- All right, I'd like to call this August 21st, 2025 regular meeting of the Board of Public Safety to order. First is the approval of the consent agenda. The consent agenda for this morning contains the following items. Approval of minutes from July 17th, 2025, regular session. Approval of claims from July 25th, 2025 to August 8th, 2025. Approval of payroll from July 25th, 2025. End of August 8th of 2025.
- Does any member of the board wish to have any one or more of these items removed from the consent agenda to be discussed separately? No. Hearing none, does any member of the board have any objections to any of the items on the consent agenda? No. Hearing none, the items on the consent agenda are approved. And now we go into the police department. As you'll see, we remade it.
- upscale from last year to this date, we're now 20.1%, which is a little bit lower than last month, earlier 23.9. That's still a whole lot more calls for service for you when they're current staff. Crime tolls again, 25 this year to date, 20 years are complete. I'm sorry, the other years are also a year to date, so we're still trending a little bit toward the positive, but we're still in here, so if you're giving your way on this.
- Traffic stops have fallen off a little bit. That's again concurrent with some call volume and some training issues that we've had going this month. Didn't drop that precipitously. What has continued to drop on us this month is the calls involving weapons. They continue to trend toward the downward slope. Adult arrests will go up in July, and juvenile arrests will go down in the furloughs. We can not have normally so free either.
- This was not, sorry, this is the end of the period. There were zero for hate crimes that were reported. And again, this remains consistent with what you've seen every month as our services, intoxication, maintenance, and rent. Training highlights this week, this month. 15 officers completed the state mandate of online training courses. 15 officers completed the legal update from the prosecutor's office.
- Four attended a drone tactics and operations course. One officer attended our own SWAT school. It's internal to the department. And then we had K9s and 13s in service hours. Community engagement hours, as you see listed. The ones that have actually already happened, National Night Ops took place a week or so ago. The Forever Friends is every month. But we did touch track, the Fourth of July Parade, the outreach to the POWs.
- back-to-school celebrations, and CSS doing outreach and bike index training. Social workers, you can see the numbers there. They talked to me, almost mother-off-and-over back, so we got her connected to long-term housing. Assistant client creating a resume, applying for jobs, assistant parent with getting some background services, mental health and mental therapy. That really helped that family as a whole.
- It's a bank use from a gentleman to reach out to, say, accessible business and substance abuse and mental health treatment. The outreach specialist worked in downtown, worked successfully with the downtown resource officer, Thomas, got an individual who was resistant to assistance from long-time housing and assisted clients with identification, food stamps, and some medication.
- He's going to letters of appreciation for that person. This is from Officer Bay. I just want to say thank you for helping with recruiting efforts in Black Expo in Indianapolis. This is a call where Officer Wallace received compliments from the public.
- move on to a general business. I presented the department's budget last
- really vote on anything and didn't ask very many questions, so that's, I take that as a positive sign. Some of the things I touched on were the recruiting and retention of the races that were instituted last year and the take home cars that really benefited that. We had our largest number of hiring
- officers from earlier this year at the London. We've got six more. We're doing backgrounds on coronary. So with that 11, we cut it down to having 11 openings. And hopefully with the six, we'll get, I don't know that we'll get all six, but maybe we should weigh it a little bit more. So that's trending in a good direction.
- And it focused on some of the stuff that was mentioned in the social worker report. We've had an open social worker position for two years, probably. And we finally filled it a couple weeks ago. So we've got four social workers, or mental health professionals. One of them is not a social worker, but a counselor. So that's helpful to the problems that we're dealing with today.
- One of the other things I touched on was the 714 location, which is the site of hopefully what will be a new police department. That was slowed down because of actions by the legislature with property taxes, but we are moving forward with that currently looking for an architect to start doing some design work to hopefully help us with cost estimates.
- that project moves forward, we'll keep the board kind of updated on it as well. Personnel issues, how you doing? Do you have the numbers that you have? We'll come back to that. Purchases, there's not been really a report and certain vehicle deployment, we had none last month.
- Personnel, we are currently sitting at 95 officers out of the 105 authorized. We have one in FTO in phase, what's called phase two. Three of them have moved to solo control and are finishing their last phase of field training. And we have two that are in phase four getting ready to jump to that.
- shadow phase, and then we have five that go Monday for their physical agility test at the Academy, and then we start the Academy the following week after liberating. And we did our interviews last week for a certified process, and we have four certified applicants that are really the backgrounds right now. Any sense of retirements?
- We have at least one confirmed retirement coming up. He goes at the first of the year with a planned retirement. He put in his drop three years ago. OK. So now, do you want to go on with the promotion? I think that was a Chris question. I'm sorry? Do you want to go on with the promotion now? Yes. OK, great.
