Right? Good afternoon. We will now call to order the expanded budget Finance and Audit standing committee for the purposes of our fiscal year 24 budget hearings. With the clerk please call the roll.
Sure. Councilmember Scott Business Council Member Fred Tarhana. Third, present. Customer Leticia Johnson. Councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romain, Hail Mary waters. Councilmember Angela Winfield Callaway, Councilmember Coleman a young your council president pro tem James T. Your Council President Mary Sheffield president. Madam President, you do not have a quorum.
We have five here.
Yep, we have five. That's okay. So we do have a quorum. So we will proceed with our budget hearing and I see member Johnson has also joined us as well if the clerk with no clock will show not Madam President. All right. We have the Detroit Police Department joining us for our budget hearing chief white and all of the representatives that are here. Please join us at the table. Member waters is here. The park will note Madam President Thank you. Thank you.
Chief in to all of you are just when you guys are ready to state your name and titles and the floor is yours to begin your presentation.
Good afternoon. Chief white
in the valley Assistant Chief Commander Michael Parrish Chief of Staff.
Neverland Zarco. Agency CFO Franklin Hayes Deputy Chief
All right, once again, good afternoon, honorable Council. And thank you for having us here today. As part of the budget process, I'd like to provide a high level overview of the Detroit Police Department's budget with the understanding that the DPD has the largest and probably one of the most complex budgets in the city. Due in part to crime, crime is a complex issue. And the complexity of our department reflects this. We devote a substantial amount of resource to emergency call taking emergency response and investigations. Here are some notable statistics just to share with this honorable body department is down 24.8% and sexual assaults were down 7% And carjackings, and we are down 7.3% In burglaries however, the department is experiencing an increase in homicides this year by 17% Compared to last year at the same time, our analysis suggests that this is due in part to a spike in domestic violence. We've had a number about 20% of our calls or homicides are attributed to domestic violence, whether that be intimate partner violence or relatives who are in some type of dispute that results in violence and and usually as gun violence. We also have a spike 32% in motor vehicle facts around the country. My colleagues are seeing a similar spike in auto theft, Kia vehicles, one of the vehicles that are being targeted and we are working with our commercial auto theft unit to address this issue. But you know, this auto theft issue is one that affects our community, particularly our committee because in fact our folks being able to get to work it affects you know, to the doctor, and then they're victimized by this this issue and also has a significant economic impact on our community, a particular community that spending a significant amount of money on auto insurance, so we are focused on that and this council will be receiving a comprehensive expansion of our LPR recommendation as well as how we're going to address auto theft in the future. We'd like to be able to identify where the person is stealing the vehicle where they're driving, and be able to use this technology to help get those vehicles back to our residents. We also have a substantial amount of resource dedicated to mental health response. And then in our response to our shelterless population, which was commonly known as the homeless population in our community. As of March 13, Detroit Police Department has service 3800 calls for the mentally ill and of that number 1336 calls for those who were violent episodes meaning they were armed, threatening to hurt themselves or others. So as you can see, there's a significant dedication to to that work. No less important is the health and wellness and education of our members to ensure that they're both physically and mentally capable of doing this work. We've worked very hard with our training division to make sure that we have some of the highly some of the most highly trained officers but also we've really pushed education in our department. We partner last year, we're clear University, and we currently have 171 individuals in the department, super proud of this that have graduated from Clara University, and we currently have another 310 that are enrolled 69 members of the Detroit Police Department have graduated from the Wayne State Leadership Program. I'm one of those in 101 members have graduated from the new chief school and 10 have graduated from the FBI supervisory Institute we feel that a highly educated department is important for serving our community, as this council was aware of our fiscal 2024 budget appropriation totals $388 million and that's an increase of $22 million. This increase is largely due to a $10 million increase in benefits pension insurance and longevity and 12 million due to the contractual wage increases. Based on our new contract the police department's new expense initiatives and requests like other departments has a number of things that we're frankly we want to do to make our department better to improve our operations and to certainly make sure that we have a department that is both transparent has the latest equipment and the best officers. Also that we have the equipment that the officers need to reduce injuries to themselves and injuries to our community because we are dealing with some situation quite violent. This shooter department had to prioritize a procurement of its next generation of tasers, which adds up to approximately $2.5 million over the next 10 years so spread out over a 10 year timeframe. The tasers the department's principal and intermediate devices to be used against individuals who are posing act of aggression towards the officers or to someone else whether threatening to hurt them. The devices are critical when it comes to taking violent offenders into custody without having to directly engaged with the suspects. These devices were first approved five years ago prior to that we use the PR 24 which is commonly known as the nightstick that was a very complex tool. It was hard to use and conflict or when you were dealing with act of aggression, it generally lead to injury and then the optics of it were just simply horrible. So the Taser is a much better tool to use. I'm moving on to another area of priority. Our recruiting initiative and as this council is likely aware, the department has had a number of vacancies over the years. And recruiting is just something that we're very, very focused on everyone in this department is focused on Assistant Chief Lavallee and our HR director, director Pattillo have been Uber focused on making sure that we recruit from every area of our state but particular particularly I'm sorry, in our city. We are trying to continue to fill both sworn and civilian positions. And I'm happy to say that since council approved our last contract thank you again on behalf of Detroit Police Department. The attrition rate has slowed down in addition we have seen more than ever before number of officers returning to the Detroit Police Department I'm gonna boast a little bit about those numbers very briefly. Oakland County we got one officer back Westland PD we got one officer back and Arbor PD we got two police officers back at Atlanta PD we got one officer back Auburn Hills we got one officer back Farmington Hills. We got one officer back Lavanya PD we got three officers back. Metro airport police we got one officer Ben Ovi PD one we got three from the private sector people that left to do other things. One came out of retirement, one from River Rouge River Rouge, one from Taylor and two from Temple PD. We are super excited. And I've got about 16 Trying to come back on my desk before I got here today from varying agencies on our state. So this is goodness, the impact of the raises for our officers. Six months prior to the raises the department only saw the return of three candidates under similar circumstances. But Economic Society Detroit Police Department has been retooling its efforts. And this retooling includes really moving around personnel to make sure that they are in the most effective positions possible those positions that can be done by civilians, were hiring civilians and putting those police officers back on the street. In addition to that we've decided to partner our recruiting efforts with some other key stakeholders. We partnered with military services Army National Guard, Air National Guard, and other veterans organizations partnering with organizations such as Detroit at work, Job Corps, or Job Corps, I'm sorry, and a number of colleges and institutions including Wayne State, and Wayne County Community College. In fact, we we hired a when I missed that one. We hired away state police officer to Detroit recently as well. We also have done some creative things applicants who failed testing we rescheduled and immediately we have officers are that are working with those who can't pass the physical requirements of a policing. So we have an initiative that we do every weekend where the training academy is able to work with our residents. We also are working with those non enforcement roles in the department such as dispatch, and other supportive operations like towing in the police department, where returning citizens have opportunities with the police department, which is very unusual to some, but we've hired a number of returning citizens to do non enforcement type noncertified type work. My chief of staff actually serves on a committee. He also does expungement work for those that are trying to turn their lives around and get opportunities within the city as well as the police department. So in fiscal year 2023, the Detroit Police Department hired 186 members, and over the last 12 months the Detroit Police Department is hired 253 members so much work remains but sure you agree those are pretty good numbers. Again, since the announcement of the new contract we've hired 156 remembers and just give you a bit more context or context on that centralized 2022. The department has had five classes through the academy
and this amounts to a total of 115 students that successfully transitioned to the rank of police officers. But our efforts to fill and file is not just about hiring. It's about restructuring our department in a way that makes sense in this progressive time in our country and particularly in law enforcement. Our legislative policy division took a look at the total number of positions and they noted that they decreased by eight and the reason for that is we found a need for more supervision more on the street supervision and we just simply moved some positions around to accommodate that. So where we we see a fluctuation and in eight positions. We actually have more supervision on the street. Filling our ranks is not just priority. It is the priority for our department for fiscal year 2020. For everything we're doing is to that end, that with the effort of or the purpose of reducing crime as far as our needs for fiscal year 2024. As stated earlier, the department has as many all of our facilities require some renovation. We're super excited about number eight finally bringing that annex closure. Councilman Pro Tem will be very happy to hear that that is coming to fruition here early summer late spring number eight precinct is in really good condition number nine is wrapping up and then certainly we'll be looking at doing something for number seven. I know I only have two minutes on Bloomberg quickly. The bottom line is we have some asks for the fiscal year 25 budget and certainly they have been done with fiscal responsibility in mind, being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and mine and to make our department better. Thank you for your time. With that. I'll take any questions that you may have.
All right, thanks so much, chief white and just want to first start off by saying thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do. Your entire department does the leadership within Divi and I'm just saying this not as an elected official, but as a Detroiter, that I am also just very proud of you and your leadership and what you stand for. I think we are very proud as a city to have a chief like chief white.
Thank you very much.
I've been out in the community with you. I see how you engage with our young people. And I just commend your holistic approach and overall view of policing. And so I just thank you I really do thank you for your collaboration with our office and just the work that you continue to do day in and day out as it relates to policing in our city. Thank you. And so every man and woman of the police department, we appreciate your service as well. I will start off with member Doha for questions and it will continue to council members.
Thank you President and good afternoon chief Good afternoon team. I echo some of the same comments. Appreciate your work arbit your service and all of our officers who put their lives on the line every single day. And that is something I don't take lightly. As we are approaching one year without one of our great ones. Mr. Laurin courts officer lower courts, who was from the second precinct, I always think about them and think about the job that you have and how difficult it is. Especially shout out to two six and 10 those are all my precincts. Those offices are amazing, particularly those MPOs who reach far into the community go to community meetings. I mean, every single community meeting is attended by MPO and that is just amazing within our district. So thank you again for that. With that my questioning kind of just revolves around other initiatives. You know, I'm happy to co chair the gun violence task force with council president Sheffield. As you know, we have made some strong pushes for initiatives and that gun violence task force we've heard about now sat stoppers is easy to mix that up with the other one. But what you know what is kind of the thought behind and I know a little bit over a year ago you unveiled your five point plan, and that connectivity with community policing in a sense is important. What are we what can we see and what can we look for in this upcoming year, particularly in this budget? Or with some of the things that you are seeing some of the funds you were hoping to secure to strengthen that CBI work that goes deep into the community that is additional to what our officers are doing every day and how does that relationship work?
Yes, sir. And thank you for that question. And thank you for the both of you for the comments through the chair. So the CVR we're super excited staffer opportunity and what's being presented because we do understand the importance of that community relationship. We've talked about the 45 point plan and compasses community first right. But there's there's veins and pieces of crime that we can't necessarily touch as police officers you know that those those beefs those, you know, we had a guy shoot a neighbor killed over a property line dispute over garbage can you know, we had two ladies shot at a club this weekend. You know, two o'clock in the morning, guy pulls out a gun and shoots two plays out and shoots. One looks like she's not going to survive the other looks like she will thank goodness. So what we're hoping to do is disrupt that. What What, what's the CVI work and those things that the police only know about after the fact. I think that there's gonna be a great opportunity to disrupt violence at that level. And then we come in and do the work that we do. We have to layer it, we have to layer it with being out in the community, working with our community building community trust, and then when it's time to make an arrest, we have to make that arrest. I mean, there are some violent offenders who pose a threat to our community, that have to be dealt with professionally, but they have to be dealt with, they have to be off the street so that they don't victimize our children. They don't victimize our elderly and they don't victimize each other. You know, sometimes we see these beats breakout where a person is mad with one person for something and three for people to have absolutely nothing to do with it get hurt. So that's what you're going to see more focus. You know, we our crime strategy. We built off the five point plan we met earlier this year when we were talking about our initiatives and how we're going to go about our business. We have a tendency sometimes to chase the shiny object, right? I mean, when you when you do a crime strategy, you have to stay focused, you have to stay with it. You have to stay in those those areas in our community that we know consistently represent our crime. I mean, since I was a kid, I'm not going to call out those areas, but there are specific areas that we can look at statistically and they have driven our crime for years and years and years. We're going to be in the veins of those communities and attempting to drive down crime with the mindset of knowing that everybody in that community is perpetrator of crime right there are there are residents that live that are victimized by the crime in those areas. So our focus will be a layered approach to seating the community but in but eradicating crime, getting those abandoned vehicles out of there cleaning up those areas, working with our partners in the city to board up those houses and they've done a great job of partnering with us, Deputy Chief Hayes, the moment we go into a community, you know, we have a philosophy. We go in, we find a problem, we clean it up, we leave it better than we found it when we go into these businesses that have shootings and like he's going over to that club that had a shooting says we're done here. And we're gonna we're gonna check your license. We're gonna make sure that you've got the you don't have any fire violations, you've got the proper lighting. And if we find violations, we're gonna shut you down because you have to be good stewards and partners for our community. Same thing, we're going to neighborhoods, they're shooting in a neighborhood, we're gonna clean it up. If there was an abandoned house, get boarded up, work with our partners BC has been great. Go in there and there's vans and cars and those areas get them out of there, do everything we can to leave it better than we found it. And hopefully that will also help us so we as you're gonna hear we've got we're not just going out to enforce crime. That's a big part of what we're doing. But we're also going to work with with every partner we have in these communities because there's there's there's more to to the crime than just the event.
