Aug 03, 2020 City Council on 2020-08-03 11:30 AM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Monday, August 3, 2020. It is 1131 a.m. We are going to move through our work session reports. Our first agenda item is Work Session Reports 3A, ID 20-1469, and Receive Report. For discussion, you have staff direction regarding the Police Department Staffing Study conducted by the Matrix Consulting Group. Thank you, Mayor. Today, we've got Richard Brady, who's been our lead consultant from the Matrix Group, with us to review a number of recommendations that he's going to be making to the police chief and the city council moving forward in terms of the staffing of the police department. Right after Chief got here, one of the things that we asked Matrix to do is just to pull all of our records, call logs, that sort of thing, and try to give us an idea what our current level of service was, what deficiencies they might have seen in it, just so we would have a kind of a long-term plan looking forward for the city council to kick around. So we're going to turn it over to Richard, and then Chief Dixon has obviously got a number of staffing discussions he would like to talk to the council about today as well. So at this point, is Richard on the phone? I believe so. Yes, I am. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good. And I have a couple of other team members who I think are in the waiting room, John Scruggs and Ian Brady. I think they need to be released because they just texted me, and they're going to participate in the study summary as well. I'll get hold of Billy. Okay. Hey, Rich. This is John Scruggs. I am on. Okay. And Ian has not. And I'll get started while you're in the process of releasing him, and he's important to have because he's going to be talking about patrol. So thank you very much, Mayor and council members. We appreciate the opportunity to summarize the results of the study of the police department that we have spent nine months in the making of getting to this point of making a council presentation to you. So we very much appreciate it. Do you have copies of the PowerPoint presentation because there are some graphs that we have in there? Is that a yes or no? Are you able to pull it up, Richard? No, I thought you were distributing yet. I wasn't given instructions for that. So I'm on my phone. I could, if you could do that, that would be the easiest at this point. Otherwise, I have to disconnect and go to my computer version of zone. Okay. Okay. We can't find it for you. You're going to find it? Yes. Let me know when you're ready. We're looking for right now, Richard. Okay. Oh, something's coming up. Okay, it's up. Okay, good. So let me start out by talking to about the objectives of the study, first of all, and how we conducted it, especially during the fact-finding phase and what we've done after that. And then I'm going to be having each of our key team members who focus on patrol on investigations and some of the other areas summarize the work that we did here, the results and recommendations. So the study was a comprehensive look at current staffing and projected staffing, but also work management as part of that, because if we were just looking at metrics associated with staffing levels, then that wouldn't tell the whole story because how you manage resources are an integral part of the staffing that's needed to do that. So as part of this process, we looked at current service levels, operations, and delivery of services to the community. We compared those to best practices. We looked at current staffing and deployment of all functions within the police department. We developed projections of staffing for the next 10 years. But throughout this, we looked at operations management as well. So the next page, so how we conducted the study. I want to say at the outset that the first two items there are essential to a well-grounded and well-founded study. There was extensive input from police department staff, not just management staff, not even just mid-management staff and management staff, but many first line supervisors and many line staff as well. So one-on-one interviews throughout the department and some functions, especially in administrative and support types of functions in small units, we talked to all staff within that function. But that's not everybody, so we supplemented that input with input from everybody in the department through an online survey. So we got a lot of good input that way. We collected a lot of data within the police department and got a lot of cooperation, help, and support from the police department as we went through this. But clearly, we needed a lot of information from the computer-aided dispatch system and the records management system within the police department. That took some time, and it took a lot of assistance from within the department. But I think you can see as you look at the report that there's an extensive use of quantitative methods to determine what patrol, investigative, and other service levels are, workloads, staff utilization, et cetera. So there was a well-founded report from that perspective. We evaluated current services and staffing and analyzed the impacts of staffing on staffing by projected growth in the community. And that is how we developed the report that you have. Throughout the process, we had extensive collaboration with staff, first of all, to go through the data, but then to discuss issues, to discuss preliminary assessment of alternatives to current services and staffing, as well as the draft report once we developed it. So before we talk about each of the functions within the police department, I want to step back a bit and just step back from the details and talk about what we consider to be the main themes that come across from this study. First and foremost is that while most functions are appropriately staff, plus or minus a person or two, there are two functions, major functions in terms of community perceptions and being able to handle the core services and the important functions that are expected from the community and police services have an imbalance of the amount of work that they're handling to the staff that are available. That's patrol and major crimes and investigations, and we'll talk about that. There are some backlogs and support functions that impact efficiency. These are in records and property and evidence. And there are several other functions in the department that lack effective tracking and reporting of work, which impacts the management of those operations, as well as ability to be completely transparent to the community. The second note I'd like to have before we talk about the individual functions, and especially in light of what I just said on the key themes of the project, that the pandemic and the recession are going to have some impacts on your ability to implement some of these recommendations in the short term because they will increase costs. But it's important to recognize that many of the recommendations in patrol investigations and support services are cost neutral and are not and should not be impacted by the ability to increase staff in the short term. However, we just want to stress that, especially in patrol, that we made some strong recommendations to increase staffing that's based on a great imbalance of workload, which impacts the ability to be proactive and to provide expected level of service in the community, and so we made that pretty clearly. And we're going to start off with that right now, and I'll let Ian talk about the analysis of patrol, how we did that, and what the results of that assessment are. So Ian? Yeah. So the patrol analysis began with collecting years' worth of computer-aided dispatch data, which tells the picture of all the calls that patrol responded to, the amount of time they've spent back with the units, et cetera, which allows us to construct what the total workload of patrol is, and we compare that against their capacity, their ability to handle that workload, after you account for leave, training, nutrition, et cetera. And when you compare those two together, the availability against the workload, you're left with the number of uncommitted hours, that is, the time outside of responding to those calls for service, and we call that patrol proactivity, and that's really a critical measure for how we analyze patrol and whether it has adequate staffing, whether it's providing a high service level, because it says whether or not, for starters, if patrol are able to respond to calls in a timely manner, or whether they're overloaded at certain times of the day or on an overall basis, but beyond that, whether they're able to be proactive, get out there in the community, engage, address issues where they occur, be proactive on a number of fronts. And so to be able to do that and provide that kind of high effectiveness level, you need to have around 35 to 40 percent of your time available proactively. And right now, on an overall basis, patrol is at just 23 percent. So significantly below 35 to 40 percent range, and what that shows is that when officers do have time available to be proactive, it's available in short increments, and that at many times a day, as you can see in the chart, particularly from around 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., so really hours a day when people are awake and out, there's almost no proactive time, and at some point, it gets down to 9 percent, 2 percent, 0 percent, so really even negative 9 percent on Saturday nights, which shows that not only do patrol officers not have time to be proactive, but they don't even really have the capacity to handle the workloads that are occurring. Now that's not saying that emergency incidents aren't getting responded to because they still are very quickly, but it means that the lower priority incidents, things like minor non-injury accidents, whole burglaries, et cetera, they may queue up, and it may take 30, 60, 90 minutes or more for an officer to get to them. And that really is a key measure of whether staffing is inadequate. So… Ian, Mayor Watts here, I just got one quick question. Could you help me understand what you mean by proactive when you talk about productivity? So that's the percentage of time that officers are available outside of handling workloads. So once they're done handling community-generated culture service, the workload, the time they have available outside of that. Okay. All right. Thank you. So to be able to address that and improve the capacity at patrol to handle calls and be proactive, two solutions are needed. One of them is implementing call diversion, so diverting calls away from having sworn officers handle them to civilian field responders, which is something that the department is implementing under the PSO classification. And so these are calls that you don't necessarily need a badge and a gun to respond to, but are really just more like taking reports, lower-party calls, so freeing up officers to handle things that you do require an officer for, and freeing them up to engage with community. So we estimate that about 12% of culture service can be diverted to this civilian classification. And next, outside of that, even if PSOs are implemented and 12% of calls are diverted, an additional eight officer positions are needed to reach 40%. And we have a chart here that shows at each proactivity level, after you count for attrition and everything else, without diversion, how many officers are needed to reach each proactivity level. So right now, at 23%, but to be able to move into the 35% to 40% range, additional officers are required. So on the next slide, we did a comprehensive analysis of projections, which we'll get into in a little bit. But as part of that instructing what growth is going to look like in Denton over the next 10 years, the fact that new developments on culture service, on crime, by 2025, over the next five years, culture service projected increase by 11%. And that increase, along with assuming that the PSOs are implemented and calls are diverted, will still require another nine officers over the next five years, in addition to the eight that we've already recommended here. So with 17 officers assigned to patrol, 17 additional officers by 2025, and call diversion implemented, proactivity can be maintained within that 35% to 40% range. And this is what that implementing those officers would look like in 2025, under 2025 workload. So as you can see, compared to the previous chart, we showed current proactivity at single digits, negative numbers at some point, it's a significant improvement and one that would allow officers not just to be able to respond to all the low