The public safety committee meeting.

Chair Larsdorf is not present.

He has a military commitment, so I will sit in on his behalf.

First item of business approval of the April 7th, 2026 meeting minutes.

Do I have a motion?

Second.

Second.

Second.

Alright.

If there are any changes, comments, or anything of that nature here and now.

Seeing none, all in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All right.

Aye.

Any in opposition?

Don't see anything in opposition, that passes.

All right.

First up, we have a crime plan update by Chief Garcia, Fort Worth PD.

Good morning, Chief.

So good morning before we begin.

Really, it's gonna be kind of the criminologist show.

I just want to thank you for the opportunity to present our crime plan.

The partnership with our criminologists.

I will say obviously no secret about it, but when I first got to the city to the east, uh I've been working with criminologists for a while.

There's other uh cities that have been working well with this crime plan.

Um one of the dynamics is as we look at the city of Fort Worth and quite frankly, every statistical category, where there'd be violent crime, whether it be murder, aggravated assault, robbery, including property crime that continues to go down in the city.

Obviously, going into the summer months, it's not the time to sit on our hands.

And so certainly working with criminologists and getting uh uh plans and programs that have shown uh to be working around the country is something that's incredibly uh important for us.

Our job ultimately is to put our officers in the best places for them to succeed.

Uh, and we were going to continue to do that uh both with internal plans and external plans, including the criminologists.

So with that, I'm gonna uh pass it over to Dr.

Mike Smith and Rob Tillier to walk us through the presentation.

Good morning and welcome, Dr.

Smith.

Morning, y'all.

It is still morning.

Yes, good morning.

You'll hang it on.

Uh I'm Mike Smith, and I'm with my colleague uh Dr.

Rob Tillier.

Uh we are professors of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio, longtime police researchers who've been working in this space for you know a long time, many years.

Um and we're grateful and uh and pleased to be partnering with your city and the Fort Worth Police Department uh on this violent crime plan uh that we're here to talk about this morning.

And so um this plan is a evidence-based uh plan that's that's comprised of three primary strategies that are designed to work together and synergistically to reduce violent street crime uh in large urban areas like Fort Worth.

Uh it has three primary strategies, as I mentioned.

The first one is a hot spots policing strategy, uh, the second one is a midterm strategy that's focused on persistent, we call them persistently violent places, um, places that um have been among your top three or four most violent places in Fort Worth for the last three to five years.

That's what that strategy is designed to address.

It's a multi-pronged strategy requires a lot of resources uh to address these highly problematic areas beyond just the police.

Uh and the third strategy is focused on people.

It's an offender focused strategy.

Um in the criminology world, we call it focused deterrence.

It's designed to help break the cycle of violence among persistently violent offenders and hopefully offer them a different path.

Um, so a little bit more detail about these strategies, particularly the hotspot strategy, uh, which is um the first the first one out of the gate and the one that is underway right now.

Um the these strategies work because of a couple of criminological facts that we would call them.

Violent crime is not um, doesn't happen everywhere.

Um, it happens in a relatively small number of places, and I'll show you some data in a minute on that.

Um, it also is not committed by most offenders, it's committed by a relatively few number of offenders, um, some of whom are persistently violent.

Um, and that third strategy that I mentioned focused deterrence is really designed to address those few individuals.

So the kind of plans that we uh are are sketched have sketched out here for you require uh careful data analysis.

Um, you're they require good data, first of all, uh, and then careful analysis, and you'll see uh what we mean in a minute.

Um, but we end up mapping crime down to very small grids in your city and get get very, very granular about where these violent crimes are happening and who's committing them.

So I mentioned the concentration of crime by place.

Uh, here's some data.

Fort Worth is on the top line of that um of that table, but there's some comparison cities in Texas as well, Dallas and San Antonio.

I mentioned those grids.

Uh so we we divide your city into 100 meter by 100 meter grid squares, um and we map crime uh and other measures down to the to that very small granular level.

You have 92,348 of those grids in your city.

In the last five years, between 2021 and 2025, um, only 6700 of them produced any violent street crime, and 1,300 of them or about 1.5% accounted for 50% of all of your violent crime.

Um another way of thinking about that is in Fort Worth, uh 93% of your land area produces no violent street crime.

