Well, good morning. I would like to call this meeting of the Board of Public Safety to order. Welcome
to our guests this morning and special guests. Recording in progress. So I'm on the record already.
We would like to first
Look at the agenda, the consent agenda, and I would seek approval of that agenda as I won't have a chance
to look at last month's minutes. If there is, the agenda includes the approval of those minutes, the
approval of the claims that were filed from September 12th through September, or December, October 9th,
approval of the payroll from 918 to 1002, any other
Any other comments or questions about that consent agenda? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion
to approve that agenda. Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. All in favor, aye. Aye.
Thank you. That's approved. I would now ask for the police department business. I would ask that we
can move item D up to the top, personnel issues. Yeah. Is that all right? That's perfect. OK.
So we have some promotions that we would like to make and these are mayoral appointments and Mayor Thompson
is here and so we have a new deputy chief and two new captains. Ryan Pettigo was appointed this week
by the mayor to be the new deputy chief and Mike Baker and Lucas Tate were promoted
from lieutenant to captain by the mayor. Those are all mayoral appointments. So she's here today.
We have, Ryan already has his badge, but we have the two new captains have not gotten their badges yet.
So I think the mayor would like to present those. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your service.
Congratulations. Thank you.
Thank you. And I also just wanted to say hi to the Board of Public Safety and hope you know if you ever
need anything reach out to me but I really do appreciate your service and the way you do business is
exemplary so really appreciate what you do for the city. Thank you very much.
Good to see you all. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Stop by any time. Bring Riley. Well, Riley was all
dressed in his wear purple for domestic violence. My sword didn't connect the dots that you'd be here.
Riley really loves these too. He would have come. All right. Thank you very much for that. Thank you.
Now return to the rest of the police department business if we could. Sure. Well, I guess I should ask
the board under personal issues would probably also be the approval approval. Would you like to do those
now or would you like to wait? It's this is perfectly appropriate to do it now. OK, so let's do that.
OK. In executive session, I spoke with board members about seeking approval for three conditional offers
of employment.
for applicants Brian James, applicant Jordan Grant, and applicant Maverick Wells. This conditional offer
of employment would be contingent upon those three applicants successfully completing the remaining
stage of the hiring process, which would include things like physical and psychological exam, truth
verification, acceptance by the local pension fund and the state pension fund. I would entertain a motion
to approve those appointments. Second.
Any discussion? No discussion. If I may, I believe before Chris has asked the board to approve them
individually? Individually. All right. So which one? Just in these three names. So we would like to
approve the appointment of Brian James. Second. And under the condition that they
meet the qualifications and standards and the protocols that have to be pursued before they're formally
appointed. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Approved. Mr. Jordan Brandt, assuming that he also fulfills all those
prior obligations and conditions and stipulations. So moved. Moved. Second? Second. Thank you. All in favor?
And finally, Maverick Wells. On the assumption that he also completes all of the requirements and conditions
of employment, I would entertain a motion to approve his appointment. Motion to approve? Second? Second.
All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. I think we've approved all three of them. Congratulations, and
we wish them well. All right. Thank you, Board.
All right, so we'll go ahead and start then back at the top on our stats for the past month. Pulse for
service, we continue to see a slight decline from 2026, which is welcome. Around that 10.2% I believe
last month, it was just slightly higher on 10.5%, but we do continue to see a slight decrease in calls.
And we're hoping that continues through the end of the year. Crime comparisons.
Most categories seem to be down, which is obviously a good thing. We have really focused some efforts
in the downtown area and basically on drunken behavior and trying to make sure the downtown remains
safe for those that visit. So there is a slight increase in that 27% of that public intoxication. Most
of those are all related to calls for service for disorderly behavior and dealing with the issue before
it becomes a larger one.
did have a homicide. I was going to ask. Yeah, it was very recent. It didn't make the statistics. So
that will be reported next month. Moving on to traffic stops. Those are continuing to climb again. We
see a slight decrease in 2025. However, we see those increases again. And I think that also can be
So you see an increase there at 12.8% of the operating while intoxicated arrests. I think proactively
seeking out those breaking the laws and those that are driving while intoxicated, things like that,
I think those are a direct correlation. We are encouraging the officers to do so. Obviously, we need
to decrease those that are driving intoxicated while in our city. Crimes involving weapons continue
to go down from that high end 2024.