And so I you know, first I'll say I'm glad to hear that when we particularly we talk about hotspots in these areas, and I think deeper attention needs to be paid when we talk about what drives crime, whether that's economics are socio economic, whether that's dealing with housing, whether that's dealing, you know, with so many other factors, too. So to hear it the idea that cross pollination is great. So so it's not more so of a proactive approach or a reactive approach, but more so of a proactive approach to be able to drive those numbers down. And I think that CBI will help with that, as we talked about in our task force, connecting them with other departments as well, that can solve issues. You know, maybe someone does a carjacking and there's no excuse for it, but maybe they say we've done this carjacking. But I don't have a place to live. So I sold that car, right to be able to have a place to sleep for the night. And I think, you know, again, that's not excusing the behavior. But I think, you know, to your point when we look deeper into those factors, and then have the assistance from our department DPD with other departments, it takes more so it looks and gets deeper into the serve aspect, the Protect and serve mantras, they would say that means that my second question goes back I heard you mentioned the raises and I can tell you, when I served in the state legislature, we used to talk about this all the time, we would run across other representatives and say hey, man, why? Why is your dish? Well, you know, why is your district keep stealing our cars, right? And they say, well, we can give them better opportunity. And then you guys can and now I think we're you know we're seeing a push towards where we can bring some of those cops back here, right here in the city of Detroit. I'm glad to see that. My question is even going deeper than that, though. I believe it's creating a pipeline to the point where even you know officers who have not went to the academy yet. Are we looking at our schools. I remember being a kid. When I was a kid, there was a singing group that came around they call them the blue pigs and they will come out and obviously you don't like using the word pig anymore, but I'm not that old but that's that's that's that's what was utilized then. But there were a singing group that will come to DPS and try to promote, you know, careers in law enforcement. And and I think that you know, that was so it was eye opening now that I think about it not everybody wanted to become a police officer, but what it did was show the initiative, hey, I'm not here to harm you. You know, you see tons of Instagram videos now where you got cops happen out of the cars going to play basketball in the neighborhood and things like that. I think that deeper connection with our youth, you know, because even when we talk about this gun violence task force, we're looking at these numbers for fatal and non fatal shootings. You know, and thank you again, for the DPD updates that you send all the council members that we get. We look at those numbers I'm seeing 1617 1819 Right. And I'm like, wow, you know, I would I wouldn't think somebody even my peers around that time. We're just all carrying guns. But I think, you know, I guess my question is, what are we going to do to take that deeper approach to those younger ages to our youth to be able to create that trust? Because trust is important, that connectivity and then try to work on establish a pipeline to bring them forward?
Yeah. And so you just really talked about what keeps me up at night. We're trying everything we can, you know, so much has changed with with how we have to engage the youth and there has to be a high level of trust. And in policing. And so what we're doing it we don't have the blue pill anymore. When they retired out we we disbanded that operation, but we're doing things very similarly, we're working with the Detroit Public Safety Academy, which is a school and many of those kids there at that school. Want to be either police or fire, EMS, dispatch, and we're working with them. We have a summer program that we do with them. And for those kids who graduate and don't want to go away to college. We're hiring them right in the police department up to Detroit cop at 18. I mean, it's a big list but you know, if you if you've got the right emotional state and in maturity, we work with you to get you in but we also expose them to other opportunities. You see, we use our social media platform, which is the kids new news. I grew up watching my grandparents done news, my mom watched the news, but our kids are watching Social Media News, and they don't necessarily do the 247 thing like we do. So we're reaching out to them and social media, a lot more. We're trying to demystify or demystify the police department and not make it you know that that place that only few know about so we have a lot of our MPOs that are doing high level engagement activities with the youth. We have our WhatsApp program with academies. It's going to why is it escaped me when I'm speaking out serve them protect. So that program is a program before you can take your assignment you have to serve the community right? And we do that in in partnership with our youth in our schools, so that people can get to understand what the police are before they're jumping in and out of scout cars. We want you out of that Scout car walking in those neighborhoods and getting to know the community. And in fact, Councilmember Santiago Romero was at a program last fall, was it fall or winter? And where we are we had about 25 youth from around the city sitting in a round table discussion. It wasn't staged she walked in there and had the opportunity to see the officers engaging the youth and tell them about you know, decisions and consequences, that type of thing. So we're super focused on it. But you know, it's gonna take a village gonna take all of us because our youth are exposed to things that we weren't. Social media is a whole new animal that we didn't anticipate it being the having the power that it has right now. We're seeing a lot of kids, we've got a significant uptick in violent crime by youth gun accessibility. They're hearing put a switch on your Glock and, you know, put a hidden compartment in your car and we're combating all of that we were able to narrow down the key a boy thing that went national started with social media and you got kids that are doing carjackings, and don't even know that they've done a carjacking you know, they don't understand implying a weapon and taking someone's car. It's a carjacking right. I mean, if you imply you got a weapon to give me your keys, you've just had an armed robber, you don't have to actually have a weapon and, and so it's just so much to it. We need everyone we need community conversations. You know, I need to be even more visible to the youth. Even though I'm an old man to him. I gotta tell him what I'm seeing with other kids that are making poor choices. And then we got to use our younger officers who can connect because they see Dad and granddad when they talk to me. I tell my story a little bit surprised, but but I want to make sure that we've got those young people connecting with our younger officers. So you're gonna see a lot more of those types of activities, sir.
Thank you and I appreciate it unless it's just a comment. You know, also supported by the equipment. I don't think sometimes folks understand resources and resources are very important. So whether that's the LPRs that we get, you know, district seven has a lot of stolen vehicles that come from district seven. I hear from residents all the time. So I'm glad to hear that we're talking about increasing funding or trying to get funding for more LPRs and to ensure that we keep our folks safe and they can get their vehicles back before it's totally stripped. Right. And then the other thing and I had to promise a resident I will say this was SATs ShotSpotter yes, that spider I'm now mixing up the stopper in the spider now. But that technology, she gave me a story that happened the other night right in their neighborhood. And she was sitting in our living room and she just heard multiple gunshots from automatic weapons. She was crawling in our living room. And what surprised her was that about seven minutes later DPD showed up and they didn't have ShotSpotter before but since the expansion they did and she said I was just amazed how fast someone showed up because we used to hear these gunshots all the time and nobody responded as quickly as they did. And so she was just amazed by that. So again, you know, when we look at policing resources are important. Please keep looking to increase our resources that we have and tools that we have that will assist us and make sure that we become modernized like other police departments around the country.
I appreciate that. Let me kind of very briefly. It's important not to fear the technology have strong policy behind it. I hear from from residents all the time with that same sentiment that you know, officers showed up we've got dedicated resources to go into areas where shots are being fired. You know, if you don't wanna engage the technology don't fire in our community. There's never a condition where it would be okay to be shooting a gun in our community period. And unfortunately, we still find people that are doing it but we're also able to see the the impact of ShotSpotter and it's causing people to make different decisions because we go out, we recover evidence if the person has left unfortunately the other night we found two people shot and killed at a ShotSpotter program which ironically, we did not get 1911 Call on but we were able to recover some so bring out the tracking dogs. Time is essential in those critical incidents and able to get right out and start to investigate the crime. I think we're going to ultimately be able to close it because we got there so quickly was able to recover some evidence. But you know that I just really appreciate that and other communities even around here. Use technology every single day and we should have the same advantages to be able to read our community of violence and crime as any other community without fear. So thank you for that.
Thank you, Chief. And thank you, Madam President for your indulgence.
Thank you. Thank you member Doha. Um, so I have several questions that we submitted in writing, but the two I want to focus on one and you may have mentioned this I'm sorry if you touched on it on the your opening remarks regarding the crisis intervention and CO Response Team. And so it looks like there's 210 officers to date that have been trained, is that correct?
227. The I don't know why the numbers a little bit different explaining them. Okay. If
you could just speak to what's the overall goals in terms of the officers trained and then also is there an actual amount in the budget that is allocated for crisis intervention, it was kind of hard for me to really see how much we're actually spending on this mental health response. Yes,
ma'am. So let me start, work my way for the number to 27 and what we have is a combination of things. We have officers that are receiving crisis intervention, mental health training in the academy, so we're going to constantly be training, but then we have specialists that are trained as CIT officers and that number is at 227. And the reason that is different is a few months back, I made a decision to centralize the crisis intervention response, we were seeing so many numbers, I wanted to ensure that we at least had a presence in every precinct with a crisis intervention trained officer. And so that's where you see that 20 number where we brought 20 officers that's their sole job every day three shifts to go out and handle these runs. And we've had some some some success. But the issue is, this is a problem. That is smack dab in our lap that we didn't ask for. Really had to get prepared. For shouldn't be a policing problem. It's bigger than a policing problem where police officers were not mental health professionals, but now we're forced to have to navigate an area where we were going to need a whole lot of support. The goal is to try to maintain our lane integrity and what I mean by that is be the police with the training. Let the mental health professionals be the mental health professionals work with them wherever possible, and try everything you can in your power to reduce the number of interactions with policing and mental health now that is a a change in philosophy. Because we will never be medical professionals and I had to really look at that and say, you know, the constant engagement of police in crisis if someone is in crisis, they're posing a significant threat to themselves or others. When the police come in, the person who called the police calls the police because the person that they love and know is operating out of character. And now here comes the police. And they tell us that we're going to believe them, right? And now this person is engaging in high risk behavior that they're unfortunately not even responsible for. There's only so much training that's going to that's going to be able to mitigate that problem in that circumstance. So there's been a lot of work done with our mental health professionals around the country that learn best practices, and bring what they have done to the city which includes a separate response. That's non police. We're not there yet. But at the very least a co response which we are there with police and mental health train police officers, but the goal should be to get us out of that role completely at some point. And I don't know what that's going to look alike but we're working at it feverishly to ensure because it's it poses a risk to the officer poses a risk, really to the community because these are not these are police officers with mental health training if like you know I'm not to sound crude, but if I need a roofer I call a roofer. I don't call a plumber that knows something about roofs right. We're in this instance, we're plumbers I know something about roofs, right. And so we want to make sure that our citizens have the professional that's given the services. D one has been a great partner. We need to get more trained mental health professionals on that car with a police officers but you know, one of the things that one of the challenges is candidly is that they you know, it's a risky situation to have a person who has a mental health crisis oftentimes arm with someone who was a mental health professional on that car was one police officer sometimes too. They don't want to always engage. We've been fortunate. But we much work remains and we're not there to announce to this body yet that we have completed everything and ready to present a full fledged rollout but we have done a lot of good work. I appreciate the council support on some of the equipment and tools that I've asked for, and we're going to continue to move forward with a comprehensive presentation in the next few months for this body. That includes the new equipment and a more elaborate plan and rollout
but just to be clear, covers all proceeds currently
it does. It does. It does again, it's it's a small, dedicated number of officers in every precinct. Your next question was about the budget allocations and looking at the budget because of whether they're all spread out and we had to move quickly. It's in there represents about close to $400,000 in but we're going to need some equipment pieces that we just don't have the answer for yet. We were able to get some small pieces to stabilize the operation. Some things were donated to the Public Safety Foundation. We're doing a proof of concept on a couple pieces of equipment. And I don't know exactly what that number is going to look like yet. Just back in the envelope math is closer about a half million dollars. But obviously I'm gonna bring a comprehensive document to this body to make an evaluation on I'm just not there yet.
Okay, well, I'm definitely want to work with you on that initiative as much as I can support. I do have additional questions around it. But my second question and final question is regarding victim assistance, something that is near and dear to me, I have to give a shout out to all of the social workers and everyone that works within victim assistance. We've had to come out to several events and I think a lot of people don't really understand the services that DPD offers in victim assistance. And the devastation that occurs after violence has taken place and families is devastating. It is long lasting. And so I guess my question really is around one I saw a reduction in the budget so I'm going to do to address the reduction and then two is it's fully staff the capacity to really address the need of of it was who need the victim assistance within the city of Detroit.
