- Well, we now have an in-person quorum, so we can start the meeting today's Thursday, July 16th, 4 p.m.
- This is the meeting of the communities, I agree, on Public Safety Commission. We're gonna first take
- roll call. My name is Larry Allen. I'm representing the city council, I'm an attorney. And to my left,
- Michael Burton, board member. Kamala Brown-Sparks, board member. Commissioner. Sharon Weishelbauer,
- commissioner.
- Hello, Lorraine, Commissioner. Member of the public. Shall we? Just the character. Welcome. You're still
- here. Lovely to have you. We have a few people online as well. You don't want to join the commission?
- No, I'm good. We have some spaces. Next, there is no need for an approval on this unless anybody has
- corrections. The attaches of memorandum from the previous meeting, Thursday, June 18th, 2026. You can
- find that in your packet.
- The difference between memorandum and minutes is fairly slim. Memorandum is required by law. So actively
- as we go through this meeting, we will take notes about everything that happens. It can be as bare bones
- as just having the agenda and any official votes taken on it. So this is just a memorandum. We didn't
- convert that to, it reads like more distinct minutes, but just FYI, so that's more for your information.
- It's certainly approval. We do have an agenda for today. Does everybody, did anybody have any additions
- or changes to today's agenda that they would like to move that we alter? So all in favor adopting today's
- agenda, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Fantastic. Now we move on to reports. Do either of the co-chairs
- have a report that they would like to give? I did not.
- Other individual members, do you all have any reports you'd like to make? No reports. Okay, this is
- where I give a Shakespearean soliloquy, if you'd like. We're ready. Okay, fantastic. We gave you a lot
- of work to do. Well, yeah, and these will be relatively short reports, unfortunately, but we do have
- a few updates. So first, just so you know,
- We had asked if you all wanted to submit feedback on the public safety report. We didn't receive anything
- in our email yet. The commission, obviously, you're free to do that if you'd like, so just send that
- to the council email address. We'll compile that and talk about it at future meetings. We just didn't
- receive anything, but I just want to let you all know that. You had asked about the LEAF study that
- is still in progress. They have just started the advocacy or the
- the phase in which they're interviewing interested parties among the cities, among the cities. So they
- have gotten through their initial phase, and now they're on kind of phase two, the very beginning of
- phase two. That's the process. It's not much else to look forward to. Did they have a plan? Yes. Yeah.
- And there's, and I could share that with you all, because it kind of gives just a rough timeline. It's
- just not detailed. High level milestones. Very high level milestones.
- I will do that. Let me actually, I want to think of, no, not my own good space, so I can actually jot
- down what I missed. We'll be included in the Membrano. Yeah, we can do that. Thank you all, very good.
- Next, we had talked about an incident in Wilmington where a drone or an unmanned vehicle was deployed.
- A person had barricaded themselves in their home and posed a threat. There was questions raised about
- what the city of Wilmington's drone policy is. There is a general UAV policy that we have linked in
- the agenda for you all to review. Essentially, the way that policy works is
- Any of the pilots have to be licensed. They have to be fully licensed pilots. They also have to report
- any time they deploy and use a drone. When we went to the data center to look at the latest updates,
- it looks like updates have not been provided to that list regularly. Other departments were updating
- things. So whenever utilities has used a UAV or something like that, some sort of
- vehicle or drone, they have updated that, but police and fire have not with their uses of it. So that's
- something just if you go to, it is on the page there that I sent you to, so there's a link to a spreadsheet
- so you can see what is reported there.
- Law enforcement, so speaking about law enforcement very specifically, law enforcement use of these vehicles
- is governed by a statute, at least Indiana Code 35-3359 governs the use of that, and essentially it
- breaks down into two ways, which is not dissimilar from what we talked about last time. One is essentially
- it counts as surveillance or almost like a search, so almost like an entry into a home. And so if you're
- going to do that, if you're law enforcement, you have to obtain a warrant, unless there are exigent
- circumstances warranting the use of it. So exigent circumstances are a very special category, a term
- of art in the law, which includes emergency situations. So if it's basically a flight for death, the
- police have reason to believe that they absolutely cannot
- obtain a warrant in time to prevent a dangerous situation. They likely would have exigent circumstances
- to use in that case. When we're talking about the deployment here in this particular instance, the police
- did, they sent out a press release afterwards, the way it was worded. So once they arrived on the scene,
- they were apprised, they were told what was happening. There was a dangerous situation. However, they
- did obtain a warrant.
