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.