WEBVTT 00:00:14.338 --> 00:00:23.034 - But I wanted to introduce to you the father of the Safe and City Task Force and the brains behind the 00:00:23.034 --> 00:00:31.901 - project, Mayor John Fernandez. John. Good morning and thanks for coming here today. I'm tempted to make 00:00:31.901 --> 00:00:40.939 - a joke about the father comment but we're being taped so I figure I better be good this morning. Actually 00:00:40.939 --> 00:00:43.070 - Chuck and his group have 00:00:43.266 --> 00:00:50.182 - done a wonderful job on this project, and I want to thank Dr. Barnser right off the bat for all the 00:00:50.182 --> 00:00:57.098 - time and effort he's put into this project. There's no way that we could have moved forward without 00:00:57.098 --> 00:01:04.222 - that kind of commitment and that kind of support from Indiana University. For the last several months, 00:01:04.222 --> 00:01:11.553 - we've been working very hard to address what is a very complex issue, and that's the broad subject matter 00:01:11.553 --> 00:01:12.798 - of public safety. 00:01:13.410 --> 00:01:22.626 - And typically, especially during heat of campaigns and such, the issue gets reduced to very insignificant 00:01:22.626 --> 00:01:31.407 - sound bites of quick fixes and slogans. But in reality, there are so many complexities involved with 00:01:31.407 --> 00:01:40.275 - these issues that it really does take a thorough analysis and a lot of effort. And moreover, it takes 00:01:40.275 --> 00:01:42.622 - a community-based approach 00:01:44.098 --> 00:01:51.687 - And that's what we've attempted to do for the last nine or 10 months now is to work through a number 00:01:51.687 --> 00:01:59.277 - of complex issues and develop a reasonable and practical plan with many different action items in it 00:01:59.277 --> 00:02:07.242 - that we can implement here in Bloomington Monroe County to make a real difference in the issues of public 00:02:07.242 --> 00:02:12.126 - safety. So today we've come to an important part of the process. 00:02:12.354 --> 00:02:19.889 - The various working groups that Dr. Bonser will be talking about here momentarily have developed a series 00:02:19.889 --> 00:02:27.281 - of recommendations in six broad areas. And today we need to hear from all of you on your views on these 00:02:27.281 --> 00:02:30.622 - recommendations. We don't pretend for a minute 00:02:31.106 --> 00:02:38.346 - to think that we know absolutely everything about these issues. We don't pretend for a minute that our 00:02:38.346 --> 00:02:45.446 - recommendations are perfect and that we've covered everything that there is to be covered. So please 00:02:45.446 --> 00:02:52.827 - feel free today to talk constructively about the recommendations, point out weaknesses, point out things 00:02:52.827 --> 00:02:59.294 - that we can build on, and certainly point out any omissions. We've tried very hard over the 00:02:59.490 --> 00:03:06.201 - last year to include as many people as possible, and I think this is a really good effort. And so today 00:03:06.201 --> 00:03:12.653 - I want to just simply thank you for coming out on a Saturday to work with your community to develop 00:03:12.653 --> 00:03:19.364 - the best plan possible for all of us. So with that, let me also thank BCAP for coming out today to help 00:03:19.364 --> 00:03:26.462 - record these proceedings. I think it will be important as we share this information over the next month or so 00:03:27.138 --> 00:03:33.980 - with the public and continue to get input. So again, thank you very much for being here today. I'm going 00:03:33.980 --> 00:03:40.497 - to turn it over to Dr. Bonser, who's going to lay out our game plan for the rest of the morning and 00:03:40.497 --> 00:03:47.078 - afternoon. Thank you. Thanks very much, John. I'd also like to thank everybody for coming out today. 00:03:47.078 --> 00:03:53.790 - I'd particularly like to thank the task force for what's been about nine months of hard work for them. 00:03:54.242 --> 00:04:01.072 - The mayor and I started, the mayor approached me on this. It was last May. It's almost a year ago. We 00:04:01.072 --> 00:04:07.902 - began talking about it and he and I and Chief Kennedy met the mayor's office to discuss it in ways in 00:04:07.902 --> 00:04:14.598 - which we might approach trying to improve the safety and the perception of safety in our community. 00:04:14.598 --> 00:04:21.562 - And then we had our first task force meeting in July and the task force since then from July till early 00:04:21.562 --> 00:04:22.366 - in the fall 00:04:22.626 --> 00:04:30.772 - grew to about 60 people, more than 60 people, actually. And there's a list, I believe, in the handout 00:04:30.772 --> 00:04:38.918 - that you have. I wanted to introduce to you, however, the task force chairs who have been responsible 00:04:38.918 --> 00:04:46.904 - for driving the program and the working groups, which is where most of the work has gone on. And as 00:04:46.904 --> 00:04:52.574 - the mayor indicated, we have six working groups within the task force. 00:04:52.770 --> 00:05:00.372 - The first one I wanted to introduce is the Youth Programs Workgroup, which is chaired by Mike Fitzgerald. 00:05:00.372 --> 00:05:07.758 - Mike. And working with Mike is SPIA graduate assistant Kathy Giles. Where's Kathy? Right here. OK. And 00:05:07.758 --> 00:05:15.145 - we're breaking up into these working group sessions here in a bit. And assigned to each of the working 00:05:15.145 --> 00:05:21.886 - groups as a recorder, we have some undergraduate SPIA volunteers. They really are volunteers. 00:05:22.402 --> 00:05:30.476 - And they're going to be recording and taking notes. And I want to introduce them to you in the youth 00:05:30.476 --> 00:05:38.630 - programs group. Matt Bubness, where is Matt? Over here. The second group, the second working group is 00:05:38.630 --> 00:05:46.944 - what we've called crime prevention. And the head of that is Carl Salzberg. Carl's in Europe. I'm sorry, 00:05:46.944 --> 00:05:50.142 - Cheryl Brown. Yeah, mitigating at risk. 00:05:50.946 --> 00:06:02.926 - is Cheryl Brown. Where is Cheryl? Hello. Hello. I'm sorry. Well, it's wrong on my list. I'm sorry. I 00:06:02.926 --> 00:06:13.246 - know better. Jay Hoffman. This is screwed up. Hang on. Let me get my other list. Okay. 00:06:15.714 --> 00:06:22.762 - Police law enforcement issues is one of our working groups. That was chaired by Roger Parks and Alex 00:06:22.762 --> 00:06:29.739 - Weiss. Alex is over here. Roger Parks has an illness and his family was not able to come today. And 00:06:29.739 --> 00:06:37.275 - working with them today is Eric Martin over here. Eric's my research assistant and has helped me throughout 00:06:37.275 --> 00:06:42.718 - this whole process and the overall project. The mitigating at risk situation. 00:06:42.850 --> 00:06:51.682 - situations, and we spell that out in the report about what we mean by that, was chaired by Carl Salzman. 00:06:51.682 --> 00:07:00.431 - And the research assistant there is Jay Hoffman. And working with Jay in the group today is Tom Cramsey 00:07:00.431 --> 00:07:09.011 - over here. He will be the recorder for that group. We created a group that is a little bit different, 00:07:09.011 --> 00:07:11.198 - I guess you would say, in 00:07:12.066 --> 00:07:18.410 - safety kinds of issues. We believe that civility was an important component of safety, so we created 00:07:18.410 --> 00:07:24.754 - a working group on civility. It was a very difficult, very slippery concept to get a hold of, as you 00:07:24.754 --> 00:07:31.099 - can imagine, but I think you will find that their work was really interesting, and they came up with 00:07:31.099 --> 00:07:37.380 - some, I think, very valuable recommendations. That group is chaired by Steve Saunders here, and Jay 00:07:37.380 --> 00:07:39.390 - Hoffman also worked with Steve. 00:07:43.618 --> 00:07:50.696 - The young man, the boy is going to work with them this afternoon, and that group is not here. I'll let 00:07:50.696 --> 00:07:57.704 - the group introduce him then. The fourth group is Crime Prevention. That was chaired by Cheryl Brown. 00:07:57.704 --> 00:08:04.576 - Sorry, Cheryl, over here. And working with Cheryl was one of our research assistants, Ann Sorensen, 00:08:04.576 --> 00:08:11.447 - over here. And finally, we had a group called Enhancing the Safety Environment, which had to do, as 00:08:11.447 --> 00:08:12.478 - you will hear, 00:08:12.930 --> 00:08:20.099 - with physical kinds of arrangements particularly and things that we might do to the physical environment 00:08:20.099 --> 00:08:26.926 - of the community to make it safe and also improve the perception of safety. And that was chaired by 00:08:26.926 --> 00:08:34.094 - Dan Sherman over here and his research assistants Ann Sorensen over here. Okay? So those are the groups. 00:08:34.094 --> 00:08:40.990 - Now what were we up to? Basically what we're up to was trying to improve, we had really three goals. 00:08:41.442 --> 00:08:49.261 - One was to try and improve the capability of the community's law enforcement system. Secondly, to develop 00:08:49.261 --> 00:08:56.711 - proactive citizens' programs and techniques and try to enhance both the safety and the perception of 00:08:56.711 --> 00:09:04.161 - safety in our community. And finally, to improve citizen civility. So those are the three goals that 00:09:04.161 --> 00:09:11.390 - we set out with. Now, as I indicated, we established six working groups to do that and the report 00:09:11.778 --> 00:09:18.787 - spells that out, this preliminary report that you have. The task force met once a month throughout most 00:09:18.787 --> 00:09:25.526 - of this past nine months, and the working groups met much more frequently than that. So most of the 00:09:25.526 --> 00:09:32.804 - work was done in the working groups. In the task force, we would have people appear before us. For example, 00:09:32.804 --> 00:09:39.678 - some Lieutenant Comer came and talked about school systems. We had people from the Bloomington Police 00:09:39.678 --> 00:09:40.958 - talk with us about 00:09:41.282 --> 00:09:49.064 - crime statistics and so on. And we would have programs like that throughout the year. But as I say, 00:09:49.064 --> 00:09:56.924 - most of the work went on within the working group sections. I wanted to say also that we regard what 00:09:56.924 --> 00:10:04.861 - we're talking about today as a draft. And our plan is to get as much feedback as we possibly can from 00:10:04.861 --> 00:10:08.830 - the community on this draft. And then after today, 00:10:09.506 --> 00:10:18.810 - Then we'll convert that to a final report, which we will then take back to the task force and to the 00:10:18.810 --> 00:10:28.114 - mayor. And we hope to have that done hopefully before we're into the summer very far. Well, before I 00:10:28.114 --> 00:10:37.694 - walk through the schedule with you briefly, I wanted to maybe just throw up a couple of transparencies. 