- All right, can I get a motion to promote Officer First Class Connor Bryant to Senior Police Officer effective August 18, 2025? So moved. Second? Second. Great. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All right. Motion passes. Congratulations to him. And now, fire department.
- There we go. Our year to date total is $3,885. As far as July goes, we had 512 calls for service. I don't have July up here. But of the 512 calls for July, 214 were in rescue and EMS and 129 were false alarms.
- For July, we're down 9% from 2024, but up 34% from 2020, as far as July call volume. So here we have IU. And for July's calls, they were just a little over 1% of the overall call volume, just 49 calls on campus. But of those, 33 were false alarms.
- in six EMS calls. In July of 2024, there were only 27 calls. So we're up 45% from last year. In 2020, there were 25. So we're up 49% on campus during July in five years. And then year to date, IU is, like I said, 11.5% of our rents.
- The response times go up in blue, where we want to be. And this is for the response times for the apparatus to actually get on scene. All responses on our heat map for July. Red spots where we're going most often. So we have Redbud Hills on the southeast side. Beltrace, the community and the, you know,
- But you can see pretty soon we'll have a lot more as we go up the extension.
- And then inspection activity. So right now we are at just 30% of our goal for the year. And 2250 is, that's where we'd love to be. However, we are not. And we talk about highest risk occupancies within the city. So it's not like we're going to go to a lot more, but these are the ones that we're actually tracking.
- at the community engagement for July versus where we were in 2024. In May, we started tracking the inspectors' community outreach as well. Like I said, in July, they really moved into better tracking hearings or the types of calls, because every community contact I make does not necessarily qualify for calibration. I'm doing education.
- Why are we doing what we're doing? And our school visits will certainly pick up here as school starts for community engagement. I will say as far as our community engagement officer, he spent a lot of time in this last month, out of the NOBU, where Catalan used to be, that, I mean, fire extinguisher training the entire, all their employees to go through it.
- 11 in the morning and you know 8 to 10 at night. Just what they wanted to get all their shifts. Training division activity I said high month. July has been one of our slowest months so far but they did finish their like I said the flash over campers and train the trainer. We did purchase and train him
- operations on the new lithium battery extinguishers. They have a video out of that, which it just basically creates this big sludge that goes over the battery to keep it, to smother it, basically. It's interesting. So another prior certification class, being on campus before the students move in, and then an upcoming training session that they will look at with boxes and rocks and rolls.
- And our training have gone down too since we don't have any recruits in session. Two new people are scheduled. September 15th is their start date. And that will put us in a little bit of a voice out in September. MIH activities, as you can see there, we put in nine car seats. And they actually gave
- two away, because they do have that state program, so they can actually give the families car seats, 12.2 visits per patient, and 12 different services. When we talk about services, the shelter, community, housing center, food, or utilities, referrals, all those are the kind of services they engage in.
- the nine different agencies that provided those services. Referrals from Fire, Stride, community members, township trustees, and the hospital case management. So we had some wins with their impact. So they worked several walking, you know, walks, and just the public payments provided per state.
- lightweight wheelchair someone so that was their way to get around and then they had up someone who thanked them for getting involved so they didn't have long-term hospitalization so all good things.
- Canes and milkshakes? Mall, yes. Mall is something they go, they help a lot with that. And actually, Tuesday afternoon, one of our people staffed that. And that also helps us with the access so that they can go on Thursday and pick up stuff. Yeah, so they are out there. Yeah, but it's good for walkers or, like you said, canes, just different things that will end up in the library. It's a great idea, and they're involved with that.
- of appreciation, Chief Littlin, with the misery and miser, Peyton. He was very excited about the tour. Yeah. Yeah. Well, is that your balloon that's on there? That's not your color. And then so he was excited for them to visit. Chief Littlin provided it. I have to talk to the rubble in the fire station in that place for a minute.
- And then also Amber, one of our MIHS, she's been a representative at the Black Expo for the last three years ever since the city started going HR. This is her third year representing us there. And so Mr. Johnson, lovely letter.
- Any questions on anything your person has to call? Thanks, any none? General business. Fire also presented budgets last night and appeared to go well. There's some pertinent questions and it seemed like it was received well. So there's been similar anticipation of no issue with our numbers that we sent over. Personnel, we currently have two off on work comp. One of those we anticipate being short term. One's that's likely to be off for the rest of the year.
- Two off on FMLA. And as mentioned earlier, we're going to track the higher two in September that will bring us forward to staff. So that's a nice landmark we're looking forward to. And then lastly, recently, our administrative assistant position became vacant. So we'll actively see January facing through that and hopefully have that filled soon. Regarding expenses, kind of a win that we encountered recently, some of the pending expenses that you've seen, one's for an aerial truck.
