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San Rafael staff reports 30 complaints in 2025 and details SAFE and drone programs
Summary
City staff told the Police Advisory & Accountability Committee that investigators logged 30 complaints in 2025, outlined SAFE crisis response statistics and said the drone first-responder program has completed about 150 deployments and aided a December homicide response.
San Rafael staff reported to the Police Advisory & Accountability Committee on Jan. 21 that investigators handled 30 complaints in 2025 and provided updates on the SAFE crisis-response contract and the city's drone-as-first-responder program.
Assistant City Manager Robinson Pinon and Lieutenant Eberly said the department's complaint tracking for 2025 included 27 community complaints and three internal complaints. "It was a total of 30 cases that were investigated," Eberly said, adding that 18 complaints were exonerated, six were unfounded, three were not sustained, one was sustained and two remained pending. He said the complaint summaries will be available on the department's transparency portal and staff plans to publish a more detailed FAQ about the complaint process.
Why it matters: Complaint counts and outcomes are the committee's primary public-facing accountability metrics. Committee members and public commenters repeatedly urged easier ways to file complaints and better outreach so incidents are captured accurately.
Eberly described elements of the SAFE program, a contracted crisis-response team for low-level, behavioral-health and substance-related calls. He said SAFE is staffed per contract by one EMT and one crisis-trained responder and that the team has handled roughly 1,577 calls on a fiscal-year basis; police or EMS requested SAFE assistance about 129 times during the period Eberly reviewed.
Eberly also updated the PAC on the drone program approved by the City Council last summer. "We got our first drone up and running in October, and then we got our second drone just this month," he said. He reported approximately 150 deployments so far and said about a dozen officers are in the licensing pipeline for the FAA Part 107 remote pilot certificate; at the meeting he said two pilots were certified and a third had just passed the test. He added the transparency portal will show flight paths and (redacted) call types.
Eberly described a mid-December homicide response in which the drone located a victim within 79 seconds and helped direct patrol officers to the scene. "Within 24 hours we did have all four suspects in custody on this case," he said, crediting the drone and the ALPR camera network for investigative leads.
What remains unresolved: Community members asked whether drone deployments meet commitments made to historically marginalized neighborhoods, whether operators can broadcast in Spanish and whether deployment decisions account for bias-by-proxy reporting. Eberly and Chief Spiller described a three-step review (dispatcher intake, supervisor review and pilot launch decision) and pointed to the department's bias-by-proxy policy, saying it focuses on behavior rather than individual appearance.
Next steps: Staff said hyperlinks to the complaint data, drone flight paths and related materials will be posted on the City of San Rafael transparency portal; the PAC requested continued reporting and more granular dashboards and outreach to ensure the public can review deployments and complaint processes.