00:10:38.242 --> 00:10:53.421 - to give you a feel for the overall situation that we were looking at. I'll move through these rather 00:10:53.421 --> 00:11:07.998 - quickly. This won't tell you a lot. I'm gonna show you some graphs on this. This is the database 00:11:09.122 --> 00:11:19.561 - Bloomington Police Department crime statistics, and it shows you over a period of 1980 to 1990, the 00:11:19.561 --> 00:11:30.312 - frequency of a variety of crimes in our community. So I say I'm going to show you some charts on that. 00:11:30.312 --> 00:11:36.158 - You can really see what was happening with it. Okay, so 00:11:37.442 --> 00:11:48.496 - The top is simply total offenses, and you can see numbers change from 1980 from about, what, 2,300 to 00:11:48.496 --> 00:11:59.659 - something over 3,000 in that 15-year period. Violent offenses, you can see the pattern of change there 00:11:59.659 --> 00:12:06.270 - over that period. And criminal homicides seem rather random. 00:12:07.234 --> 00:12:15.541 - This is going to give you kind of a flavor of what the background statistics that we were looking at 00:12:15.541 --> 00:12:24.177 - as we began this project. These are statistics on certain kinds of crime. There's a lot of dispute about 00:12:24.177 --> 00:12:32.649 - the rape statistic, because the problem is a lot of rapes aren't reported or aren't reported properly. 00:12:32.649 --> 00:12:35.774 - So these are the official statistics. 00:12:36.226 --> 00:12:49.379 - Some folks would argue that they very much understand what that real situation is. Robbery statistics, 00:12:49.379 --> 00:13:02.149 - as you can see, have gone up considerably. The period since 1980, an aggravated assault has gone up 00:13:02.149 --> 00:13:05.342 - particularly since 1980, 00:13:06.818 --> 00:13:22.528 - Okay. Total property crimes, burglary, larceny theft patterns over that 15-year period. Again, limited 00:13:22.528 --> 00:13:33.662 - crime statistics. And finally, motor vehicle theft and arson statistics. 00:13:37.442 --> 00:13:44.288 - These are in the report, but I just want to give you some flavor for those of you who have not been 00:13:44.288 --> 00:13:51.340 - involved in the task force with the kind of preliminary data we began with. Okay, we also had a survey 00:13:51.340 --> 00:13:58.323 - conducted in the community, citizens in the community. We interviewed in early November, roughly 560, 00:13:58.323 --> 00:14:05.854 - 570 persons in the community, randomly selected, of course, and interviewed by the IU Survey Research Center. 00:14:06.242 --> 00:14:14.293 - And what we're interested in is finding out how people regarded safety in the community. So their reactions 00:14:14.293 --> 00:14:21.897 - to, in a way, perception of safety is what we were, I suppose you could say, coming up with here. The 00:14:21.897 --> 00:14:29.650 - first transparency I want to show you has to do with the question where we ask in general, do you think 00:14:29.650 --> 00:14:35.614 - people in our community are very friendly, somewhat friendly, not too friendly, 00:14:36.098 --> 00:14:44.824 - not friendly at all. And you can see that in there. So it come out somewhat friendly in that category. 00:14:44.824 --> 00:14:53.720 - This has to do with the issue of civility and how civility ties in with public safety. That's what we're 00:14:53.720 --> 00:15:02.362 - trying to get at here. When we asked the sample how concerned they were personally about grime in our 00:15:02.362 --> 00:15:03.294 - community, 00:15:04.354 --> 00:15:15.413 - 40% said they were very concerned and roughly 40% said they were somewhat concerned. We tried to get 00:15:15.413 --> 00:15:26.363 - a reaction from them about how comfortable people felt in certain kinds of settings. And so this is 00:15:26.363 --> 00:15:31.838 - part of that series. This question had to do with 00:15:33.218 --> 00:15:45.522 - how safe how safe do you feel when you're at home alone? And you can see the response there. Most people 00:15:45.522 --> 00:15:57.239 - felt very safe. Then we asked how safe do you feel alone at night outside in your own neighborhood? 00:15:57.239 --> 00:16:00.286 - Again, in a relative half 00:16:00.610 --> 00:16:09.572 - of the people surveyed said they felt very, very safe. And a sizable proportion said they felt somewhat 00:16:09.572 --> 00:16:18.189 - safe in their own neighborhood. Did you do any work looking at it from the point of view of men and 00:16:18.189 --> 00:16:27.582 - women separately? Yeah, we did. Yeah. We also did some cross tabulations, which came out rather interesting. 00:16:28.674 --> 00:16:39.705 - Then we ask how safe people feel alone at night in downtown Bloomington. You know, less than half said 00:16:39.705 --> 00:16:50.521 - they felt somewhat safe. What's that about the third? Felt very safe. Balance, full concern. When we 00:16:50.521 --> 00:16:57.054 - ask them how safe they felt alone at night on the IU campus, 00:16:58.594 --> 00:17:06.252 - A sizable portion said they didn't feel very safe. What's interesting, I'm not going to have time to 00:17:06.252 --> 00:17:13.834 - show you the cross-tab on this, but it'll be in the report. But when you broke this down by who was 00:17:13.834 --> 00:17:21.493 - responding, what came out in the statistic is the people who aren't very familiar with the IU campus 00:17:21.493 --> 00:17:27.710 - didn't feel very safe there. People who are very familiar with the IU campus felt 00:17:28.194 --> 00:17:37.179 - relatively safe. So these are some of the cross tabs that will come out in the report that are a bit 00:17:37.179 --> 00:17:46.698 - more illuminating than these raw statistics. When we ask how safe from crime do you feel in our community, 00:17:46.698 --> 00:17:55.684 - a sizable portion felt that they were very safe or somewhat safe. Well, I don't have time to go into 00:17:55.684 --> 00:17:57.374 - any more of these. 00:17:57.890 --> 00:18:05.014 - as you see the cross tabs are in the report there and you can have a look at them. The bottom line of 00:18:05.014 --> 00:18:12.278 - all this is I think the perception of safety in the community is quite high. People generally feel safe 00:18:12.278 --> 00:18:19.332 - in the community and feel that we don't, I would argue don't have a serious crime problem right now. 00:18:19.332 --> 00:18:26.526 - Although when you look at some of the statistics, some people are concerned about where we're heading. 00:18:27.234 --> 00:18:35.588 - So anyway, at the moment, I think the perception of safety is fine, but I'm clear where the training 00:18:35.588 --> 00:18:44.108 - is going. Okay, again, you can look at that yourself in more detail. I wish I had more time to go into 00:18:44.108 --> 00:18:52.463 - it, but we want to spend most of our time today in the working groups and getting your feedback. Any 00:18:52.463 --> 00:18:55.358 - questions on what I covered there? 00:18:56.930 --> 00:19:05.207 - Okay, I'd like to walk through the schedule with you briefly. Everyone by now should have been assigned 00:19:05.207 --> 00:19:13.325 - to a working group section. We have three working group sections this morning and two this afternoon. 00:19:13.325 --> 00:19:21.522 - This morning, the youth programs working group chaired by Mike Fitzgerald is going to meet in the bank 00:19:21.522 --> 00:19:25.342 - one is abandoned room, which is down this hall. 00:19:25.986 --> 00:19:34.031 - past the main hallway and to the left. And the crime prevention and mitigating at risk groups are going 00:19:34.031 --> 00:19:41.767 - to be meeting to the room immediately to your right as you come out of this room. It's called the J 00:19:41.767 --> 00:19:49.503 - room. And the third group, the bank, the police law enforcement group is going to be meeting in the 00:19:49.503 --> 00:19:55.614 - bank one Hanson room, which is again down the hall, past the main lobby there. 00:19:55.714 --> 00:20:02.772 - and on your left. The sessions will go on until 12 o'clock there. And then we'll meet back here for 00:20:02.772 --> 00:20:09.830 - lunch. And then we'll go into, there's no program at lunch. We'll go back into an afternoon session 00:20:09.830 --> 00:20:17.382 - for an hour and a half from 1 until 2.30. And I'll give you those assignments then, those room assignments 00:20:17.382 --> 00:20:24.158 - then. They're different than what shows in this program. Finally, we'll meet back here at 2.30. 00:20:25.122 --> 00:20:38.518 - and receive reports on the feedback to the recommendations from the working group chairs. And we've 00:20:38.518 --> 00:20:53.790 - allocated an hour or so for that report. Okay, are there any questions on that? Yeah, Steve. Good feedback, yeah. 00:21:23.842 --> 00:21:30.461 - Well, it is mixed up a bit because we're only dealing with three sessions this morning and two this 00:21:30.461 --> 00:21:37.212 - afternoon. I think I'd like to try it the way we have it set up right now, and we'll see how it goes. 00:21:37.212 --> 00:21:44.095 - Just a word about the process in the working groups. Again, the purpose is to obtain feedback. And what 00:21:44.095 --> 00:21:50.846 - we're interested in, these kinds of questions, did our working group identify the problems correctly? 00:21:51.714 --> 00:22:00.091 - Were the right issues covered? Do the working group recommendations make sense? Can they be realistically 00:22:00.091 --> 00:22:08.390 - implemented? So we're trying to get ideas from you and reactions from you with regard to those questions 00:22:08.390 --> 00:22:15.898 - and any recommendations you may have that we missed, things that you think we need to explore. 00:22:15.898 --> 00:22:19.454 - As I say, each working group will be chaired 00:22:19.554 --> 00:22:26.010 - by the chairman of that, each roundtable discussion group chaired by the working group chairman with 00:22:26.010 --> 00:22:32.594 - the assistance of their graduate assistant and a recorder there to take notes. So again, the questions 00:22:32.594 --> 00:22:39.178 - of the working group should revolve around these. One, did the working group get it right? Other, have 00:22:39.178 --> 00:22:45.571 - we missed or ignored important issues or programs? Secondly, which recommendations do you think are 00:22:45.571 --> 00:22:49.534 - most important in the working group? Do you have other ideas? 00:22:50.338 --> 00:22:56.755 - And finally, moving from policy to action, given the policy recommendations that we've made, how do 00:22:56.755 --> 00:23:03.300 - we move from there to implementation? So, that's all I had to say about that. Let me ask if there are 00:23:03.300 --> 00:23:09.716 - any questions before we break up into the working groups, okay? Everyone know where you're supposed 00:23:09.716 --> 00:23:13.374 - to go? Okay, we'll see you back here then at 12 o'clock. 00:24:18.466 --> 00:24:24.855 - And with respect to resources, we made three particular recommendations. And for the most part, these 00:24:24.855 --> 00:24:31.182 - are recommendations which in the last several weeks and months have actually, we now know that these 00:24:31.182 --> 00:24:37.445 - things are going to happen. So we're kind of pleased by that. First of which, our recommendation is 00:24:37.445 --> 00:24:43.709 - that the Bloomington Police Department increase its staffing. The city has taken some very positive 00:24:43.709 --> 00:24:48.094 - steps in recent years to do that. We believe that's a positive trend. 