priority calls, but to be able to get that out there in the community, engage and be proactive. So realize that there's a lot of resource requirements here, but a number of different approaches here that can help including call diversion. Any questions about official analysis before we move on? Okay, we'll move on to the support areas, but that includes investigations as well as administration. Oh, sorry. No, I'm sorry. I was on mute. I apologize. Yeah, we've got a couple of questions. If we could, because I know that by state law, if a council member's talking, they need to be seen. So I think what Billy told me is if we have the slide up that whoever's talking is seen. So we'll try this. If y'all need the slides up, just let me know. I believe council member Armitage, I saw your hand raised. Yes. Would it be fair to say, this is following up on the mayor's question about what is proactive in this context. Would it be fair to say that proactive policing is what's generally called a community policing? Or is it more that it's part, an integral part of the community policing model? Just a second, I would say that's the integral part of it. I think the other way of saying it is that community policing techniques are an important part of what should be the uses to which proactive time are put. Okay. So then proactive includes both what you call being engaged in the community, kind of going around without being called, and also includes being available to respond. It does include that. It does include that. It would also include certain kinds of proactive kinds of enforcement, like traffic enforcement doors, deploying yourself in an area where there have been problems in the past, that type of thing. Okay. Okay. So everything that's excluding being a specific call for the police. That's correct. Even if they were just driving around and not responding to a call, that would be within that proactive time percentage. Okay. Excellent. Thanks. Any other, Councilmember Briggs, I believe I saw you had a question or comment. I did have a question, but I guess I have actually a lot of questions about the study. So do you want me to hold until the end or, because some may be for the chief and some may be for the consultant. If you have some questions that are directly related to this segment of the study that they've gone over, yeah, feel free to ask those now and then whatever you don't get to ask as we go through these different segments of the study, then we'll catch those at the end. Okay. So I guess because this presentation goes kind of hand in hand for the ask, I understand what you're saying with non-emergency calls, how when they take a long time to get response that could create a negative sense for a negative impression for the community. So I understand that, and I was glad to see on your study page 31, it's the PSO, the public safety officers, and that's what you're discussing right now, which is an alternative response capability. And I would assume that would be the mental health unit that was discussed or is this something different? This would be a more general classification, the mental health unit would certainly be a part of that and it has potential to take a lot of those calls, but a lot of the more kind of general calls like minor non-emergency accidents would be handled by more generalized PSO classifications. Okay. All right. Okay. That's good. So the recommendation would be, I think you're recommending nine officers or something, but what we're being asked is less than that. So I guess that would be a discussion for the chief later on in the budget. So I'll hold my question for that. Okay. All right. Okay. One question. Any other questions on this? I've just got one just for clarification. On the public safety officers, those aren't sworn, would those be civilian positions? Those would be civilian. Correct. Okay. All right. Any other questions for this segment of the study? All right. Seeing none, y'all can continue. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. So we're going to move on to the support areas, which includes in Denton's organizational structure investigations and records and some other support functions. So I'm going to have John Scruggs summarize those functions, as well as the functions in the office of the chief. So John? Yes, sir. So support and operations and administration. We looked at, to start off with, detective caseloads for a year. And we analyze those a lot like we do the CAD data, knowing that a different type of investigation takes different lengths of time. So a robbery investigation obviously takes longer to investigate than maybe a burglary. So we broke out the cases by case type, and then we came up with a workload metric for each type of case or general cases. And then we put that against the resources that Denton police currently have. What we found was that there are more cases to be worked, especially in major crimes, and there are work hours available by detectives if you're going to do a thorough investigation. So the staffing levels are appropriate in most investigative units, except for major crimes where we're recommending four additional detectives to handle the current caseload plus a sergeant for supervision. And then we also noted in a couple of the proactive units that a better consistent approach to case management and tracking of the cases that are working would be a useful management tool. And even in general crimes, those investigations, having a consistent case management approach could streamline some of the investigations, and also maybe lower level ones may not get assigned. There are some cases that are assigned to detectives that many departments wouldn't assign to a detective, they just have the patrol handle it if they could. And then there's a major backlog in property that was ongoing and already been looked at prior to us starting this study, but we're just noting it here as well. And that backlog is really the purging of older evidence and other items that are no longer needed. The cases have already been adjudicated, or they've held the item in property for a number of years, can't find the owner, and they just need to do something with it. And they're working on that currently, but that backlog still exists. And then we're recommending part-time help in eliminating some of the backlogs there. And in records, there's some backlog as well. And then also recommending a revision of the policies about evidence and property retention. Denton has a more conservative approach than the state law allows. So we're looking at saying, you know, to loosen it up a little bit and just go along with the state requirements, and that will help you get rid of some of the property you no longer need. Moving on, next slide, which is Office of the Chief. And professional standards, internal affairs, all the cases are assigned. They do a great job of doing that. They're meeting timelines and all that. However, there's really no public, you know, transparency or reporting. So we're thinking that, especially in today's environment, the more information you can get out to the public about the types of investigations are done, how they're completed, how they turn out, is a better way to go. One example, and I know the Chief has brought this up, San Antonio, if you go to their website, you can go right to professional standards, and they'll give you bias-based policing reports that you can just pull up online or last year's internal affairs cases that are conducted. And they have the full report there for public view. We just think that's the best practice for transparency. And then increased internal and external and internal data for complaints. They track a lot of categories. They use software that could do a better job of, you know, tracking who has which case, where it's assigned, the outcomes, and put out more data, basically, to keep the public informed. And then also using that data to direct training resources where there are needs. So, you know, if you have several use of force complaints regarding some kind of physical control hold, that may be something you could bring into training and retrain that if it was done improperly or rethink it. So using the data you have to inform policy decisions or training decisions down the road, we think is an important part of the process. So for mid-management staff, media training, right now the department has kind of an open door. Anybody can really chat with the media. But training really needed to be involved with that. You're representing the city and the police department, so we're talking about a more consistent approach to that and just having some training so folks know how to address the media and how to be, you know, supportive and transparent while still meeting department policies. And additional analysis needed in crime and to support a department so they can really focus where they put their, you know, proactive time, any kind of community engagement, and resources, even for, like, traffic patrol and other things. So we think there could use some more crime analysis and to help them be more effective in managing the crimes and cases there in Denton. And then last, additional information technology position is needed to support the department and major specialized systems for CAD, RMS, any more. Police departments are really heavily relying on a bunch of different technology. And unlike some IT type positions, it's really specialized. There's just some types of software and hardware that's specific to police departments. And to support a department the size of Denton, you're going to need more resources there. So we're recommending an initial person there. And I think the next slide would be Richard there for operations management. So any questions on what I've just covered in either investigations or Office of the Chief? Let me, let me pull up, see who's trying to figure out, yeah. Councilmember Briggs. Thanks, Mayor. Yeah, the report was 156 pages, so fitting it all into these slides was pretty good task. My question is about how our policy is to require a court order for disposing of items, and that's not required by state law. And I think you just kind of touched on it a little bit in regards to the backlog. And I guess is there, this may be a question for the chief, but is there a reason why the city of Denton does that and other departments don't if it's not required by the state? Frank Dixon, Chief of Police. That's a great question, Councilmember. So when we, when I first got here and we started looking over the operations about the department, we did find that we were keeping, we were retaining records a lot longer than we had to by law. We were really requiring a court order by a judge to release it. It's important in those criminal cases where the statute of limitations may not have lapsed yet that we hold on to that in case something comes up in the form of someone taking their case to an appellate court. So we saw that evidence readily available. But as we look at it, and we already had a process come in and outside consulting come in and help us with the overall purge of the records room and the, we also had one for the evidence of property room, we've really done a pretty good job of moving out a huge bulk of that backlog material back there, both getting it released and destroyed. So I think right now we're in a space where we're going to be able to move forward being much more efficient in how we manage that back there. Yeah, just follow up and then we'll call on campus member, Amater. Yeah. So just to follow up in the, in the report, it mentioned that there was an evidence software, the grant that came through and that it was working on, is that, are we still on track in that process? Is that being implemented? So we're on track to get that software and then implement it. What we have to do first is make sure our records management system that we just implemented a few months ago was up and running because now you have to cross that over into the evidence software and we have to make sure that they're compatible, though that is unprocessed. Thank you. Council member Amater. Yeah. So my question is about the stated need for a more consistent approach to case management from investigative services and follow up for major crimes. That's consistent with, you know, my scent with a lot of what I hear from constituents. And what I'm wondering is, can the need for more investigators and detectives be met by staff who is already in the department in other areas? Or is the training for investigators, detectives and all kinds of follow up, including, you know, the civilian follow up, is that something that we need to come from outside or is it a mix? So if you could kind of just give a general sentence of, you know, how much of that, that need could theoretically come from people who were already there versus from outside. So we have done a really good job of doing more with less. We have moved and we constantly reevaluate our staffing, our resource levels and where they're at. So we have really moved around a lot of resources in the last 18 months to try to close that gap. We've done a good job, but we're at the point now where we have stretch patrol so thin and moving those resources around, if we move any more back to investigations, it's really going to start impacting the quality of service that we put out to the public from where we should be. And that's got to be specialized investigators when you're talking about the putting together a criminal case, getting ready for trial. You're looking at chain of custody of evidence, the handling of that evidence, the questioning of witnesses. I mean, there's so many things that go into these cases, which they kind of spoke about early on, when you're putting together an investigative case, depending on what type of investigation, it may take a lot longer and may require a lot more work. So and thank you. So to follow up to that Councilmember Armitage, I think there's also someone on the phone who's wanting to weigh in. Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. This is Richard Brady from Matrix and John may want to weigh in as well. So I think one thing, a couple things I would say about that question is that using resources from patrol, as Ian explained, would be a problem because they're starting from such a low level of ability to do anything besides responding to calls anyway. And there aren't many other people in the sworn personnel in the department from which to draw outside of patrol and investigations. The second thing I'd point out is that our assessment of staffing needs is based certainly on effective case management, but also the tasks involved within an investigation compared to the time available. And our recommendations are based upon an effective and sometimes more effective approach to case management. So I think what case management would do would make better use of their time, but the time is still going to be spent, especially in a person crime. John, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah. I mean, just some clarifying points a little bit on investigations. One of the things I think is really worth pointing out, worthwhile point out is that investigation, criminal investigations now are more complex than they ever have been. And so even in the last 10 years, the time it takes to put a case together and the amount of steps that are necessary has increased. Now you have to review body worn camera video and put that in almost every business has a video. So you have a lot more of those kinds of processes. But in addition to that, you know, for major crimes, you're writing a lot of subpoenas and warrants for stuff that you didn't even have to do 15 years ago. And just to write a simple subpoena or warrant for preservation of records and some other things that investigators are doing now today that they weren't doing 10 years ago, it just really means your detectives are going, the caseloads they can manage successfully and properly is diminished even with the same number of people, if you have the same number of detectives 10 years ago as today. I think there are some places where you could use a crime analyst to help do some social media searches if that's part of an investigation and some other places. But generally going out and interviewing witnesses and, you know, canvassing crime scenes, writing subpoenas and warrants that really does take sworn law enforcement with training and investigative, you know, know how. So I don't think you can substitute a ton of folks, you know, for the investigative, you know, detectives we're looking at. And in addition, there is really not a lot of resources within the department to move over to investigations at this point in our analysis. I hope that answers what you're getting at. Yes. Yeah. And thank you. I think that patrol is, that a lot of patrol or most patrol is started from such a low level of ability. You mean, just you mean in terms of the training that they've had to do, patrol is not as extensive as the training is necessary to do investigations and crime analysis. I take it. Would you say that are these different, such different professional skill sets that you wouldn't recommend or it would not be recommended best practice to train patrol to do that kind of work? I actually think the right answer would actually be as one skill set builds upon another. So your patrol officer is your basic level of investigation and they're trained to do those. But as you assign cases to detectives, like a sex assault case, you don't want to assign that to somebody who doesn't have a lot of experience investigating cases because the risk to the public or the victim is too great if you fail. So that's really where you want a professional investigator, someone who's trained knows evidence procedures and does that kind of stuff on a daily basis. Plus with patrol, yes, you can write some warrants and get that kind of experience at the patrol level, but it gets more sophisticated at the, that, you know, like in the major crimes cases where they're writing a number of different subpoenas, warrants, doing different investigative processes that you really just can't move somebody in patrol to do that and still cover patrol. I mean, you really need somebody who's dedicated to do it. - And anyway, thank you so much for that. I'll weigh in in the discussion on my opinion on that, but I do agree with what you're saying and your assessment of the situation that makes sense to me. So thank you. - Okay. Anybody else? Council member Melter. - Yeah. You touched on this question of productivity briefly when the mayor asked about it. And there were a few minutes when I was offline that, you know, you may have expanded on it. So I hope this is repetitive, but you talked a lot about the need to preserve a certain amount of time for productivity and what I took from your answer previously was that it's mostly a measure of kind of available capacity so that you can keep response times low. But is there more to it than that? And I'm going to say a little more before you answer if you don't mind. You know, are there things that you are implicitly saying police officers should be doing in times when they're not responding directly to calls? A bit more I'd like to say is from what little I know about police and just from general reading, the one thing that's correlated with people feeling safe and secure and having low crime rates, if they have good community relations with the police, is police visibility, just presence. So is that what you're after? - Yeah, let me get started with that and Ian may weigh in as well. So all of that is correct and those are great observations on your own that certainly if you do not have enough proactive time, response times can be impacted by that because you would have to break off from a call of lower priority to go to a call with higher priority or wait for somebody from another part of the city to respond. So that could certainly be the case. Secondly, part of the use of proactivity is again to address long-term issues that may be occurring in a community and that does get visibility as well as various kinds of problem solving. And lastly, the concept of engagement with the community has always been important, but I think we're all more aware of it now with the events that have been happening in the last few months that how important the relationship is with the community to be positive and ongoing. And if your relationships with the community are based largely on just responding to calls of none and more positive proactive kinds of interactions such as going to meetings or interacting with citizens, trying to talk to them about what their problems are. You can do a much more holistic job as it were of being engaged with the community and addressing problems. Ian, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, no, definitely and I think that when you're in the 30 to 40 percent range for activity, when you're able to do those kinds of things, when you're below that, it really hurts response times to low priority calls for instance where if resources are tied up, calls start to begin to queue and I mean the emergency incidents are still going to get responded to but those low priority things like minor non-injury accidents, cold burglaries, so it's going to have extended response times as a result of that. Thank you. All right, anybody else before we move on to the next segment? Okay, thank you. You may proceed with the presentation. Okay, before we talk about the projections, I just want to take a couple of minutes to underscore one of the concepts that we've been talking about here and it recognizes the fact that in a staffing study in which we have found that there are some staffing needs, just want to make sure that some other things aren't lost in the process. So John has talked about the importance of focusing detectives' time especially in certain kinds of property crimes on cases that are solvable with leads, evidence, even witnesses, those types of things so that you can receive the greatest impact in terms of the efforts that you have available and there's some issues relating to retention of evidence as we've discussed both of the presentations, the questions and answers that need to be addressed that can make that more efficient. Internal affairs are some transparency issues regarding case follow-up that will be important internally and to the community and finally making media relations more consistent in quality in terms of the support that's provided to certainly mid-level managers as well as personal and supervisors and others who may have contact with the media but may not be supported as appropriately as they are today and that's just four groups of recommendations and many of the recommendations that are made in the report and none of those require substantial additional investment in the police department to make them happen. So unless there are any questions about that concept I'm going to move on to Ian who will explain the staffing projections that we've developed for the city's police department. Councilmember Armitage, did you have a question on this, on what he just said? Yes, yeah a question about the media aspect. So you know you had mentioned before and I agree I think that was in the chief's recommendations to for more transparency and mentioned the San Antonio model of having all reports kind of publicly available online. I know that involves an investment at some level in software you know but once you've got that it can be kind of a self-sustaining system. As I understand it and I'm just going to use this as one example I know it's not the full extent of media contact but the police blotter you know my understanding of at least how the police blotter was done in the recent past you know was that the police department that somebody in the police department would kind of would handpick some preliminary reports and give those to the media and I'm wondering if that practice was eliminated and just replaced by putting everything online and leaving it to the media to decide what they want to cover you know would that free up some some staff time or is that not so much a staffing issue? I honestly don't know. I will say either way I would prefer for the media to be able to just see everything at full transparency and be able to choose but I'm curious if there might be also a staffing issue. That is a really interesting question because there are a variety of uses to which information is put and I certainly agree with you that in the interest of transparency that everything should be available but because the department is and the city is not just in the business of making information available on a blank slate kind of approach but also trying to make sure that a positive image is expressed and that some of the good things and positive things that the department are doing are underscored and highlighted to the community and because this involves both social media and the website and as well as other kinds of interactions with the public in the media you do need some more directed consistent approach from media experts in the department and that's what we're talking about here so it is both having the information available and being able to stress the things that are positive about the department but it's also about handling of the media