So, is it fully staffed? It's fully staffed budgetarily but is there enough? Not yet. I think we need to add more. We're going to be adding more. One of the things that we did, we had to we weren't paying enough I mean there's no nice way of saying it with COVID. What are the things that we've learned nothing really good came out of COVID Except for awareness. And one of the things is the awareness of mental health and the need for social workers. Well, once that happened, everybody needed them. The price points went up. We weren't paying enough. We were losing social workers. They were going to other jobs. And so what we did was we decided to collapse down ask Neff to collapse down a few positions that we couldn't fill anyway and pay the ones that we have more and that's why you see that I believe that's where they're saying they did you can talk to in a moment. And so we we hired and we boost up the salaries. We'll talk about that.
Yes, Madam President. The there are two separate issues the reduction in overall personnel by eight which is part of your questions, but then on the volca grant victims of crime assistance. The budget is funded for that operation through a grant. So as grant money comes in, lower or higher. That's how we adjust the general fund. But if approved, the 2024 budget that you have in front of you, aside from the grant will be able to support the current personnel even though even if the grant may be reduced, if that makes sense. However, invoke operations as chief indicated they're fully staffed as far as the budget goes, but as a personnel I believe we have a few vacancies in that regard.
Okay. All right. So this is like I said near and dear to me and I like you said you guys are fully staffed based on the budget. That's available, but I really would like to see more investment in victim assistance. And so we could talk more offline. I will like a motion if possible Pro Tem to add this to our Executive Session. motion has been made. If there was no objections, we will add that and then I will submit the rest of my questions or writing. Thank you, Chief white. Thank you, potentate.
Thank you, Madam President, and very apropos, because that was on my list as well about victim assistance. We talked about it a bit in the past chief about some of the folks who have caught well the surviving members of of victims, how challenging it is for them to get updates on their cases. And as we know, the unfortunately, the caseload just continues to grow. As you all continue to execute, you know, provide the best sense of justice you can for those families. Where do we stand now? No, there was another there was an individual that was hired last year to assist with that process. Where do we stand with that particular element of the victim assistance?
Yes, sir. Through the Chair. So we we are doing better. You know, I don't have the personnel to assign to every call, but we're calling folks back. I get less complaints on that. But we have to do better. I mean, I'm just going to be candid with you. The numbers of cases that that are coming in are just very, very high. And obviously everyone wants that connectivity with the person who's managing their case. So what we've required happen is that our detectives now take a more active role, not just one or two people that's assigned to victim assistance but the actual detective call back those complaining family members or complainant, family members to give them case updates. The other thing that we've implemented that I'm really encouraged by is a quarterly check in with the family. So we actually hold a lunch and we bring them in, we update their case, we have lunch with them, I come out and talk to them. And that has been moving in really the right direction. And we're going to continue to do that and we're going to put some work in and expanding it. And that's also being supported by the Public Safety Foundation. The director buys them lunch or dinner some instances and that's been going really, really well. You know, it's just a really tragic event. Oftentimes, we find that people just want to tell their story and how traumatized they are. That goes a long way. We've used some social workers for that. We're also folding in our chaplain Corps. I just hired in fact one of the chaplains I can't think of her name right now but She's on our team to work with the families and she now works directly for homicides still does Chaplain wear Chaplain Stenson, but she also works with the families and that's that's going a long way to so connectivity is important. And more work still needs to be done, but we're doing a lot better than we were.
So it sounds like there could possibly be a need for additional bodies there. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Is that reflected in the budget? Because here's now's the time to ask for
yes, there is reflected in the budget. And actually, I've actually done a budget adjustment to hire a civilian for that sole purpose. So yes, we are in fact asking in this budget for that personnel,
would they be included in victim assistance or is that a separate
homicide? There'll be a civilian that works at Homicide.
Okay, so so when we just talk specifically about victim assistance, while we're increasing the pay, which is excellent. That means we're still not necessarily on paper. We have the personnel but in reality, we put could potentially use some additional individuals. What would that number look like? Well, it could assist you. I mean, I know you come with the budget and say, This is where we are. This is what we need because it's been approved by the mayor's office and everyone but the reality is, we're here to help. You know, we want to provide whatever assistance we can, especially for those who are already victims. We don't want to lessen that load just as you do.
Yes, sir. And I just want to be clear, there's a very detailed and comprehensive approach to our victims, right. So when there's a case filed down, they're signed to a team and that team is a chaplain, and that team is a one of those Victim Assistance professionals, and someone who's going to be assigned to that family. So it's, it's a process of the allocation of personnel that's needed. We've we've addressed that in this budget, and I'm very comfortable that we're going to be able to meet our the meet the expectations of the community, with the budget that we've presented, but I'm talking about is long term. I mean, hopefully we get to the point where these casefile numbers drop and I've got more resources to push out to other families. But I think that presents a very proactive approach and it doesn't leave us in a place where we are not going to be able to reach out to our family members. But when we're I think we're talking about two different issues. So Victim Assistance itself is is to work with the victims of crime as you know, cosmic and to ensure that they get the resources that they need, whether it be through the department or otherwise but the contacting other family members of victims of homicide. That number is represented. And also, we've added some resources to do just that. So that's the hiring of one person who oversees the unit, but that's the number of people that come in work
and then my last one, I know that we'd also talked about nighttime or evening MPOs want to get a status on that. I don't think they've gone live just yet. They work hard over the weekends for sure. But you know, not emergency issues, neighbor issues that could potentially be trying to tamp down, still go to 911. Any update on the evening.
And I'm only laughing because that's one of the most unpopular things that I did with some of the MPOs but they have adjusted well to it. So what happens now is I think we're down to MPLS. We're gonna be filling those when we with the graduation clap down for because a four. I'm down I think I'm down for MPLS because to get promoted to sergeant, and so I'm going to promote those up graduated class Friday and we'll be fully staffed on MPLS they flex their hours they have to flex their hours. Because when we move them in the night, then people want them on the days and so what we're doing now, I've asked the sergeant director to sergeants to make sure that those evening cases are addressed by setting up appointments with citizens but also one day a week at very least, each MPL should do a rotation on afternoons not fully implemented yet because there's been a lot of things pulling but it definitely will be in play for spring and summer.
How will how will the public leave more made aware of MPLS social media
and their monthly community? Meeting? They will be made aware and I've hired a member on my staff, Marcellus less than Mr. Kibby who is to be going around and if you all have had opportunity meet him yet, but he's going to be going to every community meeting and ensuring if they forget to mention it, we will make some notes on it.
Thank you as well, Chief you've retained for all the tremendous work that you do have additional questions that's coming but appreciate your presence and your response to the questions today.
Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, proto Council Member Santiago Rivera.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon, everyone. Good to see you all. Just wanted to start off by saying thank you as well for all the work that you do. And I'm very hopeful and proud to hear our police chief say that you agree police should not be responding to non violent mental health calls to get to a point that we're at right now to be able to accept that and try to work towards solutions that would bring in partners and mental health providers and social workers to be to be the responders to those instances, gives me a lot of hope. And I look forward to continuing to work with you in your office so that we get there and it'll take some time. But I'm happy to help you and continue to forward any resources that we can to make that happen. My questions are, a lot of them are really focused on our budget. This is something that's really important to me and ensuring that we're utilizing these resources to the best of our abilities. And you have made a recent request for license plate readers. And you're using ARPA funding I don't remember Siemens as a part of your original ARPA request. So if you wouldn't mind reminding us if this was a part of that ARPA strategic plan that you had. If it's not what happened, and if you can let us know what the remaining items are. That you're going to be requesting for ARPA funds.
Okay, I don't have all of them with me. But I don't have that list. So I can go high level with you. I'll have to give you the I just don't have all of those right now. But as counselors are aware that ShotSpotter was initially as part of the gun violence reduction that was in our app, and then we we put that out, and this gave us an opportunity to use those those funds for this purpose because we had the the allocation for the gun violence reduction, which was part of our our PA at the time where you have to identify ways of reducing gun violence in your community for some of the categories. So this opportunity presented itself but I just don't want to gloss over the the LPR issue. It's just I mean we obviously have had LPR since 2018. And we've used them very responsibly. What this tool gives law enforcement not just Detroit, but other law enforcement is the opportunity. You know, to know that when a vehicle is stolen, like the old hot sheet right where we used to literally walk into work every day, you get a piece of paper with license plates listed on it, right? And officers would look at the so called Hot sheet and drive around and look for those vehicles that were driving through our community. Oftentimes when you found them they were sitting on a bench or they were abandoned on the streets partially strip. What we're saying is when a car is stolen, and it hits one of the license plates readers will be able to know that hey, that car is that seven mile and evergreen Scout car over there and get the person's car back lock up the person who stole the vehicle and cause these auto thieves to make better decisions by not stealing our residents cars. That's that's the goal of this. We're not using this for speeders. We're not going to do that by policy. We're not using this for any other reason. But for violence crime, carjackings, and stolen vehicles. Not for enforcement of civil or anything like that immigration status. speeders child support warrant? Absolutely not. But for the purpose of identifying those people who are kidnapped vehicles that are wandering and kidnappings, carjackings and stolen vehicles and we think because we have demonstrated such responsible use other agencies use this tool that Detroit could should expand and use this tool to get our residents vehicles back. We as of this morning, I was talking to DC Hayes 503 More cars stolen this year already 503 more vehicles than last year at the exact same time.
Understood through the Chair. Thank you, Chief. I will look out for that list of the ARPA items that you're going to be requesting that are moving forward and I do understand I hear the issues that we have right now regarding car thefts. So thank you for your willingness to let us know what the policies are that we're going to have in place to ensure that it's safe. My next question, you're talking about car thefts. I had been recently made aware that there are residents claiming that their cars are being impounded for non theft reasons that they're being paid fees charged fees. I'm gonna assume that something isn't going rights or that they might have old information, but I'm wondering if you can please let us know what the process is if something like art is stolen, what they can expect.
Well, let's start with the cars being impounded for reasons other than auto theft. It's very specific reasons why we would impound the vehicle if it's abandoned. If if it's abandoned and damaged and poses a risk to the community where you can't drive past it. Or you know it's partially in the street or the vehicle was in disrepair on on two or three tires type of thing. We can immediately impound it for safety reasons. We if it's not if it's just abandoned in front of your home, we tag it and 48 hours. If you don't move it, put it on your property or secure it. We can impound it. So it shouldn't I'd like to talk more about that if you could send that information over to me. I can give you some specific information as to what happened with those vehicles. With regards to your vehicle being stolen, what happens is you make a police report wherever the vehicle we you know, we do our best to look for the car, but I'm not going to say that we're out just scouring the neighborhoods looking the officers. Right now we have LPRs and vehicles as we go up and down the streets. If it hits on a stolen car, it will look and if it's stolen, we still have to do an investigation even though it comes up stolen. Sometimes people find their own cars and they'll take them off the system which is you know, something that we'll have to do some education on. But we'll do an investigation we'll impound the vehicle. Most kinds of stolen vehicles that are either in a chase where police officers which we generally don't try not to chase for stolen vehicles because it poses a risk to our community. Or they're they're stripped and dumped and if they're stripped and dealt with and piling up, and then there is toll fees as it relates to non Detroit tolls for stolen vehicles. Oftentimes with us we don't want to you know, re victimize our residents. So we try to waive them waive the fees particularly if they don't have full coverage insurance.
Okay, thank you. This is very helpful. I have more questions that I'll send over regarding the implementation of ShotSpotter with the new contracts and just want to briefly ask there are unfortunately more gang activity that I'm seeing in southwest right now. Thinking signs that I haven't seen in years. recently moved over by car park area and the amount of gunfire is getting ridiculous. Wondering if you've heard of these concerns, and would love to have an offline conversation with inner captain to see what we can be doing it because this is something that we haven't seen in a long time. I thought we had it pretty, pretty handled. But wondering if you've heard of any issues regarding this and hoping that we can have an online conversation around this issue.
I would love to have an offline conversation outside of this with you about what we're saying we are I will just tell you high level that we're seeing some generational stuff happen some some kids who, you know, uncles and dads we're we're engaged. Right now not as violent, but emulating a lot of the behavior with Satan starting to see a little bit of an uptick in tagging which is what you're talking about ceasefires engage. Our Gang intelligence is engaged in it and we're gonna be making some real talk. We've got some activities that we have planned, that will stop a lot of what we're seeing and we know, a particular school, couple groups that we need to talk to and we'll be doing that and you'll be seeing a pretty significant operation in the next two weeks that also involves some narcotic rates that are directly attributed to some activities and I'll stop there.