00:24:48.418 --> 00:24:56.594 - Based on our analysis, the department does not have sufficient sworn resources. And I think I should 00:24:56.594 --> 00:25:04.770 - point out also, and I think it's an often raised question, it is the case that there are other large 00:25:04.770 --> 00:25:13.027 - law enforcement agencies in this area. And certainly with respect to some operations, access to those 00:25:13.027 --> 00:25:16.670 - other organizations is valuable, but I think 00:25:17.506 --> 00:25:24.220 - At the end of the day, crime control strategy in Bloomington is going to be the responsibility of the 00:25:24.220 --> 00:25:31.197 - Bloomington Police Department. And I think it's incumbent upon the city to make sure that that department 00:25:31.197 --> 00:25:38.043 - has enough resources to do that. And we applaud the plan to move into the new police facility. We think 00:25:38.043 --> 00:25:45.086 - it's going to be terrific over there, significantly enhance the capacity for police community interaction. 00:25:45.762 --> 00:25:52.981 - We recommend further that the department investigate other kinds of facilities. For example, small facilities 00:25:52.981 --> 00:25:59.544 - in shopping centers, in public housing, downtown. Once again, the goal being to increase the number 00:25:59.544 --> 00:26:06.172 - of contacts between police officers and citizens in non-threatening and in non-emergency situations. 00:26:06.172 --> 00:26:12.931 - Every one of those contacts that you have, you strengthen that relationship and it works out being for 00:26:12.931 --> 00:26:15.294 - the better. Finally, there's a plan 00:26:15.746 --> 00:26:23.611 - being implemented now to establish a combined public safety communications facility which would involve 00:26:23.611 --> 00:26:31.703 - the local law enforcement agencies and police and EMS. That's certainly an appropriate plan and we commend 00:26:31.703 --> 00:26:38.888 - that. Now with respect to managing resources, there are a couple of general directions. First, 00:26:38.888 --> 00:26:44.862 - the Bloomington Police Management Information Systems is at present inadequate 00:26:45.474 --> 00:26:52.364 - to do much strategizing or, for that matter, actually to do much managing. So steps are underway now 00:26:52.364 --> 00:26:59.186 - to develop a new management information system. We applaud those. Some of us on the task force will 00:26:59.186 --> 00:27:06.417 - be working towards the implementation of that. And what will come out of that, I believe, is the capacity 00:27:06.417 --> 00:27:13.307 - to much more effectively manage the resources of the department. Now by that, we mean in a couple of 00:27:13.307 --> 00:27:14.398 - areas. For one, 00:27:14.562 --> 00:27:20.814 - We need to closely look at the allocation of police resources, both respect to temporal allocation, 00:27:20.814 --> 00:27:27.503 - geographic allocation, that has implications for work scheduling. We want to make sure that the department 00:27:27.503 --> 00:27:33.817 - administration has the capacity to put officers in the places where they need to go and at the times 00:27:33.817 --> 00:27:40.631 - where they need to be there. This is very, very important. If you're going to have a crime control strategy, 00:27:40.631 --> 00:27:44.382 - that strategy is going to be based largely on your capacity 00:27:44.770 --> 00:27:50.887 - to be responsive to change in crime patterns. You need to have the officers to do that. That's going 00:27:50.887 --> 00:27:57.307 - to take some work, but I'm quite sure we can get there. The second area that holds considerable progress, 00:27:57.307 --> 00:28:03.666 - and we've heard that in a number of groups today, is the general area of geographic information systems. 00:28:03.666 --> 00:28:09.783 - We now have the capacity to produce essentially real-time maps of crime patterns and disorder in our 00:28:09.783 --> 00:28:13.054 - community. That's going to be invaluable information. 00:28:13.538 --> 00:28:19.419 - Many cities now take this information and make it available on their worldwide webpage. For example, 00:28:19.419 --> 00:28:25.592 - citizens can query the webpage and find out about crime in their neighborhoods. And of course, the reason 00:28:25.592 --> 00:28:31.415 - why that's so important is that for most people in most neighborhoods, there's less crime than they 00:28:31.415 --> 00:28:37.412 - think there is. And they get to see that in a fairly clear presentation. The other application of this 00:28:37.412 --> 00:28:40.382 - GIS technology, of course, is for police officers. 00:28:40.674 --> 00:28:47.289 - In Chicago now, for example, a police officer can walk into a police station and make a real-time inquiry 00:28:47.289 --> 00:28:53.530 - about crime in their own beat. They can find out what crimes occurred in the last 12 to 24 hours in 00:28:53.530 --> 00:29:00.021 - their beat and what information is relevant. So it's a very, very valuable tool. But the real objective 00:29:00.021 --> 00:29:06.449 - of all this improvement in kind of information systems is that the department can shift its focus from 00:29:06.449 --> 00:29:09.694 - one of incident-driven policing, in which we simply 00:29:10.146 --> 00:29:16.417 - wait for 911 call to come in and then go take care of it and then go do something else to an emphasis 00:29:16.417 --> 00:29:22.749 - on solving problems. Knowing about the nature of problems in the community will allow the BPD to solve 00:29:22.749 --> 00:29:29.328 - those problems or a substantial number of them and that's certainly an objective. Finally we think there's 00:29:29.328 --> 00:29:35.475 - two areas in which the department needs to closely reevaluate its mission. The first is in the area 00:29:35.475 --> 00:29:39.902 - of managing criminal investigations. The department needs to look again 00:29:40.226 --> 00:29:46.225 - at its work scheduling for investigators to make sure that that's consistent with the workload demands. 00:29:46.225 --> 00:29:52.167 - And they need to improve their capability of communicating with victims and witnesses about the status 00:29:52.167 --> 00:29:58.109 - of criminal investigations. There are management information systems that are available that have been 00:29:58.109 --> 00:30:04.455 - developed some time ago that can do that. And our final recommendation has to do with the general orientation 00:30:04.455 --> 00:30:07.166 - for the Department towards community policing. 00:30:07.874 --> 00:30:14.183 - Now community policing is a word that we often hear in those of us in the police community often wonder 00:30:14.183 --> 00:30:20.674 - out loud what it means. But what it means in general terms is the following. One, you have an organization 00:30:20.674 --> 00:30:26.740 - that is more interested in solving problems than responding to incidents. We've talked about how to 00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:32.502 - do that. It's an organization that's decentralized, one in which beat officers and supervisors 00:30:32.502 --> 00:30:37.598 - and neighborhood police officers work in their communities to solve problems and to 00:30:37.922 --> 00:30:45.559 - fix the problems in those communities. Finally, you have an organization that's responsive to the community. 00:30:45.559 --> 00:30:52.635 - And by that, we mean an organization which goes to community meetings, talks to neighborhoods, talks 00:30:52.635 --> 00:30:59.641 - to residents, but then does what the people want them to do. And that's an important change. That's 00:30:59.641 --> 00:31:06.997 - a big change. And I believe that the resources and the capacity to do that is in place now in the police 00:31:06.997 --> 00:31:07.838 - department. 00:31:08.002 --> 00:31:33.120 - And I think these changes that we make with respect to infrastructure will facilitate those and support 00:31:33.120 --> 00:31:37.950 - that general trend. 00:31:38.306 --> 00:31:46.723 - anything else? Okay for the information of the working group chairs the sequence I'm going to do this 00:31:46.723 --> 00:31:55.058 - in is Mike Fitzgerald will be next followed by Cheryl Brown and then Jay is going to report for Carl 00:31:55.058 --> 00:32:02.238 - Salzman and then Steve Saunders and Dan Sherman. So Mike Fitzgerald on youth programs. 00:32:08.642 --> 00:32:16.970 - background on the youth programs is just to say that what we found every week during the entire process 00:32:16.970 --> 00:32:25.139 - was four or five more great programs that we hadn't known about the week before. And I think from our 00:32:25.139 --> 00:32:33.627 - point of view the really good news is that everywhere around the community we have really strong programs 00:32:33.627 --> 00:32:36.190 - that are together. The bad news 00:32:36.290 --> 00:32:44.422 - or what we think is the key need is a means to coordinate and facilitate the overlaps that are inevitable 00:32:44.422 --> 00:32:52.708 - in many of those programs. And that really leads into the centerpiece of the proposals from youth programs, 00:32:52.708 --> 00:33:00.457 - and that is that there be an establishment of a joint city county commission for youth. We were very 00:33:00.457 --> 00:33:04.830 - lucky in our meeting just now to have with us the mayor, 00:33:05.058 --> 00:33:12.731 - some commissioners and people from both the City and County Council, and I think that there's a universal 00:33:12.731 --> 00:33:20.188 - acclamation about this notion for the establishment of such a commission. I'm not going to go over all 00:33:20.188 --> 00:33:27.716 - of the purposes and notes that are outlined in written form. I think the key thing to highlight is that 00:33:27.716 --> 00:33:34.014 - this would be a vehicle for coordination, for helping to identify certain redundancies 00:33:34.498 --> 00:33:43.070 - and solving certain of those problems. One good example is that there are 30 great mentoring programs 00:33:43.070 --> 00:33:52.145 - or good mentoring programs here in Monroe County. However, there's no unified method right now for training 00:33:52.145 --> 00:34:00.969 - mentors or establishing a certain baseline of professional criteria for those. This is the type of thing 00:34:00.969 --> 00:34:03.742 - that such a commission could do. 00:34:04.194 --> 00:34:12.639 - The specific recommendation would be that both the city and the county authorize in no later than a 00:34:12.639 --> 00:34:21.674 - June by July 1 timeframe a general authorization resolution stating their support behind this proposition. 00:34:21.674 --> 00:34:30.710 - And then by September each of them working out a mission statement that would have certain recommendations 00:34:30.710 --> 00:34:32.990 - on composition, et cetera. 