- both for the arrest of the person, but also entry into the home. And so once they obtained that warrant,
- sorry, we have a comment online. Eric, your note taker should have already been admitted. So I show
- it as admitted right now. Sorry, your chat just came through. They obtained a warrant. There were two
- actual drones that were deployed. There was one on the outside of the building.
- And then there is a specialty one that was deployed by an officer that is specifically designed to be
- able to go indoors. And that is the one that was trying to locate the subject inside.
- The subject was able to hit it and destroy it. So that was actually one of the charges brought against
- them, is that they destroyed the property to $1,000, is that they basically threw the unmanned vehicle
- against the wall and destroyed it. The other one was outside and could see in and wait until the door
- was open to make sure it was safe for, this was an incident that required the CERT team
- to be called out. So the critical incident response team, otherwise colloquially known as SWAT teams,
- was called out to this situation. And so kind of to help give them some safety, they know where the
- person is. They were also looking for two specific weapons. This person had threatened another person
- with knives. So there were knives that they were searching for so that they could see if that person
- was armed, potential danger to themselves or potential danger to the officer. So that is more or less
- how this went down. So in terms of their policy, they did follow a state statute. In this case, they
- did obtain the warrant for the use of it. There are circumstances by state law that they could theoretically
- use it if there's a cause for that. But it seems like our police are following that procedure where
- they did obtain the warrant for use. Questions about that?
- Is there follow up from a city or council to have them regularly updating when they do use it so that
- as there is public law, but I'm like record like every other department. I don't know about that. So
- that was one of the calls of the questions we have in specifically. So who was originally
- watching after this was the city's risk department. So specifically because of how it would play into
- the city's insurance policy. So one of the things, one of the calls we have out to, it's the risk management,
- find out what's being reported, what's not, whether they're requiring that anymore. Thank you. Would
- it be possible to get an update on that by our next week? Yes, I think so. It's more a matter of if
- they're giving us an understandable. I'm just a point of clarification question.
- Was the warrant, was there a date time stamp of the warrant that was before the breach? That's a good
- question. I basically have what's publicly available from that. What I don't have is the warrant itself.
- So I haven't been able to, because I'm not involved as an attorney on the criminal case or anything
- like that, I don't have access to that warrant document.
- Okay, necessarily. We could try to find out more information about the specific timing of when the warrant
- is. And the reason why I'm answering it that way is I'm going off the press release as well. And I love
- public official writing. It is often in passive voice. And so this is in passive voice. So I can't tell
- you with 100% certainty. The order of operations in which it was stated
- made it seem like a warrant was obtained, the CERT team were spotted, the drug was issued or launched.
- And I imagine by that time the person who was out of the house was out of danger. The person who was
- out of the house was out of danger. There's still a question. I mean, the person who remained in the
- house barricaded themselves was reported to have been going through potentially
- a crisis for some time. And so there was there's a question about whether they're finding themselves
- are still with the data. So I'm not a law enforcement professional. Does it does it does it seem like
- a situation where right? One has threatened male who has left the residence and she has barricaded
- barricaded as an arresting term. Was the door just locked or was there? That's a good question. Yeah,
- that's the term that's being used in the release of the standard report. Does a SWAT team or a SIRT
- team response to that seem reasonable? Yes. The reason why I would say yes from my perspective as I'm
- reading it is because you just don't, you don't quite know what that situation is.
- The way we've historically used the CERT team, it's not necessarily like just for them to blast their
- way into a building. It's also because they have the ability to kind of, well, one, as you all know,
- the Bloomington Police Department has the Bearcat vehicle, which I know is a hot topic of debate. One
- of the benefits to that vehicle specifically is that it can put a safety barrier
- between the house and any responding individuals. And so if for some reason there was a firearm involved,
- which I don't think they know 100% for sure at that point. I mean, they knew about the knives for sure.