- have ones for a fire engine. They have very long delivery times of years. Of course, they're expensive, and we're able to secure some modifications to those contracts to make them stock units. So it comes at a lower price and quicker delivery time. So those are both approved recently, and we'll have those trucks probably built this year instead of way out in the future. So that was a nice change. As previously declared, our grant funded
- GMC training for the MIH division expansion has arrived, and we have that now. So that'll be on the street. So we'll have an opportunity to see if it lines with it. And then lastly, bond project updates. Station three is slated to be done technically with contractors. It should be September 12th. We'll need a little time to move in, but that's right around the corner. We'll have an opening, an open house for that. So station three will be back in service soon. Which one is station three, I'm sorry? Penis. Okay. Good.
- We've been working on it for a while now, and it's just about done. It needed it. It needed it, yeah. But in the operations center, if you ever buy there, there are building, it's moving along, anticipating that to be done August of next year. That is the remainder of living structures. Let Barbara walk around downtown a lot.
- And I really appreciate seeing the firefighters downtown on 4th Street engaging a lot with the public. And it's a nice thing to see. They do a good job of that. You know, on that day, the bagels were open. They're usually down there to show people trucks. They were playing basketball one night. I think when they saw me, they put the ball away. And I said, no, no, no. Can I join you?
- They were from station three, by the way. Oh, yeah. Well, they're out there, right? Yeah. That was an exercise session. Well, I knew this was the time to bring that up. Yeah. We'll make sure we do that. High coordination training, et cetera. That's right.
- It's team building, literally. They do swimming in the basement. One stitch. OK. They do swimming in our basement. Yes. All right. Well, any old business? And new business? You betcha. That's what I figured out. So I had shared with the board
- proposed amendments to our standards. And this is largely reflected by the fact that we now have a merit system for the fire department, which handles a lot of our obligations statutorily. So having now established a merit system, it makes sense for us to go in and change our standards so that it doesn't show that we're still trying to do things for the fire department that the merit system does for
- hiring, promotion, and discipline of their members. So largely when you go through and see the red line that I shared with you, you simply see me peeling out that information, those sections where we were working with the fire department. So while making those changes, I made a couple of other changes. And what you have before you is that final version of what I shared with you individually in emails
- I did make one change just a minute ago. It's not reflected in your documents, and that is on page one, I'm sorry, page two of the document in B5 talking about the secretary of the board, because our secretary is no longer going to be of the legal department, it's going to be somebody from the police department. So that's not a statutory or local ordinance requirement, that's just something that is set in our standards.
- Now that we're making that change, I've reflected that change as well in our standards. Going through a couple of the other things that I've changed, just to give you a quick explanation, looking at regular meetings right below on that same page, page two under C, we used to say, or we currently say, shall hold at least one regular meeting or one meeting. We don't always do that. Sometimes we can't meet quorum, and so
- I'd rather have our standards reflect what we actually do, which is some months we don't have a meeting. It's not a state statute or local ordinance that requires us to have that meeting. It was just something that was in our standards. So I'd rather have it reflect what we actually do. So that's why I changed it to schedule one regular meeting per month. Then I'm going to scroll down. I had a couple of other comments I wanted to share.
- So if we go to section two, which is on page four, disciplinary process, I put a little blurb in there under A, applicability that explains that the Fire and Merit Commission handles any non-disciplinary actions. I just thought, we aren't always going to be the ones who are in these positions and somebody comes along later on in life. They may wonder why on earth we don't do that. This is the explanation. Yes?
- that they can recuse themselves if they, and then. It's all true, that's all true, but I'm not explaining that in here. Yeah, so that is a good point though. And now you're making me question myself. There may be a far more accurate way to explain that, but at the moment, I'm just simply saying that fire merit does.
- Yeah. So what she's referring to is the merit commission can actually ask this board to do the disciplinary actions. I don't know why they would choose to not do their job, but they could ask. So they can ask for somebody else to do their investigating. They can ask somebody else to be in the judiciary board that reviews it. So they could ask some independent party or you could ask this board
- to do that. If they do ask you to do that, you're simply going to be following the Merit Commission rule. So I still think this is probably the best way to explain it for now. Sort of the bright line rule is we expect the Merit Commission to do their job. I would be really shocked for us to have gone through all of this effort to get a Merit Commission only for them to decide that you're going to do what they've been asked to do. So I'm hopeful that if I continue to be the attorney of the Merit Commission, I'm going to strongly encourage them not to do that.
- I'd like to see them actually do their job. I could only see if it would be if there was a conflict. There could be some kind of a conflict. They knew the individual personally or... And that's the interesting rationale here is that two of the members of the Merit Commission are members of the fire, are former members of the fire that can be. Yeah, they are not. They are just our representatives that were hurt by the...
- So that's right. So there could be some that they know. So there could be some conflict. All right. Scrolling down further, I wanted to make a few other comments. Going down to page nine in section three, in reference, that title is complaints against sworn police officers and members of the fire department. These are complaints from the public. So. So.