So when you know these facts, and you can see the data are very similar in Dallas and San Antonio, and in fact, across across across the world where this kind of research has been done.

Um so knowing this fact is very powerful, because what it suggests is that if the goal is to reduce violent street crime, police don't need to be everywhere, they need to be at a relatively few number of places, and that's that's what the strategies are designed to leverage, particularly the hotspot strategy.

This is a um a graphic that talks about the other side of the coin, the offender uh side of the coin.

Um the graph on your right is actually a crime curve.

Each of those little squares represent a study uh over about the last 45 years that has looked at the concentration of crime among offending offenders or of the offending population, and I've summarized the the results there in the inset uh language there to the left of the graph.

Um if you look at the entire population, those people who commit crime and the vast majority that who don't among that general population, about 10% of your most criminally active offenders account for two-thirds of your all of your violent crime.

If you look just at offenders, those people that commit crime on a regular basis, um, 10% of them commit about 40% of all violent crime, and together about 20% of offenders commit about 80% of your violent crime.

So again, knowing that knowing these facts, it allows us, yes.

Alright, I have a yeah, we have one question here.

Can I get a quick um just some definitions real quick?

Sure.

Um you've used street the term street crime and violent street crime.

Okay, so it's it's one and the same.

We're not talking about two different types of crimes.

Right.

So violent street crime is I think the term you've heard me use.

Yeah, um, so we define that um in as murder, robbery, and aggravated assault.

Okay.

So vi violent felony street crimes.

So uh would rape be part of that.

No, no.

So you said murder, murder, robbery, and and non-family violence aggravated assault.

So, yeah, sure.

Um so deterring sexual assault or or domestic violence is a is also a very important goal, requires a different set of strategies, though, entirely than then dealing with violent street crime.

Okay, is that did I answer your question for now?

Okay, um, I'll kind of pivot now to talk about uh the hot spots portion of this strategy, which is the uh we call it the near term strategy simply because it's simply the first one that rolls out.

Um the others are a little bit more complex, take a little bit more time to get into place.

Hotspots policing is probably though the strategy that we have the most evidence for in the criminological criminological literature, going back 40 years for its success.

Um and so it is the it's the foundation of the crime plan.

Um it's also so I I would characterize it as it's a necessary but insufficient strategy as well.

Hotspots policing is great.

It will help lower the crime temperature in some of those those violent places that we talked about.

It will not solve the problem by itself, and it's not designed to.

It is designed to lower violent crime, though, in those places that produce most of it.

And the strategies that we recommend are twofold.

One is a high visibility strategy.

It is nothing more than a lighted patrol car.

And when I say lighted, I mean all of the emergency lights on the vehicle turned on, parked stationary in one of these hot spots for a 15-minute period during a peak crime hour.

So we not only map crime down to the place, down to those grids, but we also map it temporarily by hour of the day and day of the week.

So the deployment strategy that we recommend puts police officers in one of those high crime grids during a peak crime hour for a 15-minute window, with the officer out of the car, foot patrolling the area, talking to residents, talking to business owners, that kind of thing.

The other hotspot strategy is an offender focused strategy.

This requires a team of uh skilled police officers.

You happen to have one of those here in Fort Worth, the directed response unit.

We actually rode along with them last week.

These are highly capable group of men and women.

What these teams do is they also work in these hot spots, these relatively few hotspots, but they focus on people.

They focus on persistently violent offenders, people that have active warrants on file, who are otherwise engaged in activity that put them at risk for violent crime.

Um either by arresting them or by simply by being president and letting them know that they're in the area.

Those two strategies work together as part of the hotspots policing strategy that's underway right now.

It started in uh April 1st here in Fort Worth.

Um, and it's important to understand that um sort of the parameters of this strategy.

Uh I mentioned you've got 92,348 of those grids in your city.

Uh currently the Fort Worth Police Department is treating 12 of them.

Um that's a that's a very, very small number.

And over the course of a year, you'll treat less than one percent, far less, in fact, of than one percent of all of your grids with this strategy.

Um it is not an over saturation strategy by any stretch.

Um it's not a crackdown strategy.

Um, it is not a stop and fresh strategy.

Um it is a very focused, very precise, high visibility, and offender focused strategy designed to put police resources in a very small number of places that produce most of your violent crime.