- It creates a barrier, a level of safety. And then you have the people who are also on the CERT team
- are not just there for
- use of extreme force, they're also part of your negotiators. So they're your negotiating team to help
- people in crisis and to try to de-escalate the situation. So they are trained specifically in a crisis
- situation to respond to that. So those are the two things I would say most positively. And then of course,
- if you do need some sort of region that happens, they're also trained for that kind of being on the
- level of a regular responding. I have one follow up question. Is there,
- Is it available via public records when we would look at to be able to build a table in using AI that
- says, um, the cert team was deployed and then negotiation was the tool solution used versus force used.
- Yeah. So there is, there, there already is another data spreadsheet.
- on the city's website that exists currently, that is referred to as a use of force spreadsheet. That
- spreadsheet, it's not what it's not going to have. It does not have details about this is who the person
- was, this is everything that's going on. What it generally has is this is the state of the person or
- the intoxicated or not or having an issue. Then it does have several categories of
- potential use of force from non-lethal tasers, obviously firearms, deployment of special teams. So there
- is kind of that level. The most recent data I saw on that, because I checked that spreadsheet too before
- this meeting, the most recent data I saw on that spreadsheet was from December of last year. So for
- some reason, there's not data updated through today of 2026. That may be when they uploaded, I'm not
- 100% sure. So that's something.
- the deputy mayor had reached out after our previous meeting. And so one of my extra tasks is to follow
- up with her specifically and kind of have a conversation just about this is why we're looking for this
- information. This is what we're looking for and try to understand a little bit better about what's updated
- when and why certain things are updated. Thank you very much. You've done a very excellent job looking
- into this for us. Thank you. I'm happy to try to get it. And also credit to, we have two fellows on
- council's office.
- Uh, one, his name is Michael. He helped with the drum policy and then we're going to get into the flock
- and Evan, who was online, uh, went into the flock policy. So I really appreciate that because they did
- a lot of good work, like we're getting what was hopefully available. And I was kind of working together.
- I think here seems like it's horribly wrong. It's just an interesting opportunity for us. I, for me,
- at least by pressure test and maybe it's one of the things that we should be doing in this commission.
- It's just.
- understanding individual cases like this to see and to find out things like, Oh, that hasn't been updated
- since December. Yeah. I think that's, that's important too. And that's what I was also trying to communicate.
- And what we're trying to communicate is we're trying to get information to the public as well so that
- they understand the process. Cause these are fairly opaque.
- And I know before I worked in city government and you asked me, and I would have had a picture of a
- movie in my head with like smoke and firearms everywhere and that kind of thing. And so understanding
- the different tactics and what's used and how they deploy it and how it's, it's an escalator. I'm just
- very hopeful. It's certainly very educational for me. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?
- I think that on the agenda is this very long report from the parking commission. Oh, it's just reference
- to block after we do all that stuff. Okay. Reference to LPRs and I just included everything. Thank you.
- Yeah. So once it was put on the agenda, I decided there's a website dedicated to this, which I think
- I also linked to for the parking study with. Yeah, it's like there.
- I just see you all didn't have to hunt for it. I just went ahead and attached the report, the memo.
- It is huge. It's way more information than you need. I totally understand that. But I just wanted to
- have it once paid in one place since we're referencing it in the packet. OK. If in the future you'd
- like me to pare that down, I'm happy to do it. I was going to give it a thumbs up. Nice to have it if
- you want other information, if you want to dig out a problem. And it's kind of memorializes at this
- point in time. Like, this is what we talked about. This is what we are considering. But all that stuff.
- Is that enforcement technology? Yes. Yeah. I'm going to click to that in the new business tab. So next,
- just update on the FLOC ALPR camera status. After our conversation, last time, as I mentioned, Evan
- put together some good information for us. We did have the administration reached out
- After our conversation to say that the statement that they give at city council that report is their
- updated report. They kind of reiterated that to us to go through what what. Largely you will already know.
- The city announced that it's not renewing those contracts. One of the contracts had already expired,
- but by the time they announced they weren't renewing it, so it was good for two years, and it started
- in the spring of 2024, and it expired sometime in March of 2026, so that was one of them. There was
- another contract for two mobile units that was entered into in 2025.
- I just from practical knowledge, I think these mobile units were deployed at very particular high call
- volume areas in the city. So outside specific apartment complexes, those have been removed at least
- from those sites where they used to be, mainly because I live near one of them and I noticed that there's
- no longer a mobile unit that's right outside my neighborhood. The other one I also believe has been
- removed or I haven't seen it there. I don't know.