- In those instances, this simply refers to the rules and regulations of each department. And the departments follow their rules and regulations for complaints coming from the public. And I've gone ahead and referenced. I've kept the Bloomington Fire Department in there just because it doesn't harm us to have it in there. It still goes through the fire department's rules and regulations, which will usher everything to the Merit Commission.
- if there is a discipline being merited or geeked out as a result of the complaint. So that's why that's still in there. And then with section four, personnel matters, I went ahead and left the references. It says, following documents are hereby incorporated into these standards as if fully set forth herein. And I do have the fire departments, rules and regs and general orders and things like that in there. I'm just leaving them in there because you all might decide that the experiment of having a mayor commission is a giant, horrible experience, and you want to come back.
- So I'd rather just leave all of this in here as opposed to having to plug it all back in later. It's just me being lazy. But I don't think it's confusing because we are always going to be beholden to the standards and orders that the department does create, whether it relates to personnel or not. All right, scrolling down a little further, I don't think I have any other comments. Everything else I thought was pretty self-explanatory, but I'll open it up to the board if there are any
- Things that you would have talked to me about with regards to these standards as a board as a whole, as opposed to me sending out individual emails and having those sidebar conversations.
- I would then ask the board to take a motion and hopefully approve the updated amendment standards. Can I get a motion to approve the City of Bloomington Board of Public Safety standards effective August 21st, 2025? So moved. Can I get a second? Second. Got a second? Any discussion? No? Okay. All in favor? Aye.
- And motion passes. Thank you. I'll get a clean version of this out to all board members and departments and staff just as soon as I have a chance to sit down and do that. Thank you. And any other new business? I'd just be interested in what the two departments are seeing after the arrest and seminary and down by Crawford Homes.
- Has that activity moved? So some of the dealing stopped. It didn't move to kind of like around the park. But we also did another drug investigation down at Crawford, where we took several people into custody. Crawford is experienced.
- its own problems. So we saw a little bit of, it cleaned up a little bit, but it's still there. Yeah. I have a question. I know we started using Tejas again within the last year or so, I think, for sure. Just wondering how that was going, and are you deployed very often?
- Defining deployment has tasers drawn without probes actually being launched. They are used that way. We had a Tuesday as an example. We assisted county with somebody that was actively resisting. When our officer got out, he pulled his taser, gave us all a warning alert, makes a loud sound.
- and it deescalated that. So we get that often. I think in the first year, we're still under probably 20 actual total probes launched and understanding that like more than one probe is like it's a minimum of two. So we have not had a lot of
- actual contacts with them, but we've had several deescalations with them where just their presence has caused people to deescalate. I just wanted to put an article in the Times. I think it was in Mississippi where these little departments had no training with them at all. And they would say, I used it once, but then actually I used it six or seven times on little old ladies or something. Yeah. So we follow Taser's best practices.
- which is every officer goes through a research annually with it, which is a full eight hour class, which includes scenario-based training, so they have to make decisions on escalation, de-escalation, and along with actual like a qualification course and like being able to accurately use it. And then our policy, we have a strict policy
- about recording the number of times that it's energized. And that's actually all recorded through the system. So I can pull up anybody's taser and be able to say, you energized it this many times. You did this many draws. It tells you literally everything that they do with it. The cool cities of Mississippi just know they have that ability.
- the New York Times had buying the duplicate so they could read the reports off the taser. It's not that crazy. Yeah, and we even have the new simulator system that we bought is from Axon. In the end, it integrates scenario-based training with the tasers. So we put a lot of time and effort into it. Yeah. I figured you'd have more than these little cities. Yeah. So I know I've got a tiny little window on this, but I've had three or four folks in the last
- Monk talk about the great job you guys do at the Escalation. On the TASERS, during the initial training, do they actually get shocked by the TASERS? We do not. The white line department did. It was enlightening. Yeah, that is TASER took that out of the training program.
- Well, before we got them. So it'd been a couple of years. Now, if somebody wants to do a voluntary exposure, they can do that training. And I think we've had one person that's opted to do that. I've got some folks I would recommend. But we don't put them through the exposure necessarily. I mean, there's just so much video out there now. And everybody understands what
- what the outcome is of using the device. Our big complaint was, when you gave us a gun, you didn't shoot us with it. Exactly. Yeah. And the other less, I mean, the OC spray, you still do that exposure in the Academy, but that's sort of a, that is a necessary one because of OC spray gets everywhere. You need to know what that physical effect is. But yeah, no other, you know,
- If you're issued a bean bag or some other info, we don't hit you with your baton. So yeah, it's a little silly to do it. I'm glad they changed that. Yes. All right. Any other new business? Any petitions, communications, anybody? No? All right. This meeting is adjourned.