So we talked about hotspots.

Um those hotspots are identified based on reported violent street crime, the question that you asked about a second ago.

Murder, robbery, and aggravated assault.

We, our team analyzes your crime data every 60 days in your city, and we map those those crimes down to those that grid level.

And then we simply really write rank order them, the the worst to the least worst.

And every 60 days, we recommend that resources be shifted to the next set of of grids, based on what was sort of what areas were hot or crime prone in the most recent 60-day period, as well as some consideration given to places that have a longer term crime trend problem over the last 12 months or say.

Each treatment duration is for 60 days long.

And as I mentioned, about 12 grids are being treated right now.

That's 0.01% of the total number of grids in your city.

And then at the end of that 60-day treatment period, we redo that crime analysis, make a new set of recommendations to uh based on reported crime in the previous 60 days, and then we look backward and we analyze what happened to crime in the places that were treated during the most recent treatment period.

And we put all of that information in a dashboard for senior police leaders in Fort Worth to be able to see.

Which grid gets which treatment is a decision made by the Fort Worth Police Department, with some recommendations from us, especially early on, simply because we've we've been doing this work for the last five years and learned quite a bit about kind of what places are best suited for which type of treatment.

So roughly half of those 12 will get high visibility, and about half will get the offender-focused treatment every 60 days.

So what happens when you when you use a set of strategies like this?

I said we've been doing this work for five years.

We started in Dallas in 2021.

And in that four-year period, between May of 2021 and April of 2025, violent street crime in Dallas decreased by 22%.

Murders went from 260 to 156, robberies decreased by 31%, aggravated assaults by 30%.

Now violent crime is going down in a lot of places right now for the last 12 to 18 months, and that's a great thing.

That's largely a nationwide trend, not true everywhere, but it largely true in many big cities.

That was not the case at all though in Dallas when we started in 2021.

The reductions that we're talking about in Dallas coincided with the start of the crime plan.

And the reductions that we've documented did not happen everywhere in 2021 or 2022 or 2023.

In fact, they didn't happen in any of our comparison cities, except for Dallas.

That is an interrupted time series graphic from San Antonio.

It represents crime data in San Antonio from 2020 through 2025.

That red dotted line is the introduction of the crime plan.

The crime plan that I just sketched out for you all.

Same crime plan is has been implemented in San Antonio since January of 2023.

So that's the intervention point that red line.

To the left of it of that red line is what crime was doing in violent street crime was doing in San Antonio prior to the introduction of the crime plan.

And to the right is what violent crime did after the introduction of the crime plan.

Again, these are evidence-based strategies.

We didn't invent them, they've been uh they've been tested in the literature for more than 40 years, which is why we we've put them together uh in a single strategic plan to help cities reduce violent crime, and these are the kinds of results that can happen when you use these evidence-based strategies.

We've used them outside of Texas as well.

Uh we worked in Tacoma, Washington for a couple of years.

Um Tacoma saw significant crime reductions as a result of these strategies as well.

Um, one of the questions that we get a lot is um, well, if you treat crime in these in these hot spots, won't it just move around the corner?

Won't it just displace to somewhere else?

There's many years of research that's have examined that question, and and we've done a bunch of it ourselves.

The answer is usually, generally speaking, no.

Um it's not that you don't ever see displacement, you you do occasionally see it, but you rarely see it systematically.

We've actually never seen it systematically.

Um typically, what you find is the opposite.

The areas immediately around your treated hotspots.

Uh, we call those a catchment area.

Crime actually falls, goes down.

Um, they benefit those areas around your hotspots benefit from the hotspot treatment itself rather than being a place for crime to displace.

Um, and we certainly saw that in Tacoma, and we saw the same in Salt Lake City.

So that brings us to uh kind of where we are in Fort Worth right now.

Um that is a draft of the uh crime plan as I've sketched it out here this morning.

Um the plan itself has a significant amount of detail and and citations to the literature and uh and detail on the implementation of these of these three primary strategies.

Um so hot spots policing started as I mentioned in April of 2026.

Um we are we just started our second treatment period, so um April and May were period one, uh June 1st uh was uh the start of period two.

Um we uh again we evaluate crime every 60 days.