- where those have gone in terms of we didn't get an update about, okay, those mobile units have been
- shipped back to flock. They're not in storage anywhere or anything like that. But as far as I can tell
- from that public, just the public view, those are not being used at this point. They're not deployed
- throughout the city. There are some differing numbers out there. And you may have seen this, this has
- been publicly reported. So if you look at the contracts that the city had, there were,
- 11 mounted automated license plate reader cameras that were deployed throughout the city. And then there
- were four other mounted video cameras around the city. And then there are four mobile trailer systems
- that had not only license plate readers, but also could go to video potential gunshot detection. That
- is the contract that was ended and that was not renewed. So that those should all no longer be active
- in terms of actively
- reported data and things like that. Have they been removed from Street Bulls? I know that it's also
- been widely reported that there are still existing cameras on certain areas. The question would be whose
- cameras are those? And I think that that's one of the difficulties we had at even obtaining kind of
- an update for you about that. There's a website that helps with that as well, but it's still kind of
- people-based. So I think it's like, is it what the fuck? Yeah. Thank you for adding.
- So, and one of the difficulties because Monroe County has some that are deployed at particular intersections.
- The count that we saw on, again, this is kind of a public information request that's been gathered by
- university. It looked like there are eight by Monroe County at various intersections that I don't know
- the details about where those intersections are. And then at minimum five are with IU. Indiana University
- has at least five.
- That same source reported Bloomington potentially had as many as 40 in deployment. That does not match
- the contract amount, but what I have a suspicion for is some like those mobile units that we had, had
- more than one camera attached to it. And so it's potentially they're counting every individual camera
- as opposed to deployment. So if you had a light pole and it has three cameras pointed different ways,
- it's gonna count as three cameras, but here it's only gonna count as one location potentially.
- Um, so that's one of the clarifying comments again, uh, appreciate members of the administration reaching
- out, but that's one of the follow-up just questions for them about how that works. And, and if there's
- any more details that they could share at this point, um, try to see, but to your point, there are public
- websites. People are just going around pointing to that. Yeah. Hey, I see one right here. This is where
- it should be. Yeah. And I think.
- This will tie into the new business. And what was also reported is the difference between potential
- handheld license plate readers versus automated license plate readers. And it seemed to me like the
- parking operations, and this is true by you as well, because their parking operations use this handheld
- license plate readers that they use to give out tickets to monitor how long a vehicle's been in a particular
- space, as opposed to the old chalk method, if you remember that from way back in the day.
- So it sounds like that's the recommendation on the parking side is to potentially use those handheld
- ones for staff to use as opposed to necessarily automated ones. But that's going to be a topic
- for conversation that we'll get to in new business. Any questions in terms of the flocking? I'm sorry,
- that's a little bit looser of an update. And I appreciate Evan doing great work on this. Thank you,
- Evan. Yeah, thank you, Evan. Would they be valuable?
- ask for things that involve just a whole bunch of this network that doesn't really have much of a payoff.
- But I'm curious what we think as a group, would there be value or interest if we could get a list of
- all of the flock requests which were made by the police department and what their purposes were?
- I'm not sure. I know other places have that available.
- but I'm not sure how that process goes, like requesting that from the specific landing thing, right?
- Maybe I'm not so interested in each individual request, but in their evaluation, if they think it's
- worthwhile, worth the money, and I don't know, just,
- justified to keep some of them. We still have some in use, right? They were in the process of terminating
- the rest of them. There was a short-term extension used for Little Five on some things that were counter
- put that were used and ended up being used.
- And we also talked about cameras elsewhere in the city that are subject to the same thing. So they have
- not, if they're relying on their statement in the report given to council previously, the administration
- has not ruled out using this technology of the future from another vendor. But I will also tell you
- city council is currently exploring and actively in conversations about regulating
- those technology as a whole, so not limited to automated license plate readers, but anything that's
- AI-empowered that potentially has a survey of interest too. So there are council members who are at
- least in talks and working on ways of regulating that and developing policies within the city to regulate
- the needs. I see. So it's really a more point right now as to whether the police think it's worthwhile.