I think we've said it multiple times before, but I would like to reiterate that I do honestly believe
that's directly attributed to the work of our investigators and officers and arresting people, locating
those responsible for these crimes, arresting them and ensuring that they're held accountable so that
those that are repeat offenders are no longer allowed to do so because they're being held accountable
for their actions involving weapons. Arrests basically are
basically the same from the same time last year, just a slight increase, but nothing of really note.
Juveniles remain about the same, a slight increase. Those kind of fluctuate month to month. There were
no hate crimes, however, let's see, yeah, so this would have been the end of a quarter. We had zero
reported through this past quarter, and so we're at zero for the year, which is certainly a good thing.
Nuisance calls, these remain the same, I think, month to month. A lot of it related to alcohol. Training,
we had 746 and a half hours. A lot of that, we have mandated training that the officers completed. We
also had another large group of officers go through an hours worth of firearms training. There was three
day in service, which is also mandatory for all officers of the agency to complete.
And then we sent 11 officers, 11 officers, I'm sorry, attended seven and a half hours of crisis negotiation.
So those are important. We also sent four officers for a total of 16 hours to be TASER instructors.
That way we can continue doing training in-house and that they're certified through Axon themselves
to train our officers in the appropriate use for the electronic control weapon. Community engagement,
there were eight events.
Although it shows on here as being upcoming, I would like to note that we did a night out in Bloomington
on October 6th, so just a little bit earlier this month. I think that it was probably, I would like
to call it a big success. We had a large turnout. We had changed it this year from the normal,
quote unquote, national night out, which is a trademarked name, I guess, or title. But that is in August,
and it's the very,
last day before school begins. That's also the same evening when a lot of parents had to meet with like
parent teacher conferences. So that affected our turnout and people weren't able to come. So we decided
to push it back to October this year, which the weather was certainly a blessing because it was much
cooler than standing there in August. So it was a big success. We had a lot of people. Captain Tate
grilled 160 hot dogs and I think we handed out 150. So
large turnout so that was and we invited several other city agencies and departments as well as other
first responder agencies in Monroe County. Of note one that is upcoming is a national drug take back
day October 24th that'll be at Kroger West and it's usually a pretty big event we usually collect several
well pounds and pounds of unused prescription medication obviously it's good to if
It's no longer being used. People get that turned in. It's destroyed by the DEA in a controlled manner
and then that way it's not in the streets or in cabinets for people to get a hold of. Unfortunately
this week, I'm sorry for this month, I was unable to provide social worker stats. Our head social worker
was out of the country on a vacation and we had some issues. The software updated and those that were
going to pull for me were unable to do so. So I do apologize for
not being able to provide stats, I'll make sure next month to try and catch the board up on where they're
at. So I apologize for that. Under general business, Chief? I don't really have a whole lot. It's a
busy time of the year. Football games, homecoming is coming up. It's on Halloween, so that will be really
busy. So that's pretty much about it for general business.
I may note for those that may be downtown on that date, if they're not aware, the parade route this
year is changed and it actually goes down Kirkwood instead of up Indiana. So the downtown Kirkwood area
will be very busy on homecoming weekend as all of those roads are closed basically between Walnut and
Indiana for the parade route to go east towards the sample gates and then turn north. I also don't believe
there are any large purchases, expenditures.
And we had zero ARV deployments. Quick question if I could ask on the firearm issues. Incidents involving
firearms and arrests made as a result of those.
Can I assume that the firearm that was involved is confiscated normally? Yeah, if we are able to locate
it unless they've already, you know, we certainly put as much effort in we can, even if when the person's
arrested or search warrant is served, if the firearm is not located, we extend a lot of effort in trying
to locate the firearm to make sure that we do confiscate it and it's held as evidence.
Obviously there are certain times to where we're unable to locate it, but I would say it would be safe
to say the vast majority of incidents involving firearms, we are able to locate it and it is confiscated
and held as evidence. So following that, can I assume that to some extent that results in a reduction
in the number of firearms floating around in the community? Or is that a pipe dream? There are a lot
of guns in the community. I mean, obviously... A lot of law-abiding people.
Yes. We did a violent crime detail a month or so ago, and it was 14 cars, and we had 14 people with
weapons. So unfortunately, there are a lot of firearms out there. And again, many of those are vaguely
possessed soldiers. I don't have a fundamental problem with the ownership of firearms,
Those that shouldn't have them, it'd be nice to get those people off. Thanks. Sorry to hold you up.