and handling of interest in information that needs to be addressed in a more consistent coordinated way within the department. So I have a question because what council member brought up at least I thought was different than what you were describing in the San Antonio kind of paradigm and that is I thought the San Antonio paradigm was internal affairs investigations is that am I correct on that or was that any report that any police officer took okay so it was that was limited to the internal affairs investigation I think what council member Armature was referring to is just any report that's taken any day from a police officer that you know some of them selectively show up in our local newspaper you know all of those being somewhere identified or disclosed so I just want to point out to the public that there was a difference in exactly those two different types of pieces of information and how they were handled at least as reference to the San Antonio situation oh well let's let's let's have John talk about that part of it because that is part of the question so John do you want to talk about San Antonio and what we're recommending here yeah so with the San Antonio and and the software is already available and they already have it it's just reports that would be produced from IA Pro and then simply having someone put that information on a public document they do an annual report in San Antonio and then if you go to their website you can just click on it and so that information is widely available you can see how many types of incidents they had or investigations whatever you were going to want to know really about all the things that are tracked through internal affairs and that can include you know the number of you know vehicle crashes per year types of force that were used per year at up to and including the complaints that come in every year they're investigated and what the outcome is okay so you can break all that stuff down so that's okay just being very transparent all right you bet councilmembers real quick then we're going to move forward yeah so just to be sure so are you saying that we have the technology for that already that it would just involve you know using that technology in a different way is that correct yeah you're already using that technology it can produce some of those reports yeah I think it'd be appropriate for Chief Dix and to kind of talk about some of these things that he's implemented sure brand new to us so right sure you bet okay chief you want to comment or you want to wait till your presentation I would love to thank you mayor yes so when talking about the police blotter we have never handpicked anything to go out to the blotter they go through an open data portal what we have done very intentionally is we have one PIO that sits with the media every day personally and goes through whatever cases the media wants to go through they pick what they want to put in the blotter we do not choose their content for them we're talking about the San Antonio model we have had a website put together already with all the information that's been talked about we did not want to launch that before first we took that to the use of force committee to let the ad hoc committee know and it's in my report to you which is going to be next in our budget discussion but we did not want to launch that to the general public until you all have been briefed on it so it's already sitting it's waiting to go it's waiting to launch so that'll be launched this next week okay thank you chief so basically what I heard you just say was that the procedure for the blotter reports is very different than what councilmember armature had described it seems like there was a difference there there was a small period in time where the portal went down and we were actually having a PIO drive up to the police station to sit face to face with a reporter every morning for them to go through and hand select what calls they want to look at so we don't we do not select those calls for them okay all right thank you for that clarification councilmember armature yeah and thank you for clarifying that so they so the media gets to see the full slate of all the reports that's that's they have access to the portal that they had before okay well anyway thank you for clarifying that because that has not been been my understanding but that's that is real that is really good to know thank you okay any other comments on this section all right we can proceed with report okay ian is going to talk about how we did the staffing projections and what the results were so ian okay so uh we started this process by uh talking with planning officials and getting uh data both on historical rates of growth in terms of uh permits population data but also looking at uh wider scale projections such as uh than long-range uh forecasts future land use plans and other kinds of regional planning efforts that looked at population growth um and ultimately what we ended up doing was really focusing on um historical permit uh issue and looking at over the last five years how many uh residential permits are are issued um constructing from that rate of construction growth in terms of the number of housing units and from that population growth and what we did was we split the city up into a number of different areas um looking at downtown uh selectively as well as other areas dividing that up and focusing on how projections would impact each area individually so from that looking at how based off of most recently built constructions and what the impacts of public safety were in terms of call service and crime what the the next build um or rather the future construction is going to look like in terms of the impacts on public safety so um taking the population estimates and from that projecting the number of calls to service that would be generated the number of crimes that are likely to be generated um and so from that building that up each year focusing on 2025 and 2030 for the key benchmark years for um what the staffing needs will need to look like and so our methodology is based off of maintaining the same level of service that uh is recommended as part of the staffing recommendations and then from that just maintaining that same service level uh in future years but based on the increases to call service and crime and so one thing that's important to note in all this is that currently only 182 of 195 to form positions are filled and so that all of the projections that we're making are based off of authorized uh budgeted positions not uh filled positions so understanding that there will be some turnovers there will be at times difficulty to fill uh some of those vacant positions uh but that our methodology center on each individual position that we were looking at uh patrol officers for example individually media relations records each thing individually and not looking at the department on the macro overall level so in examining the the staffing recommendations from each position on an overall basis um it comes out to approximately four new positions each year that are needed from 2020 to 2030 uh go the next slide uh has a summary of uh by bureau what the staff staffing recommendations are in terms of both now but then looking at 2025 and 2030 how many positions need to grow so it's about from 2020 to 2030 it's uh 35 additional sworn positions so i guess 3.5 per year on average in terms of civilian positions is six throughout that entire time period so that's maintaining uh the recommended staffing levels currently but with the additional uh growth impacts that will occur over the next 10 years and what those staffing needs will need to be to achieve that any questions on the projections or methodology of what we came up with i don't uh there is one um yeah there's one council member well a couple council member breaks yeah um could you could you talk about the time it takes from um an applicant for someone who wants to be a sworn officer the time it takes from application to actual position uh john do you want to take that so if you can cover that area yeah so anybody you hire obviously you're gonna have a three to six months hiring process so you know someone puts an application does the testing has the background done by the time you uh swear him on you're working three to six months to put on how fast you can move and then it's getting him uh trained and ready to be on the street and that is usually another nine months to a year before someone's actually uh solo so in most departments we see around the country and doesn't would be no exception before someone's really out able to take calls for service you're looking usually around 18 months uh or or if i could add here texas has some training requirements that some other states don't which that lengthens it a little bit so it from from point of uh publishing a position it could take as long as two years chief do you have any uh additional information or comment on that so that's absolutely right what uh richard spoke to well we have tried to leverage that by instituting a lateral hire process where we can bring in um police officers that are already credentialed in the state of texas we still do a thorough background on them and vet them we can get them into a modified hiring process with our hope of getting them on the street in about six months instead of that 18 to 24 okay uh council member brings you have a follow-up and then we got to go to council member armature and council member melzer yeah i did i just wanted um to put it out there how long it takes so what we approve in a budget may we may not see that actual um hire you know on out so as we talk about needing four per year i just wanted that time period to to be known on how how long it would take and um i'm glad you discussed the lateral moves i wanted to ask and follow up because it was mentioned in the study if that's been working if that's if that's worked out it has for us we've hired about six or seven so far we've been able to get them through training and on the street at a much quicker pace because they're coming here um some of them are already supervisors at other departments so they already have a good amount of training and skill it's just teaching them to what we do here and then and again after they go to that thorough vetting process we don't hire everyone we have turned away a number of applications through the hiring process as well yeah this is richard brady again i would underscore that that uh no less than you would um uh have as an important factor in hiring a lateral compared to a new recruit uh backgrounding is is is essential just because they have the experience uh the fit and uh the personal experience in the background is really important as well okay council member armature and then council member melzer yeah uh yeah uh two questions one um when uh at the level of of testing uh not not training but the just initial testing um is that used to place somebody uh to decide whether or not they go in patrol or in investigations or detective or is that more a matter of experience uh or is it a combination i'm wondering you know is there like a certain score that someone has to get or uh on on tests to qualify you know for one of um uh the for for a you know non-patrol or non-exclusively patrol petition uh position or is that simply a matter of experience and personal preference everybody goes to patrol when they're out of academy and field training and uh they could spend their entire career there but based on experience capability and training they receive at some point in their career they can take um on additional or take on other functions within the department such as investigations or some other capacity within the department okay thank you so it has nothing to do with it with testing or a matter of experience no okay thank you so much not not not at entry level no not at entry yeah that's what i meant so thank you so much um so on my second question so i understand you know the case that that is being made about you know there's a certain percentage on that's kind of a best best practices model or the model being used for the percentage of patrol um i i personally uh happen to think that um that we we um place too much emphasis on the you know proactive patrol and uh so in that respect i i disagree uh but i agree with the need for more in you know investigations and follow-up um what i'm wondering is this model that you're using with the percentages recommended percentages i i i realize that it's a very standard uh model almost a universal model but i'm wondering you know is there a name for this model uh and um uh or is it a certain you know kind of category of model as