00:34:33.730 --> 00:34:43.124 - The notion would be that a youth advisory board be created that is composed of youth around the entire 00:34:43.124 --> 00:34:52.701 - county and that one or two youth sit on this commission so that they can facilitate ideas back and forth 00:34:52.701 --> 00:35:01.822 - between youth and the community figures that would be represented here so that it's a way to really 00:35:01.822 --> 00:35:03.646 - facilitate dialogue 00:35:04.418 --> 00:35:12.450 - The further recommendation would be that the MCCSC meet and discuss the mission statement that's being 00:35:12.450 --> 00:35:20.325 - formulated here and hopefully adopt a resolution supporting this proposition because the recognition 00:35:20.325 --> 00:35:28.435 - is that there will need to be a really active dialogue between the school system and the resources that 00:35:28.435 --> 00:35:31.710 - they control and such a youth commission. 00:35:32.610 --> 00:35:41.136 - Kathy, have I left anything out on the Youth Commission? Right. I think the other points then, in terms 00:35:41.136 --> 00:35:49.579 - of the generalities there, that it would be a vehicle to implement a variety of different suggestions, 00:35:49.579 --> 00:35:58.351 - identify the gaps, really try to promote those programs which are the most important, but not necessarily, 00:35:58.351 --> 00:36:00.318 - as John Fernandez said, 00:36:00.834 --> 00:36:08.471 - supporting its own programs and competing with resources of other groups, just helping to facilitate 00:36:08.471 --> 00:36:16.260 - that process. Going then very quickly over some of the things that we discussed, the notion of whether 00:36:16.260 --> 00:36:24.048 - there should be one or multiple gathering places for youth, I'm not going to try to go into any detail 00:36:24.048 --> 00:36:27.678 - again with the limited time. It's in the notes. 00:36:27.842 --> 00:36:34.613 - We think it's very important to have a variety of opportunities for youth to come together 00:36:34.613 --> 00:36:42.053 - in an extracurricular circumstance, but also using the schools in certain ways. For example, really 00:36:42.053 --> 00:36:49.716 - trying to promote and increase the opportunities for adults in the community, particularly retired and 00:36:49.716 --> 00:36:55.966 - semi-retired people, to interact with the students in much more broader based ways. 00:36:56.386 --> 00:37:06.467 - This can be done in cooperation with the school system in a number of ways. I think I already mentioned 00:37:06.467 --> 00:37:15.966 - the mentoring program coordination, the mentoring program training, so I won't go back over that. 00:37:16.770 --> 00:37:23.440 - The resource identification in the community of parenting resources, the Sunrise Publications Parenting 00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:29.918 - Guide is the best that we've got so far, just a start obviously. Many of you are familiar with that. 00:37:29.918 --> 00:37:36.588 - It lists probably a thousand different organizations of one sort or another that are doing this or that 00:37:36.588 --> 00:37:43.387 - on a variety of different functions. We want to continue to use that as a baseline to continue to improve 00:37:43.387 --> 00:37:44.862 - it and then get it out 00:37:45.186 --> 00:37:52.647 - Again, reaching to different aspects of the community. We want to involve businesses in creating parenting 00:37:52.647 --> 00:37:59.969 - programs. The guide has a checklist and information on how businesses can do that. We want to have youth 00:37:59.969 --> 00:38:06.942 - bulletin boards throughout the community to advertise the things that are happening for youth, both 00:38:06.942 --> 00:38:14.334 - in general and specific events that are coming up. We want to have an annual youth exposition that really 00:38:14.690 --> 00:38:21.694 - broadens over some of the things that have been done in the past that brings in job fairs, job information 00:38:21.694 --> 00:38:28.306 - with it, for youth, under this umbrella, so that we not only see what all of the youth organizations 00:38:28.306 --> 00:38:35.180 - are, but we start to understand the opportunities for youth. We want to improve and increase the Indiana 00:38:35.180 --> 00:38:41.791 - University student volunteerism that already exists. Again, it's a question of bringing together the 00:38:41.791 --> 00:38:44.606 - information and disseminating it back out. 00:38:44.930 --> 00:38:53.430 - We also had the idea for creating some what we'll call school videos here on the outline, which is code 00:38:53.430 --> 00:39:01.929 - for making the MCCSE a little more user-friendly in a variety of ways, particularly to people who might 00:39:01.929 --> 00:39:08.222 - be parents of at-risk youth who have a certain feeling of disenfranchisement 00:39:08.386 --> 00:39:16.016 - and we want to get them involved to know how to get into the MCCSC. And we think that videos and other 00:39:16.016 --> 00:39:23.498 - information so that there are multiple points of access could help facilitate that in many ways. And 00:39:23.498 --> 00:39:30.980 - then getting that video out into the parenting programs in the businesses, again, just disseminating 00:39:30.980 --> 00:39:37.054 - information at all levels. I think that really highlights the key that we've had. 00:39:38.466 --> 00:39:53.427 - Questions or comments? Thanks. Thanks very much, Mike. Cheryl Brown on crime prevention. Cheryl? OK. 00:39:53.427 --> 00:40:05.278 - Our committee, we discuss crime prevention. We learned that through the survey, 00:40:05.858 --> 00:40:12.008 - There wasn't that much crime in Bloomington as people felt there was, but we felt like we still needed 00:40:12.008 --> 00:40:18.159 - to talk about it because there was enough people that were concerned about crime in our community that 00:40:18.159 --> 00:40:24.130 - they felt like it was something, some important issue. So going forward, we decided that there were 00:40:24.130 --> 00:40:30.160 - a lot of groups already in Bloomington that were working on issues in crime. A lot of the task force 00:40:30.160 --> 00:40:33.982 - had already started some of the same things we were discussing. 00:40:34.274 --> 00:40:42.028 - And they could deal with them in different ways that we couldn't. So we decided that the biggest thing 00:40:42.028 --> 00:40:49.707 - that crime prevention could do was education. And we felt like through packets that were sent out, we 00:40:49.707 --> 00:40:57.311 - discussed sending them out through different organizations that deal with people that have problems, 00:40:57.311 --> 00:41:02.430 - housing additions, packets would go out to new people buying homes. 00:41:03.426 --> 00:41:11.918 - We could deal with that that a way. And to the school systems that are dealing with crimes, maybe there 00:41:11.918 --> 00:41:20.166 - would be some things that some of the social services could help them with that have problems in the 00:41:20.166 --> 00:41:28.413 - schools. We dealt with putting it in the newspaper. The HT could run different things on that in the 00:41:28.413 --> 00:41:32.414 - different columns. Different organizations could 00:41:32.642 --> 00:41:56.094 - present their issues on a monthly basis. We would run different issues through the HT for preventing crime. 00:42:03.650 --> 00:42:14.436 - We decided that we could provide citizens with an up-to-date information on an ongoing basis as to what's 00:42:14.436 --> 00:42:24.916 - going on in Bloomington with the City Safe Civil Task Force. Some of the things that we discussed that 00:42:24.916 --> 00:42:31.326 - some of the other groups also went into were the Yoda program, 00:42:32.450 --> 00:42:41.658 - alternative transportation, extended outreach education for senior citizens. We talked about mentoring 00:42:41.658 --> 00:42:50.686 - programs, parenting resources, we talked about that, and coordinating school volunteer programs. And 00:42:50.686 --> 00:43:00.252 - hopefully some of those programs that youth programs and mitigating at risk with the programs that they're 00:43:00.252 --> 00:43:01.950 - presenting, crime, 00:43:02.690 --> 00:43:09.903 - we felt is that education that they're also giving out would prevent some of the crime that we have. 00:43:09.903 --> 00:43:17.044 - And our biggest problem it seems is with the middle school kids and high school, we've got a lot of 00:43:17.044 --> 00:43:24.756 - good programs running right now for the grade schools. So we felt like if there was more mentoring programs 00:43:24.756 --> 00:43:30.398 - that the youth program is offering, that that would help our crime prevention. 00:43:31.298 --> 00:43:38.536 - Educating the smaller kids starting out was our biggest key, and if we could find ways to educate them, 00:43:38.536 --> 00:43:45.496 - and we felt like a lot of the human resources organizations that we have out there that are already 00:43:45.496 --> 00:43:52.804 - dealing with a lot of kids and families, and they could give that information to the families. We talked 00:43:52.804 --> 00:44:01.086 - about a home page, a kids page in the newspaper where we could put something on a kids page in the newspaper for kids. 00:44:02.210 --> 00:44:08.833 - The board of realtors, maybe in some of the banks when they're selling the homes and showing homes would 00:44:08.833 --> 00:44:15.455 - give information. I know a lot of times you're probably getting information in neighborhoods when you're 00:44:15.455 --> 00:44:21.826 - buying a house as to what crime goes on in that neighborhood. So information packets there. Downtown 00:44:21.826 --> 00:44:28.133 - community, we talked about alarm systems. I work at the college mall, so I kind of know some of the 00:44:28.133 --> 00:44:30.782 - things that the stores there do as far as 00:44:31.426 --> 00:44:37.700 - people working in stores as how they teach their employees how to watch for crime. And that same thing 00:44:37.700 --> 00:44:44.036 - that neighborhood associations and groups like that do, teaching people how to watch for crime. We also 00:44:44.036 --> 00:44:50.127 - talked about how to call crimes in. That would be in the packet, how to call crimes into the police 00:44:50.127 --> 00:44:56.280 - department so that they would know whether it's something that they needed to respond to right away. 00:44:56.280 --> 00:45:01.214 - Is it a life-threatening crime? What number do you use when you call a crime in? 00:45:01.410 --> 00:45:09.338 - This kind of information would be in a packet. Information as to how to design your landscaping would 00:45:09.338 --> 00:45:17.422 - be in a packet. And we'd hope that maybe the city would provide people with, or some organization would 00:45:17.422 --> 00:45:25.583 - provide people, homeowners or developers, with good ideas as far as how to do that when they're building 00:45:25.583 --> 00:45:31.102 - a home or redesigning or remodeling a home, what things would be good. 00:45:31.234 --> 00:45:39.306 - We hope that packets and information through the HT, even radio spots, or maybe even some TV spots, 00:45:39.306 --> 00:45:47.378 - if someone has the funding to do that, would be good for crime prevention. So education is the main 00:45:47.378 --> 00:45:55.450 - thing that I think we can do if we want to prevent crime, is educate people on how to prevent crime 00:45:55.450 --> 00:45:59.486 - to themselves and to watch for crimes for others. 00:46:06.242 --> 00:46:19.082 - Thanks very much, Cheryl. Jay Hoffman is going to give the report for Carl Salzman on the mitigating 00:46:19.082 --> 00:46:30.270 - at-risk situations. Jay? Cheryl and I actually voted for a shorter podium, but we lost. 00:46:30.466 --> 00:46:35.415 - I'd like to begin by first recognizing our committee. It was rather small, but it was a committed group. 