According to County of San Diego Community Partnership Prosecutor Monique Meyers, Alpine residents reported fewer residential burglaries over the past year.
Meyers, along with county Community Relations Officer Cameron Celeste shared this and other information from the District Attorney’s office at a recent Alpine Chamber of Commerce meeting held at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post on Tuesday.
“The biggest thing that I hear about is homelessness and how it affects business,” Meyers said.
Meyers addressed the fact that mental health care is part of the current dialogue on homelessness.
“Our jail is currently the biggest mental health provider in San Diego. Think about that,” Meyers said.
Meyers said the District Attorney’s office has put together 13 different proposals with potential plans for addressing homelessness and mental health care, one of which includes a crisis center that would include mental health care.
Additionally, Meyers said that the District Attorney’s office has been working to connect individual agencies from different San Diego communities so that they are able to pool ideas across San Diego on areas of concern such as human trafficking and juvenile opioid abuse.
“I find myself connecting people who I think should know each other. For example, Chula Vista might have a program that is working well— maybe that same program would work well in Carlsbad even though they are very different communities,” Meyers said.
Meyers said one major initiative she is working on is reducing the school-to-prison pipeline.
“The school to prison pipe line is significant in San Diego. We’re trying to connect with children through empathy and education before they join that pipeline,” Meyers said.
According to Meyers, the District Attorney’s office has been instrumental in obtaining private funding for the Human Trafficking Prevention Education and Training Act of 2017.
The law requires all students in grades 7 to 12 to receive instruction about sexual harassment, sexual assault, adolescent relationship abuse, intimate partner violence, and sex trafficking but is an unfunded mandate.
Meyers said that the new curriculum has not yet been implemented in Alpine Unified School District, but that representatives from the District Attorney’s office frequently go into schools across the county for a wide variety of trainings.
“For years, we’ve been doing D.A. trainings with schools. I’m probably going to ruin fairy tales for you, but we often use the story of Cinderella as an example: she was unpaid, forced to work, and had no freedom to leave,” Meyers said.