opposed to other kinds of models because i know that there are other kinds of models being being employed and there's a lot of experimentation uh you know going on nationwide uh so i'm wondering just kind of any information that you can provide about you know the name for this uh workload you know percentage model that that is really invested in the proactive side what what is your understanding of you know the name the names for other kinds of models or is it really so experimental right now that it's wide open yeah so um in terms of the productivity analysis it's not really a model so much as just a methodology for looking at um workload and the amount of time that's available to be proactive on the projections model this is something that was developed just for den um and it's it's kind of a hybrid of multiple different models so part of it is workload based where for patrol investigations etc it's using workload to construct what those staffing needs will be in the future uh and and for others it's using different relationships of like say for supervisors the number of direct reports so it it varies by function what kind of category of methodology would fall under um so i'm not sure that answers your question but there it isn't a set um like modeled um that's this label to categorize this one specific thing okay council member mouncer yeah um i noted in i think it's on page 29 of your report there's a discussion about how historically um a lot of different tasks have in recent years have fallen to the police because others weren't able to do it and uh i think our chief has been kind of a leader in reimagining policing by bringing in more civilian public safety officers and using mental health professionals now so my question is on your projections are you assuming increasing success with the use of civilian civilians either public safety officers or health professionals or you know uh or not or how does that figure into your projections for the need for swarming yeah yes it assumes that the um the recommendations for about 12 percent of calls to service to be diverted to uh civilian field responders is is continued throughout the increase or throughout the projections period so the 12 percent is going to be greater great a greater number calls in 2025 and 2030 as the overall number of calls to service grows so it does seem that that expansion is made okay thank you okay all right was that uh it looked like that was close to the uh conclusion of the report or or am i did i miss something all right i think we have we have a short concluding statement but um just underscores everything we've been saying and i think one thing that gets lost in a study that looks at improvement needs and then gaps in staffing is the fact that uh with the work that we've done with the police department working with them for months and months here that uh in in just about every area of service the police department provides an excellent level of service to the community with the resources that they have um underscoring again though that in some areas most significantly in patrol and major crimes staff's ability to handle that workload at uh expected levels of service um for proactivity and handle cases for example in an effective manner uh is just not possible at current staffing levels and that this this issue will increase as the city continues to grow over the next 10 years but in spite of that there are a number of opportunities for the police department to uh make changes in the way it manages its staffing and other resources that can have an impact on improving service or support for the department uh internally so with that we'll take any last questions and i think the chief has a statement as well sure uh council member breaks not really a question just i want to commend them on the study and the report it was very helpful to read um you got an understanding of each division and individuals who work there and what they do and what's needed it was very thorough and um i enjoyed reading it and um i just have i guess i have one last question for the chief there were a couple of times where um standard operating procedures came up and i assume are wondering are those being worked on already as we continue to revamp all of our general orders which are our policies we're also doing that with the SOPs in each individual unit those are very specific to records crime scene unit so throughout the department we are doing that yeah okay thank you absolutely anybody else thank you gentlemen so much for your presentation and for your report it's very helpful in helping us uh you know find some direction and to meet the needs of our community to our public safety officers and and to provide them the adequate training and support that they need to to provide safety to the community appreciate it thank you well thank you for giving us the opportunity to uh to not only provide you the summary of the report but also to work with you so greatly appreciated here thank you sir all right let's uh before we go into the chief's report let's just take a quick five uh five minute break it's 12 35 we'll come back about 12 40 welcome everybody back to this meeting of the denton city council on monday august the third 2020 it's 12 46 p.m we're moving through our work session reports we are on our work session report 3b which is id 20-1412 receive report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the fy 2020-21 police operating budget good afternoon mayor council frank dixon chief of police is a pleasure to be here with you today let me share my screen and we'll get started i'll put in some natural breaks so we can stop along the way for questions so as we start out i want to identify a few accomplishments that we had this year and then kind of talk about a few of the future goals moving forward um we have really enhanced our training educational opportunities within the police department most notably human relations risk training which is also contains sexual harassment and harassment in general across the workforce fair and impartial policing training which we started about two months ago sending in about 24 of our staff that we picked and they accepted our offer to be our department trainers to get this throughout the department where it's going to be a mandatory class that deals with implicit bias which i think is very important not just given the current state of affairs but overall the executive team and some members of our community are going to attend a one and a half day session of this next month in september so i'm looking forward to that and then we have done some work with our training staff and dr richard williams who's our accreditation and compliance manager to put together a comprehensive training plan which is really going to set our our future success in motion so we're really trying to deepen our bench and prepare people to take over as people start retiring and roles change we realign our patrol areas in our districts we had five large areas that three or four police officers were sharing as districts we shrunk those into 16 separate areas and we left downtown to be one standalone district because it captured everything from the square in the industrial area up to fry street so we kept that district by itself but we realigned the rest of the city to have smaller districts so officers would have more ownership of those we also create our full-time homeless outreach team this year in january and as we've been discussing the last few weeks the creation of the new mental health division we started the accreditation process through the texas police chiefs association best practice program we're about halfway through that process now we're looking to complete that in the next eight to twelve months we also deployed agency-wide first net cell phones not just for the purpose of having communication and capability but that is one of the really good things officers can give out those numbers to people that they come in contact with complainants and they can follow up a lot easier that way but more importantly they have instant access to our general orders they can double as ticket riders and then some can even do traffic crashes as well so that was a huge step for us this year and starting to leverage technology a lot better than we have in the past we have brought in just a number of external stakeholders into the police department as far as selection boards for internal specialized positions most notably family violence and sex crimes and as we talked about last week we created a centralized homeland security coordinator although we renamed that the emergency management coordinator to mirror what the fire department has and we were very blessed in having done that within about a month prior to the covid outbreak so officer Sarah Keith really hit the ground running and we can't say enough great things about the work that she has done over the last four or five months and we have had the opportunity to expand the number of supervisory positions within the command staff i think one of the glaring things that came out of the matrix study as you all saw was the span of control and that has been an issue not just here but in policing in general over time so we really want to again make sure that we're constantly reevaluating and redeploying resources where we need them so we can be more efficient more effective and keep the city safe going into next year we're going to continue to deploy an agency wide reform based model looking at how we're doing our job we are about to deploy a spider tech technology that when officers get dispatched to a call the complainant will get a text or an email letting them know the officer's name that's coming the case number and about the time that they're expected to arrive on scene when they leave it will notify them when the officer completes the report it will also notify them when it's been assigned to a detective and it will give them the last piece of that and probably the most important piece it'll give them a survey to to put out that will deal with both the 911 portion of the call how was your call handled as it was being taken how did our initial response work out for you and then how have we done on the back end as far as the investigation so we're looking to get some real-time feedback instead of waiting to do an annual things we want to get those as the year progresses and we're going to continue to improve technology and equipment where we can just again to set our police officers up for the greatest success we can our philosophical changes it's been really big for us to get away from kind of black and white decision making i really want to encourage an environment of critical decision makers where our police officers are taking in constantly taking and re-evaluating things as they're driving the calls or at call scenes as they get new information they're evolving as that information comes in we're really trying to cultivate an overall environment of both internal and external procedural justice and one thing that i would tell you as we're having these discussions about what does accountability look like look like in policing in general but in the didn't police department specifically i will tell you that while some in the community may believe that we're not holding our police officers accountable i will tell you that there's a good number of police officers since october 2018 that believe not only are we holding them accountable but we're doing so probably in some cases a little harsher than they would like we are continuing to foster a culture of continuous improvement and training opportunities it's not good enough for us just to hold classes that kind of a shotgun approach we want to make sure that we're being very intentional very direct in what classes we're holding for our police officers so we're getting those subject matters that not only impact them but also impact our community and of course we will never do enough community engagement no matter how many police officers we have no matter how much time we have we will never do enough and i think that's just the the nature of where we're at as a society our service level changes we talked about this pretty soon after the covet 19 pandemic started we implemented precautionary measures pretty early on as far as police departments go we were one of the first to go through the facial hair mandate making everyone shaved a fifth protective equipment implementing face coverings sending people home to work remotely that did not have to be here and again mirroring what the city was doing the police department did and we were i think as a city and as a police department one of the first in north