We made the first set of recommendations for May and June, and we made the next set of recommendations for June and July based on the on the crime patterns, reported crime patterns here in Fort Worth.

Um, and then we're about to look backward um to see what happened to crime in those hotspots during the first treatment period of May and uh uh April and May.

Um, that uh midterm strategy that I mentioned uh a few slides ago, it is appropriate for persistently violent places, places where you treat them with hotspots policing for a period, and then maybe they roll over and they're still among your top 10 or 15 the next time and you treat them again, and maybe they roll over again, and you have to treat them multiple times, and they're still among your top 10 or 15 places.

Those are the places that are most uh relevant for a strategy, the application of a strategy like problem-oriented place-based policing.

The goal is to identify the underlying conditions.

What is it about these places that make them persistently violent?

Why do they keep coming up in your top 10 or 15 list every 60 days?

The goal is to figure out what those conditions are and then to address those underlying conditions.

It requires multiple stakeholders besides the police department.

Um, it's an all-of-government approach, really.

Um requires a lot of coordination and a lot of resources to be brought to bear, typically over an extended period of time.

Um, these places didn't get to be that way overnight, and they typically won't be won't, you know, the the conditions that cause them to be persistently violent won't be addressed in the near term, but it requires a longer term focus.

The focus deterrent strategy is that person place uh focused strategy that I mentioned.

It is really designed to identify who your most persistently violent offenders are in Fort Worth and to address uh address those folks through a combination of enhanced prosecution and the provision of social services.

Uh my team, our job uh is to evaluate your data, and we do that relentlessly.

We do it every 60 days for hot spots, we do it annually for the other the other strategies that I mentioned.

Uh we report all of these results publicly.

Uh the hotspots data results go into that dashboard that I mentioned that the police department has has access to.

Um, and we will undoubtedly be before this group at some time in the future to report out on what the what the impact of the strategies have been over the over the previous 12 months.

If you're interested, and I don't you probably if you'd like to put yourself to sleep, you can read these papers that my team and I have written related to this crime plan work, but for now, we're happy to take any questions that you'd like to like to ask us.

All right, thank you, Dr.

Smith.

Uh I'll start off by asking board.

Are there any questions?

One question that's probably uh for Chief Garcia.

I appreciate the the data-driven approach to really drilling down on the areas that we need to address.

Um what assurances um can you give the community that this isn't gonna feel like to some communities that it's coming in and targeting the communities at large as opposed to the violent crime to speak to the this is not stop and frisk, this is not um, I'd very much appreciate the question, council member, and that's something that uh was born out of the one of the data sets that we had done previously is that although crime began going down in the hot spots and calls for service, priority one types of call for service were going down in the crime spots, so too were arrests.

Uh arrests went down as crime was going down because the premise of identifying the right places uh in the right criminal enterprises truly is what makes this different from a stop and frisk or some type of saturation patrol.

Uh we're gonna be intelligence led.

And so when we're talking about uh, you know, people places in certain areas, where are your drug houses?

Uh where are your legal gambling facilities, uh, where are your individuals uh that have uh warrants, specific in specific places and individuals.

And so again, this is certainly not stop and frisk, and I completely understand the sensitivity of that.

This is not saturation, and what the data has suggested is as crime goes down, if this is done properly and and intelligence led, is arrests also go down.

You say it's intelligence, so the saturation will be maybe felt but not seen is what I'm hearing.

No, there's no set it's it's specific to places.

Again, when we talk about high viz, that's uh one patrol car with their lights on for 15 minutes at different times of the day, stopping talking to individuals uh and just getting to know their community.

Uh the other one is when it's offender focused, it's individuals actually having specific information on people and places.

Gotcha.

It might be helpful to share just how small some of these grids actually are to give you know context.

It's not a grid might be like half a block, if that big, or one block.

Well, that's the whole the whole go ahead.

Or even smaller.

It's it's a football field.

Okay.

One of the dynamics again that makes this type of hotspot policing different is it's not the hotspot, oftentimes there's a hot spot within the hotspot that we're addressing, which is what makes this the grid work differently.

It is not a four or five block area that we are in the area of.

It actually is very, very specific and and right.

Chief, while you're up there, I guess I'll uh put this to you and then you can uh talk about it.

