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