- I'd like to call this November 20, 2025 regular meeting of the Board of Public Safety to order. And
- certification of the executive session. Motion to certify the executive session. Do I have a second?
- Second. Got a second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. All righty. Approval of consent agenda. The
- consent agenda for this morning contains the following items.
- Approval of minutes from the September 24, 2025 special session, approval of minutes from the October
- 16, 2025 regular session, approval of claims October 24, 2025, November 7, 2025, November 21, 2025,
- approval of payroll October 17, 2025,
- October 31, 2025, and November 14, 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? Hearing none, does any member
- of the board have any objections to any of the items on the consent agenda? Hearing none, the items
- on the consent agenda are approved. Now on to the police business.
- You'll see calls for service continue to increase. Even over a year to date, we're still up an extra
- 6,000 plus. Still running about 10% in excess of last year. Here's the year to date versus the final
- portions of 23 and 24. So you see there's some categories up, some we're maintaining, and we have some
- that are in the negative. But again, we see that every year about this time.
- where they begin to coalesce toward their final numbers. Traffic stops again. Remember, 24 is completed
- year. Year to date, we're 2,000 short of that. I don't think we'll probably get back there with just
- 60 days less or less than 60 days left in the year, but we'll see. Calls involving weapons continue
- to decrease. The officers have done a lot of good work in the areas to make sure that these are suppressed
- to the best of their ability, and it's actually paying dividends because we're down considerably from
- 2023, almost 200 runs. Adult's rest, again, as we've discussed repeatedly, these remain remarkably consistent
- over the years. We did have the one rise in August, but everything else is within a couple of percentage
- points. Juvenile rests, again, from September to October, we were one.
- This is not a hate crime reporting period. We'll get that to you in January. So we'll see the final
- numbers there. This statistic slide remains fairly consistent across the board every month. It just
- is the nature of these crimes. So it's not a cut and paste. It really isn't. No, Sarah changes them
- every month. No, I won't tell you. The colored sections aren't cut and paste, but the numbers change.
- Training, we had almost 500 hours this month. Some of the officers went to IECP conference in Denver.
- We had officers doing the mandatory online training, designated marksman training for nine of the officers,
- two at first line leadership. And you can see the one at crash reconstruction. That's an incredibly
- intensive school. Officers with stops course, which is teaching traffic stops and felony traffic stops.
- and we had one at a 24-hour advanced handgun course. And then the three dogs accumulated 13 hours worth
- of training this month. Our engagement events, there were 19 during the month, 71 hours involved, and
- you can see some of them that have taken place. The upcoming ones, a couple of them have already occurred,
- the Rad Nights, and then the Residence Academy, Forever Friends continues.
- as it does every year. The career crews, I think Captain Pettigrew attended that, had a great time.
- I sure did. And did you do the talk at? I did. I did a career talk at North as well. Man, he enjoyed
- that immensely. He'll be going back next year. Probably. Social workers. Again, you see their numbers
- for the month and the year. They had some good success this month. The one thing
- Crema County Arizona Sheriff's Office helped them with developing some internal policies for their agency.
- Had some motivational interview training with crisis negotiators. To top it all off, they hosted the
- family Halloween party, which, again, Captain Petko thought was an immense success. I didn't make that
- up. You did not make that up? I did not. Our outreach specialists continue to move around downtown every
- day, even in inclement weather, seeing what they can do to assist some of the individuals that they
- come across.
- And general business. The only thing I guess that would probably go under personnel. I'm not aware of
- any general business. Do you have anything? No, I don't think so. So we'll move on to personnel. Just
- a quick update on our staffing. We currently have 94 out of 105 full-time staffing spots filled for
- sworn officers.
- Unfortunately, we will drop to 92 soon due to one retirement and one is transferring to another agency.
- We have the two that I'm requesting the board approve today that I'm looking to hire them with a start
- date of January 5th of 26, pending approval through the local pension board in the state. In that timeframe,
- surely we've got enough time to get that approved so we can go ahead and get them on.