You know, Dr.

Smith, if you want to add something to it, that's fine.

Uh so what we're hearing is that um not a saturation, this is a directed response to a very specific geographic area.

Okay, so it's officer focus.

Makes sense to me that DRU would be involved with this from uh and and it's difficult to say what amount of time on any given you know um hot spot you would have to spend, you know, before you start seeing the crime trends go down, but you know, this is not something that we would have to um sustain for a long period of time, hopefully.

So I guess my question would be as far as the DRU complement with Fort Worth uh police department, that's something sustainable, something that we have uh as as a deployable resource without any concerns.

Oh no, there it's not there's not gonna be a mission from a deployment perspective.

Uh their part of their mission not only is a response to city issues, but also to be directed uh per their name to be directed response as well.

Uh and so that we're trying to put them in the best place to succeed.

But they're not the only tool.

Um there could be uh we we've had issues with uh with late night uh entertainment venues that have caused us violent crime.

That could be a that that could be a project for vice if it's an area.

There could be drug houses that that's uh that that'll be an issue for uh you know narcs, uh, there could be an issue with gang activity, and so although DRU is a tool, there are other there are other proactive units that we'd be using to really be surgical, and that's I guess that's the that's a turn that we really want to get.

We would be surgical about how we go uh about this work.

Understood.

Thank you, sir.

Uh Michael, uh, you have a question, sir.

Yeah, Chief.

Uh thanks for putting all this together.

I was you and I were meeting one day, and I where you were having a meeting about this or just prior to this.

My question really is I appreciate these efforts of targeting specific areas, high crime areas.

What should the average citizen that is not in one of these areas expect in response times and other resources that police may or may not have in the area?

Will they see a change in what they uh now experience or or what?

Well, that's a great question.

I think one of the things when we talk about the amount of work that this entails is really the dosage.

And as you heard uh Dr.

Smith talk about the areas that we're treating, we're not treating them all, we're treating certain areas.

And what this also does not do is it also doesn't take the onus off of our commanders to deal with issues that are occurring in their areas and utilizing resources as well.

Uh, and so although this is specific to specific areas of violent crime to ensure that uh uh our crime trends continue quite frankly to go down the direction they're going to, but continue to go down for a reason, uh, continue to go down with strategies, but again, this doesn't take anything away from our commanders in other parts of the city to deal with other levels of crime that are occurring in in divisions.

So ultimately they should see no difference in response times and uh calls uh being answered, obviously, response times uh and the resources that are in their neighborhoods as this plan moves forward.

No, they should not.

Now, when it comes to response times, again, response times are cyclical, and it really does depend on the dosage uh that that we're going through it, and we're actually going about a project on response times actually as we speak with regards to that.

But as far as the day-to-day services that they're getting, they should not be taken away from our other communities.

Great, thank you.

Alright, any other questions going once more around the table.

Great, thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Dr.

Smith.

Appreciate that update.

Very informative.

All right, next up, Chief uh Deputy Chief Sean Conjura, who's gonna give us a state and local laws uh that govern e-bike scooters and similar devices report.

Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tim and Public Safety Committee members.

Today we're gonna talk about electric bikes, scooters, and similar devices.

Uh next slide.

I'm a little clicker here.

There we go.

So on March 3rd, Councilman Lawsdorf brought up a question about e-bikes and what homeowners associations could do to regulate these types of vehicles in their neighborhoods, which led to us creating this PowerPoint as an educational tool.

I'm I'm really wanting to get through this pretty quick and give a good overview so we can get into the questions part so we can talk a little bit more about the problems we're seeing across the city.

Um current city of Fort Worth ordinances uh chapter 22.

Uh e-bikes are currently governed under the bicycles ordinances.

Um, which are safety equipment, proper operation, prohibited conduct, reckless operation, and the helmet laws.

Uh this slide gives you an idea of a variety of the electric vehicles that are out there, not all of them.

Most of these are legal.

Um, and as you can see, we have like the class one e-bike, which is a pedal assisted e-bike, doesn't travel very fast.

A class two e-bike, which has a throttle and a pedal assist, goes a little bit faster.

Then we have the class three bike, which uh can go up to 28 miles an hour, which under Texas statute right now, that is the maximum uh speed that can travel on the roadways without being a licensed vehicle.