00:46:35.415 --> 00:46:40.128 - And although they haven't made it through the day, some of them, it's been a long day. I would just 00:46:40.128 --> 00:46:44.606 - like to briefly recognize them. Our committee was composed of Shadia Garrison, Chuck Holloway, 00:46:44.606 --> 00:46:49.460 - Brenda Ogborn, Carl Salzman, and Toby Strout. And I just want to thank them publicly for doing a great 00:46:49.460 --> 00:46:54.268 - job and sticking with us all the way. Their deliberation and insights and professional expertise were 00:46:54.268 --> 00:46:59.358 - just invaluable in putting together a tremendous amount and variety of recommendations from this committee. 00:47:00.258 --> 00:47:05.733 - Mitigating at risk situations is a very diverse topic, and it might actually be, in my opinion, the 00:47:05.733 --> 00:47:11.317 - most fun one for the task force because we were able to integrate all the different aspects of crime, 00:47:11.317 --> 00:47:16.846 - safety, civility, youth, you name it. We could talk about it in our committee because all those deal 00:47:16.846 --> 00:47:22.485 - with at risk situations. In designing some of our recommendations, I was reminded of a quote the other 00:47:22.485 --> 00:47:28.234 - day that the truth is all around you. What matters is where you place your focus. And with that, I would 00:47:28.234 --> 00:47:29.438 - just like to say that 00:47:29.538 --> 00:47:34.599 - Although we approached certain areas and we feel that the truth might be in those, we know there are 00:47:34.599 --> 00:47:39.610 - many areas that we didn't touch. And we know that there are many service providers in the community 00:47:39.610 --> 00:47:44.722 - who are already doing a tremendous job in these areas. And we hope to build on and innovate and offer 00:47:44.722 --> 00:47:50.034 - creativity to those groups, not replace and rebuild. With that, our first recommendation that we proposed 00:47:50.034 --> 00:47:55.195 - is called the After School Program, Integrating Foreign Language and Computer Skills. And this one has 00:47:55.195 --> 00:47:58.302 - really generated into something very creative and innovative. 00:47:58.466 --> 00:48:03.625 - where we're targeting after school kids grades one through five and we realize there are a lot of programs 00:48:03.625 --> 00:48:08.542 - already targeting this group but this particular program seeks to teach these kids a foreign language 00:48:08.542 --> 00:48:13.460 - skill which may or may not be exciting to them but we hope it encourages their parents because we all 00:48:13.460 --> 00:48:18.329 - know that it's easier to learn a foreign language when you're young than when you get a little older 00:48:18.329 --> 00:48:23.247 - in college like myself when it gets a little difficult. But how do you make that fun? We thought well 00:48:23.247 --> 00:48:26.622 - you know if these kids had a pen pal in Germany or a pen pal in Spain 00:48:26.818 --> 00:48:31.688 - And they created a home page that kids all around the world could look at and see that, hey, I'm learning 00:48:31.688 --> 00:48:36.603 - this foreign language. I can communicate with you. It's a simple idea, but it's innovative. It's something 00:48:36.603 --> 00:48:41.519 - creative. It's something that no one else in the country is trying. And we thought it might spur interest. 00:48:41.519 --> 00:48:46.113 - And there was some pretty good comment from this particular recommendation in our group. But people 00:48:46.113 --> 00:48:50.753 - did emphasize the need that we do need more youth programs aimed at the 13- to 18-year-old, the true 00:48:50.753 --> 00:48:55.806 - at-risk kids. And I know that youth programs did a fantastic job of addressing that, and we need to continue. 00:48:56.546 --> 00:49:01.062 - The second recommendation that we put forward was for the suspended and expelled school. And this is 00:49:01.062 --> 00:49:05.892 - something that's already up and running in the community. And this gives kids who are suspended or expelled 00:49:05.892 --> 00:49:10.632 - from school an opportunity to get back in the saddle, so to speak, an opportunity to get back into school 00:49:10.632 --> 00:49:15.148 - to wipe out that expulsion, to wipe out that suspension so that they can learn, which is, after all, 00:49:15.148 --> 00:49:19.709 - what school is all about. We're not trying to get rid of kids. We're trying to educate them. And this 00:49:19.709 --> 00:49:22.526 - is something that the community started about three months ago 00:49:22.626 --> 00:49:27.842 - and our committee, one, wanted just to endorse it, and two, offered some ideas on how we might expand 00:49:27.842 --> 00:49:33.160 - it. The third and fourth recommendations really go together, and they talked about comprehensive health 00:49:33.160 --> 00:49:38.325 - education. Now, we've all had health education, and unfortunately, many people consider health to be 00:49:38.325 --> 00:49:43.745 - that subject right after study hall or right after lunch, and it doesn't really matter if you stay awake, 00:49:43.745 --> 00:49:46.302 - and we wanted to get over that conception because 00:49:46.562 --> 00:49:51.111 - Healthy people are less at risk for just certain things than other people. And health encompasses more 00:49:51.111 --> 00:49:55.793 - than just a healthy lifestyle. We're talking about mental stresses that we all have, and drug and alcohol 00:49:55.793 --> 00:50:00.299 - abuse, and all these different things, and the need to comprehensively integrate them throughout your 00:50:00.299 --> 00:50:04.848 - life. And we believe that a healthy community is a community that is less at risk for many situations. 00:50:04.848 --> 00:50:09.530 - And Shadia did a nice job of putting together many things, many recommendations for not only the schools, 00:50:09.530 --> 00:50:13.726 - but for the daycare system. And I think we could see some interesting things come out of that. 00:50:15.170 --> 00:50:20.957 - The next recommendation we had was, again, we call it the latch key or summer school program. What might 00:50:20.957 --> 00:50:26.468 - be a better name for it is program for middle school kids. We just put forward an idea that we need 00:50:26.468 --> 00:50:32.035 - to try to develop more programs for middle way, middle, excuse me, middle school children. And Wendy 00:50:32.035 --> 00:50:37.656 - Perry has been instrumental in visiting with us about programs that one, are already in existence and 00:50:37.656 --> 00:50:41.790 - two, how we might get the ball rolling on some of these sorts of programs. 00:50:41.922 --> 00:50:46.803 - We also put together what we call the Herald Times Spring and Fall Insert. And what we came up with, 00:50:46.803 --> 00:50:51.684 - we had several parents on our groups, and they were saying, you know, what's happening is, I get all 00:50:51.684 --> 00:50:56.614 - these advertisements in March, and I enroll my kids in these great programs. And then in April, I get 00:50:56.614 --> 00:51:01.833 - a whole other set of great advertisements of things my kids can do in the summer, but I've already enrolled 00:51:01.833 --> 00:51:06.666 - them in these other events. So we thought, what a great idea it would be if we could coordinate all 00:51:06.666 --> 00:51:09.662 - this advertising together in one behemoth advertising effort. 00:51:09.794 --> 00:51:14.467 - by the newspaper so that parents could plan their summer vacations and plan Christmas and birthdays 00:51:14.467 --> 00:51:19.234 - and holidays and have all these summer school programs available at the same time. And then repeat it 00:51:19.234 --> 00:51:24.047 - in the fall so that parents can, again, plan out the school year of, OK, my kid is going to be in flag 00:51:24.047 --> 00:51:28.720 - football and then in baseball and whatever the particular interest might be. So it would be nice to 00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:33.533 - have all that in one spot that parents can turn to. And we hope to visit with the Herald Times and get 00:51:33.533 --> 00:51:35.870 - their input on how we might move forward on that. 00:51:36.002 --> 00:51:40.530 - The next recommendation we had was something that the mayor had specifically addressed in many of the 00:51:40.530 --> 00:51:45.147 - meetings, and that has to do with the overlap in social service delivery that we have in the community. 00:51:45.147 --> 00:51:49.764 - We want to say that the social service delivery we do have is absolutely outstanding, but so many times 00:51:49.764 --> 00:51:54.248 - we don't know what different agencies are doing and are they already attacking a particular problem. 00:51:54.248 --> 00:51:58.909 - And we thought by getting together in various forums and discussing in roundtable formats what's already 00:51:58.909 --> 00:52:03.482 - going on, we might be able to, one, eliminate some overlap and, two, just improve the general delivery 00:52:03.482 --> 00:52:05.968 - and getting people to work together a little bit better 00:52:05.968 --> 00:52:12.172 - And we hope that some things come out of that. We put forward the alternative transportation network 00:52:12.172 --> 00:52:18.438 - proposal. That was really Brenda's idea. And we had concerns that people just can't get from place to 00:52:18.438 --> 00:52:25.011 - place as well as they should in a town like this. And that might limit their ability and access to certain 00:52:25.011 --> 00:52:27.038 - programs or agencies or whatnot. 00:52:27.298 --> 00:52:32.320 - The landlord responsibility neighborhood relations proposal was a proposal that we designed in response 00:52:32.320 --> 00:52:37.246 - to the neighborhood association's needs to try to get landlords more involved with their tenants when 00:52:37.246 --> 00:52:42.268 - their tenants make mistakes or do things to disrupt neighborhoods. And the whole key to that is finding 00:52:42.268 --> 00:52:47.870 - a way to let the landlords know that there's a problem with their property. And so we designed a strategy for that. 00:52:48.354 --> 00:52:52.626 - Toby provided an excellent report on domestic violence, which goes into not only what is going on in 00:52:52.626 --> 00:52:56.982 - the committee, but offers some good recommendations on how we might step forward. And if we've learned 00:52:56.982 --> 00:53:01.338 - anything on this recommendation, it's that we still have a lot to talk about. And I'm sure that we can 00:53:01.338 --> 00:53:02.142 - all agree on that. 00:53:02.690 --> 00:53:07.427 - And finally, the extended outreach for education and for senior citizens. We had some excellent help 00:53:07.427 --> 00:53:12.211 - on that from the Area 10 agency. And that was primarily a recommendation to put together a packet for 00:53:12.211 --> 00:53:16.949 - senior citizens, letting them know what sorts of situations they might be at risk for, what sorts of 00:53:16.949 --> 00:53:21.639 - scandals they need to be on the lookout for. We wanted to say that this kind of information already 00:53:21.639 --> 00:53:26.376 - does exist. We were just trying to brainstorm on ways it might be expanded and on ways that we might 00:53:26.376 --> 00:53:31.067 - be able to further distribute this kind of information. That's primarily what our committee focused 00:53:31.067 --> 00:53:32.286 - on. It's a lot to digest. 