texas to take those precautionary measures we modified our patrol response so we could keep our employees as healthy as we could kind of reducing their risk of exposure again and then we created a teleserve function which we're going to keep where we have at least two officers that are doing nothing but taking report calls over the phone so they can take old report calls they can talk to people about any concerns they have in the community and we've seen a good balance of them taking those lower priority calls off of patrol to help them but again we have kind of redirected resources so much we're kind of limited at what we can do at this point post-covid we talked about all that and we re-implement our online reporting system which is big as well so our community now has three different really if you want to look at a menu of three different options they can do the report online themselves they can call and talk to a teleserve officer or they can have a officer still come out and take a report from them live any questions so far Let me see if any council member Armitage So you mentioned so about accountability you had said that you know for some there's even some feel there's even too much accountability are would you refer us to the I guess that was last week there was a there was a slide on you know disciplinary measures taken I think it said in 2020 there were you know four people four officers or four instances of discipline and it had kind of the numbers for previous years and different levels of discipline is that where we should go to look to see the accountability that's happening or is there some accountability that's out that is outside of that that you would like to highlight Well it's all highlighted in the report that we gave to the ad hoc committee this past week and if you look at from 2015 to present I think there's been 19 different scenarios of accountability being a day off or more I think 14 or 15 of those 19 have been from October 2018 to present there's been I believe three indefinite suspensions two since October of 18 there's been two that have resigned under investigation and that doesn't take into account the verbal oral reprimands the written reprimands the epips which are performance improvement plans and it doesn't take into accountability any any of that lower level less than a day off well thank you and that that that's the the information I'm referring to so thank thank you absolutely member Briggs chief on the service level changes page could you talk about the the changes that have been made in the jail post covid so in the jail we're issuing anyone that comes in from the outside you know our detainees we're issuing them face coverings our jail staff has been issued face coverings and shields just depending on which ones they want to use there's gloves back there they disinfect and sanitize it as they need we have a machine back there that kind of does an ozone type sanitation that will cover about 5,000 square feet so we're taking a number of precautions we're trying to keep as many of the detainees separated as we can and we're turning them over pretty quickly I think our average is down to like 17 and a half hours total them being in our custody and being released a big majority being a lot less than that 17 hours but overall is between I believe like six hours and 24 so we're turning people over pretty quick we're trying to get them processed in and get them before magistrate so they can bond out and we've also stopped taking class year rest where we don't have to so someone's not a danger to themselves or others and we can release them we've been doing that I think you've seen that in our writing citations for an ounce of marijuana or less there's just some other things that we've implemented to try to reduce the number of people that were actually taken into physical custody thank you okay councilmembrometer thank you so yeah follow-up question on to that about the jail so and I really I'm really glad for the improvement in the policy on marijuana citations for an ounce or less of class C I'm wondering about you know can you speak to the extent to which police is involved in determining what what dollar level a bond is sent at before and after they first see a judge and get processed by a judge because I know you know when one goes to the to the intake page or whatever you call it you know sometimes when someone first comes in you'll see a zero dollar amount sometimes then you'll see a dollar amount even before they've gone to be a judge and then after they go to see the judge it changes so if you could kind of walk us through that that process and the level of police involvement in determining that figure yeah if yeah if we could and chief I want you to answer that is as it relates to the budget this is a budget discussion so I mean there's a lot of policy questions that we probably all could have and we'll certainly have an opportunity to do that but if you could just answer that in relation to how it reflects on the budget if how much police officers are required to interact with the court and so forth and so on I'm sorry by statute by state law police officers don't have any authority to issue bonds okay so so when that when that dollar amount first shows up that council member armature I'm not sure how bond setting with the municipal court which is a totally separate division of city government I think the chief just said he doesn't have the police officers aren't involved in that at all so if that's a policy question for the court I certainly would encourage you to to send that on or when we have the court before us to discuss that but I'm not sure how that reflects on the discussions that we're having right now regarding the police city budget okay sure sure and I wasn't going to bring it up except since we were already talking about it and but it is a city revenue issue but that's fine that's fine okay thank you all right chief you may proceed there we go this is our fte summary going into the next fiscal year as you look at the asterisks under administration and then under mental health the asterisk for administration we're looking at a mid-year transfer from the finance department to a police department for one of these administrative positions which is going to keep us flat at 44 it was going to drop to 43 and the why behind that is the creation of the new mental health division of five non-sworn positions we took those from administration and current existing vacancies that we transferred to make the mental health division and then for patrol we're going from 95 to 100 and then from criminal investigations we're asking to go from 44 to 45 and those six positions are based on the matrix report adding one to major investigations and then adding five on patrol as they talked about and then we wanted to let you all know what the forecast looked like for those sworn ass if you implement five per year as they talked about this is what the annual expense would be throughout that five year period per year okay and then this is our current organizational chart i want to show you how we are structured we're going to have the mental health division reporting directly to me as well as accreditation and compliance and media relations specifically for the mental health division while this is going to be in beta test mode for the first year i want to make sure that they are following to the highest extent possible what the vision is for that unit and how it continues to evolve and i want to make sure that we're appropriately deploying them we're training them properly and we're getting out the best product that we can as far as a mental health unit it's too important for it to report i felt like anywhere except me in the first year and we'll look at like we do with everything else we're evaluating that as the as time goes on but another point that we also talked about prior to internal affairs reporting directly to chief smith and then to me chief i have a real quick question on the mental health division uh you mentioned that in the the staffing chart that those five positions were being filled because there were five vacancies i believe yes sir and so uh those are the five is it the social workers or is that including the patrol officers that they will be teamed with so those five are going to be the manager and then the four social workers under the manager but all non-sworn we're creating all of the positions through staffing that we have currently we didn't have to move the vacant patrol staffing numbers because we're already in patrol okay so they will be teamed with a patrol officer that will able to be able to respond to other calls simply other than ones that would involve those licensed social workers or would they be strictly all the calls now that would be of that nature would be funneled to whoever's on patrol at that time with that team so strictly that team is going to focus on mental health okay not only being first responders to them but we also want them to do some limited follow-up as well there's a lot of bandwidth that i think we can do proactively and keeping our community more connected to your resources kind of the same vein as the homeless outreach team if we can specifically be out there and do some limited follow-up and get people resources before they need them i think we're going to find a good benefit in that as well as responding to them okay thank you chief appreciate the info and then our proposed revenue budget for this next year as you can see things kind of stay the same until you get to the sro program if you all remember about mid-year last year we added three positions to the disd which increased that 463 number to the 630 number moving forward so so chief just but but that's that's our portion of though the cost for those additional fte's and then the school district i believe picks up the rest of that is that my understanding correct okay um if we could i just had a real quick question if we could pull the slide down just because i think i have to be seen and chief if you want to think about this and get back with me that's fine i guess is there some level of providing sro coverage by the city of denton police department where it would become more efficient for as the school district grows and as of course the police needs of our community get larger where that may be something that we we migrate from or transition to where the independent school district may be looking at you know do they need to to meet that need themselves or is that just something we just we do and since they're paying half of it or do we transition to more of that cost or i guess i'm just trying to understand that process from a budgetary perspective so we have continued to have conversations with the isd on just that at what point would they potentially want to create their own family but until we get there it's kind of like when you're reimagining what public safety looks like overall until we can get a better better item on the table for discussion we need to do the best that we can with what we have and i think we're doing a really good job working with them as partners and in doing that great do you know if there's any discussions moving forward about the the level of cost sharing is is there been any discussion about moving that i think it's 50 now each is that is that correct yes has there been talk as we move forward and get more more sro officers gradually reducing that percentage of cost to the city and increasing that with the school district or is this just the way it's going to be for the near future those conversations haven't taken place about the school district picking up a larger share if you might remember a couple years ago i did sit down with superintendent wilson we adjusted their cost sharing from roughly 33 up to 50 of that but no further discussions on this moving forward okay all right thank you mayor pro tem and then council member melzer thank you mayor chief quick follow-up on the mental health officers just to help me understand its effectiveness can you walk me through or let me let me say this my my concern is it seems like we're still going to be dependent on the caller to provide key information that would then trigger who we send out how do we manage that or how do we how do the 911 officer our call takers kind of see through what they with the callers deems as a as a need for a regular police officer kind of see through that and say well no this officer fits that scenario better how how do you manage that or our handle that communication so we're actually meeting with our communication staff in the next week to talk about one component of the houston police department mental health