- I think what I would be interested in knowing is,
- not as much about individual police and politics, but like, were they responding to ICE requests? Were
- there external agency requests coming in that they were processing? I think there's like people like
- Sheriff Marte and other people have like said they would not, but the issue that everyone was predicting
- was that there's not necessarily, ICE doesn't need to request, even if there are boundaries in there,
- people can hack, at least they still need to be boarded.
- I just couldn't obtain things because of the way it was being stored. So that was me. So I think the
- issue that was coming from the people in the city that they were like, why this company and why? So
- why no boundaries? And I think the city would turn around and was like, we don't and we will not, but
- it's also been proven by many people within that company who are like, I can check it right now if you
- want. So there were a lot of back doors. Yeah. OK.
- there wasn't a security that could be proven, that could be stated, but it wasn't like no one was going
- into audits, no one was going into, they weren't like, oh yeah, we'll prove that it's secure. People
- were like, let me audit it, or let's do independent audits, and there was a lot of pushback, nothing,
- so. Yeah, because this is one of the points also, the BPDs explicitly updated the use policy even before
- they gave their report to council, which stated that they would not use this technology
- for either immigration request or for anybody who may be exercising their right to an abortion or something.
- So those are two very explicit things that they need that they're prohibiting all use from, at least
- from the BPD side, to basically, I think, to thwart off at least official requests to other agencies
- for those two purposes. But then the question remains of,
- Could the federal government then serve a potential warrant or request on flock itself and get access
- to this data? And that has been an open question. I will say, you know, the Supreme Court ruling in
- terms of the geofencing
- that was occurring. So geofence search of phones also throws a wrench into this, which is now the Supreme
- Court has acknowledged that you need a search warrant for those things. So that ups the level of proof
- before the government can request those kinds of things from tech companies that may also apply to Flock.
- I mean, it's going to be a technology by technology thing, but certainly you could extrapolate if it
- applies to something like geofencing, which is anonymous data of your cell phone that's provided in
- the aggregate by Google or whoever.
- Uh, you certainly would see that that it should apply to something like flock. So I'm not that's not
- me saying it's a guaranteed. That's just the update in the wall. So, for sure. I'm just trying to give
- information just to be, you know, question these new technologies to. They're here and we didn't, uh,
- we didn't understand boundaries or the however, so, and I guess I don't. This is more of a philosophical
- question than about the, what this commission does.
- and its placement as an official commission for the council. Again, I'm new to this, so your clarification
- would be helpful. I'm also so very new. If an agency says at press release, yes, we did it fine, is
- it our position to accept that or do we have, we're not
- But do we have the ability to ask additional questions, clarifications, requests for validation of that?
- Yes, you do. And I think one of the things that's helpful, so just in terms of going through, this is
- one of the reasons why we put the goals and purposes of the commission. So there's two things. Do you
- have the power as situated to issue subpoenas? No.
- Right, right. So, I mean, just practically speaking. So if you're saying like, I would like data about
- this, of course, you could always get the answer is no, or for years, for years reason, you don't have
- a lot of legal recourse, but what, but there's obviously value in asking the question. And then also
- in terms of
- providing recommendations to also counsel and presenting, hey, here's what the public thinks about what's
- going on with these technologies. Here are the questions we feel like are unanswered. Let's present
- this to counsel. And these are the questions we asked. These are the responses we got. These are the
- responses we got. And this is what we'd like to know more about. And then going up the chain, I think,
- is very important. Imposing those either directly to the administration or to counsel themselves as
- a follow-up is very important. And that's what we can do as staff is kind of relay that information
- Or you can also do it formally. So if you all wanted to gather language about one of these technologies,
- so if you wanted to say something about FLOG, for instance, and say we would like to draft a resolution
- or a letter that would go to council to make a recommendation that they investigate further, they take
- particular regulatory steps, or just to inform them, hey, here's our public opinion about what's going
- on with this. That's a very in the wheelhouse of this particular commission way of going about them.