- We'll have five that graduate from the Law Enforcement Academy December, I want to say 16th or somewhere
- in that timeframe. So they will be starting their field training about the same time. By the time they
- come back and take some days off, burn up some of their PTO for the end of the year, they'll basically
- start the field training in January at the same time that these two officers will if everything goes
- through with their approval and they accept employment. But some good news.
- Over the past two weeks, I've interviewed 11 certified applicants. 10 of them are going to be sent to
- background today. And so there's a pretty good wealth of knowledge and experience that is interested
- in joining our agency. So we'll see out of those 10 how many of them come out of backgrounds. But my
- hope is that we can hire several from that certified process and get them started probably spring of
- next year.
- Your backgrounds or HR's backgrounds? Our backgrounds. Okay. Yeah. No, our backgrounds. Yeah. Well,
- I know that public safety HR, there's more than civil, but I was just curious. Yeah. No, we have, we
- assign detectives to do, I usually give them somewhere between four to six weeks to do a background,
- so it's pretty intensive. If all 10 passed everything, could we hire all 10 of them? I mean, I know
- that's not very likely.
- We could. I mean, I would like to. One of them is probably going to, if everything goes well with him,
- he just put his name in the hat a little early. He doesn't actually graduate from IU until May of 26.
- There's actually a couple others from IU that would like to apply that graduate in May of 26. So he'll
- probably kind of get held up and I'll probably maybe slide him in with those, with the next group.
- But yeah, I'll hire as many as we can.
- Yeah, that would be, we'll be at 92, so we'll have 13 spots that are available, so. I think that's it.
- On to personnel, or I'm sorry, expenditures. Do we need to do that under personnel? Yes, you're right,
- we do, sorry. All right. So now we've already,
- passed a motion for conditional employment on these two. Do we need to do another one? On Skyler Condra
- and Andrew Shelton? When did you? We did that back on September 18th. September, yeah. Yeah. We did
- a motion for conditional offer of employment for Skyler Condra condition conditional upon completion of all
- remaining steps in the hiring process. OK. And that's what they've been through. They've been through
- that. This is their final paperwork that you said I need to bring back to the board for a signature
- for the final approval that certifies that they've passed everything and that I can then send it on
- to the pension fund. So there's no need to move again for them to be fully employed. It's just a matter of,
- signing that paperwork as an official action of the board. So I guess you could ask the board for a
- motion to complete the paperwork for the department. This is unusual. It's not unusual. I think it's
- just a natural step in the process. But no one had ever shown me that paperwork before. And it states
- at the bottom that the board is doing this. Like you've reviewed and you approve the paperwork. And
- you can't do official board action outside of a public meeting.
- That's why I've asked them to take this extra step. And I think we're just going to see this now from
- now on is to have this brought in for you to sign as an official action. So I guess just a quick motion
- to approve signature of the paperwork. That feels cleaner to me. I so move. Signature of the paperwork
- for Scarlet Condra and Andrew Shelton from employment. Got a motion? Second. Got a second. All in favor?
- Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Done.
- That's right. Just the following personnel, we have three officers that are off currently on extended
- light duty and will be for a little bit yet. So that goes along with our hiring needs. Moving into purchases,
- expenditures, you'll see in the next 30 to 45 days the general end of the year purchases, which is just
- our replacement cycle.
- You'll see some for body armor, some for handguns, some for rifles, some for vehicle equipment. Again,
- it's just the standard replacement cycle as it's coming through. So it's nothing different from the
- normal. As far as the certain ARV deployments, I want to make sure the board's aware of one that I don't
- know that they covered last month because it was right on the cusp of when we had the meeting for a
- barricaded gunman. This was
- actually in our area, but it was a county call because they were serving an emergency detention work.
- So the vehicle, the team in the vehicle came and resolved that piece of it. And I think, so we're fired
- at that point. I do apologize. I forgot to include in the packet this month, I did have one letter for
- an officer. It was from a member of the residence academy that rode, did a ride along with one of our
- second shift officers.