Appreciate you so much. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you,
Councilmember. Councilmember
waters. Thank you, Madam President. Um, let's see. Some of the questions been asked but Could you outline any plans to reduce ammunition expenses through the use of virtual Ranger? Reducing contagious firing? Very Yeah. Just you know, to use to reduce your ammunition expenses, any plans to reduce your ammunition expenses, through the use of virtual rages or for reducing contagious firing, you know, Oh,
I see. Uh huh. So, the way we go about looking at our use of ammunition was there's been a significant increase in ammunition across the country. Again, here we go since COVID. There were a lot of gun purchases in this country, and as a result, ammunition went up through the roof. So I don't think that the reduction in ammunition one thing that we do is we use two types of ammunition. We use our training ammunition as well as the ammunition that we carry, which is of a higher quality than the training ammunition, but it's also important that you replicate the impact of the weapon during training, right. What you don't want to do is exclusively train in a virtual environment. And then when you have literally live bullets that you have a totally different reaction. The two are totally not comparable. They you can you can replicate the emotional impact of pulling a trigger virtually, but you cannot replicate the impact of pulling a trigger and so we want the officers to know the impact of pulling a trigger and within the city limits at a person is is such that you have to do so thoughtfully. You have to make sure that you I mean, there's a lot that's happening in that millisecond that you are trying to navigate all of that, but we want to make sure that we have the best trained officers so we are doing more training. We are we're not doing less we're doing more options in addition to those decisions, so split second decisions with the best amount of information that they could possibly have. So to answer your question, virtual training, yes, we've increased it. But but the real life training, we're actually out there doing we're actually talking about doing some simulation training at night, because the conditions are very different. And the contagious fire issue that you brought up is something that we're constantly evaluating anytime we have an officer involved shooting and large part of the officers are practicing extreme restraint. We had a situation the other day or an officer was shot at and you know, the officers practice great restraint. We had the two Michigan State Troopers that were shot and officers were on the scene and did not engage that that suspect and so those are the things that we're always tracking. But as far as the costs on ammunition, it's just something that is is an industry problem right now. And I don't think we're going to be able to make a true impact with the number of officers that we have, and the number of rounds that the officers that are in training are shooting and we're hiring approximately 30 to 40 officers a month. So the this council won't see a reduction in those numbers for quite a while.
Okay. I read several questions that we will email as well. But I do want to ask you if you have any data to report on ShotSpotter How was working and so forth, anything to share with the community about that?
I would like to if, if possible just to provide you with a report. Because what I'm going to tell you is anecdotal. I mean, I look at the data every day and I see that we're responding. Their average response time is between four and seven minutes. I can see that we're still getting a number of ShotSpotter calls that are coming independent of anyone calling 911 which is really good for the community. Because what it speaks to is that some areas of our community hear so much gunfire that they becomes desensitized to calling 911 Because unfortunately, they don't think it's going to have an impact. This allows us to get out there, engage in the work, collect evidence and hopefully reduce those calls for service from that community by ref and those folks who are shooting up our community. And then of course, we've had a number of incidents I keep looking at Deputy Chief Hayes because crime intelligence falls on the him. But we've had a number of incidents where we found people injured and no one has called and many instances were able to save lives. So the impact has been great that we have not done full implementation as councils aware this was just approved. I think the full implementation date is July we're somewhat ahead of schedule as we move throughout the precincts. But we're not fully implemented yet. But we've seen an impact in those precincts that we have implemented. So I'll bring that to council soon.
That would be great chief if you could share the data that you have with us right now. And then perhaps at the end of the year, since it will be fully implemented in July. Okay,
I will do that. Alright.
Thanks so much, Madam President.
Thank you member waters. Council member Johnson.
Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon, gentlemen. I want to say thank you for all of the work that you all do. I know that it is a difficult job but we appreciate you all being out on the in the line of fire and working to protect and serve residents every single day. So a number of years ago, it was back when Eric Jones was over the eastern district so that tells you how long ago it was. I was working in community and working with him before five nine split. To address the broken windows theory. I've been an AmeriCorps member and provided information to residents around vehicles that were being stolen it like in any particular month, alerting the community around increases in different types of crime just trying to give information to residents for them to be proactive to avoid becoming a victim. Can you talk about the work that you all do in collaboration with community and before you answer that I do want to make you aware that number five has to MPOs unless something has recently changed. And so they are amazing. They're phenomenal, but they're still only two of them. So can you just talk about the work that the department is doing with our residents in the community to help residents be more proactive in avoiding being a victim of crime?
Yes, ma'am. Through the Chair. And let me start by saying that, yes, they have to. We have some openings. But in theory, we are all MPOs and I as much as I appreciate what the MPOs do. It shouldn't be just isolated to the MPOs that kind of work right? So every police officer, you know, at their core should be an NPO as it relates to the work the work. I mean, it's multifaceted. We deal and talk about everything from you know how not to be evicted and how to, you know everything from depending on what the crime is. For example, Friday we gave out clubs for the car now that's not you know the answer I mean answers to reduce the the opportunity for someone to steal someone's vehicle. But we also talk about you know how to limit victimization, whether it be at your home, we still have people that are leaving very expensive items in their vehicle. When they you know, in their driveway leaving their cars online. We talk about you know, we've had some success knock on wood be an ease and you know, it's amazing what what people are doing even in leaving their homes, unsecure letting everyone know, the new items that they just bought, putting out 70 inch TV screen boxes without chopping them up and things such as that and then leaving porch lights on when everybody knows that you're away and you know and we talk about a concept I also very familiar with the broken windows theory and we've done some work on it, but but as part of that, we talked about being systematically unsystematic with how we we do our business and in terms of residents and you know, we are a product of habit. And so if you leave your home at 6am and you turn the porch light off and you get in your car and you drive off everybody on the block knows what time you leave, they know a porch lights off that means that they're gone. So we talk about you know putting using timers and using ring doorbells or any doorbell system I keep saying ring but the whole lot of different companies happen now. And then you know using the buddy system in a neighborhood and when something is off at your home having someone call you and say hey, did you know that this is going on? So there's a number of different things and I'll be happy to put in writing for you some of the things that the MPOs and others are pushing in our community, but we are out there proactively trying to engage the community and really through lessons learned too because a lot of times when we arrest folks that attended to a really good job of debriefing and say hey, what made you choose this house? What made you choose? Well, because I know they live to work every day at 5am You know, I know that they're packed, just stay on the porch. They get a delivery at 10am. If somebody's home at 1005 that package is gone. You know if it's no one's going to be there till five they see that on Monday. Then maybe they come back on Tuesday and do the b&e. So we've learned a lot and we try to share that information. And again, I can't overstate it or say it enough. Social media is a huge powerful tool for us and we share our MPOs all have a page and they push out information to the residents in that area. That help we're also using a new tool Mike and helped me out the notification tool that we're building.
FRANKEL tools.
The other one notification. What is Detroit 365 You're gonna be hearing a lot about Detroit 365 And bear with me because I don't know have any notes on it. This is all from from our meeting. So the trade 365 We're going to be able to communicate with residents and we're going to geofence the area and I'm going to scare anybody with that. We're not using any special technology, but we're going to be able to communicate if you live in one area. You don't it's not that you don't care about what's happening on the east side if you're live on the west side, but it's not beneficial for you to hear what's happening outside. So what we've identified with this app, is that we'll be able to push crime to you for your specific area being 365. Unfortunately, we learned about this through a tragedy at the active shooter and number 12 That was moving around. We found an opportunity to expand three Detroit 365 to notify and push information to our residents. And doing that we said what if we push crime? What if we were able to say there's a group of guys girls whatever, driving around doing b and E's in this area and so we're going to be carving out particular areas of the city to launch that in and how close every frame should be mid summer. So Miss summer we'll be able to push that out. So if you sign up for this, and you say hey, I want to know on push notification, what type of crime is happening in this area? We'll be able to push it to you know, I've put your address I've put your name to sign up for the app, we push information to you. And we're looking at everything from auto theft to be any ease to specific crime problems that we're having to push to our residents. So that is going to be a huge add and it'll be coming your way mid summer.
Okay, excellent. I'm looking forward to that. I actually hosted director Kincaid and the folks to get District Court residents signed up for alert 365 So I've gotten phone calls in five o'clock in the morning or again text messages as well. So I certainly know that it works and if people are made aware of crimes that are in action for them to be able to avoid that I think that would be excellent. My The second thing I wanted to ask you I know you've talked about individuals returning back to the department that had left and gone to other cities. Can you talk a little bit more about your engagement with Detroiters and getting Detroiters through the academy and becoming police officers and also your implicit bias training? Can you tie the two together? I had the benefit of going through the citizen police academy a number of years ago and so I think you know I may look at things a little differently as it relates to crimes and how you respond to them. Some of the information that I saw was a little jarring, but I know it's something that you all see on a daily basis. I'm not sure if the citizen Police Academy is still moving forward. But I do encourage residents to sign up to go through the process because I think they can better empathize with what you all deal with on a regular basis.
But well thank you for that man. And yet the citizen Police Academy is back it took some time off with COVID There we go again. But it's back and we're looking forward to having two sessions. One summer and one in the fall. And so Assistant Chief Yun is working very hard to pull that class off with regards to the implicit bias training, so we all go through diversity, equity inclusion and implicit bias training and the department's been mandated for a number of years. When I came back to the department after my brief retirement. I was fortunate to be selected as the director of Michigan Department of Civil Rights for a year. Very enlightening and informative opportunity for me. I thought I understood implicit bias I thought I understood how organizational implicit bias operated until I worked for the Department of Civil Rights and and really at a very high level level was able to see and learn a lot more when I was selected to come back as interim chief and then ultimately by this this council and the border police commissioners and the mayor to run the city police department. I quickly hired my director, Deputy Director for the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to come in as our Diversity Equity and Inclusion director and that's Mary Engelmann and she has done a fantastic job of working with the department on our training, looking around the country at what's trending. Again social media and some of the things that people say in social media. But then but really not to get so far in the weeds without talking about how we all deal with levels of implicit bias and sometimes and that's just education, exposure, lack of exposure, how we're raised how we're taught, and so it's just been incredibly enlightening what she has brought. We continue to make sure that we have strong policy against any bias or implicit acts or explicit acts and making sure that people understand it's not so much your intentions, but how you how you make people feel with your actions. And that you know, when someone is harmed by bias, it's not up to that person to validate that harm. It's up to you to address what you did that harmed them. And that is, you know, what I'm most proud of that we have worked towards when you when it comes to any type of bias acts, implicit or explicit, that we're not going to spend time making you feel better about what you meant to do. We're going to make sure that you understand what your actions cause. And so the department has been extremely responsive to Director Engelmann and myself and our policy. We continue to improve policy we're not we're not waving a flag saying hey, we're the best we're not. We're good and we and we take every opportunity we can to be better. But we're proactive. And when we see something trending, we make sure that we address it immediately. And so I'm pretty happy with that.
Thank you. Um, so the only part of my question that you didn't respond to was recruiting more Detroit residents.
So we do things a recruit Detroiters we do a number of things. Everything from we've got some some issues with insurance and tickets and things like that, that we have really modified our policies. On. We know that if you have a car in the city, you pay a lot more insurance particularly years ago than you do now. In most folks do. And then you get a ticket for no insurance and then you you you have problems that kind of cascade over that one issue. We have modified our policy of that if that's your only issue, that you're given an opportunity, something that wasn't done years ago. We also are looking at people who don't have their driver's license but have no reason not to. We have a program called drive the drive to thrive where we're helping young people get their license. We're noticing now that times have changed even more than I thought I think I'm becoming older than that. I got I got accepted. I'm old. But I couldn't wait to get my license and 16 the kids now so why do you need a license I can use Uber everywhere or Lyft everywhere. And so we got to encourage them to get their license and then some of them don't can't afford to go through the driver's training. So Thrive thrive, gets them through there without having to spend their own money and get some setup so they can get their license and then start them on a path of success with joining the police department. And that's just I mean, that's this very low level some of the stuff we're doing. But we are really motivated to recruit Detroiters and you know, we can do better and we want to do better. But again, it's exposure. It's it's going out to the churches and talking and letting everybody know that we're hiring. We've got members of board police commissioner that has helped us with recruiting I encourage council to continue to help us recruit. We definitely want to recruit Detroiters. It's a great job, the single best professional career decision I've made and I encourage others to do the same. And then being in the schools that's the big one for being in our area schools. We just have a really good plan with Wayne County Community College to go in and recruit their students are gonna be at all their campuses, but we're gonna be focused on our downtown campus as well as the campus on otter drive and Southfield. So we're doing everything we can and we encourage our residents to, you know, come this Saturday, the 25th We're having a recruiting drive. It's on our social media page, where you'll be able to do about 90% of the process absent the background investigation in one day that used to take three weeks, it's going to be done in one day. So we're again, we're encouraging auditors to come out.