- Thank you for the clarification. It's great to have you. Okay. And I think the the legislation the council's
- working on is like we can, you know, that's where like they'll take our advice or help however, but
- also they're working really hard on that. So if you have questions for them, take an e-mail about what
- they're thinking because I know at least the two of them have a lot of information that they've and
- a lot of work they've done on understanding Flock as well as what it would mean to govern
- new technologies showing we haven't done yet. So again, this will be something if you all like to add,
- just keep it on the agenda too. So as we get updates about it, if the legislation's introduced and things
- like that, we can report back on what that looks like. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Any other
- questions, comments about FLOC? Anything else? Good. Are there any
- reports from members of the public or anybody want to give public comments, anything in particular,
- if you're on Zoom and you'd like to give public comment, just raise your hand and I can acknowledge
- you. I don't see anyone. Okay.
- We don't have any old business, because mainly that was covered in our staffing reports. So the next
- piece of new business is the Bloomington Parking Study that was conducted by Walker Consultants, which
- is included in your magnitude. Yeah, I haven't included it in whole, but I've read through most of it,
- but mainly it's page 72 about the technologies. So it was in relation to, as we're dealing with our
- fallback on ALPRs,
- seeing someone suggests, you know, and then I was like, I was like, what is this technology? What does
- it differ? And you answered that a little bit, but I hope they just didn't help because it was like
- a car with a big gas can. But I was like, that's not a handheld. They're just going to grab around a
- car and scan everyone's information. I was like, that's, so I was just, I was intrigued on that as bringing
- it in and maybe reading about the technology part just so that we have, because that would also be under
- the same legislation probably that
- If it involves a cloud server and storing people's information, how is that governed? And where does
- council's legislation land that is coming through? Well, they're going to raise parking prices more,
- but. I would just say that. Yeah, that's a stop. It does require active councils. Yeah. But there's
- a big, that's why we kind of address parking prices.
- infrastructure around our parking. So I just found it intriguing. I was like, I don't know, we got a
- parking van. I was like, oh, because it's, it adds a lot of things. So it's mainly why I wanted to include
- it so that we didn't see another technology coming while we're still going to do all the posts of the
- first technology. Also, so this, this report was released kind of, uh, it was brought before
- the Transportation Commission. One of the things in your packet is
- And then from the parking service, the director, Michelle Wall, responding to the transportation commission's
- feedback as well. This report has not formally been presented to council in a meeting yet. It's something
- that council's still working on, is trying to find a time when parking services could come and give
- kind of a presentation to council. I think at least they wanted to have, the parking services wanted
- to provide the written report to council first.
- So there may be a date that I would watch out for in the near future. It's not going to happen next
- Wednesday, but potentially the Wednesday after that, or just before budget. It's possible that Parking
- Services gives their report. So these are questions that I'm happy to pass along to council as well,
- so that if that report happens, these questions can be answered, or asked at least about the technology
- and how that can work. I went down a bit, and I see that they actually do need
- all the parking garages and I'm wondering if that's going to change when the new county, the new building.
- Convention center. Yeah, they're going to have parking there too, I think. That's an open question.
- Uh, still, as far as I, the last layer, it has been in talks about having a dedicated, you're talking
- about a dedicated parking garage for the convention center. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that has been part,
- it was at least part of the recommended. This is several years old when we did the public on the convention
- center, which was a long time ago.
- It was recommended that one of the county lots be converted, potentially it could be converted to a
- parking garage if you needed that extra parking. That would be through the Capital Improvement Board
- because that piece of property is currently county owned and so it would be probably a county project
- or a Capital Improvement Board project. Capital Improvement Board, a separate entity that has members from
- the city that's pointed by the mayor and the county. Technically, it's a county board because they have
- control interest in it. But they are independent. And you probably also saw that they announced from
- this week that they have at least tentatively selected a hotelier to go on the southern parcel, so south
- of the convention center on current county-owned plots. And there was mention of parking being included
- as part of that hotel as well, so an underground level on potentially first floor.
- Okay, so there's some parking options and obviously we have the fourth street garage, which is there
- to serve. A long time ago there were questions about whether you connect the fourth street garage to
- anything. I don't know that that's currently under talks. We do have parking close by that is fairly
- substantial. Sorry, I have not, yeah, it's a lot of information, but.
- I haven't heard anything on the update about whether they're going to build a dedicated to a site partner.