Uh we have some mopeds, some scooters, some skateboards.

There's electric skateboards out there that that uh we see about downtown quite a bit.

Um then we get into the off-road only electric vehicles.

All of these vehicles are absolutely prohibited from traveling on sidewalks on public property, they're strictly off-road use only.

However, we have seen and encountered every single example on this slide operating in the public sphere.

Um, we work hard to address those.

Um, if you look at the one uh third row down, farthest on the left, you see electric off-road scooter.

When you see that scooter, that is so similar to what it is legal to operate on the highways.

So you can see where our officers kind of run into.

Hey, we it's better to stop and check to make sure than it is to just let them go.

Because some of these vehicles will travel up into the 50 60 mile an hour range and higher.

So when you have young kids operating these, obviously it becomes an issue.

Um state law, transportation code 551 regulates bicycles, e-bikes, um, where we can operate, age restrictions according to the state.

Under this law, it allows us as a municipality as a city to enhance those laws.

Um, currently, like I said, uh motor assisted scooters can operate on roadways speed limits of 35 miles per hour or less.

There are a few little details like the uh segues and the hoverboards, they can operate on sidewalks.

However, if a sidewalk is not available, state law allows them to operate on roadways less than 30 miles per hour.

Now we can we can regulate that further, but I I brought that as up as an example to show you the complexity of what we're dealing with with so many different models, and as these things become more commercially available because the production costs have gone down, we're obviously seeing a huge uptick in operation throughout the city.

So, when you get into like pocket bikes, mini bikes, as on the previous slide, those are strictly prohibited, can't ever operate anywhere except private property off-road.

Um we get into the question about homeowner associations.

What can homeowner associations do to regulate traffic in their area?

So when Park Street sidewalks are publicly dedicated dedicated and maintained by the city, obviously regulation falls under our state law and municipal ordinance.

Umas that have privately owned property, you know, such as the common area, sidewalks, trails, parking lots, that ownership is retained by the HOA, they can enforce their own house rules, so to speak, on governing whether or not they want these types of vehicles to operate in their community.

Um of those restrictions can be speed limits, uh, age restrictions, uh restrictions on operation on trails, uh prohibiting high-powered devices, um, designated riding areas.

If they have a green space that's owned by the HOA, they want to do something like that.

That's certainly in the purview of the HOA and operating hours.

Uh these restrictions would obviously be adopted through the HOA board policies and amendments according to each HOA if they chose to go that route.

Deputy Chief Conjure, can I interrupt you on that?

Sure.

I just don't want us to have to back up, but this is something that I've asked before, and and you're beginning to address it.

Uh, one thing that I didn't see as far as an electric conveyance is is a golf cart.

Now, you know, to your point and HOAs and you know, big you know, planned developments, you have a lot of that use.

And I understand what you're saying, you know, when it comes to privately owned areas where they could operate, but when they do venture out into the uh, you know, public right-of-ways, right in the beginning officer.

What is generally the approach of PD when it comes to enforcing that?

For PD with us, if we see a golf golf cart out operating, we're gonna educate them first.

Obviously, state law does allow for operation of golf carts under certain conditions in certain types of developments.

Um generally when we have an issue with those, it's because someone gets out into a roadway with greater than 35 mile an hour speeds areas where it would require you to be registered licensed to operate a vehicle in those conditions, which golf carts aren't.

So when they we've had the issues in the past on the west side, people crossing over Uland Street, you know, going back and forth from the neighborhood to the school and stuff, which we were very effective then at educating the public and letting them know, hey, I know that state law and regulations say hey, you can operate here, but you can't travel across here to operate in an area where you're not allowed to do that.

Um, golf carts is a little bit more of a complex issue because there are there are some ways that and some laws on the books that allow for further golf cart operation, most wouldn't pertain to the city of Fort Worth, like agricultural use and things like that.

So it's something we'd have to clean up and specify in the ordinances if you really wanted to dive deep into what golf cart usage is.

But I yeah, understood.

Is that help?

Yes, sir, it does.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

So back to the uh common community concerns, high speeds on sidewalks and trails, conflicts with pedestrians, young riders, young riders is a big issue, and that's for us as a police department.