division model where they have a licensed social worker actually in their tail in their communications room so when a 911 call does come in and there's a mental health component to it that person actually works with the 911 operator and sometimes even takes over the call and asking those probing questions that will get us more i guess more robust information on the front end and then continue to ask follow-up questions so they can kind of develop a better picture and then transferring that information to those responding so they get a better picture of what they're walking into and if i may mayor sure is that do so when modeling is that is that included in the five that you've identified or would that be a sixth so that's not gonna be included in the five part of our discussion with communications is we haven't talked to him yet but potentially taking one of their existing vacancies and making one of those positions that but i think at this point everything's on the table and i have no doubt that we're going to do collectively as a team what's best for the community i don't think we're going to be in a position where we're going to be really debating or haggling about that sure and i guess just as we go forward that's going to be a key quick answer i need is how do we if i if i'm ignorant to a situation i'm looking from afar and i call in saying this is happening i may not be informed enough to give the information necessary to send the right group out and and so maybe it's how do we switch if need be or just i just need to understand the the how it how it's implemented and to make sure that those resources are deployed and managed and in a in a scenario where we're dependent on a caller that is not up to speed on on all issues so before we we launch any of this after they get their training and before it's put on live we're going to brief counsel on what that exactly looks like yeah another component of that probably the third peg of that stool if you want to call it is educating the community better on what they need to be looking for if they're not familiar with signs of someone being in a mental illness crisis what they can look for and what's important for them to tell us as responders to that yeah and and i'll and i'll put a i'll put a point on that because i was sitting in on a call where it came in that a person had a knife and officers arrive and it's a radio and so in that you know there's just going to be those instances where the caller gets it wrong and we have to be able to to manage that absolutely councilman melcher i think i saw your hand yeah thank you i have a couple of if i may uh and also just comment i think that the side effect of educating the community at large about how to be sensitive to mental illness could be one of the best things that can comes out of that it sounds great um my questions you show the uh financial impact of adding five full-time employees a year but what i what i heard in the consultant's report was about i need to add four so my am i missing you know what am i missing what's the fifth so when they're talking about for they're talking about um sworn so what's our five is going to be four sworn plus one non-sworn because i want to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible not coming to council asking for 24 positions at once you kind of laying that out what that looks like in a five-year forecast that answers that thank you uh and then um yeah this is something that uh i feel like i should know i i saw in your slide that you had 44 employees that are in the community resource area and i have to admit i don't know what that is and if i don't imagine you know others in the community might not know either so what is that so that's going to be our that's going to be our sros it's going to be traffic that's going to be um our cro's so they're patrol like functions but not specifically responders on patrol okay those and those are the civilian functions that dsos will be captured in that but those are motorcycle officers traffic officers i see okay great thank you council member breaks um i have several and i think there's just one or two more slides so i'll wait and hold mine until okay all right okay all right thank you council member barmiter uh i had a question about about the mental health response uh so the the mental health response team uh and the what you're talking about uh about having a a trained mental health professional in dispatch and i love that idea by the way of having someone in dispatch i think that's essential um you know how how do you plan to to address uh to to use this new uh emphasis on on mental health or uh extended emphasis on mental health to address um how mental health issues are dealt with in proactive policing uh in other words situations where you're not responding to a call that's been assessed at to be a mental health call but where they're dealing with people who whether diagnosed or not you know have some kind of mental health issues or or trauma is there a a plan for kind of a change in approach to that uh and or just in terms of the approach in department culture in general in using uh you know avoiding ableist language um if you want to speak to that absolutely we're going to continue training all right you can't train one time and then put it on a shelf so we're going to continue developing training implementing training this kind of um do exactly what you talked about making sure that we're doing the best job we can proactively in engaging the community it all comes back to building relationships within the community so one of the big facets of both the homeless outreach team because the intersection with mental illness and what the mental health division overall is reducing them proactive outreach and some proactive going back after the call you know a week or two after the call after the person has gotten services and they're back home following up with them letting them know that you know we're trying to establish those relationships so the next time they're in crisis they will be less hesitant to reach out for help because now they know that it's officer x and counselor y coming to their home and it's not somebody they don't know so establishing that's going to be big but then you know reaching out onto patrol and just continuing constantly training that same approach is very important to take our time when we're out on any call for service but more importantly when someone may be in crisis to taking that information make critical decisions and make them appropriate thank you okay all right we can go ahead and move forward with the presentation so we talked about the for the proposed coming up personnel as we talked about before takes up a good majority of our budget and then our operations and cost of service at the bottom in total down here and this is what it looks like as we're talking about the one-time costs for this year being the 232 167 for the sworn and then the 35 for the the admin manager and then how that plays out in the recurring costs make sure and that the total cost overall and that is it for the budget i'll open up to any questions you may have sure councilmember breaks chief i have some questions going through the report it seemed like there were a lot more positions that were suggested and i just want to run through those and i guess my main question is has there been a rearrangement to address some of these or are you just are waiting councilmember breaks your sort of you're sort of fading in and out audio wise to to another date so there was a full civilian recommendation to fleet body camera councilmember breaks yeah okay you're back you're you're you're moving around now and we can hear you so uh yeah if you could maybe just repeat the jest of that that'd be great um thanks frontier um so on on the positions i don't know what you heard and what you didn't just start over there were some recommendations okay there were some recommendations in the report that were pretty thorough and justified and i don't necessarily see them on your request and so i just kind of wanted to run through what what i saw and to see if you can address um very quickly um one was the full-time civilian to fleet and body camera unit um the other one was a cis unit supervisory position um one was for the hiring process they needed admin support and that may be the one that is on the list but i i'm not real sure which um so admin support that goes to um detectives they requested or recommended several analysis um and also a records part-time position and a jail manager so and along with other patrol all right so as we're looking at what we're going to ask for on the budget i mentioned a little bit earlier i knew that i was going to come in and ask for 24 positions this year there's just no way that we're going to be able to do that financially right so we prioritize what we needed to cover this year going into next year and then incrementally as a stair step over the next five years implement those along the way so we wanted to put an emphasis on patrol this year that's why we asked for five positions for patrol and the one administrative person that's going to go over to support training they've needed some administrative support for years and they haven't had it so we're going to be able to do that with that one ask and then again patrols we make sure that we're keeping up that base level service to the community okay um could you could you speak to the detective situation like right now the current detectives that we have in their their caseload well i can't speak to any more than what matrix talked about we know that that's a need but again we have to prioritize how we're going to implement the the structure we implement more detectives now that's not really helping our officers on the street be able to respond to calls better and when you're looking at right now they're down to like negative nine percent availability at certain times during the weekend especially we have i think we have to focus on being able to provide that base level service to the community now short term and then look at how we can implement those and cid into investigations moving forward okay and on the um i'm the patrol that's recommended because i'm having a hard time understanding i know that the mental health is is a separate unit and then there's the patrol um but then there's also when councilmember medsler asked that the 12 percent of call diversion was included in the recommendation so are we looking to grow the pa yeah we we lost you councilmember riggs yeah we can hear you now with that something coming later on okay did you did you hear me about the uh the pso yeah you talked about the 12 percent was that included in the recommendations for the five patrol increased patrol officers i believe yeah and in the in the study it said that that's going to need um if we want to grow that which i think is really great program that it's going to need more funding and so is that something that we're going to be looking at in the coming years or was that addressed this budget no we're absolutely going to look at growing that in the coming years we have four currently they're being trained to take over some of those low priority calls right now as far as old reports minor crashes picking up evidence turn turn that in so they're getting trained on how to do that now so we can implement those four and then again as we stair step the rest of the positions in the next five years how we can implement two more of those pso's again up to six okay may i just have one more question sure it's not it's there's a little bit about hiring but there's also recommended software um in a few of the categories and upgrades and i was wondering if that was added in the budget in the operational budget so we haven't so we talked about the open data portal we already have the existing support to do that now we have one budget item that we're already going to be getting from a grant to help with the property evidence piece and then we're still looking at what potentially we could switch from there will also merge training training records and internal affairs right now we have blue team and iapro for internal affairs it works for us right now we're still trying to find out if there's going to be something better that we can move to but again we don't want to rush into making any technology purchases without fully vetting them to make sure they're going to work for everything we need to okay and the human resources management software that's the same thing that we're talking about it's going to kind of link training internal affairs and then training records and getting things out internally okay all right and