Excellent. Well, again, I appreciate your efforts. The last thing that I want to share with you is the report that member there have referenced the DPD updates. I unfortunately do not receive them. I have there is another Leticia Johnson that works at city hall that apparently has received them but I'll make sure I share my information with you to ensure that I'm getting Thank you. Thank you Madam President.
Thank you, member Benson.
Thank you. Thank you all for being here and just thank you to your team for their level of responsiveness when there was a question or a call, they're very, very responsive, you yourself are responsive, and you address the concerns the communities so we want to thank you all for that. Number one, and I want to reinforce what my colleague said, about auto thefts. My wife and I we've been the victim of auto theft on multiple occasions from our home, which living in this country was not uncommon, but just the the aggravation and violation that comes with losing one's car and we are fortunate to have resources and so we can count on families and go get a rental car. But there are those in my district my bosses who are car insecure the car barely works if it does, and they're also the victims of battle rap and just to think of how impactful and negative impact that has on a family. You can't doctor you can't get to work. You can't get the kids to school. You can't go grocery shopping. You now have to get a new car. You now have to get away to go get groceries you have to pick a duffel if you were lucky enough to be able to afford insurance. So just the what the police department is trying to do to help reduce auto theft me is huge. And so I want to see the reports that have been requested regarding that technology but I'm really want to see how this is going to help reduce adult death in the city of Detroit. Just knowing the burden that it places on our families who are so often living at or below poverty within the city of Detroit. So thank you for that. I'm looking at the but if you look on page Bravo 87 Tac 14 And this is one of the programs that is near and dear to my heart. That's going to be their citizens radio control. And so that is something doesn't get talked about much anymore, which is a good thing because at the time it was being talked about on a regular basis because it wasn't being managed very well. The reimbursements weren't going on a timely fashion. And the controls didn't feel like they were being valued. And so I know there was a conversation in the past about how they can play a larger role. It really helps to harden your target in those communities and they see a significant reduction in crime when there's an active citizens control so what are we doing these days to support that? I know one time is Gracie was leading the charge there and we doubled the budget to actually bring on a full time person to help lead and manage that program. I know that we still have very active system patrols in the States. What are we doing there now?
Yes, sir. So she still is leading and done a phenomenal job as you indicated, we doubled the budget. We've got great capacity there and we continue to recruit and it's moving in the right direction. And you know, they're very active and engaged and we continue to to see new members that want to be engaged in it. So I don't we're not having a problem as you can see in our budget ask and we're gonna continue to support them. And we're bringing them in on recruiting and other things now too. We try to get them more engaged in department activity, not just radio patrol. They have been extremely instrumental with Halloween and the DEA as well. That kind of shifted from the patrol and is going out and helping us with the community and it's a good relationship and it's going in the right direction.
It will be so sounds we're leveraging that relationship and doing more than just typical patrols. Absolutely good. Another one looking at page Bravo 37 TAC five. This is one that I hadn't paid attention to in the past was the crossing guards line item half a million dollars for crossing guards. But there's zero FTE proposed for that line item
to take that across.
Call the chair the deputies because all crossing guards are part time and we pay them per needed basis various locations in the city that that's how it's been always. So there is no FTEs associated with that activity.
Can you talk about how that's being coordinated with dpscd? Yes, sir.
So I I absolutely love that program, by the way. It's been in existence for many, many years. Goes back to the old Safety Patrol days, but it kind of morphed into what it is now. DPS CD has it we we have a relationship with them but we have a number of intersections that we see problematic for our kids. And this program gives us an opportunity to use our crossing guards in conjunction with whatever DPS has as well as not have to use for police officers because those those intersections still have to have crossers, because those kids will get hit the speculum especially with so much distracted driving now. We have even a more significant need for crossing guards. And so that's why you see that ask there. And I stand behind. I certainly had this whole budget but I think that that piece, the reason that you focus in on that half million is because we need to keep that particular area of the department funded. Otherwise we'll have to use sworn police officers and it also gives us a another opportunity. We've got some people that are going through various parts of the recruiting process, and there may not quite be ready yet to be selected as police officers we've been pushing them to jobs such as this to get some exposure or working with us before you get hired as a police officer. So I got nothing but good things to say about a crossing guard program.
Okay, thank you. I just want to say one last time my office we've been supporting ShotSpotter before DPD and the mayor's office, were publicly supporting it and so glad to see where it's coming from as a pilot program in the third district and I freezing now to being more on moving towards a citywide program and really having an impact on gunshot gunfire and how DPD engages and responds to those type of calls. So thank you. Thank you, sir.
Thank you remember busy, I remember. Yeah.
Thank you, ma'am, president and chief Good to see appreciate you guys. Good to see you guys. Thank you so much for making the ultimate sacrifice to putting your life on the line for people you don't even know what to keep us safe. We appreciate that. I just want to ask you really quickly about senior citizen buildings, particularly the server protect program, does that cover senior citizen buildings at all? Is there a dedicated unit for senior citizen buildings? If so, or if so, or not? How much would that cost? The reason why I'm saying this because I get a lot of complaints from senior citizens about people breaking in selling drugs committing acts of violence, sexual assault, so can you just answer that a little bit for me to what you plan for senior citizens.
So any any building senior citizen otherwise particularly our most vulnerable seniors, we need to get that forwarded to my office immediately and let us address that the right way immediately. In fact, if you can do that today, I will be some units engaged in that. And will they'll be responding today. The server protect program we give the students and opportunities or Academy students before graduation to select some activity that they need to do. It could be working in a soup kitchen, it could be working in a community it could literally be cleaning up a neighborhood. It's whatever their class wants to do for their service before they protect. And no it does not necessarily involve senior citizens homes but it could involve senior citizen homes, but I try not to impact what they want to do. I want them to choose something that interests them to help our community and sometimes they choose to just patrol sometimes they want to do foot beats and neighborhoods. I don't know if you you've seen that last summer. Some of them want to you know go into neighborhoods and walk the beat. Last year a number of them chose to walk the avenue of fashion. That's what they wanted to do 90 degree weather but they did it. So but if you're having a problem in a particular area, I want to know about that so I can put the necessary units on top of it. And what you've just said is very concerning.
Well you hit it right on the head towards the patrol. That's what I meant. Like you have like any you have any units that like patrol, you'll do you have any DoD senior citizen buildings that you see, okay, this the problem is the area this building, do you have a unit that's dedicated to that or if you have patrols that happen on that aisle? That's That's what I meant
in any instance of where there's a targeted problem. You know, we've got commanders that will deploy special ops or will deploy their MPOs I just need to know specifically what area we're talking about. And the problem is we will address it but we don't use we don't leave something like that to the server protect program. This is going to require a more deliberate enforcement activity.
Now, as I appreciate they also want to ask you about gang violence, conflict resolution, I reached out I talk to people who are from ceasefire and that what they were telling me is that they need a place of neutrality or Switzerland, if you will, to be able to bring people who they can trust where they can bring multiple gangs together and they can bring people from the police department together without worried about retaliation against them to be able to talk out issues in the community. I just want to ask you, is there any buildings or any places that you think would you would recommend that or do you have any partners that you think we should go to the recommend that and if not, but you have some ideas, but you don't have the budget for that? What do you think that kind of program like that would cost?
Well, that's the first I've ever heard of that. I've talked to ceasefire quite a bit. I mean, that's of all the things that saw that's one of the easier ones to solve for us. We've got great partnerships around the city. We've got great partnerships outside the city. We can a neutral ground the meet on is not a problem whatsoever, not in the lease. I mean, we've got partnerships from Fairfield to LCA to Southfield. I mean, if we just need a place to meet that that doesn't. I don't know exactly what informed that conversation or that that opinion, but that doesn't appear to be our issue. The neutrality of a meeting location. Our problem with our games is youth impulse decision making and illegal retails. That's that's a three tier approach that we're looking at disrupting, is how do we get our youth more engaged, give them something else to do. We're seeing a significant uptick in illegal marijuana, which is not what you anticipated with some of the refiners you see popping up, but people are trying to compete. So they're creating some some different potencies. And then we've got our youth violence that these young kids are are emulating behaviors that they're seeing from previous gang members.
So yeah, I think so there's probably still prohibited on the federal level as well. So we kind of have to make up my mind about that
in terms of marijuana.
I understand that what you're saying. Um, I also just wanted to ask you as well, with the um, since they say it's during the pandemic Medicaid, you were able it will automatically reenroll you that stopping now and because that's stopping you, have you seen an increase in terms of mental health, that your issues that you're dealing with, you see an increase in terms of calls and runs. Are you having a go on now, because people don't have let COVID have lack of access to the mental health services they receive for Medicaid?
Well, I don't think it's I don't think it's Medicaid driven. I don't I mean, I don't think it's health care. I think it's just a lack of services period. I think we need more long term facilities. I think Medicaid and release is not the answer, because people don't like taking the medicine for a number of reasons. You know, a number of reasons. And there's no long term health facilities and long term mental health facilities. You know, it's not just a mental crisis. It's a mental medical crisis. And if you could imagine not having enough hospitals to keep you overnight, and that's basically what it is. I mean, you you're trying to manage this, this crisis, and where people need to be, you know, hospitalized and it'd be like having surgery and then sending people out the front door. After the surgery. I mean, you just can't do that. And so hopefully, with the attention that has been brought on by, unfortunately, a number of prices, not just in Detroit, but around the country. You see, you saw what happened in Dearborn a guy walks into precinct and mental mental crisis and shoots at the police. So it's not just those episodes, but active shooters around the country, you know, and all those poor decisions that clearly have a mental health nexus to them. Hopefully now the attention will get the results that we all need.
And my final question is drag racing. What are we doing particularly about that that's also issue with it. See for the senior citizen holds as
well. Yes, and we have a unit
and how much does that cost? And do you need more resources for that or not? How old would you need if you do
we have a very comprehensive strategy that includes helicopters. We've appreciate we just submitted some repairs for our helicopter we've got partnerships we're going to be making an ask for additional helicopter in next year's next year's budget in next year's budget. And so, but from an enforcement standpoint, we use social media. We get in front of where they're congregating. This is a whole operation. These folks go around the country and drift and drag race and there's money involved in it. I think it's time that we challenge some of these social media companies that are that are complicit and crime in our communities. But that's a whole nother conversation over my 15. So hopefully this ticket is but but, you know, our plan this year is going to be to eradicate it to take those vehicles and to lock those folks up. Because the thing that's not talked about, we see the ones that involve, you know, well the police and the chase and the this. What about the kids that get hit every weekend? In the summer I hear about a kid getting hit, watching drifting and drag racing car loses control hits a kid and end up in a hospital. The prosecutor is talking about charging a lot more people. And I mentioned in charging some of the spectators I think it is a bigger issue than we put attention on and I hear from evidence all the time that they can't even enjoy sitting on the porch cars flying by and and if you live near one of the thoroughfares and people are shutting down streets and drifting and driveways and we're just not going to tolerate that we're not it's a serious crime, and it's a public safety and public health issue as well. So we're going to be out there. We're gonna be doing some stuff with our partners. We're going to be using helicopters, not just ours, but our partners, helicopters and there's going to be some ticket and some toes. That's coming your way soon, sir.
All right. Well, thank you. That's it. Thank you. Mr. President. Thank you, Chief.
Thank you. Any additional questions, comments? All right, hearing none, we appreciate your time, Chief white, and to all of the members of DPD. And we're looking forward to the responses to the questions. Yes, ma'am. And have a blessed day. You too. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Right, we are a little bit behind we're gonna go straight to our next budget hearing which is the board of police commissioners.
Okay. No problem.
You share your screen for the presentation or Yes, let me know if you need any help. Or if if you should be able to share your screen share permission
perfect all right whenever you guys are ready to state your name and titles and the floor is yours to begin Good
afternoon, Madam President. My name is Brian Parkinson. I'm the Border Police Commissioner chairperson.
Oh, good afternoon. Thank you.
I'll make sure your mic is on by pressing the bottom of the microphone it'll turn green. And that's how you know it's on there. You go.
Thank you. Good afternoon, honorable Council. My name is Annie Holt, and I am Vice Chair of the Board of police commissioners as well as the Chair of the Board of police commissioner's Budget Committee. And to my left I have a member of that committee.
Good afternoon, honorable Council. I'm Commissioner Weaver in district five.