That's our greatest area of concern is the safety of these kids.

And you know, we were all kids once.

We want kids to enjoy their activities outside, but we also need to educate them on the operation and the dangers.

And unfortunately, some of these devices that are marketed really exceed the capacity of what you know, especially smaller kids should be on, should be riding.

So another thing we need to look out, and they're easily modified.

A kid can grab an e-bike and boost the power pretty quick, relatively easily.

Um anyway, what we can enforce reckless operation, traffic violations, unsafe equipment, illegal operation.

Uh we've covered covered the potential areas for policy consideration.

Um our primary ordinance is just regulate bicycles as e-bikes, um questions.

Let's just jump to the end.

All right.

Any questions from the board?

Elizabeth, Michael?

Good.

Yep.

The only hey uh Chief Conjura, um, I want to make sure what I brought up earlier.

I didn't see it mentioned in there, at least with helmet laws that they're we're parity with bicycles and scooters.

Um, I want to make sure that that's part of this.

Oh, absolutely.

We're working on a a comprehensive update to the ordinance.

I think that once you look at it and and get it for review, I think you'll like what you see, and obviously we can add any community concerns and address those further, but we should have something for y'all really soon that covers all this.

Sounds great, thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank y'all.

Have a good day.

All right.

Next up, Sonny Saxon, their emergency management and communications department.

FIFA World Cup update.

Uh, good afternoon, uh, Mayor Pro Tim and Council members.

Um, I just wanted to thank you for providing a few minutes.

I'm gonna do this really brief.

I think we've talked about World Cup a lot, uh, but I do want to update just a little bit on our public safety work.

Um, I will mention that I'm joined today by members of the police department, fire department, emergency management, as well as our 911 team.

Um, some of them also are actually in Dallas for a uh we'll talk about it in just a second, but a regional last minute briefing.

Um, the final briefing is today, so uh, but we do have time for questions.

So, if you have any questions, I'll ask my colleagues to come up and join me.

Um, I do want to call out just a couple of them.

Uh, from the public safety committee point.

Let's see if I can get that.

Can we bring up the presentation there?

Uh there we go.

Okay, so uh we do have a a uh safety and security work group.

I know I've talked about the many work groups before.

Um that's co-chaired.

Uh it's worthy of mentioning between the police department, fire department, and emergency management.

So I just wanted to mention that they have been great leaders in that.

Um we do have the nine matches.

I think everybody knows that unless you're living under a rock, right?

We do have the first one coming up in nine days, so June 11th in Mexico City.

The final one is July 19th.

I do want to mention though that there's been various reporting out there on how many tickets are sold in all these host cities, how much hotels are booked.

I think that is noteworthy when we talk about public safety because we're going to make sure that we have a scalable and adaptable approach, and you'll hear me talk about that in just a second.

So we have plenty to do.

We do have plenty of our entertainment districts are spooled up and ready.

Great opportunity for community members as well as visitors that may come in.

We've got, you know, not just Stockyards and Sundance, Seventh District, LaGran Plaza.

I'd also mentioned pop-up events like near South Side's going to have some of those.

And so it's very exciting time.

And when we think about public safety, we think about really interacting with all of these events and keeping everyone safe and fun.

So how have we been planning?

Regional planning and emergency preparedness has been going on for quite some time, over uh two and a half years of active planning.

That's been with regional partners from the COG to the North Texas organizing committee, also even our healthcare partners, our local hospitals, our trauma centers have been involved, FEMA's been involved, we've been doing transportation test runs, and we've got some happening even this week, and exercises.

So quite a bit's coming on.

The bottom line is we are ready from a public safety perspective.

And I want to zoom in just for a minute and talk about City of Fort Worth preparations.

So one thing noteworthy worth highlighting.

We had over 60 participants of what we call our coordination group and our executive policy team that met in College Station just last month and really practice scenarios from tornadoes to flooding, evacuations, also transportation impacts.

And you know, when I think about a whole of city response or a one-city one team, this is probably the best way that you see that.

When we have to act quickly, everybody comes together to do that.

And coming out of that, we have lesson plans and a multi-year exercise plan that we're putting together.

So we're really thankful for that.

Okay, I just want to hit a couple of the highlights here.