00:53:32.642 --> 00:53:54.959 - There's a lot to go through. Are there any questions? Anyone had? Good participation this morning. Yes? 00:53:54.959 --> 00:54:01.182 - I recognize the need for it. 00:54:02.306 --> 00:54:17.854 - Fortunately, Brenda did a nice job of articulating this, and I'll try to do it justice. 00:54:18.018 --> 00:54:22.970 - What we want to do is try to create a seamless web of the different sorts of transportation that are 00:54:22.970 --> 00:54:27.431 - already available. Boys and Girls Club offers transportation in a van. The city bus system 00:54:27.431 --> 00:54:32.383 - offers transportation on the bus. Indiana University has a busing system. We have taxi services, but 00:54:32.383 --> 00:54:36.158 - none of these work together. You don't ride a school bus to get to the mall. 00:54:36.482 --> 00:54:41.799 - Now that might be a little bit of a leap, but kids need to get from different places. This is how this 00:54:41.799 --> 00:54:47.065 - was all born. And they can get on the school bus and ride home, but they can't get on another bus and 00:54:47.065 --> 00:54:52.434 - ride to maybe soccer practice or whatever. And we need to talk about how we can make our transportation 00:54:52.434 --> 00:54:53.054 - system more 00:54:53.186 --> 00:54:58.458 - efficient for those people who don't have transportation, specifically children and older adults? And 00:54:58.458 --> 00:55:03.781 - how do we integrate these different, I mean, if the Boys and Girls Club has a van, can we get that van 00:55:03.781 --> 00:55:09.363 - to take them to the bus stop to where they can go so they can get on the bus and make it to soccer practice 00:55:09.363 --> 00:55:14.584 - or piano lessons? And it's this kind of intricate planning and intricate development that we need to 00:55:14.584 --> 00:55:19.752 - look at. And our recommendation is just a cursory of what might happen. But I think it's kind of an 00:55:19.752 --> 00:55:22.078 - exciting idea if we can make it work. It is. 00:55:42.082 --> 00:55:47.415 - Well, you're absolutely right. Is Judge Vitalia Farrow still here? She is not. I know that Judge Vitalia 00:55:47.415 --> 00:55:52.545 - Farrow has had an opinion on this and has spoken to it. Skipping school is actually, if I'm correct, 00:55:52.545 --> 00:55:57.624 - is a misdemeanor. And the courts have been trying to get involved to a certain extent on mediating, 00:55:57.624 --> 00:56:02.906 - not necessarily charging, but mediating these sorts of instances where more kids miss school, they have 00:56:02.906 --> 00:56:08.798 - to go into some sort of a mock sort of court setting. And I know that's one program that they've experimented with. 00:56:08.962 --> 00:56:14.771 - There are other youth programs also in the city already such as show cap, which is something coming 00:56:14.771 --> 00:56:20.581 - out of the prosecutor's office where if it's a continual and habitual problem that we can deal with 00:56:20.581 --> 00:56:26.623 - him in that sort of an intervention setting. So we do have some social service agencies already dealing 00:56:26.623 --> 00:56:32.606 - with the problem, but you're right. It is a very entrenched sort of problem and when it's hard to weed 00:56:32.606 --> 00:56:38.590 - out. Uh, I would suppose that there is, but that'd be a question you have to ask the judge. I'm sorry. 00:56:42.594 --> 00:56:47.613 - OK, she said both Yoda and the Aurora school are dealing with that. So that's good to know. Thank you. 00:56:47.613 --> 00:56:52.730 - And if I could speak, I'm with the probation department. And last year, actually the summer before last, 00:56:52.730 --> 00:56:57.700 - Jim Trulock, who was our lead prosecutor for the juvenile division, worked very hard with the schools 00:56:57.700 --> 00:57:02.622 - at getting some sort of systematic referral system going. Last year was the first year that that was 00:57:02.622 --> 00:57:07.495 - implemented. And we received, I think, in excess of 170 truancy referrals. Not all of them ended up 00:57:07.495 --> 00:57:12.222 - on probation. Not all of them ended up going back to school. But I think somewhere in the middle 00:57:13.858 --> 00:57:18.861 - compromised with the majority of the families that we came in contact with. One of the things that we're 00:57:18.861 --> 00:57:23.721 - trying to work with is to get them before it becomes a truancy problem, 7th or 8th grade. Usually the 00:57:23.721 --> 00:57:28.581 - absenteeism starts much sooner, but we realized we need to start someplace, so we looked real closely 00:57:28.581 --> 00:57:33.345 - at middle school and high school. So we're working on it. Nobody has a good answer. We don't have a 00:57:33.345 --> 00:57:38.253 - turn-on officer in the community. We don't have anybody who goes out every day and knocks on your door 00:57:38.253 --> 00:57:42.398 - to make sure Jimmy's at school, but it's certainly something that probation's aware is 00:57:42.914 --> 00:57:48.997 - I think the judge said this morning, a gateway crime, that kids who start out not going to school usually 00:57:48.997 --> 00:57:54.334 - end up doing other things that they shouldn't be. So we're at least beginning to address it. 00:58:34.946 --> 00:58:43.710 - Our next report is from Steve Saunders on the slippery issue of civility. 00:58:44.546 --> 00:58:49.919 - If you want to think of this task force as sort of analogous to the university's academic departments, 00:58:49.919 --> 00:58:55.396 - I guess Alex would be sort of like the criminal justice department. And as you'll hear from Dan, they're 00:58:55.396 --> 00:59:00.925 - sort of the school of architecture. And our committee was the philosophy department. We dealt with issues 00:59:00.925 --> 00:59:06.558 - that everyone sort of understands and recognizes at some level, yet are rather difficult to get a grasp on. 00:59:06.690 --> 00:59:13.015 - not to say agreement on. I think it was very visionary, though, on the mayor's part and on Dr. Bonser's 00:59:13.015 --> 00:59:17.150 - part to recognize that issues of civility, and I'm not even in this 00:59:17.634 --> 00:59:23.900 - presentation going to attempt to define that, but we do have a very nice definition in the report. Issues 00:59:23.900 --> 00:59:30.167 - of civility are intimately linked with issues of safety, maybe more specifically issues of the perception 00:59:30.167 --> 00:59:36.256 - of safety, that if people are in an environment where social capital and social interaction and mutual 00:59:36.256 --> 00:59:37.438 - respect break down, 00:59:37.634 --> 00:59:43.777 - the expectations about how safe that community is start to break down, and it's a vicious cycle. If 00:59:43.777 --> 00:59:50.228 - safety is not present in the community, people become less concerned with quality of life factors, those 00:59:50.228 --> 00:59:56.371 - little steps that you take to go out of your way, to be respectful, to learn about other people, to 00:59:56.371 --> 01:00:02.760 - enhance what we call the social capital of your community. If you feel that other people are not taking 01:00:02.760 --> 01:00:04.542 - responsibility for upholding 01:00:04.834 --> 01:00:11.215 - basic safety and security in that committee, so really intimately linked. We also start from a premise 01:00:11.215 --> 01:00:17.596 - that the work that we have begun here needs to continue in a very decentralized way. There's not going 01:00:17.596 --> 01:00:23.854 - to be a civility czar, there's no civility department in Bloomington, but rather it's something that 01:00:23.854 --> 01:00:26.270 - we all kind of understand at one level 01:00:26.562 --> 01:00:32.555 - what we're talking about. We just have to take responsibility and feel empowered to enact that in everything 01:00:32.555 --> 01:00:38.107 - we do. And there are ways that these issues translate into youth programs and after school camps. We 01:00:38.107 --> 01:00:43.880 - can imagine ways that they translate into what goes on in our schools. We can imagine how they translate 01:00:43.880 --> 01:00:49.598 - into issues in the public debate in our community, the political debate in our community. When a person 01:00:49.922 --> 01:00:56.329 - calls someone on the carpet or calls them out for engaging in political discourse which is over the 01:00:56.329 --> 01:01:02.801 - line, that's one way of safeguarding civility. When we do a program for kids at Parks and Rec summer 01:01:02.801 --> 01:01:09.272 - camp about mutual respect or politeness, that is a way of improving civility. When we take action on 01:01:09.272 --> 01:01:14.526 - or consider reports that the Human Rights Commission publishes about incidents of 01:01:14.594 --> 01:01:20.128 - hate or discrimination in our community and resolve to try to do something about that in our own way. 01:01:20.128 --> 01:01:25.879 - That's a way of improving civility. So we recognize that these have to go forward in a very decentralized 01:01:25.879 --> 01:01:31.629 - way. What city government and the mayor's office can do, though, is to create an environment where people 01:01:31.629 --> 01:01:37.109 - feel empowered to take action on these issues, where they are made aware of these issues and feel as 01:01:37.109 --> 01:01:42.046 - though they're given some inspiration and tools to make an improvement in their community. 01:01:42.658 --> 01:01:49.464 - And there are various ways that city government can do that. Our sort of centerpiece recommendation, 01:01:49.464 --> 01:01:55.326 - as I call it, has to do with a media campaign. We're encouraging the mayor's office to 01:01:55.650 --> 01:02:01.653 - foster a campaign that would involve media broadly defined in the community. This could incorporate 01:02:01.653 --> 01:02:08.075 - everything from public service ads and WFHB and some of the other radio stations to a poster or an artwork 01:02:08.075 --> 01:02:14.078 - contest which could be sponsored both for youth and for artists in the community to design original 01:02:14.178 --> 01:02:20.453 - posters for the mall, public service announcements and ads that could run in the newspaper, a coordinated 01:02:20.453 --> 01:02:26.372 - campaign with a consistent theme that puts forward images and messages about civility. Steve Howard 01:02:26.372 --> 01:02:32.528 - has talked about using the cover of the Chamber's business directory next year in some way to emphasize 01:02:32.528 --> 01:02:38.566 - and underscore this theme. We talked in the meeting here about how customer service and a campaign or 01:02:38.566 --> 01:02:39.454 - training about 01:02:39.522 --> 01:02:45.194 - customer service and maintaining high levels of customer service in business, local business, is one 01:02:45.194 --> 01:02:51.147 - way of improving civility. And so a media campaign is part of this strategy. Another part of the strategy 01:02:51.147 --> 01:02:56.762 - involves working with neighborhood associations. We recognize the really key role that neighborhood 01:02:56.762 --> 01:03:02.827 - associations and strong neighborhood associations play in maintaining a tenor of civility in the community. 