Race & Equity
Equity Mission Statement: The City of Palo Alto is committed to creating a respectful, fair, and professional workplace and city. We will identify prejudices, eliminate inequities, welcome many perspectives, and use a collaborative approach to create an environment that works for everyone. The City's commitment to achieve equity in Palo Alto is the shared responsibility of our residents, organizations, governments, and other institutions.
News & Updates
NEW!
The City of Palo Alto's two-year Equity Action Plan is now available! The Equity Action Plan will follow these year-over-year broad objective areas to support ongoing consistency in the City's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) work even beyond the two years:
- Cultivating Experiences and Appreciation
- Fostering an Inclusive Environment
- Applying an Equity Lens: Strategic Review of the Organization through an Equity Lens
2024 and 2025 Equity Action Plan(PDF, 262KB)
The following community updates provide a summary of Race and Equity work underway and highlight ways you can provide input, learn more, and stay up-to-date on progress made.
Actions & Highlights
2020
The City of Palo Alto adopted its Race & Equity mission statement on November 16, 2020 as part of the City’s ongoing Race and Equity efforts. On that same evening, the City Council voted on 16 other actions to advance equity work on a range of topics from use of police data to a community summit on gender equity issues. Notably, the City Council decided to continue this work through the Policy and Services Committee on an ongoing basis.
2021
Following many discussions through ad hoc committees and Policy and Services discussions, the City Council expanded the Independent Police Auditor (IPA) scope and included several components that were previously reported in summary form in a supplemental cover memo. As of June 2021, the IPA’s scope includes the following for future IPA review and reports:
- Incidents where an officer uses a TASER, baton, chemical agent, less-lethal projectile, canine, firearm, or any other force, resulting in an injury requiring treatment beyond minor medical care in the field;
- The Police Department’s handling of Supervisory Inquiry Reports (formerly called Informal Inquiry Reports) (complaints that are sufficiently investigated and resolved through expedited review); and,
- Review of City investigations of uniformed officers arising from employee complaints of discrimination, harassment or retaliation by a uniformed officer.
Additional actions taken in 2021 include the development of the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT). This program teams up a police officer with a licensed mental health clinician to provide rapid intervention to a person in mental health crisis. PERT is an important element in furthering the City’s Race and Equity priorities by reinforcing Palo Alto’s commitment to supplementing law enforcement response options.
2022
In 2022, Council approved a new staff position for an Equity and Inclusion Program Manager, discussed ways to reduce hate crimes and hate speech, approved recommendations from the 2021 Women and Girls Summit, and took action to celebrate several dates of historic significance including Juneteenth, Cesar Chavez Day, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Additionally, the City debuted its new police records management system designed to comply with the Racial Identity Profiling Act and continued collaboration with the Santa Clara County Psychiatric Emergency Response Team.
Quarterly updates to the Policy and Services Committee