Council workshop.

We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Today we have a presentation from the Frederick Police Department from Chief Lando and Friends.

So if you would like to kick it off, we did uh receive advanced notice that City Council members, McShane and uh Kazem Shak will not be joining us, so it's just the three of us today.

Okay, well, thank you very much.

Uh Jason Lando, police chief, with me, uh, Captain Kirk Henneberry from our operations division.

I also wanted to acknowledge some guests that we have today.

We have uh Chief for a day, uh Kelsey and Angel from the Arenda Center are spending the day with me.

And uh they uh they've been at several meetings today, and uh they wanted to come and be a part of this as well.

So thank you for being here.

Um this is our annual update.

Uh just a couple things uh we have going on in the department now and some things we're looking to in the future.

Um first I provided each of you with a brochure that we hand out to the community that outlines a number of the programs and initiatives that we have going on.

Uh that's uh a public document that we hand out regularly.

Uh so I'll just get started with the PowerPoint.

Um several years ago, probably about three years ago now, the Capitol Police, the architect of the Capitol uh police uh had a command post, a mobile command post that they were um giving away to uh any police department that was uh first come first served.

So at the time we uh a bunch of us jumped in a vehicle and got down to DC as fast as we could and uh secured that vehicle.

Um it has been in the shop uh getting refurbished for the past two years.

Um and we just took delivery of it this week.

So um Captain uh Lapp drove to Anvil PA with some of our staff and picked it up.

So we now have our own uh uh command post for major incidents, events, parades, and whatnot.

Um so that that hit the street this week.

Just to give you an idea, brand new a vehicle like that would be about one million dollars.

Um we were able to get the vehicle for free and uh have a couple thousand dollars worth of upgrades, but certainly a bargain for us.

Um right now we have um a drone program in place where we have about seven or eight of our officers have uh drones that they can deploy for uh you know from a scene during an incident, whether it's uh you know, whether it's uh an individual who's barricaded, a missing child, something like that.

Um one of the things we're working on for the future is uh a new program called Dronus First Responder.

Um this is a program that a number of forward thinking and progressive police departments have begun to roll out around the country.

Uh basically we'll have a uh in addition to our officers, um our pilots having drones, we will have a drone mounted uh on the roof of the new police headquarters.

It'll be actually tied into the dispatch system.

So let's say a call comes in for a person with a gun or a suspicious person.

Before the police officers are even dispatched, the drone will be automatically dispatched, will fly to the location uh of the call and begin uh in real time feeding information back to the responding officers.

So not only do they know what they're getting into, um, but we might even be able to clear calls uh that way.

So you know, keep our officers in service.

Um so it makes it safer for the officers and for the community members that are responding.

One really important thing, you know, with the drone program is this is not um any sort of like m community monitoring or big brother type program.

These are specific incidents that the drones will be deployed to.

Um, and it's really the goal is to is to keep everyone safe.

So we're not gonna have drones spread out around the city constantly recording or monitoring.

That's not the point of the program.

Um but it's something that we're working on, and as we develop the new headquarters, we're gonna have space in the new headquarters um for uh for the DFR program.

So one of the things um that I noticed was brand new officers get out of the police academy and they have all this knowledge and they're you know ready to hit the street and do great things, but they don't know any members of the community.

Uh and so one thing we started this past year, we wanted to just run it once or twice as a pilot and see how it went, was a program we call Get to Know Your New Five O.

So during the uh police academy, more towards the end, because we want to make sure that they're you know they're doing well and getting ready to graduate.

Uh we bring in uh a number of community members, uh, community leaders from across the city, uh, and we bring them in for an evening with our recruits and we do just some table talks and we rotate them around and we get they get to know each other.

Um, and then that way when the officers hit the street, they've already been kind of introduced to some of the the leaders and the community faith leaders, school leaders, elected officials.

So we ran the first one at FCC last year, uh, and it went really well.

Um actually, the officers, after we we debrief with them, they really liked it and they recommended it for future classes.

And our community members really um like getting to know the officers that were about to hit the street.

So we're gonna continue that uh this year with the class that just started the academy.

We're really making a push to improve some of our technology.

So um Captain Lapp couldn't be here today.

Um, but we have a license plate reader trailer that is uh deployed as needed in certain areas.

So obviously it being a part of a trailer, it's mobile, it can be deployed anywhere in the city.

Um let's say we're having um you know an uptick in certain crimes in a certain uh neighborhood, we can just deploy the trailer and move it over there, and it'll capture license plates.

So um, you know, if we're having thefering vehicles or burglaries, um, we can use that to capture the license plates in that area that uh might might be the car of the burglar.

One of the things we're working on now is we have uh additional um stationary locations for license plate reader cameras.

Um we ordered 20.

Uh they should be here shortly, and we're gonna strategically place them in areas where um we where we get like the most we see like the most traffic, so um the uh ingress and egress to the city.

So if we should have uh you know some sort of crime take place, um we they'll be mounted kind of close to the highway, so we can basically get the most bang for our buck uh with that.

So you'll see 20 new license plate reader cameras getting deployed.