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February 10, 2017
Morgan Hill City Council,
The City Council commissioned a Public Safety Master Plan (PSMP) to assess current service
levels and provide a foundation for future policy decisions to enhance the City’s Police and Fire
services. For many years, public safety has been the City Council’s highest priority and the
majority of the General Fund revenues are allocated to keeping our community safe. Recently,
the community affirmed the City Council’s public safety priority as part of the 2015 Community
Priorities survey.
For many years, Morgan Hill has enjoyed a solid reputation as a safe city – and still does so
today. This reputation is reinforced in our lower than average crime rate, strong feelings of
safety from our residents, low structural fire occurrence and property loss, and the ability to meet
the established Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response time goal of 8 minutes or less 95
percent of the time. Morgan Hill has 2,177 incidents of crime per 100,000 in population as
compared to a county average of cities under 100 sworn officers of 2,529. Our low crime rate is
due to several factors, the primary being the proactive nature of our team and an engaged
community that regularly provides information and leads on crimes in progress. An example of
our proactive nature is found when comparing the percentage of reports that end in an arrest. In
2015, the Morgan Hill Police Department (MHPD) set a record high at 51 percent where other
agencies averaged 35 percent.
The quality of our Police Department’s investigations also contributes to our success. The
District Attorney’s Office (DA) recently informed the City that during a six year period ending
in 2016, MHPD saw a nearly 5 percent decrease in the number of cases where criminal charges
were
not
filed by their office – from 14.9 percent to 10.1 percent. This is important as the
aforementioned 51 percent reflects the quality of the response and initial investigation leading to
an arrest and the latter speaks to the quality of the overall investigation and our credibility with
the DAs Office.
The Morgan Hill Fire Department (MHFD) portion of the study shows that there were 3,066
calls for service studied by CPSM for 2015. Of those calls, 3.5 percent were for confirmed fires
with reported damage (25 percent below the national average), while over 60 percent were for
EMS and/or rescue services. Total fire (inside and outside) response was 21.4 percent of total
incidents. Home fires remain the leading cause of death, injury and property loss in the US. The