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According to Long Beach Post, Long Beach is proposing allowing civilians to respond to certain police calls instead of officers. LBPD Lt. Eric Matusak says there's about 36 types of calls these 'civilian assistants' could handle. Examples include: burglaries where police reports need to be filed or graffiti that needs to be documented. Matusak says:
“Basically they’d go out there, take some pictures and put some information in to have the city’s contractor go out and remove the tagging,”
The civilians will not be armed or drive in unmarked police vehicles, but they will carry pepper gel (similar to pepper spray), and be trained on evidence documentation including how to fill out police reports.