Deputy Chief Eric Henderson.

Good morning, Mayor.

Commissioners, glad to have this opportunity to provide an update on police reform.

So just to remind everyone, kind of the process where it started.

So back in June of 2020, the city commission formed five committees that were led by co-chaired by a commissioner or mayor and also another community leader within our city that covered oversight, use of force, training, recruitment, and community engagement.

Through that process, we had over 100 community members that were involved.

We had over 100 meetings, and there was a lot of volunteer hours put in by a lot of folks and a lot of staff time by a lot of people outside of the police department throughout this organization put a lot of work into this.

And it resulted into 142 recommendations that came from the city commission to the city manager's office that was reviewed and approved for implementation.

So I'm happy to report our implementation progress.

So we're actually sitting at 94% of our recommendations have uh that the recommendations that were made have been approved.

Um there are four that are still in progress, and there's four that were found uh to be uh not working basically just because of this situation.

Um either it required uh a lot of cross coordination, not saying that they're all dead in water, but it's one of those things that it's it's really takes more than just the city of date to take the lead in.

Uh I think one of the major uh accomplishments uh of police reform, uh it was actually the first um item that was recommended uh was body worn cameras.

I'm happy to report we have over 400 uh body worn cameras out and deployed out in the field.

Um it also includes our parking enforcement aids now and also our arson unit who are sworn uh police officers that work under the fire department.

Um we also still maintain 120 in-car cameras um in our cruisers, and um, but I do want to highlight, I mean, we're spending a lot of money on this 871,000 directly um from the technology that's annual cost from the body worn cameras from the in-car cameras, and also just the personnel to redact videos.

So that doesn't include some of the additional support even expenses and also the time that it takes to review a lot of these things.

But we found obviously we knew it would that it's gonna be beneficial for the community, it's beneficial for our officers, it's beneficial for everyone involved because we get another uh set of eyes basically to see what occurred out on the scene.

Next, moving on to use of force.

So back in November of 2023, uh there was legislation that was updated uh concerning the use of force committee.

Um, that uh use of force committee meets twice a year.

We had a meeting back in April of this year, um, and they reviewed our 2024 annual force report that was recently released and published to our website at uh Daytonohio.gov on our uh police uh actually uh site.

Uh you can go to this report there.

Uh also the use of force policies were updated and implemented, um, and that work was completed in 2023 with a lot of input from the use of force committee, and we brung in um with the work with the law department and bring in some experts on this topic.

Uh so just to provide some stats just to show kind of some of the data that's reported out as far as use of force incidents and where those occur, uh, we break that down by uh race, gender, what actions were occurring that led to uh the force being used by our officers in those type of situations.

The escalation um in 2022, we finalized their training.

She trained everyone in the Dayton Police Department on it's called ICAT training.

Uh it's from the police executive research forum.

And I know you're gonna say, what does ICAT stand for?

So integration, the integrating uh communications and tactics.

It's basically when we respond to a scene, slowing things down if time allows.

If if the situation uh allows for that to occur, slowing things down, being able to take time to communicate, being able to stand behind cover.

So, like if we're able to stand around the corner from a suspect, if we're able to utilize a drone um to uh de-escalate the situation or at least provide intel to our officers.

We had a situation on windwork where an individual had a weapon in hand on a suicide uh type call, and we were able to deploy one of our drones and officer around the corner was able to uh basically observe and watch when the suspect put the weapon down, so then that we can start engaging that individual in a more safe manner.

Um, so um we're now uh tracking all of our de-escalation attempts and our use of force review.

Um, I think it's important to note it doesn't catch every time we de-escalate a situation, it's only capturing when we've tried to do it when a use of force has occurred.

I I can tell your officers, there's times we're encountering people with guns and we're de-escalating that situation to a point where we're able to peacefully resolve.

One such incidents just occurred earlier this week where uh the U.S.

Marshals uh Delphus looking for a uh individual wanted for aggravated murder uh the Cleveland area.

And when those officers uh were in the building, that suspect fired around at those officers, actually struck the concrete right in front of them.

They were able to back out, uh, they weren't they did not engage the suspect.

They backed out, called out our SWAT team, um, our hostage negotiations team and also Montgomery County Sheriff's Office FLAT team.

Uh we deployed a drone.

Uh, we reached out to Ohio State Highway Patrol for some of their assets, and we were able to slow the situation down.

The suspect even fired at the drone while it was in the hallway several times.

Uh the suspect was able to take the drone out by utilizing uh a sheet and some other tools, but uh but we had uh luckily we have backups in place because we have multiple drones for these situations, but uh luckily we were able to de-escalate that situation and talk that suspect out and resolved it.

And I could tell you it it was a tense situation where suspects firing rounds or officers are on scene, and uh, I think if you hear that story, you think you know, come to a conclusion how that may end.

And I you know, it I think it's gives me great pride that we're able to slow these situations down and come to a peaceful resolution.

Those are stories that unfortunately did not reach the news because I know we have a lot of mention yes, the legend can be avoided so well that Harley is aware of it.

So good luck.

Thank you.

So moving on to accreditation, um, there was a recommendation from the training committee uh about uh becoming accredited.

So I'm happy to report that in 2025, uh earlier this year in April, we awarded accreditation from Ohio Collaborative.

Uh we were one of the first 10 agencies in Ohio that was awarded uh actually accreditation from this organization.

Um Ohio Collaborative has been around uh for a number of years, but they just basically made suggestions, and we could submit some stuff to show our policies, but it wasn't as robust as the accreditation process.

So uh with this, there's 32 standards that we had to meet, including use of force, handling uh property evidence, pursuits, uh bias-free policing, uh, serving search warrants, and those things.

And uh we actually had on-site assessors that came in, reviewed our policies, looked at our training.

We have to provide proofs to show that we're doing what we're seeing in policy, and we're documenting that, and that process takes place every year.

So uh we're one of the first 10 agencies in Ohio, and um their goal is to have every agency in Ohio because uh the one thing I'd like to point out just in Montgomery County, there's 31 law enforcement agencies uh within Montgomery County.

So if we're changing our policies, if we're doing things a certain way, there's 30 other agencies within this county that could be doing something different.