Good afternoon honorable Council Victoria Shah, the secretary to the board of police commissioners
Good afternoon, James George NCCF. Thank you once again, this is this is truly an honor for myself and the rest of my colleagues to present our 2324 budget before this council. And without further ado, I'll have Miss Shaw proceed.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, Detroit city council members and guests. Again. My name is Victoria Shah. I am the newly appointed secretary to the board of police commissioners. I'll be presenting today the proposed B LPC fiscal year 2023 24 budget proposal. Although I've only started my appointment with the board a week ago today, given the tight budget timeline I prioritize this budget in my first week to be ready to present to you today. While I'm still assessing staff structure processes and procedures I'm confident that the assumptions in this presentation are sufficient for us to propose a budget that allows us the flexibility to make the necessary changes over the next fiscal year to better meet the needs of the community and oversight. The Budget Committee had a public working session on Tuesday, March 14, where this presentation was reviewed in great detail. adjustments were made and the final draft was approved to bring before the entire board. This presentation was then presented to the full board at the regular public meeting on Thursday, March 16. At which time the board voted to approve this presentation to present to this honorable City Council today. Before I go into the presentation, I'd like to answer the questions that this body has proposed in advance which I received on Friday, March 17. And you should have a draft of those answers. In hand as well. It'll be in your packet behind your submitted questions. And I'll just touch on these briefly.
Yeah. Can you mind just during the presentation? Sure. And then I think we all have a copy colleagues. Everyone has to have a copy of the responses
to the questions. Okay. We can go right to the presentation no problem is to allow questions from members thank you so much thank you
so on this slide to speaks to the budget in the current fiscal year. The LPC is currently operating under $3.9 million budget of that we're on track to have a surplus of almost $859,000 By the end of this fiscal year. In the far right column, you'll see that the greatest driver of this surplus is multiple open positions in OCI and on the administrative team, filling those positions has been prioritized. There is also a surplus in operating services due to rent being budgeted but not paid for the Meril poissons facility. This is because construction is not yet complete. In addition, we have publications to be printed prior to the end of the fiscal year. Which we'll use some of the surplus in that category. The training and travel surplus is due to not all training being completed as of yet for this fiscal year and training is being scheduled for June. You'll see there that there's overspending in the equipment acquisition category. In the current budget, we did not allocate funding for equipment out acquisition. However, there was an unanticipated need to purchase replacement laptops for staff and commissioners, which caused that expense. Slide three summarizes the major initiatives that will have impact the changes were requesting in the coming budget, as I mentioned, and as is also mentioned in the answers to your questions. This includes conducting salary assessments across the team based on market analysis and performance. We need to budget for increases that may average up to 5%. Overall, I do want to clarify here that not all races will be the same. It will be based on what where individuals are in their range market analysis and performance. Also, we're looking to restructure the administrative team to increase relationships, service and effectiveness of the board with the community as well as to align to Nicole and business best practices. We're also looking to provide snacks water and more literature during our community meetings. And then last but not least since the matter of the TAs workers, those are the temporary investigators that we're looking to bring on since that matter is still under review. If they're not on boarded during the current fiscal year, those funds will no longer be available. So the plan is to budget for them. In the next fiscal year, just in case. So this slide number four describes the new staffing structure that this budget supports. Many of these positions already exist in the budget and are just not filled. However, there are two new positions being proposed in this budget. The goal of this model is to establish a commissioner and community partnership team that supports that provides dedicated cause Commissioner support. It also increases capacity to support the partnerships between commissioners and the community. And deliver partner driven outcomes. And lastly, it establishes a financial officer and grant writer to partner to increase BLP C's budget through city budget approval and grants to better meet the the community's police oversight needs. In the left gray circle you have the Office of the Chief Investigator under which we're not looking to make any structural or position changes. Moving on to the center green circle, we have the central administrative team. Now on that team, we're looking to add a data analyst and that's the only change in that circle to the right and the orange circle. You can see three existing positions that are being reassigned to provide dedicated commissioner and community support to increase those partnerships and outcomes for the community. For this model to work we do need to add an additional position to the budget so that we can have a total of four commissioner and community partners. These CCPs would assist their assigned commissioners with coordinating and supporting meetings with community groups, managing community contacts and communications triaging consumer sorry, Commissioner specific correspondence document preparation, and collectively they will be executing a marketing and community strategy.
These next two slides just break down in a little bit of a different way the position impacts So on Slide five here, it shows changes in functions and increases in budget headcount from the current fiscal year to the next. We still need the two executive manager positions in the new fiscal year with one supporting policy and grant writing and the other serving as a financial officer will be submitting the requisition to fill the open executive manager position by the first of April. We still need the police community relations position and that person will be assigned to fill one of those CCP roles I mentioned on the previous slide. The community relations manager is a new position that we need to add so that increases the overall position count and will feel the second CCP role. And then we still need the office assistant three legal assistant administrative specialist three and the three administrative assistants as well as the secretary to the board. The legal assistant position requisition will go in by the first of April and the to two of the administrative assistants will be assigned to fill the last two needed CCP roles. Moving on to slide five, we show that the chief investigator, the five investigators, three supervising investigators, the five senior investigators, as well as the attorney to the board positions are all still needed. The open investigative positions have we've received resumes for those and they're under review and the attorney requisition we plan to put in by the first of April. Last but not least the data and data analysts position is new and that will bring our overall number of positions from 35 up to 37. Moving on to our last slide here, slide number seven this shows the change in the proposed budget from the current fiscal year to the next we're requesting a 403 and 53. I'm sorry $403,053 increase, which will cover new positions raises and the TAs workers for 12 months, then 130 1005 For fringe benefits that will include that additional staff. We also are looking for $6,000 increased for operating supplies to cover the snacks and water during community meetings. And then we're looking at a $2,720 increase in travel and training costs for the additional staff. In the next fiscal year. We're budgeting $16,000 In case up to eight laptops need to be replaced. Again, we didn't budget for that this current fiscal year. And it came up as an unexplained annex unexpected expenditure. And so we want to make sure that's covered. And then as I mentioned before, the current budget is $3.9 million. For the next fiscal year. We need to budget a total of $4,430,357 To be successful, and that's an increase of $565,778 or 13% increase over last year. To close out this presentation, I would like to say that as secretary to the board that I take the use of taxpayers dollars very seriously. RBL PC budget pales in comparison to the PDS budget. Nonetheless, our budget matters, and I'm serious about fiscal responsibility. This budget will be transparently managed and the benefits and outcomes of the administrative and OCI teams will be transparently shared. So the community knows that their tax dollars are being put to good use. Thank you, Madam President. That concludes my presentation. I'm willing to take questions. It'd be your pleasure.
All right. Thank you so much. Any additional comments from the commissioners? Before I move forward? Yes.
Yes, please. Thank you for this opportunity. When Secretary to the board Miss Shaw, allowed me to look at on some of the suggestions she was making about this budget. I became exceptionally excited about the opportunity for, for board members to have that. I think it is slide three with those three circles, whereby she's making provisions for board members to have someone to assist them as we attempt to go out into the community to work the to support board of police commissioners, as our charter mandated relating to civilian oversight. In my example, I'm a Commissioner at large, which means it's easy for me to have two or three meetings. scheduled for the same evening. The Council were to give some consideration for the budget that's been presented by Miss Shaw, that that burden, if you will, would be eased to some degree because then each commissioner would have at least one person who could attend some of those community meetings, and then obviously report back either to Miss Shaw or to, in my example the commissioner. So that's the one item I am most excited about. And I'd hate to see another item that has me excited is the $6,000 whereby, obviously, when we have our evening meetings, that generally well, you know, start around dinner time. Pre COVID I was thinking that when we were going to those evening meetings that nurturing was supplied by the particular precinct and only to discover most recently like in the last three weeks or so, that no be LPC was making that opportunity available to the community folks and we're thinking that if we can we reinitiated opportunity, membership at those community. Evenings might also improve. And those are my last two comments and again, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you,
Chair. Um, my only comment is, since I've arrived on the board, that was one of my goals and wishes, because commissioners we'd go out to these different community groups and it's just not enough of us. Right? We can't be everywhere at one time and I found that out. And the reason why we're asking for the money for the laptops is because I'm trying to move us into the 21st century. Try to get rid of the paper shuffling. We use the laptop so we can do that. And that's that's one of my goals I would like to have for this board. And that's pretty much it for me. Commissioner burden burn.
Yes. Thank you. Good. Good afternoon, honorable Council. I actually disagree with my colleagues with this proposed budget recommendation. Here's why. The board has been budgeted for the past few years. For a board attorney, legal assistance and a financial manager. We have not filled those positions as of yet. I AX this honorable body to mandate that the board hire the board attorney legal assistance and financial manager within 90 days. If the board had to create any new positions, the only position that I see is is a need right now is to TAS employees to handle the backlog. of cases the backlog of citizens complaints has been ongoing and these are citizens voices are being shut down right now. And and so the charter says we have to you know citizens complaints need to be reviewed and processed within 60 days. These These citizens complaints has been backed up as far as a year. And and I think if we can hire the TAs employees to come in to work specifically with the backlog I think we'll be moving in the right direction when it comes to a data analyst we don't need a data analysts counseled honorable counsel doesn't have a data analyst or board of police commissioners doesn't need it data analysts. When it comes to a grant writer. We as a body. civilian oversight does not need a grant writer in 2014 and 20 2014 2015. The board of police commissioners has been operating with half of his budget. So if we were awarded say $3 million, or $3.5 million at that time half of that went back into general funds. We have not shown that we has been fiscal responsible as a body and we really desperately need a board attorney. We have always had one we haven't had one quite a quite a while when it comes to a community manager we actually have a community person. We have not given our employees a valuation. And and you know, since I've been elected to this body, and now was elected a decade ago, be a decade come what November. So, we have not done one evaluation and so, the community person that we have I will say we need to we need to evaluate that person's performance. Before we started talking about bringing on additional community components was desperately needed right now. As a board attorney, legal assistant that we budgeted for financial manager that we also budget for and tasks employees that we need right now when it comes to laptop replacements This is news to me haven't heard anything about we need new laptops or or anything of that Saturday. But right now, no two data analysts, no two grant writers, no two community managers and thank you honorable council at this point. And lastly, five seconds or less if I may. The board could utilize young college interns. I mean, you know to go into ces you know when we have our committee meetings and things of that nature, and I think we need to utilize more of young people, give them an enriched experience, or things of that nature. I signed up to serve and I hope that my colleagues did too and asking for more money in our budget is preposterous at this time.
Thank you. I will go straight to questions now that that's okay from council members because we haven't even started that portion where you wanted to say some
reference just real quick.
Okay. My Honourable colleague mentioned the Task Force on task employees. Chair in the personnel and training committee had hired eight task investigators for us to discover on the midnight hour that from the human resource department that those task members or investigators received a letter resending their hire. And these folks had computers and all of that. We anxiously look forward. I'm sorry. Again, we anxiously look forward to hiring an attorney to the board and what is termed my thinking and executive financial manager. And obviously that person would work very closely with Ms. Shaw as well as Mr. Joe Wright, as they try to keep us in mind and I apologize for burden. It's more of a responsibility to
we're not gonna go back and forth because we still have to go through a whole round of questions from council members. So hopefully some of your responses can address the questions that are going to be raised. Okay. So we'll start with councilmember Benson.
All right, thank you. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for taking the responsibility of being an elected official for the border police commissioners. Looking at the budget that was provided, I believe this is slide two you're requesting for it? Well, it's like you were looking for 14 Five, four computers. That accurate? Yes, I'm sorry. Okay. And then is looking at the budget surplus you have what is your budget modification and purchase those without coming to this body asking
for additional support? Yes, go ahead.
Thank you through the chair. So if we're looking at slide number two that is speaking to our current the fiscal but fiscal year budget that we're in currently now. Sorry, there we are. And that expenditure already occurred. We have a surplus and so that expense has been paid. What we're looking for in the coming fiscal year is to get ahead of another situation like that and go ahead and budget for 16,000 in anticipation for any other replacement laptops, they may come up in the following fiscal year. Does that answer your question? It does.
