Last year there were some controversies over police practices.
I would like to know if the fallout from those controversies are holding the police back - are there policies and/or procedures that create extra red-tape and inefficiency for them? Are they afraid of losing their jobs or being sued for stopping particular people?

I would love to hear the opinion of real rank-and-file officers on this, not the police chief. I've read Chief Johnson's bio and she has a distinguished career. However, I believe that the position of being a police chief is heavily political, so the opinion of an officer on the street might be more insightful.

We need this problem solved now. If we start to earn a reputation for being an unsafe city it could lead to a host of other financial and civic problems!

I am also wondering about the lack of success by Palo Alto police in securing neighborhoods from armed robbers and burglars. Is it really that hard or as the above commentator has suggested, are we witnessing the fallout from the court's decision against Palo Alto Police in stopping suspicious people on the street? While I agree the police shouldn't stop anyone purely due to the color of their skin, law officers have a duty to stop someone in a neighborhood like they don't belong in the dead of night, unless of course the budget-poor police department can't afford to send out undercovers, which is really the right way to do this thing. Sending out police cruisers is completely useless. What we need is an undercover operation.