you mentioned spider tech earlier and that sounded really um really great and that's already funded that is that's actually about to be implemented in the next couple weeks okay and the the last question um because it was in the report that there were uh requests for thirty thousand dollars for recruitment and that is something that the fire fire has i guess my question is that from um it's more to the city manager is that something that has been considered at this point or is this new information go ahead good afternoon mayor city council members nick vinson assistant director of finance um to answer your question council member brig so we do have money accounted for in the human resources budget for recruitment um if that's what you're asking it was part of a supplemental package that was actually funded this year in the human resources budget okay and that goes to fire as well um that yeah that that's all city departments human resources helps all the city department so it would be for the fire department that is correct okay all right thank you okay i think i think that's it okay chief i just have one real quick question on the the five vacancies that are now being filled by the uh the mental health professionals those were already budgeted in the budget they just weren't filled is that so we're not adding that money that that's already been part of the budget is that correct correct that was our last pull out of patrol we'll be allocating some of those resources for that okay great all right okay uh any other questions for the chief on the budget council member armator so i don't have any more questions but i have kind of closing statement that i don't know if this is the time for that i can wait though uh well i don't i don't see any other questions so that's that's your call is it is it a closing statement on the budget the police yeah it's just kind of me weighing in on the budget since it's a work session on this okay sure so nobody else has question okay um yeah so i just wanted to say um so just my approach to this so first i wanted to say my approach to budgeting in general um that uh and i love how we do this department by department approach i love seeing it this way um but i at the same time i think that that there's a danger and if we um are not seeing it holistically all the time and as a as a city and thinking of our larger city needs i'm not saying anybody here isn't thinking of that just wanted to emphasize that that that that's how i'm seeing it so for every department that comes before us you know much like in a family budget when we talk about and one talks about how much one spends on you know each each member in the of the family you're looking at individual needs but more important than that are kind of the total collective needs and so i feel like if you see this department is having you know a separate bank account um it kind of competing against each other for limited resources you know we're we're we're all going we're all going to fail so i just wanted to be clear that that my thinking about the police budget is the same as my thinking with any other budget and i'm thinking of the larger picture um so i i myself i i don't want to see that police budget increase um i would like to see a decrease or at the very least stay the same i i agree that there are some needs that are not being being met that are really important needs uh that uh that police staff are trained to meet um and i'll address that in a moment uh and there are a number of things that i support in terms of diversion um so so i'll just go over briefly kind of what what what i support that has been presented i love uh the emphasis on civilian diversion you know i would like to see more than 12 percent because i think the need is more than than uh than 12 percent um and i love the idea of having a mental health professional in with dispatch uh and i don't know if this is something a mental health professional would be able to do but to divert to uh you know not only um mental health issues but also for instance conflict dispute issues you know non-violent domestic dispute issues neighbor dispute issues uh you know having the ability uh to also determine that this is not an emergency call and i know that's something that that that other cities have done you know for instance in the case i've just mentioned this is an example you know if someone calls about suspicious vehicle uh and that you know questions can be asked to see you know what exactly is it about this vehicle you're suspicious about um and if it just turns out well i've never seen this car before it's kind of run down uh and there's somebody with you know a different color skin than i'm used to seeing in my neighborhood that that call could just be dismissed for the sake of saving uh staff time uh and to be able to make free up more stuff to deal with with actual emergencies so i i uh i i appreciate the emphasis on on uh mental health uh and i really like that uh it will not necessarily involve a uh you know police officer coming to mental health fall if they're not needed uh if they're needed as as as backup they'll come i i love the idea of having the mental health professional lead so i really like that that direction um i i don't like councilmember armature could you i'm almost done okay thank you it's just you know i've just never had opportunity to stay you know well we're going to have many opportunities because the budget isn't separate individual departments it's going to be a couple of months worth of discussion that we're going to have so yeah i'm almost done i'm just wrapping up the police budget uh so you know as far as um the workload percentage model um and i i appreciate all the percentages and that data i do not agree uh that we need so much proactive uh policing uh and i i don't agree that that that is an appropriate response uh to councilmember armature can i ask you what you and and and i'm not going to take up too much of your time but i don't really know what you're saying when you say you don't think we need proactive policing what what are you really saying when you say that and just uh just real briefly what are you saying when you say that so i think so the the emphasis on um on on uh police uh being out in the community driving around um uh with with the with the exclusion of you know certain kinds of traffic uh uh hot hotspots that have not yet been addressed by traffic engineering you know i prefer a kind of more of a fire department model where you've got people waiting uh to be to to be reactive uh both in terms of responding to responding to uh specific calls that call for police and in terms of follow-up and i love one thing i really appreciated about the review is the emphasis on the need for more follow-up so i'm here what i'm hearing from my community um from from people in the community who are writing to me saying that they want to see change um are saying that they would like to see less you've answered my question so i appreciate it yes i do thank you so i i want so uh and uh as far as sros in schools um i'm glad that we moved to a 50 you know cost sharing i i don't see the need to have um police officers in schools i think it's more important to have them uh ready uh outside of schools in case there is an emergency in that case they can't well then we'll also have more police on call uh for some other emergency uh so uh anyway there are a number of other issues that i had and i don't have to go over them all now i can publish an op-ed or whatever but um but i do really appreciate having this as a separate discussion i think there are a number of ways we're headed in the right uh right direction um but overall if i had to sum it up in a nutshell you know i push for uh more diversion uh and for uh much less of the proactive policing except in the case of certain hot spot traffic situations that have not yet been resolved by traffic by traffic engineering changes uh and uh more investigation and case management follow-up which is so critical um and which might as far as i know that might also involve you know i don't know if that involves promoting people who are in patrol but i would say anybody who's in patrol who uh could be trained would have an interest in training to do that i i definitely see anecdotally a real need for that in the community okay all right okay anybody else uh council member briggs and then i'm gonna anybody else and then i'm gonna have the i'm gonna speak last i have a follow-up on the the sro so if there's a situation in a school um you know middle schools because i have middle schoolers does the sro handle that um on their own or is there always a call for for backup so like i mean what i'm saying is we have an officer off the streets already in the school does that call initiate and remove more officers off the street to come to the school i'm just i'm just curious i don't i don't know it depends on what kind of call is if it's a call of a weapon being introduced in the school we're going to send at least one backup officer for the one that's in the school okay thank you anybody else well council member melcher yeah i would just say uh i appreciate the emphasis uh that the chief made at the very beginning on uh how there's sort of never enough community engagement and part of the criticality of that is that as long as everybody feels they're being protected by the police and not that and that they have a good relationship that they don't feel the need to be protected from the police then police presence is a good thing if it's understood you know if in fact it's true and then the data seems to suggest it is that visible police help keep uh help deter crime uh you know that's a good thing as long as that that community engagement is there so you know i i like the emphasis i'm hearing that the percent that go to diversion i think is based on that just what types of calls come in uh and i and i'm confident that we'll keep you know learning and adjusting uh you know as uh you know as we pursue these you know kind of reimagining policing so i'm just supportive of what we've heard anyone else yeah chief thank you so much for the presentation appreciate the report and the study i think it goes to show the commitment by city management and yourself and your department to ensuring that number one there's transparency number two that there's an analysis for best practices and that there's always a desire to continuing to improve and so i really do appreciate that and so while council member armature is hearing that that people want less proactive policing i'm hearing that we want more proactive policing that we want more people more patrol officers who are able to be involved in the community and get to know those community members and as i think council member melzer said continue to foster a strong positive relationship uh with the police department so so i appreciate that and and the notion that for me personally that we need to be having police in a building and not respond unless there's a call i think there's there's no evidence on how that would work i do appreciate your emphasis on moving to the civilian mental health program i think that's just so creative i think it's so forward thinking and i think it's indicative of what you bring to our police department in your leadership so thank you for that and and i look forward for to the ongoing budget discussions for the entire community and i just want to really ask that my colleagues as we move through these budget conversations because it's happened a couple of times in this meeting that instead of posing a comment as it's what it's what's true as was posed in the last segment of the conversation could we maybe ask a question if we really don't know because moving forward if something is posed as true i'm going to ask where that information is coming from because there was one of those such things that happened in the last segment that was absolutely inaccurate and once the chief was able to correct that so let's let's make sure that if you're able to provide the the substantive aspect of why you believe it's true but if you don't know can we not just ask a question and find out what the clarification is it sure i think would be much more helpful for the community and the public at large all right seeing no more comments we're going to move on into our next item which is a closed session item i will convene the closed session at 139 we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under texas government code section 551.071 and we'll give the host an opportunity to clear the screens and to allow those who are necessary and those who are not to be involved so let's take a quick five minute break