I want to talk just for a minute about City Fort Worth public safety objectives.

So we have the regional ones and we have the city ones.

And for us, really, I mentioned it is about being adaptable and scalable.

It's about readiness, safe and friendly, and then also we have other events going on, right?

So we've got the 250th celebration that we're all thinking about and many different pop-ups.

So really we're kind of focused on all of the above.

So planning and intelligence is an important piece.

Our Fort Worth Intelligence Exchange, we're very fortunate to have those resources as a fusion center of our own.

We will have representation in the joint operations center, and you'll see that in just a second.

I'll show you what that organization looks like.

But we'll also have representation at the International Police Coordination Center in Virginia, and that's the international community coming together to help feed information to our local teams.

So the bottom line is situational awareness will be there because we're all connected.

Police department is focused on our World Cup locations.

I mentioned that they're using an instant command structure and unified command.

I'll talk about that in just a second.

But nearly a hundred personnel with eight teams over three shifts are ready to be deployed and are actively dedicated to this response.

So we're very appreciative and proud of that work and of those men and women that have come out to help us with that.

Fire department as well.

Really for them, I'm reminded about during these types of special events, the everyday emergencies continue to occur.

So our fire and EMS partners really are thinking about how do they maintain citywide fire and EMS coverage?

How are they there for those that may have an emergency that may not be here for a soccer visit, right?

They're adapting with a layered posture that is scalable resources based on our Fort Worth special events model.

And then also I want to call out the leadership of the Bureau of Fire Prevention and Arson and Bomb Squad, some of the world class experts, the best in the business.

We have them here in Fort Worth, and we're very fortunate for the training and the preparations that they've been doing.

Emergency communications, our 911 teams have also been meeting.

We've been meeting with mega 911 centers, so that's the largest cities in the country, and also in Canada.

And we've been talking for quite a while about how do you protect our communities during these special events.

So we've got surge staffing that's planned for match days.

We've got a little bit of additional police dispatch support that's planned for special events.

Noteworthy is last year we deployed a technology at the end of last year to promote equal access for 911 and allows people that are non-English speaking to be able to communicate readily with our team.

So there's over a hundred languages that are automatically transcribed and translated.

We're very fortunate to have those resources for our community.

And then lastly, want to mention municipal court and marshals.

They also have been adapting their operations.

We're very fortunate that they are taking opportunities to reassign to increase security needs for city hall as well as critical infrastructure and other event operations.

So they are ready as well.

Okay, just real high level.

Then I'll also mention our joint emergency operations center or the JEOC.

This is specific to City of Fort Worth.

The overall mission focus comes from here.

You have daily briefings and situational updates that'll happen.

Some of those will be available if you want to kind of zoom in and hear some of that over the time.

Also, I would mention that we started what we call virtual operations or standby, and we'll be doing that all the way through July 19th.

We will have a level two activation, a partial activation on July 3rd and 4.

So that's bodies there in the emergency operations center working on behalf of our community.

Okay, almost done here.

Grants and cost tracking.

Just wanted to mention that that's an important component.

It's possible we'll get some reimbursement for some public safety costs.

We're working with the COG on that.

And those are reimbursement for specific FIFA related activities, and so we're working with them on that now.

And finally, last uh earlier, as I say last month, I guess it was in March, we released a new community notification system.

Really, we emphasize staying informed, connected, and ready.

So you we encourage the community to sign up for emergency alerts.

You can do that by either going to the QR code texting start to 77295, or you can go to Fort Worth Texas.gov slash ready fort worth.

I'll give you another website as well.

It's not on the screen, but Fort Worth Texas.gov slash soccer 2026 is a great way that you can hear more about our soccer readiness and how everybody's gonna have fun in World Cup.

So with that, a couple of um uh pictures, I think they took them down, but a couple of pictures there from our instant command training, and um really proud of the work that all of our team does.

So with that, I'll stand ready for questions, and I might call my colleagues up if you have specific questions about police or fire.

All right, thank you.

So any of the questions for anyone?

We're all good.

Great condensed uh presentation and the time remaining.

Well done.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right, okay.

Uh before we adjourn, any future agenda item requests?

Anyone?

No.

I think we're all good.

With that, stand adjourned at uh twelve twenty-five.