Antelope Valley Community Survey Project Launched

Lancaster – On behalf of the community of Lake Los Angeles, I have been attending the ‘Days of Dialogue’ meetings where participants attend to hear updates on the progress made in the development of revised policies, or training and entities within the Sheriff’s Department’s Palmdale and Lancaster Stations such as the Community Advisory Committees (CACs) are in place. Lake Los Angeles and the east side of the unincorporated areas are represented by Manuel Magaña.

The Antelope Valley Settlement Agreement (SA) was established between the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the Civil Rights Division; the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD); and the County of Los Angeles and was filed with the US District Court for the Central District of California in April 2015. The first semi-annual report was issued in December 2015. Each report has been in excess of 39 pages with exhibits.

The report cites: The purpose of the SA is to ensure that the residents of the Antelope Valley have police services that are lawful and fully consistent with the Constitution of the United States and contemporary policing practices. A survey to make certain all individuals who wish to participate in the discussions has been launched. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey and be a contributing voice in the process. SURVEY INFORMATION Researchers from UCLA working with the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will be conducting a survey of Antelope Valley residents to understand the relationship between the community and the Sheriff’s Department. The Principal Investigator of the study is Professor Jorja Leap. The information gathered in this survey is anonymous and confidential. No individuals will be identified and each survey will only be reviewed by the UCLA researchers, not the Sheriff’s Department or the Department of Justice. The survey is part of an ongoing effort to help the community and the Sheriff’s Department better understand relations between residents and law enforcement so that they can continue to be improved and achieve the shared goals of fairness, equality, and justice. The survey is available to complete both online and in hardcopy. The online option is preferred because it is more convenient and less expensive, so we encourage our community-based organization (CBO) partners to focus on this option where possible. For the online option, please distribute the following link as widely as possible: www.tinyurl.com/avsurvey03 For the hard copy option, we will provide copies of the survey as well as prepaid return mailer boxes and envelopes so that our CBO partners don’t incur any expense in supporting the project. We do ask that our CBO partners help protect the anonymity and confidentiality of survey respondents by providing a place where they can drop off their completed surveys. We can provide a sealed cardboard box with a slot cut in the top if helpful. In order to encourage participation, we ask that our CBO partners send out two reminders about the survey to their members after the initial announcement – once after two weeks, and then a second reminder two weeks after that. If anyone has additional questions about the survey, please suggest that the person contact: avcommunitysurvey@gmail.com or (661) 527-0410 On behalf of all the teams working on this project, we thank our CBO partners and their members very much for their time and support.