- They spoke very highly of him, and they said he was incredibly kind and welcoming, which immediately
- put me at ease. Thoroughly enjoyed my time with him, especially appreciated that he didn't have to initiate
- all the questions. He consistently explained what he was doing, why it was being done, and encouraged
- me to ask anything I was curious about. I valued hearing his personal journey becoming an officer, his
- heart for helping others, and his thoughtful perspective on the role of police in the community. And
- they just, so they just gave, it was kind of a follow-up email that was sent into the agency,
- and I apologize, I forgot to attach it.
- But it's actually October stats, not September. So you can see what we have listed. Those are all year
- to date calls. But for the month of October, 19 fire calls, 259 rescue EMS hazardous conditions, 28
- service calls, 79 false alarms, 130, and other 78.
- So like I said, we're at 593 for October of this year. Last year was 620. And five years ago,
- it was 394. So over the past five years, we've got about 34% for the month of October. For IU, we had
- 83 runs to campus, which made up 14% of our runs for October.
- A year to date, they're about 12% of our runs overall. And again, false alarms and EMS are off the charts
- there. So they just don't have enough runs, enough space. Our heat response for October. So as you see
- the red spots, those are where we're going most often. And you just see a light fade of green.
- been there very much. For our prevention division for the inspections are at 40% of their goal. The
- inspectors are also we started this year doing their monthly outreach numbers and October by far was
- the biggest month so far for them. 390 public engagements for them out of the 890 for the year.
- And this is a lot of education when they go on an inspection on why you can't have space heaters under
- your desk or fire safety type things that they're educating. Battery.
- Is there something for the group? It was not. I make that fresh every month. The number of sites that
- they're going to is on the left. We've got 40% of our goal. It's all right. Thank you. Happy to clarify.
- Anyway, moving on, adults education this year is really skyrocketed since we divided up between.
- considering them adults and doing their own category for that. Engagement has also, he's been going
- to the Novo, the previous Catalan and they are, he's doing fire extinguisher training for all of their
- employees. So yeah, and they would like to do that annually. We're not sure how logistically that's
- going to work because that takes a lot to get 2,000 people to do a live fire extinguisher.
- And then we've had 72 of our 100 smoke installs. We like to install 100 every year. And we're at 72
- as of the end of October. Our training notes by month. So our year to date is we're at 85% of our goal.
- And our goal is 42,000 hours per training.
- So we can see we're kind of leveling out right around 3,000. So Firefighters Moreland and Stravace,
- they went to Durham, North Carolina for interior fire operations, suppressions. They have been going
- around to the other stations on their shifts and sharing what they're, the techniques and the knowledge
- that they learned there. Captain Hinkle, the first do, that is our record management system. So he is
- our in-house
- tech person for that and so he was getting the latest greatest from them. We've done some shift training
- for the technical rescue and then
- So they've been doing group exercises with that. And then Sergeant Hudson went to a heavy rescue class.
- So that would be like semis, tractors, industrial type machines. No, not a large person, not tied to
- that kind of heavy, but heavy vehicles. And then swift water, surface water tech training. And then
- we had several people who attended
- risk management class that they were doing reasonable suspicion for supervisors. So when do we need
- to call somebody? Because they seem impaired or altered. And when do we need to make official reports?
- And so risk was leading that training for MIH.
- We gave out three car seats and five installs, and then they went to the career fair out at Ivy Tech.
- They engaged with eighty-five specific conversations, but it was well attended.
- 911 caller into assisted living, so that will take those calls off the table, hopefully. They did their
- second training, community training, so they've gone up to Kinzer Flats to get the staff up there trained
- in AEDU CPR and stop the bleed. And then they were doing some unhoused outreach and then they found
- somebody, they
- needed immediate attention, so they got him to the hospital with that. General business, none per Chief
- Litwin. For our personnel issues, we currently have two out on FMLA, two on light duty, and two on parental
- family leave with a few more intermittent leave pending.
- So within the six month period, we're gonna have like nine different firefighters making use of the
- parental leave benefit. So as far as expenditures, the bay floor at station two is completed and it
- looks fantastic. He said that he had already declared this, but the job has been completed.