01:03:02.827 --> 01:03:06.590 - One of our recommendations has to do with encouraging neighborhood 01:03:06.882 --> 01:03:12.812 - members of neighborhood associations and members of neighborhoods to get to know their student tenants 01:03:12.812 --> 01:03:18.685 - since the friction between student tenants and landlords and permanent residents of a neighborhood is 01:03:18.685 --> 01:03:24.500 - often a flashpoint for a breakdown in civility and so we have a recommendation which complements the 01:03:24.500 --> 01:03:30.431 - recommendation in the mitigating at-risk situations that recommendation calls upon landlords to accept 01:03:30.431 --> 01:03:31.870 - their responsibility for 01:03:31.970 --> 01:03:37.052 - encouraging civil behavior on the part of their attendance, our recommendation calls on the permanent 01:03:37.052 --> 01:03:42.133 - residents of community and officers of neighborhood associations to really make that effort to get to 01:03:42.133 --> 01:03:47.165 - know your student tenants, to get to know the people who live in your community, because as we heard 01:03:47.165 --> 01:03:51.998 - it very eloquently put by a number of neighborhood association representatives, if you make that 01:03:52.066 --> 01:03:58.472 - first step in that initial effort to get to know people before a flashpoint occurs, that can have a 01:03:58.472 --> 01:04:04.879 - very profound impact on how a situation is resolved or not resolved when a problem arises between a 01:04:04.879 --> 01:04:11.349 - local student tenant and a permanent resident of a community. Some new ideas came out of the session 01:04:11.349 --> 01:04:17.883 - that we just had, the idea of awards, bestowing recognitions that we should encourage the Bloomington 01:04:17.883 --> 01:04:20.702 - voice to include in its best of Bloomington 01:04:20.802 --> 01:04:28.011 - best customer service, most civil public official, lots of different creative recognitions that we can 01:04:28.011 --> 01:04:32.350 - foster and encourage to get people thinking about this issue. 01:04:34.018 --> 01:04:39.402 - I refer you to our report for more detailed discussion. I've hit just a couple of our major and more 01:04:39.402 --> 01:04:44.732 - practical recommendations. We have tried to remain as practical as possible and to think about what 01:04:44.732 --> 01:04:50.382 - city government can realistically do to improve this issue and to encourage debate on this issue. There's 01:04:50.382 --> 01:04:56.139 - a brief report on what the schools are doing and also a report that provides just a good working definition 01:04:56.139 --> 01:05:00.830 - of civility for those of you who are wondering how we define our terms in this respect. 01:05:01.250 --> 01:05:11.680 - So with that, I'd be pleased to know any questions you have specifically about what we've done or any 01:05:11.680 --> 01:05:17.918 - additional comments and suggestions. Yeah. Thanks very much. 01:05:18.818 --> 01:05:24.084 - Thank you. I appreciate that. And I would be remiss, too, if I didn't recognize the members of the task 01:05:24.084 --> 01:05:29.147 - force, members of my committee who are here as well, or at least who have been here for part of the 01:05:29.147 --> 01:05:34.108 - day. Steve Boncheck from Harmony School, John Coomer, Superintendent, Dr. John Coomer from MCCSC, 01:05:34.108 --> 01:05:39.323 - Jay Hoffman, who is invaluable in keeping the committee going and writing and drafting a number of our 01:05:39.323 --> 01:05:44.589 - recommendations, Steve Howard from the Chamber of Commerce, Terry Skerven from the College Mall, a very 01:05:44.589 --> 01:05:46.462 - high profile group and a group which 01:05:46.690 --> 01:05:53.629 - presides over institutions and organizations that can really foster this message and disseminate it 01:05:53.629 --> 01:06:00.567 - out into the community. So thanks, Jack. Thanks very much, Steve. There is a list of the task force 01:06:00.567 --> 01:06:07.575 - members in the handout we gave you this morning. The final report is from Dan Sherman, Enhancing the 01:06:07.575 --> 01:06:09.310 - Safety Environment. Dan? 01:06:16.610 --> 01:06:24.103 - Thanks. As Chuck said, our committee had to do with ways in which the physical environment or changes 01:06:24.103 --> 01:06:31.450 - in the physical environment can reduce crime or improve safety. We had seven proposals, and I asked 01:06:31.450 --> 01:06:38.796 - our group this afternoon to choose what they thought was important, and we'd go down the line based 01:06:38.796 --> 01:06:44.894 - upon their ranking of importance. And the first one was neighborhood improvements. 01:06:45.218 --> 01:06:51.570 - be more aptly named neighborhood maintenance. It's based upon the theory or the broken windows phenomenon. 01:06:51.570 --> 01:06:57.566 - And I think all of you on the test course have probably read more than you want to hear about broken 01:06:57.566 --> 01:07:01.662 - windows. But the idea is that if you leave a broken window unrepared 01:07:02.146 --> 01:07:09.469 - Other windows will be broken because people will see that the property is not being cared for. This 01:07:09.469 --> 01:07:17.011 - leads to withdrawal of the people in the area and invites more crime. Simply put, order invites order, 01:07:17.011 --> 01:07:24.261 - disorder invites disorder. So this is a proactive measure. And the idea is that if in Bloomington, 01:07:24.261 --> 01:07:26.238 - neighborhood associations, 01:07:26.370 --> 01:07:34.464 - and the City's Housing and Neighborhood Development Department work together and look at physical 01:07:34.464 --> 01:07:42.724 - deterioration in the neighborhoods and address it, we'll be protecting ourselves from future crime. 01:07:42.724 --> 01:07:46.110 - When this was presented to our group, we 01:07:46.562 --> 01:07:53.803 - We heard suggestions that, well, we shouldn't leave this just to the neighborhoods. We have graffiti 01:07:53.803 --> 01:08:01.115 - in the downtown. We have People's Park with litter. We should certainly have initiatives that address 01:08:01.115 --> 01:08:08.499 - that. So that's something that you all brought to the issue today. We got into a discussion about just 01:08:08.499 --> 01:08:15.166 - issues of civility or issues of neighbors relating to each other. There was some talk about, 01:08:15.746 --> 01:08:24.360 - mediation between neighbors that disagree about the landscape or neighborhood issues. In terms of suggestions 01:08:24.360 --> 01:08:32.425 - from the group, the group wanted the city to be more active in enforcement and provide more assistance 01:08:32.425 --> 01:08:40.882 - to the neighborhood associations. One good idea was something like our rights and responsibilities brochure 01:08:40.882 --> 01:08:45.502 - for renters and landlords. But it would be a neighborhood. 01:08:45.730 --> 01:08:55.553 - or neighbor rights and responsibilities brochure, where we'd outline what laws are in place in regard 01:08:55.553 --> 01:09:06.147 - to how you keep your property, and would indicate how one can go about getting violations of those ordinances 01:09:06.147 --> 01:09:14.718 - enforced. So that was a good suggestion we picked up today. Second on the list of seven. 01:09:15.170 --> 01:09:24.632 - had to do with crime reports and using the crime reports to gather information about the physical environment 01:09:24.632 --> 01:09:33.406 - so that people in a position to make decisions about changes in the physical environment, developers, 01:09:33.406 --> 01:09:42.008 - the city, will have access to information about what's, for example, if a crime report said someone 01:09:42.008 --> 01:09:44.158 - was assaulted mid-block, 01:09:44.258 --> 01:09:50.800 - And there was no lighting. And it was clear that a lack of lighting made a difference. This information 01:09:50.800 --> 01:09:57.531 - would be filtered up. And when decisions on lighting were made, there would be access to incidence reports 01:09:57.531 --> 01:10:03.885 - and whether or not lighting made a difference. And those who were deciding about lighting would say, 01:10:03.885 --> 01:10:08.414 - ah, this means that we should put our money here versus somewhere else. 01:10:08.514 --> 01:10:16.663 - This applies to all sorts of things that both the city and private individuals do. Landscaping, just 01:10:16.663 --> 01:10:24.732 - maintaining landscaping and keeping landscaping low can make a difference in reduction in crime. So 01:10:24.732 --> 01:10:32.962 - this was well received by the group. I think there was some discussion about including actions of the 01:10:32.962 --> 01:10:36.190 - victim and not only getting beyond just 01:10:36.866 --> 01:10:46.517 - suggestions on the physical environment, but also get information about how individuals can change their 01:10:46.517 --> 01:10:55.800 - behavior in order to reduce their chances of being a victim of a crime. Let's see. The idea in brief 01:10:55.800 --> 01:11:05.726 - is that we have easily identifiable information about the context of a crime, that it's easily retrievable, 01:11:05.922 --> 01:11:15.713 - And that it's regularly analyzed and made available to both public and private sector so that you have 01:11:15.713 --> 01:11:25.314 - timely and accurate information that can be used by those who are in a position to invest in changes 01:11:25.314 --> 01:11:35.486 - in the physical environment. The third topic we took up was residential safety. And the idea here is that, 01:11:36.450 --> 01:11:44.216 - You provide homeowners and renters information about the incidence of crime. And we heard about a suggestion 01:11:44.216 --> 01:11:51.483 - that we have a map of the incidence of crime for the city as a whole. And that's one of our proposals 01:11:51.483 --> 01:11:59.035 - here, is that we have that on the web, that we make it available at hard copy and places like the library 01:11:59.035 --> 01:12:04.094 - or the police department. If possible, if the HT would agree, we would 01:12:04.386 --> 01:12:11.535 - make it available for it to be placed in the paper periodically so that anyone could say, oh, this is 01:12:11.535 --> 01:12:18.614 - where crime occurs. This is where it doesn't occur. What kind of crime is it? The second part of the 01:12:18.614 --> 01:12:25.973 - proposal is to provide at least homeowners access to, well, let them know that we already have a program 01:12:25.973 --> 01:12:32.702 - in the police department where an officer will go out and advise homeowners about how to change 01:12:32.802 --> 01:12:42.659 - aspects of their property, secure their doors, secure their windows, cut back their landscaping, have 01:12:42.659 --> 01:12:52.709 - outdoor lighting, and elaborate on that so that it fits the risks as they're revealed in this map. When 01:12:52.709 --> 01:13:01.406 - it comes to renters, we suggest that renters, at the time they are leasing property, have 01:13:01.922 --> 01:13:09.654 - also access to this map, and also have some way of knowing whether the prospective apartment is a safe 01:13:09.654 --> 01:13:17.312 - one. So give them brochures, a checklist of what you would want to see in an apartment. Also bring in 01:13:17.312 --> 01:13:22.942 - the apartment owners and have a voluntary program where appropriate owners 01:13:23.170 --> 01:13:31.098 - Apartment owners go beyond what's in the ordinance and take special measures to ensure the safety of 01:13:31.098 --> 01:13:39.496 - the tenants, get special recognition so that if tenants think that's important, they know which apartments 01:13:39.496 --> 01:13:47.816 - to go to. So this is based upon a market model that people will make their own decisions and just provide 01:13:47.816 --> 01:13:50.014 - them with good information. 