Oh, no worries. Good morning, everyone. Fire statistics. So you'll see on the heat map with students
back, a higher concentration of those hot areas now on campus, particularly sorority and fraternity
row. That's pretty expected. We've been busy in those areas, especially with football season.
Here's a breakdown of our responses. These are following the normal trends that we see. The rescues
on there are typically going to be elevator rescues, especially now that we have more occupants in town
in that area. Breakdown between IU and Citi. The Citi's month totals are an 11% increase from last year
in September, looking at a 34% increase over the last five years.
portion of this indicates 17% of the month's runs, which is up from the average of 13% and expected
summer brings that number down. School starts, brings that number back up. Turn up times, following
trends that we've seen in the past, majority of these are meeting or exceeding what we're looking for.
So these are following suit with what we traditionally see.
Public engagement and prevention has been active. We've seen a number of inspections completed. Again,
just as a reminder, the goal is to hit every business in town. So with the amount of staff we have and
I use demands, that's commonly one that's just not realistic for us to hit. But that team has been very
busy getting into all the businesses they can while still doing their investigations and other prevention
activities. For community engagement, we are at and above
the goals that we've been, or some of the previous statistics we've seen for children educated and smoke
detector installations. So he's been active and doing a good job. We've had 199 engagements in September
for public engagement, 77 smoke detector installations. Training hours were exceeding where we should
be for the year, so that's great. Whenever we have a recruit academy, that usually boosts those up.
We're looking good for exceeding our goal for the year. Highlights of some of those I'll mention are
just one item that's been nice. We had a disruption to our athletic trainer program. The person that
was overseeing it was injured severely in a car accident. So it disrupted our program. We've been able
to get it going again with fill-ins from our vendor and it's been going pretty well. We're certainly
looking forward to and hopeful that the original person will return
to full health and come back and oversee our program again, but we've got it up and running in a capacity
it's working for now. Another nice new change, we revamped the automatic aid with the surrounding fire
departments, so we respond with them again. It's been a good cooperation, and we put forth new policies
that would dictate what we respond to, what they respond to, and then we implemented training for the
entire department on those new policies.
And then the last one I'll highlight on here is our ops center is substantially complete, and we've
been moving into it. And it's looked great. Now that people are in there and our stuff is in there,
now it looks complete. That's what it was missing was us living in there. So we're happy to have you
in there. I'll address an opening date here in a moment. MIH statistics break down between the different
branches of what we approach with that. As a highlight here, we have hired a new program manager. So
we're looking forward to what he can do.
If you haven't met him yet, I'll try to introduce him to you the next time that we cross paths. But
he's hit the ground running. And I anticipate he'll make some changes for the better to the program.
And we're excited to see what he does with it. As far as kudos, we had an NIH team respond to a patient.
And during the call, they uncovered an emergency that was taking place. And we're able to mitigate that
and prevent it from getting a lot worse.
These folks aren't just tending to patients with their long-term care, they're also handling emergency.
This is one of many emergencies they've mitigated while visiting patients, so they're doing good work.
As far as general business, as mentioned, the operations center has been substantially complete. We're
moving in and we hope to have everything ready very soon. The ribbon cutting has been set for November
6th at 10 a.m., so please, any and all.
If you want to come hang out with us on that date, we're welcome to have you. So it should be. Have
you seen November 6? November 6, 10 AM. OK, thanks. Everyone's invited, please. Please show up and hang
out. It turned out really, really good. Personal issues, as I mentioned, we have a new program manager.
So he started this week and is instantly very active. So you'll probably see him around. We have two
members currently on light duty. One is on FMLA or soon to be on FMLA. And we have six members.
on intermittent baby bonding currently. And lastly, purchases. We actually had our GEO bond presentation
last night at council. It was approved to move to the November 4th meeting, but on that we anticipate
purchasing a new aerial platform truck at a cost of around $2.5 million. So assuming everything goes
well with that GO bond, we'll be looking to secure that or at least dedicate the money to it at the
first of the year.
So has any questions on anything? Thank you, Mayor. You're welcome. Any questions from the board? Hearing
none. Is there any other old business to attend? I just have one thing. We need to certify the executive
session. That's right. We didn't do that, did we? So I move to certify the executive session. Second.
All in favor? Aye.
Thank you very much, Tim, for doing that. I apologize for missing that. So for the record, we've certified
the executive session. Late, but we did it. But it's certified. But it's certified. Any new business?
Bring none. Any petitions and communications from the floor? Then I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Second. We are adjourned.
Thank you all very much.