- The new ladder four has arrived and the last items are getting installed. This is the radio chop radio
- chargers tools and whatnot Probably early December. We'll be doing a push-in ceremony for this new ladder
- ladder truck. It's aluminum 75 foot stick But soon as the date is confirmed we'll invite everyone to
- that push-in ceremony and I think that
- Do we have a new? OK. Old business, new business. Are you all done with your stuff then? It is. I'll
- just have a new business. Any old business? I understand that the fire department has some new business.
- Well, it's basically we'll be requesting an agenda item for contracts
- you to supervise contracts and claims, especially the contracts, as new for items not involving city
- property. Right now, a lot of Board of Public Works is trying to lighten their load. So if it's like
- our bond projects, that involves public works, but for smaller non-city property related contracts.
- So just service agreements? Yes. Yeah.
- They will be coming here. They will be coming here. So we didn't have any prepared yet for this month,
- but we would look at other ones. So this would be fire service vendors coming to service the ground
- ladders or do their testing, do the aerial testing, items along those lines, if that makes sense. And
- that's all I have.
- Yeah. Well, I was a little, I was a little worried we weren't going to have car seat, seat installs,
- but you got to it. So in September, I wrote the mayor and told her I would be stepping down at the end
- of this year. And, um,
- couple of reasons for that. The main one is I'll be 80 on January 1st. So I need to make room for some
- younger people. And I'm going to spend more time, maybe not in California. But I just want to say my
- deep appreciation for each one of you. I already came to this with a high, high estimation of public
- safety folks and you all have
- exceeded my perceptions far beyond what I came with. And I just want to thank each one of you. Terrific.
- You're good, great people. We are so lucky in Bloomington. So thank you. And thanks to the other board
- members and Tim for your chair work. It's great. You met nice. Second reason is,
- We all come to crossroads in our lives, and we don't know how to respond sometimes, and I've come to
- some. There have been times when I've felt like I've been silenced, not out of meanness, but out of
- trying to protect, and I understand that sometimes legal situations are complicated.
- My role as a person who is a clergy person gets tricky because there may be times when civil disobedience
- is called for. And I want to be, I hope it doesn't come to Bloomington. I've recently spent quite a
- bit of time in Chicago and what's happening there is awful. I never thought I would have clergy friends.
- who wouldn't be permitted to share communion and would have the elements thrown on the ground and trampled
- and the communion table broken and thrown on the other side of ice officers. My daughter said she didn't
- think she would ever get used to the smell of tear gas in Lakeview neighborhood.
- How does one respond to this kind of meanness, this kind of racism? In a state where we have not passed
- one but two anti-sanctuary laws, and I don't know the distinction between sanctuary and harboring. Because
- I've got some friends that are not documented, am I harboring them?
- So, I'm gonna be on your side, don't worry. I'll try to keep, I'm not as good at de-confliction as you
- folks are. But I think we could be headed for some rough waters. And I choose to be where I can have
- more of a voice in public. A friend of mine who is,
- Over 90, so he's wiser as Wendell Berry. And many years ago, he wrote, only love can bring intelligence
- out of the institutions and organizations where it aggrandizes itself into the presence of the work
- that must be done by us all. Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet
- or to any nation or any institution or any profession.
- but to the single sparrow on the street, the lilies of the field, and especially to the least of these,
- my brethren. Love is not by its own desire heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists
- by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.
- Again and again and again, the question is asked in the Hebrew scriptures, and why do we do what we
- do? And the answer comes over and over and over. I counted about two dozen times last night, because
- you were once strangers in the land. So thank you for the honor. I'll be here in December, so if you
- want to rebut,
- You can't. But... I, for one, appreciate the opportunity to reflect your statements. Not that I need
- to. I appreciate your offer. I dropped the line, you know, do we work for the attorneys or do the attorneys
- work for us? But that's a whole other... No, it's been a real honor. And you have no idea how
- how I've appreciated this. Absolutely. Yeah, we will certainly miss your presence on this board. It's
- been very much appreciated on this end. I was going to sit here so I could run out before this happens.
- All right. All right.
- petitions and communications anybody no nobody all right then I officially adjourn this public Board
- of Public Safety meeting adjourned done