- It wouldn't surprise me either way. I still can't forget all the land stuff. So yeah, that's a tricky
- one. I see. Do you have a concern there specifically about? No, but I just think that if it's, if they're
- sort of evaluating how many spots there are, kind of counting spots, then that
- That would be something to consider. It's not too far in the future. Yeah, so this report is limited
- only to those that are city-owned and operated. So parking services has no operational control over
- what the county does in their county. So also similarly, like the Justice Center parking garage, which
- is right across the street on Morton, is excluded from the study. And I think there's 260 spots there
- to start. OK.
- Yeah, there are questions or topics of conversation. Okay. Yeah, let me just wanted to talk from technology.
- That was a that's great. So, yeah, we'll pass along the city council. I know they're on it. So stay
- on with them. I wasn't sure. Yeah, I knew technology is part of it, but if there's another part of the parking.
- accessibility and the leap study that's still not ready to to report it just turns what i said it's
- in process there's nothing finalized for it yet there's so there's still areas trying to gather the
- information before they put the study together maybe we're on phase two out of five i think of it and
- i'll circulate what those dates were roughly it was like uh the first two months were kind of
- setting the ground, laying the groundwork, setting up what the report's gonna be. This part is interviewing
- stakeholders and doing some analysis. Yeah, it's a long, it's a long process. It's how consultants get
- paid. And they get paid to get by too. New business. We had talked about this as future new business.
- I'm just putting it on here if you all wanna have a discussion about it real quick. My thought was,
- so right now,
- Council Member Pippa Smith is still out, so she's on vacation and she gets back next week, so that's
- why she's not here today. I'm going to bring this up so she can hopefully attend the next meeting for
- you all and have a more robust conversation about this, but I just wanted to bring it up ahead of time
- if you had all thought about it. How you like these deliberation sessions to work? Were there any suggestions
- right now? And if not, no big deal, which is for your thoughts. I just want to open it up and I'll be
- happy to provide
- Councilman P. Mossman with whatever suggestions you have. Katie, I was intrigued to hear what Councilman
- P. Mossman's suggestions have been because I've never gotten, I've been to a couple of deliberation
- sessions for different things, but never like helped organize it or create information around it. So
- like what our role, like how, you know, you're playing that in our meetings, is there
- things we can do one more way to bring back to help with the first one. Yeah. Okay. I've just watched
- spark a Sun wreck. So different, uh, different area. I did my top three, a patent multiples filibuster.
- That was, that was higher.
- The last time we met, I said that I was going to contact Beacon to find out progress on the new site.
- And I have not been able to. I emailed Forrest Gilmore in just the general Beacon email. They have a
- contact form, but nobody's got back to me.
- I don't know. It would be good to know what's going on. And it seems to me that there are not fewer
- people who can't wander around. In need of their services. Yeah. Would you like that? Is that something
- you'd like to put on as far as maybe a member report for the future? Yeah, I would like to know numbers.
- I imagine they'll get back to you. They're always so quick to so many things. I'm intrigued why they
- haven't, but I know they also are very busy. So you can, I don't know, maybe they don't know who to
- forward the email to. I don't know. I'll try Mary Morgan, thanks. There you go. Just knock them off.
- And always feel free to reach out to us if we can.
- I'll back you up on something. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We're hoping maybe by the next time you meet, council
- will have more staff at that point, at least maybe at least one person hired. So that would be. Oh,
- really? In August? Yeah, hopefully. Okay. Other thoughts, recommendations for future business?
- Should we be aware of or anything else? I guess these two filaments should probably take up a chunk
- of, since we don't know what we're doing. That'll probably, yeah, so I didn't put them here, but yeah,
- I think for the next one, I'll just communicate to Council Member Huma Smith, kind of, you all like
- kind of a structure for it, and then to be able to know where you could best work with her on it, so
- she'll be ready for that. Yeah. I don't know if we can talk about it while we're meeting, but we can
- go out there.
- Exactly. Yeah, sorry. We also had, I'm sorry if I missed it already in the agenda someplace. We were
- talking about getting someone from the call center. Yeah. And that was one of the things that we need
- to have some follow-up conversations all day. They expressed some concern. They're very busy and
- that said that it needs to be a follow-up conversation with them of what the benefit and the potential
- is. Well, I guess that's a reasonable question. What would be the benefit? That's for us to kind of
- define, right? It is. I think the other thing, it is just good to know how it operates and what's going
- on. And also the partnership, I don't think everybody understands.