01:13:50.306 --> 01:13:58.662 - If that doesn't work, and we have a town where we have very close to full occupancy so that tenants 01:13:58.662 --> 01:14:07.185 - aren't always in a position of freely choosing where they live, if that's determined to be a problem, 01:14:07.185 --> 01:14:16.042 - then this report notes that we may have to go into changes in the ordinance. And one of the possibilities 01:14:16.042 --> 01:14:17.630 - there is requiring 01:14:17.858 --> 01:14:25.644 - lighting at entryways. Apparently that's not required at the code and some places don't have lighting 01:14:25.644 --> 01:14:33.736 - at entryways and it would be a good idea. The next three proposals have to do with lighting and sidewalks 01:14:33.736 --> 01:14:39.614 - and these came from the survey and you've heard about the survey. One of the 01:14:39.778 --> 01:14:47.728 - striking elements of the responses when it came to what made you feel insecure about Bloomington was 01:14:47.728 --> 01:14:56.387 - a lack of lighting and problems with a lack of sidewalks, or sidewalks in poor condition. So these proposals, 01:14:56.387 --> 01:15:03.550 - and there are three of them, are to promote our existing lighting program. We do have one. 01:15:04.130 --> 01:15:11.868 - It's a way neighborhoods can get lighting. Our current lighting is predominantly serving vehicles, and 01:15:11.868 --> 01:15:19.831 - we're proposing that we phase in more pedestrian-oriented lighting, which is mid-block lighting, lighting 01:15:19.831 --> 01:15:27.569 - which is lower, which is under the tree crown, rather than higher up. In terms of sidewalks, basically 01:15:27.569 --> 01:15:33.278 - we need more sidewalks, and we need sidewalks that are in better condition. 01:15:35.266 --> 01:15:43.185 - need to find ways to fund it. And this is an obligation that will be borne both by the public sector 01:15:43.185 --> 01:15:51.575 - and private sector. And the next proposal has to do with both lighting and sidewalks in the near downtown, 01:15:51.575 --> 01:15:59.729 - near campus area. What the committee decide is that there is a lot of nighttime traffic in those areas, 01:15:59.729 --> 01:16:03.806 - and both the lighting and sidewalks are inadequate. 01:16:04.610 --> 01:16:13.380 - What I heard from the committee this afternoon is that we should expand that initiative to consider 01:16:13.380 --> 01:16:22.238 - other areas, perhaps the West Side, wherever those needs exist. The last proposal is one to set up a 01:16:22.238 --> 01:16:31.710 - forum on crime prevention through environmental design, which I found out today has the nickname of CEPTED. 01:16:33.154 --> 01:16:41.062 - a way of looking at the physical landscape. I don't know if it's a discipline, but it's an area of study 01:16:41.062 --> 01:16:48.744 - that's been around for a while and makes some concrete proposals about how you design facilities. And 01:16:48.744 --> 01:16:56.275 - as a committee, we saw some real promise here, but we didn't know how it would work in Bloomington. 01:16:56.275 --> 01:17:01.246 - So we suggested that we have a forum that, at this forum, we have 01:17:01.666 --> 01:17:10.672 - people who are investing in making capital improvements, developers, designers, city engineers, city 01:17:10.672 --> 01:17:19.589 - planning department, and familiarize them with these concepts and have the forum address whether it 01:17:19.589 --> 01:17:28.862 - applies in Bloomington. One of the big issues, at least I can see in Bloomington, is how do you balance 01:17:29.314 --> 01:17:38.034 - safety measures with aesthetic considerations, privacy considerations, and hopefully we could hear from 01:17:38.034 --> 01:17:46.753 - an expert and see how those compromises are made and allow people to incorporate these ideas into their 01:17:46.753 --> 01:17:55.473 - decisions about changes in the physical environment. One suggestion here was that we do this in concert 01:17:55.473 --> 01:17:58.910 - with the 1998 review of our master plan. 01:17:59.938 --> 01:18:08.823 - So we'll certainly do that. Another suggestion was that there are some, I guess we get the word out 01:18:08.823 --> 01:18:18.331 - that we have more forums or conferences where people can learn about ways that they can protect themselves 01:18:18.331 --> 01:18:27.572 - by changing the physical landscape. With that, those are our seven proposals. Thanks, Dan. Anybody have 01:18:27.572 --> 01:18:28.638 - a question? 01:18:30.690 --> 01:18:38.751 - Can I just ask you one? Sure. This came up this morning and I hadn't thought about it and I'm not sure 01:18:38.751 --> 01:18:46.733 - if you folks discussed it. The question was would it make any sense at all for major new subdivisions 01:18:46.733 --> 01:18:54.559 - or major new developments in the community to file a public safety impact statement similar concept 01:18:54.559 --> 01:18:59.646 - to environmental impact statement. Was this talked about at all? 01:19:01.282 --> 01:19:11.205 - That's a new one. But one of the attractions to this septic approach is that they want you to provide 01:19:11.205 --> 01:19:20.447 - a measured response to risk. So some communities require security audits for certain projects. 01:19:20.447 --> 01:19:30.078 - In big cities, parking facilities are perceived as a danger. We found out in Bloomington that it's 01:19:30.882 --> 01:19:38.812 - that although people don't like to go into them, the incidence of crime there is nominal. But in other 01:19:38.812 --> 01:19:46.511 - cities, it's been a problem. And some cities have required people who build high-risk facilities to 01:19:46.511 --> 01:19:55.134 - do a security audit to find out what kind of dangers are out there and then address them with a management plan 01:19:55.554 --> 01:20:03.201 - in return. So no, not sort of. Maybe something that when we move to our final report, your group can 01:20:03.201 --> 01:20:10.773 - discuss a bit anyway. OK, thanks. Well, as you can see, we've taken a very holistic approach to the 01:20:10.773 --> 01:20:18.420 - issue of how we build a safe and civil city in Bloomington and Monroe County. What's going to happen 01:20:18.420 --> 01:20:25.310 - now is we're going to be incorporating the suggestions we got today into our draft report. 01:20:25.858 --> 01:20:33.739 - And then the task force will meet and consider all the feedback we've gotten and from that then produce 01:20:33.739 --> 01:20:41.392 - a final report that we'll be transmitting to the mayor hopefully before the end of the spring is our 01:20:41.392 --> 01:20:46.014 - target for the overall report. I'd like to thank our chairs. 01:20:46.530 --> 01:20:53.308 - for doing a great job today and for doing a great job all year. I thought that they really did a spectacular 01:20:53.308 --> 01:20:59.525 - job. And I also wanted to thank and recognize our research staff. Eric Martin over here, Eric Wave. 01:20:59.525 --> 01:21:06.054 - Eric was responsible for the overall coordination of the task force and a larger responsible for working 01:21:06.054 --> 01:21:12.894 - with the IU Survey Research Center on the survey that we did. He did a terrific job in putting that together. 01:21:13.474 --> 01:21:19.620 - I also wanted to recognize our three Lilly Fellows. The Lilly Fellows program is a program sponsored 01:21:19.620 --> 01:21:26.009 - by SPIA for outstanding graduate students. And as part of their graduate assistantship, they're assigned 01:21:26.009 --> 01:21:32.154 - projects like this, community service kinds of projects. And without all four of these young people, 01:21:32.154 --> 01:21:38.118 - we never could have pulled this project off. They did a spectacular job of research and staffing. 01:21:38.118 --> 01:21:40.734 - And again, they are Jay Hoffman back here. 01:21:41.058 --> 01:21:48.801 - Kathy Giles and Anne Sorensen back there. Thanks a lot, folks. It's been really fun working with you. 01:21:48.801 --> 01:21:56.468 - I'd like to thank all of you for coming today. It's really been a useful exercise for us, and I hope 01:21:56.468 --> 01:22:04.287 - you found it interesting and stimulating based on the sessions I went to. That was certainly the case. 01:22:04.287 --> 01:22:08.158 - I want to give Mayor Fernandez a final word, John. 01:22:15.842 --> 01:22:24.034 - just add my thanks to Dr. Bonsers, to all of you for participating. As we said at the beginning of this 01:22:24.034 --> 01:22:32.148 - process 10 months ago, that what we really wanted to develop here was a community-based plan of action 01:22:32.148 --> 01:22:36.638 - on how we can work together to improve the public safety 01:22:36.802 --> 01:22:43.654 - elements of our community. And I think what's been put forward through this whole process are some very 01:22:43.654 --> 01:22:50.637 - practical, realistic ways to do that. And the key element, I think, to most of these proposals, as you've 01:22:50.637 --> 01:22:56.830 - heard or seen during your presentations, is that those action plans are also community-based. 01:22:57.282 --> 01:23:03.328 - It's not legislators or mayors waving magic wands and passing proclamations, but it's people at the 01:23:03.328 --> 01:23:09.374 - neighborhood level and businesses and organizations from our schools to our social service agencies 01:23:09.374 --> 01:23:15.601 - working together in a coordinated way for a community-based response. And that's, in my view, the only 01:23:15.601 --> 01:23:21.707 - way we're ever going to get at these problems. So thank you again very much. Let me add my thanks to 01:23:21.707 --> 01:23:26.846 - our graduate students. I got to confess something, Chuck. When I was a Lilly fellow, 01:23:27.458 --> 01:23:33.193 - I got to tell you, I think that your work on this project is so much more substantive than the things 01:23:33.193 --> 01:23:38.985 - I did. So thanks for doing it. Not that they were bad projects or anything. It's just a very different 01:23:38.985 --> 01:23:44.832 - approach than doing your typical white paper development for policy analysis, but actually getting into 01:23:44.832 --> 01:23:46.238 - a community and working. 01:23:46.338 --> 01:23:55.504 - really appreciate your help. So again, thank you very much. We'll get this draft report out again, and 01:23:55.504 --> 01:24:04.402 - we'll have it available either in hard copy or through our website. And I encourage you to continue 01:24:04.402 --> 01:24:11.966 - to participate in the implementation of this process. So thank you for coming today.