I still think I would solve the problem by just doing a budget modification since I have a surplus, but understanding where you're going with that. There was a conversation regarding community complaints. How many have been logs and how are we disposing those and how are those being handled? How's the community? How are you communicating to the community how you're managing and handling the complaints
against officers? That that's, that's the number one question we all been trying to manage through the chair. The task workers we can get back to the task worker they were. They used to be LCI investigators, whatever reason they left, right. They took some stock and wanted to come back because I asked them to come back to work on the backlog, just a backlog home. That's what people don't do 20 hours a week. And my colleagues said vice right shareholders said we got blindsided at the level file. Someone stopped it whatever. The reason, I couldn't tell you. I'm our backlog. Yes, is rough. But it happened during the pandemic. And a lot of people left for whatever reasons they wanted to leave and in cases start coming back. So we're trying to manage that right now. Now we have a board secretary and we have a good plan put in place to make that happen. And now I'm on board with it now and I got a good handle on it and how we can try to curb some of this and by the community. person that we can have cup going out to each community and the CCPs to help some of the commissioners. We can get the word out what the border police commissioners do, because when I go out, they don't even know what we can do. What we do, they don't even know how to fill out a complaint and sometimes it complaints. They just they're just they just want to they just want to have their voices heard. You know, sometimes it's not really a complaint. It's just I want to be heard. Right. And and it's not fair for them or the officers to not have that complaint being heard. It's just not and we have to be able to hire some people that's going to be able to address those problems for the citizens and we're going to hire qualified people. Now we tried to do that. A few months ago, we got rid eight. But out of those eight, we only got two because when they got in there, they got overwhelmed. It was overwhelming for a lot of them for whatever reasons, they just decided not to be there. Now I wanted to personally I wanted to hire 10 And I chose 10 off picker. Maybe we can get eight that's what I wanted to do. And if we got 10 Fine, and we'll come for those boards and ask them budget to keep those 10 That's that's That was my goal, but that don't get mad. Whatever reason someone stopped me.
Are you utilizing the HR department to help with human capital?
That's what HR HR is these HR department. Yes, the city HR is the one to stop
and you don't know why they know.
I am still trying to get legal to give me an answer and they told me they're gonna give me an answer on the 29th of this month.
Okay. Through yourself, Madam President, make a motion. I'm directing it to the administration to answer to why the bo PC, TAs, employees that were scheduled to be hired. I'm not sure what the official name would be at that point. But why would they denied the ability to hire? I'd like to find that out at this table.
So you requested a written response from HR.
If that's appropriate, yes. Okay.
Motion has been made. Any objections? Hearing none that motion is approved.
Madam president followed up with something in writing anything want to make it go to law department as well as HR sounds like there may be some discrepancy and where that answer should come. Thank you. Thank you remember
Benson?
Thank you, Madam President. I was interested in that as well. When I saw and I believe, Commissioner, Mr. Chair you were talking about on page six. Is that the the eight in eight was open positions that were essentially rescinded and left without not that
No, those are the ones we're trying to hire now. For permanent. The task workers of this temporary task workers, they were just going to be handled just the backlog only nothing else but the backlog. And it was my understanding that if some of the investigators wanted to do overtime, because I'm saying that they some of them in the union, they wanted to do overtime, it's fine. You would just work on the backlog cases when you came in to do overtime. And that would be a win win for everybody and we can knock those backlogs down. That's that's what I wanted to happen. But to the eight people that we meet personally today, we're trying to hire him right now. We got a pool of I think 30 that we're going to be interviewing like really quick. Really quick. We're trying to move this with lightspeed. So
and when when were you notify that HR was no longer going to move forward?
I was notified on a Wednesday at 4:30pm
But I mean, just in terms of so I know that you all meet on
Thursday, I was on I was on in February, and they were supposed to start like the next day. Okay.
So definitely look forward to the responses to a member Benson's question because that's very puzzling. Yes, I know that there was another position that was at one point offered. It was agreed to and then it no longer was available, and that's the chief investigator. Can you talk to us about that position and I don't know if there's any legal ramifications or anything there. But I know that's another very open position. And I want to first before we go into that congratulating the shop in the shop for her appointment, literally, just on Detroit day. 313 I believe. So, you handled that your portion of this presentation very expert Lee, if that's a word, yes, sir. But did an exceptional job so I think they're in good hands with you in the house. So just wanted to say that. Thank you. gratulations.
Up to the chair to ask your question. The the chief investigator position when we made the offer, it was an offer for negotiation, salary negotiations, that's what it was for. And we just couldn't come to terms on a salary negotiations. That's the bottom line. That's just it couldn't come to terms on that.
So it wasn't offered and then taken away. It was you all had never got to the point where
a true offer was made. We went back and forth with some offers to Mr. Pastor Warfield, Jerome Warfield, and we just couldn't come on agreement just couldn't come to $1 figure we just couldn't. So we had to resend
the article. I read here in the case that there is a recommendation that's going to be coming before your your board by the 30th for that
new person. Yes, we had to bring it we had to send it back to the personnel and training committee so we can interview some more candidates because we have we have more candidates. We have some strong candidate sets that came really close to him. So they were like a board member. Yes. Yes. So So we're, we're looking forward to that and we're gonna start that process up real quick. Make sure
Excuse me. Through the Chair. You made mention of a former board member?
Oh, I believe that. Mr. Warfield passed by he was in fact, a former board member. Yeah, I was just saying. Put it on the record. That's all. Oh, thank you. And I want to again commend both of you both D one residents as the Chair and Vice Chair as well. There's something about the more I'm gonna say. The last question I have is for Commissioner Burton, I know you mentioned that there's no need for data or data analysts. Why do you believe saying that what you all in my mind should be doing is really analyzing information not just receiving it from the police department, but really getting your own facts and figures and analyzing them to balance the two to ensure there is no conflict what why do you believe that there is no need for a data analysts
because you know that was kind of one of the reasons the board my understanding, hired Miss Shaw, she posed to have a Six Sigma Black Belt or whatnot, dealing with data so you know, so so they hired her to be the secretary and also in some of those discussions at the board table. He was talking about her Six Sigma Black Belt experience. I think from a from a cost savings standpoint. The budget the board has not been operating his full budget. And we haven't had a data person and when it comes to a lot of the data that we do receive is coming from the department, as well as coming from Wayne State University. And then we also have well, we had a chief investigator which we desperately needed now. And so the data that we do get is coming in from like citizens complaints, use of force, demeanor and things of that nature that we that we deal with on a day to day basis. So having an analyst person. We wouldn't even need that person even at an OCI. But we do need to have additional investigators as well as TAs workers to help with the backlog of cases when it comes to citizens filling out a comment card or something that needs a citizen complaint form our residents in each raid does not have problem fill out a card. That's have not been the case. If that was the case, we wouldn't have this backlog. In addition to that we have investigators just
talking about the data
sure this is fine.
Again, just understanding again, if you're receiving information from the police department, my personal opinion is that it's always good to be able to identify trends yourself as opposed to relying on the police department what you provide the oversight for. So that's just my you know, one council member opinion. So but thank you, it's always important to make sure that there's dissenting voice. We've talked about that before in committee, because it keeps everybody honest. So, again, thank you for your perspective as well. Thank you all for the work that you do. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, proto council member you.
I have questions but I will submit them in writing. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you.
Thank you member young members, Santiago Rivera. Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. And yes, congratulations to our secretary, very impressed one weekend and you've been doing great. So thank you so much for your leadership and for taking on this challenge. Thank you so much. I do have a quick question. And this might be more a question more for the clerk but wondering if there has been any work to ensure that the minutes are being posted. I'm hearing that the videos are online, but the minutes are not to be found anywhere. So wondering what efforts have been made to ensure the public has access to the minutes to your meetings?
Through the Chair? Yes, that's another challenge I've been having I was told that our board meeting, video can't go up without close caption on it. So that's the stalling part of it. It's taken a long time to put closed caption up on our meetings because in the past, our meanings have been going up Friday and Saturday mornings. Since we had to add close caption in there. It's taken a long time in a minute and on sand about the minutes can be had as soon as possible minutes, basically almost right after the meeting. You can get the minutes right after that. So I don't know where that was coming from. Yet. Yes. All right.
Thank you to the Chair. Thank you for your question. A Council Member Santiago mero. So the minutes are being put up. I'm just as a resident I've seen them up on the website. However, I am doing an evaluation of our processes and procedures on the administrative team to make sure that we're consistent in our timing of posting those. So I asked if you would allow some time we will make sure that those will be going up on a consistent basis. For the community.
Understood. Thank you. And I'm also just relaying messages that I'm hearing from the public. So good to hear now that the minutes are being posted online. But it sounds like we have some issues with videos. Have you worked with it on that or?
Yes through the Chair? Yes, we've been working through it. And that's what they told me that the machine that they use for transcribing the the closed caption had to have somebody to help work that machine and but they assured me that they're gonna get better. I assure me that so I'm still waiting on that. Okay, the Chair if
I can add one more thing regarding posting other minutes. So one thing that I noticed and before taking on this role is that depending on where you go on the website, you may not find the minutes and there's different ways to get to the information. And so for the interim, any residents that are signed up for the email distributions, if you actually click on the agenda for that meeting, it'll take you right to the minutes and all of the documents for that meeting. There's a way to look for the minutes by actually going to the website and I found challenges myself and actually finding the documents that way. But like I mentioned, I'll be working with my team to streamline our processes so that it's more consistent for the community.
Thank you. Appreciate that. I believe these are the kinds of concerns that people are reaching out to my office with and my my only other question was regarding this restructuring, but I appreciate the overview that you gave, because I really want to ensure that we are enhancing community oversights, police oversight and community engagements. But this overview that you provided Secretary is very helpful. Thank you so much. My only other question was around the backlog which we've discussed already. So you know, happy to help however we can to ensure that we get to the bottom of that, of that of that as well. So that'll be it for me. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. And I've been also notified that Michelle, you're the first ever woman secretary of the board of police commissioners since it was created in 1974. So again, watching history right in front of us to great job.
Remember dear ha Thank you, Mr. President, and just had to had to steal my son that was gonna be my next. And I often don't disagree with you at public, but I disagree when you say something about district one because that secretaries from district seven so, but again, congratulations to you, Miss Shaw. Thank you for other things, you're doing the community outside of this capacity. So really appreciate that. My question revolves more so around the community aspect. You know, I don't know about other police commissioners. I know my police commissioner pretty much as every community meeting that I met, shout out to our district seven police commissioner Ricardo Moore, who was at every community meeting. I can tell you, going from what we do every day and I leave here and I go to community meetings and I'm jumping around and I get paid to do this, by the way, is a difficult task. That is almost impossible. If I didn't have my community team. I can tell you that so so I definitely sympathize with you on that. And me I think if you know you're going out into the community you're attending those meetings, support staff is very important. And so just remind me how so when we talk about these tasks, employees and first I see a community relations manager, I guess I'm understanding that will oversee the entire community relations as it states, how many tasks employees are you talking about one per Commissioner? Is that a recommendation of yours as well? And the suggestion? Okay,
now we might be getting a couple of things. To do two different things. The task workers are only going to be four OCI, backlog. cases, that's what the password was about. The CCPs. Those are the people that are going to be assigned to commissioners.
So just to clarify Through you, Mr. Chair, are the CCPs they'll be assigned to commissioners, but are they tasks are they fts?
The chair those are FTEs Okay, and three of them are staff that we have already they are providing administrative functions. And so I'm looking to repurpose them to the CCP roles, and then the additional community relations manager this that's just the HR title for it. That individual will make our fourth CCP assigned to to the
commissioners so these, again, just clear for clarity, Mr. President, these will they will be FTEs that we full time they will respond to community callers every single day for eight nine hours a day, correct?
That's correct. Okay. That's correct.
My second question, we revolves around salaries. From my understanding, I think you guys get compensated $384 A month as a stipend. Is that correct? And and let me finish the rest of the question is that through the elected officials Compensation Commission, that you that's your compensation is set?
That's through charter charter through the city charter? Yes. And I was going to come before this honorable body to ask can we get that stipend increased? And so we don't have to wait for the next charter revision. When I understand we had to just come before you guys and we can make that happen, hopefully.
Okay. And with that with that, Mr. President. Again, I'd like to make a motion to put this the board of police commissioners into Executive Session, noting that we will work through the law department and LPD relative to an ordinance, maybe to amend the charter to be able to increase the stipend when you look at $384 a month. I'm not saying not saying we're getting astronomical or what you guys should be paid. We you know, based off of the rate of inflation $384 a month to, again, I can talk about my police commissioner, he's at every single meeting that I'm at. That is that is I don't want to use the word crazy, but I got another one. So I'd like to make a motion. Mr. President to put the board of police commissioners budget into Executive Session, noting that to discuss salaries as well as increase to the board at home.
Thank you remember, there's a motion to place the entire budget of the board of police commissioners into executive session with emphasis on those areas that have members are Hall mentioned with discussion member
Benson yourself as a chair to the VO PC, what's the suggested stipend increase to from to
about 1200 a month.
Yes, we have that laid out. I actually have that laid out. I just didn't bring it for me though. But I can get you guys a copy on how we had it laid out.
If you please send that to the our sales or to the budget chair. Be very helpful.
Absolutely. Right. Thank you.