- usually a magic black box and you call 911, you're just assuming it works and you don't know how it
- works. Sure. I know city versus county and they cover for each other and things can go back and forth,
- state as well. There's overlapping jurisdictions when you're talking about law enforcement, then there's
- mutual aid agreements between fire departments in terms of where you help out in the county. The dispatchers
- themselves, it's a joint,
- task force. It's managed by a city employee, but it is paid for by both the county and city. So it's
- all together in one. So that is, that is coordinated enough for everybody. And there are a lot of layers.
- And then how would a social worker flows through that process with providing support for any particular call?
- Yeah, so typically, at least what I know from the prior presentations, and again, I would rather you
- hear this from the actual experts themselves. Social workers will be dispatched with an officer initially
- so that they're covered just in case the situation turns out to be slightly different than what they
- understand through the dispatch, et cetera, et cetera. Then after maybe securing and finding out what
- the on-the-ground information is, sometimes that social worker will be left
- there and the police officer will peel off. Yeah. I'm not as concerned about that process. I mean,
- I am, but for the sake of this question, as you're being ping ponged around the various call centers,
- how does the request for a person who is a social worker, does that flow through with that as they call
- police from place to place?
- I guess I, what do you mean by ping pong around the different calls? So you call in, you get to,
- you get to, you get to county and then that gets, that gets transferred to another. It goes through
- one central dispatch. So there is no county dispatcher cities. It goes through the one joint central
- dispatch based on where that.
- Yeah, basically where that call is coming from, they will then deploy the nearest. So if it's within
- city limits, they're going to deploy BPD first, and BPD can't handle that, then they may call for backup.
- As far as I know, and just to clarify this, that's the jurisdictional limits of also the social workers
- and the city. I'm sorry, I don't mean that. No, no, no, that's great. Thank you. Yeah, I think we'll
- find out a lot with the leaps of time. I don't think being a sort of social
- that's what they're trying to like, as it so occurs to be the dispatch. So that we then have a better
- direction for dispatch, but then also how to incorporate the alternative. They're like, whether we create
- one, whether we, is there any, you know, that's what the links and this is what we're trying to figure
- out. Cause Piedmont Smith gave us a whole presentation on their findings from all the other cities that
- had created programs and had really cool events and I drive somewhere.
- kind of like shown how they responded. It was like, well, as some people are always worth a pop and
- a social worker or just the social worker. And there was like different statistics that they had gotten
- through all that stuff. So that was a cool presentation to see. And we have one or two social workers
- now. I would think they're the brief ones right at night. I don't know that they work day and night
- shift, but I do. Part of what they do also is
- they do a lot of follow-up. So one of the benefits of having the social workers, and I don't think I
- was speaking out of school here, one of the benefits of having social workers is not only can they respond
- to the immediate call and kind of help with that situation, they do follow-up with those individuals.
- So because so many of the calls are with somebody who maybe just needs help with services, just needs
- some practical advice, or working in navigating other services that are available to them so they don't
- get into a position of crisis,
- And so what our social workers are amazing at doing is that they log those and then they'll do a couple
- of days later, follow up calls. Hey, did you get connected with Centerstone or are you connected with
- this service? And do you know about that? How are you doing? And go on for at least a little bit until
- they have reasonable security of knowing that that person kind of stably connected with other services.
- So that's one of their great benefits is that kind of follow up. And what it does is it,
- it actually cuts down. And this is the idea of the program. It cuts down on repeat calls for someone
- kind of suffering from the same type of crisis who just really needs connection to services. Very similar
- to how people try to lower the number of emergency room visits by maybe connecting you with, you know,
- a good healthcare provider and so forth. So you don't have class emergency care. So it's like the mobile
- response by the fire department is what you're saying. A little bit there. They're very,
- Related, not the same, because they do similar things, but very related types of services, exactly.
- And honestly, it's a really cool thing. Anything else? Well, thank you all. Thanks for sharing with
- us, and thanks for showing up today. Like I said, I think
- Councilmember Piemont-Smith will definitely be here for the next meeting to see if we can get you more
- information on the social workers and see if we can actually make that happen. Okay, that's the case
- then we're adjourned. Thank you.