Any objections to the motion? Seeing none, that action shall be taken. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Carson. And that concludes my questions. Just one sorry, I will just throw you Mr. President. Just want to say really quickly again, please. You know, keep doing the work that you that you do. I think a lot of folks forget the history of the board of police commissioners stem and back to Mayor Coleman Young and the establishment coming from stress and the big four and a lot of things in the African American community where folks at that time felt they had no voice relative to policing here in that city. So it's a very important component, particularly when you look at our Police Commission, which is predominantly African American, and you don't necessarily see that across the United States. And so I think we've got to develop a respect for that, you know, as such, and keep doing the work that you guys do even if it's $384 a month, I will say I can only speak for my police commissioner in my district. But I'm sure that all of you are doing the same to braid and close that gap for police and community relations, which is so very, very important. So please, keep doing the work that you're doing. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you remember Bureau Hall member waters.
All right. Thank you, Abby. Quick. I want to know how you go on to specifically address that hiring delays. I know you talked about tasks employees that will address the backlogs and so forth. Have you laid that plan out already for for them to do and then the Chief Investigator of you can't seem to keep one you hired one and fired him the next day, right? I just can you address those things please?
Yes, I'll dress the ladder. We we gave him a lot a letter of offer. So he never was hired just a letter of offer. We just couldn't come to terms on the salary. So that's that's it. We didn't come to come to terms on the salary. The tax workers we've laid it out to whereas the TAs workers will be an entity amongst themselves, okay. They actually have a supervisor that's going to be overseeing it and they report to the chief until we get one and we'll be more Secretary Michelle. On the numbers and how they're coming down and how they're doing it. So that for that aspect. We have this laid out. I mean, the plan was it was it was phenomenal. And it was going to work. So but now that we got pushed back
you say they're gonna report what to the chief? Oh,
I'm sorry. They were gonna report to the chief on the backlog of cases and how many they got died
and that they're reporting to the chief. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure that now these TCP employees, there will be one for each Commissioner.
Yeah.
I can speak to that. So we have 11. Commissioners, so three of the CCPs what support to district commissioners and one at large Commissioner each so three, okay. And we'd have one that supports one and one will have an even number.
Are you planning to allow commissioners to participate in that hiring process in terms of who you hire for those positions?
Yes. The there's only one position to fill, because the other three are existing employees. Their responsibilities are just being adjusted. But yes, for the one that will be filled. We will be looking for Commissioner participation.
I'm glad that member there has put it in Executive Session. I'm getting a little confused about something the numbers and stuff. But okay, so thank you so much. Mr. President.
Thank you member waters. And I believe that brings us to the end of our questions, your colleagues, any additional Seeing none. We want to thank you all for joining us today and this concludes our budget hearing for the border police commissioners, and thank
you so much for this opportunity.
Let's go right into our public comments. There's Anyone from the public who would like to speak. You're on Zoom, please raise your hands now. If you'd like to speak please raise your hand now. And earlier for public comments. I would like to stay consistent with that. So we do have two hands in the Committee of the Whole one hand is Cindy dollar. The other is Mr. Ronald Foster. You can take one of those four seats right over there. Someone will direct you to the location, one of those four seats and yet we got one o'clock and for those who are watching right now on Zoom collection of public comment cards have now concluded. Mr. Foster The floor is yours. You have one minute make sure you hit that that button until it turns green. There you go. You have one minute started for jokes.
Yes, sir. I just wanted to first off say that. I appreciate Mr. Dhar hello mr. Take the tough questions every meeting here. Marcus or ideas first a little background. I'm 100% surplus net to combat veteran I was shot eight times in a city and when resolved. I have three letters here. Man which I contacted police Board of Commissioners they still haven't responded. When we talk about budgets grievances. How are the grassroots grievances are going to be applied. And what is the city doing to prevent lawsuits from police misconduct and city employees misconduct within these budgets? Is it a way that we get higher officers within our community I live within our community. One of the grievances from our community is there's too many suburbia officers that come from different counties, different cities that are bringing their ideologies to police our urban community in which they have no awareness. Those are obstacles in policing within our community. Victor my sister assistance previously just spoke about what I went through. There's been no victim assistance.
Thank you so much. So your time's up. Okay. Thank you. If you would like please reach out to my office 313
I am a fill in halfway elected position was present delegate has been very difficult to talk to any policymaker. So
I'm telling you right now, I don't know about doing I'm talking about me. I'm glad 31322422410271027 Or you can give me an email at council member Tate at Detroit mi.gov. We appreciate you.
Thank you. All right. I
think we have someone else who wants to make a comment. Yes.
I also want to give my number as well. You can call me at a 2244248 that's 313-224-4248 right 31322442488 my
emails and phone calls I appreciate you all right, my man so much
appreciate you being here. Last in person you're welcome sir and last in person here is Masindi dark mystery I will admit to Republican that.
I can't find the City Council minutes on the website. Maybe somebody helped me with that. But I don't see him except to kind of FOIA fill out a form to the city clerk and ask her Tell her what date I want. I think it's ridiculous. That you had to go through that to see the minutes. So I don't know if you have minutes or not. But I would like to see you hire Eric Blanc, Scotty Bowman, and join Warwick to sit is part part time people they probably won't work full time but they would help go through those complaints for the police commission. I tried to serve that the police commission I went I was trying to help join and serve these policemen and some other city people. I went to the mayor's office and I went to the law department and that knew nobody would take the services and we mailed them to the police and got the complaints back. So my question is how do you serve the police? You know, if you can't see to the headquarters where are you going to serve it? I thought you guys indemnified the police and you go to the blonde Department.
Thank you so much. Make sure those folks that you are looking for us to hire, make sure that they apply for those positions because that makes it a lot easier to put them into the potential
offers and part time employments and people make sure you make sure you have no complaints or we're gonna
now go to right zoom. Aria how many callers do we have and who do we have first?
Council President Pro Tem we have no problem. 10 hands raised for public comment. The first caller is Betty a
Varner that a Werner thank you for joining us. You have one minute general public comment.
Good afternoon. This is baby a barn again. Asking for your consideration to help seniors and people with physical disabilities be able to stay in their homes by making their homes handicapped accessible. We need ramps rails things in our homes to continue to so we can continue to be safe and clothing they walk in. Showers. We are committed to our neighborhoods. We have been committed paid our taxes. And we love our neighborhood. Some of us are still doing our part, working with the city to improve and beautify our neighborhood. So we're asking that you work together, come up with a plan please to I don't know what the process is but would like the Mayor Duggan to be also abreast of us. Thank you.
Thank you. That's called up loops.
That's the president for term the next caller is black Moses. Like Moses,
you have one minute general public comment
like Moses, are you there?
Yeah, the words that came up James take, you know, as President Pro Tem and city council, you know that you never published a notice regarding any of the contracts. Kilbourne any authorities here in municipality or Detroit you notice you want to console. Now, the law prescribes two options after the publishing of a notification of a contract with authority. It doesn't allow for third option to ignore it. The law prescribes to until the notice is published you don't have the authority to even discuss a contract with an authority No Don't agreement arrangement or hearing regarding the contract with authority. You should understand that as President and counsel. Maybe you need to read Michigan law, section 124 Stop order proceedings and hearings. We got a DOJ contracting to come in, of course.
Thank you. Next caller please.
The next caller is Carol Hughes Hughes.
Thank you for joining us. You have one minute general public comment.
Good afternoon. honorable body may I speak? Yes, you may. Thank you through the chair. I was a little disappointed and all of the hurrahs about ShotSpotter I think there is enough data from Chicago and other areas to show that these technologies don't really work. They only serve to give police the ability to jump out on young people that make them feel like criminals in their own homes and city. I want to know how many of those people that he brought back are black people. Part of the problem is that we feel occupied. We don't have enough black faces in the police department. And I didn't hear him offer up any information on transparency on who shot the young man more than 30 times. And then we have to determine who actually needs psychiatric help. I don't think we can move in the direction that we're moving with the police. Technology does not solve crimes, people doing the work solves the crimes and that's what people are asking for. Thank you.
Thank you. Next caller please.
The next caller is counsel use your power or lose your job.
Caller color the floor is yours. You have one minute general public comment.
We want the names of the officers who murdered Porter Burke's he want their names and we want that we want them off the job. We want to know who they are who were confronted with these murderers out here in the streets. We want to know who killed Asia Miller we want them off the job. Thank chief white for one, suspend these crooked officers in Asia Miller case. He did the right thing. But the crooked police border commission nerds refused to deal with even the chief wanted them to do the make these cops accountable. This band of Border Police Commission they need to go they're a corrupt group except for Willy Burton, the corrupt bunch of people they are asked you need to do a survey ask the public why we are not being allowed in the police commissioner's board why we can't speak out is corruption.
Thank you next caller please.
The next caller is Cunningham
Cunningham. Thank you for joining us You have one minute general public comment
just to kind of hammer you there.
You got to come up the gas station on baby
Yes sir. Yes, sir. We can hear how
you doing so thank you for thank you for going public comment first. I do. You run the meeting. But do you have a long history of running these meetings? Thank you for that kill Porter Burke's body cam. The release there should be a policy of releasing the body cams immediately. The requests made by the honorable council woman, not rubber stamp the not rubber stamp council woman. She know who she is the non rubber stamp council woman has made many requests to the police department and the commission is not being vigorous enough or stick to it enough. They don't seem like they really care about showmanship. The lady's enemy and on the police commission. It's up for birth. It is what it is. I've taken flak from police department. I feel retaliation in the past and I'll probably get some more for this but 313444911 for forced to service cutting.
Thank you so much Mr. Cunningham. next caller please.
The next caller is Karen Winston.
Karen Winston, thank you for joining us You have one minute general public comment. Hello, hello. Hey, yeah,
um, my public comment. I'm gonna go back to a department of regulatory a consumer and industry services Public Service Commission, underground electric line, or roll is number 460. I'm sorry, 406511. It runs quite a ways. It's specific as of 1971 all underground power lines were mandated to be underground. And public lighting did that DTE did not that's why they were so anxious to steal the city's infrastructure. Now they have even though like stolen it, they still don't have they're still putting their wires overhead even the service line. Sure it's expensive. That's the business they're in. So they're going to have to do that because you shouldn't be getting, you know, getting killed and because wires come down and they blame it on public lighting. But they left the wires up. They're the ones that did modernization. Karen Whitman was in charge of that. That program as well as now arguing about the ownership.
Thank you. Next caller please.
The next caller is Margarita Maddox and Scarlett
we met at Scarlett thank you for joining us general public comment the floor is yours.
I was
the will
be be back that the girls of the standings i i Oh let me know we
their work oh beggars because others may hear us but that may fit
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with the parenting bootcamp.
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thank you Miss mana we will be bringing the budget back for the board of police commissioners in Executive Session.
next caller please.
next caller is William M. Davis.
William Davis the floor not heard sir. Yes, sir. We can hear you.
Okay. I'd like to start off by thanking you for allowing her to have more time. A couple of weeks ago the board of police commissioners acted horribly and they cut her off what she was trying to do you know they act like they have no understanding and the city attorney this there they need their own attorney totally disregards you know, Michigan Law, city charter and everything and let them get away with murder. Also, as relates to the Detroit Police Department, they need more Detroit residents on that. On Detroit board the police and they need to retain more Detroit residents. They need to do whatever they can to do that. But you know, the board of police commissioners is a shame because they offered the job to Reverend Roseville and he accepted but the mayor did not want him so they pulled back this night so they could get a white guy from Texas. If that be the case, as President, I want to be asked him the Justice Department come in and look at them that they might need me to be disbarred. Thank you.
Thank you. Next caller please.
The next caller ends in 124
Caller ending in 124 to Florida Georgia got one managing Republic comment
caller ending in 124. Are you there?
Yes. Hello. I would like to know why the police don't take burglary breaking and entering seriously. It took me well over a month to get the police to respond. And this was after I caught on crime reporting, went down to the precinct went over and waited for the cops to show up. Three hours later, no cops showed up. I had to call the head of community policing. Finally got someone over there. Well over a month later they're not taking the crime seriously at all. And yes, as Cindy Dara pointed out, and I have to talk with the Postal Inspector because they're too certified mail return receipt complaints that haven't come back in the mail yet. Two, and then the other two were man December and came back to me in March. So there's something really funny going on, like people trying to avoid the lack of responsibility and I do want to support the men and women in blue who do their job honestly, ethically and responsibly. But it seems we need some housecleaning.
Thank you. Next caller please.
Council President Pro Tem that was the last caller.
All right. That takes us to the end of public comment colleagues just want to remind everyone that we will not be having budget hearings tomorrow. That is formal session but budget for the public. Our budget hearings will begin again on Wednesday the 22nd at 10am. That is General Services. Slash recreation department. Okay, seeing no objections, colleagues, is there a motion to adjourn motion? Seeing no objections that action shall be taken. Thank you. Safety. Well, this meeting is now adjourned.