I'm gonna call this meeting public safety to order.

And the first item we have is presentation from our police chief Trig on uh crime stats.

Yes, we do we have it up here.

Thank you, sir.

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon.

Get right to it here.

Okay, uh getting into the uh stats here.

Uh the numbers auto thefts continuing to trend down, which is a a good thing, um, as you see from 2023, kind of where we are uh today, the 108, and uh a lot to do with uh also our staffing levels increasing, which is big, which I'll you'll hear me mention a lot.

Uh that's just basically uh showing the monthly uh trending down as we stated, uh continuing that, which is great work by our autos and uh our detectives and accountability is key for all these uh things when people see that they're held accountable.

We should drive these numbers down.

Uh robberies, um, once again, uh numbers are down uh trending from the the high of of 2024 55 to the the 44 we are at currently this year from January through April.

Uh person shot.

Um obviously looking at these these numbers, uh we know five of these um were um horrific.

They're all horrific, but these were part of two incidents.

Uh one was the triple um we had, and then the the recent uh double.

So uh go forward to this is showing by where they occurred in the city, uh as you can see, which is a good map to to look at something new that we've added, but it shows our non-fatals and our our fatals on the map, service areas there, north, uh central, south, east, and west.

Uh the ones we've lost uh due to these violent acts, right?

It's uh the names have meaning.

Uh and when I look at these numbers, uh the thing that jumps out to me right away is half of these are our youth, teenagers, uh 15 years of age and and younger.

Although any life lost is a tragedy, but definitely when it involves our our young people.

It's it it uh it always sits a little bit different, and it's it's why we want to do the work as a city and and make sure that we can try to limit this as much as possible.

Uh our clearance rates.

Obviously, the national average uh seems to hold at 55 percent.

And uh GRPD is always well above that, which I'm proud to uh to report.

Obviously, last year 71%.

So far this year uh at a at 100%, but I don't look at it as a hundred percent.

I look at it as a uh well, I look at it at the percent, but it's accountability, as I said earlier.

Uh, because I think that's something that um drives crown crime down more than anything.

Word spreads uh if you commit a crime in this city.

Uh there's just gonna be accountability uh and uh it's gonna be addressed and um so that's where we're at with that.

Uh 13 reported fatal overdoses year to date, and 127 illegally possessed guns recovered uh through April.

So um crime is still trending down, which is a good thing.

We'll keep it to add the bodies.

You got men and women that are going out there doing the proactivity that I think is is driving these numbers down, which we could speak to more um, you know, at future uh updates, but I think it's it's key for our our department and uh our city.

So big weekend, although I missed it on uh Friday because I was out of town.

We had uh the the amphitheater, which is great for our city, and I know there was a lot of concerns moving into it, but uh from the reports I got and from what I was following uh that night via radio traffic, all went well.

Uh some of the traffic concerns that were unknowns.

Uh the the ingress and egress all worked smoothly.

Um and people were able to come into our town, visit our city without any major problems, no major traffic congestion, no uh groups of you.

There are any troubles downtown, uh, which was good to hear, and hopefully uh uh that's what you guys are seeing or hearing on your end that it was a good experience and Lionel Richie was able to uh perform.

Well, I'm sorry I missed it.

I'm a Lionel Richie fan, but uh but no overall good good uh good event uh staffing-wise.

We we had it staffed properly.

I think we maybe get another show or s uh two under our belt before we drastically uh you know cut the staffing.

Uh, but I'll I'll continue to uh get information on that, see if we can adjust that.

But all everything went went great.

I don't think it can go any better from from what I've heard.

So I will invite Chief Brown up to give a perspective on the fire department side.

Thanks, Chief.

You're welcome.

Yeah, so much like police fire did staff up as well.

Uh we had one engine located down at the amphitheater, and then we staffed an additional engine, so a third unit at headquarters station LeGrave.

Uh amphitheater, happy to respond.

Uh, we had one medical that fire dealt with, a handful of medicals that AMR dealt with, and then the third rig at LaGrave was quite busy that night, given all the people downtown.

Uh, emergency operations center was activated.

So we have police, fire, national weather service, uh, Eagle.

Uh we we had a host of people up there.

Uh the county was able to provide some real uh live drone footage for us.

We were watching the movement of the people, the pedestrians.

We were able to scan the river.

Uh all in all, though, a great night, great weather, and as Chief Triggs said, uh it really couldn't have gone much better.

All the planning and preparation over the last year led up to this.

Mobile GR, the parking.

I know there's a lot of scares.

Uh what we found was this was a well planned event, a well-attended event, and Grand Rapids was ready.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Can I add to uh first of all, thank both of the chiefs for for their work and all the staff as we prepared for the grand opening of the across your amphitheater?

Uh there were other public works employees that were also involved, as well as other uh departments, and it was just really a collaborative effort across our organization, but also with uh CAA and downtown Grand Rapids Inc.

And we were really concerned about pedestrian safety and lots of closures and appropriate places to ensure that uh people can cross uh streets safely and we had another major venue uh activated at uh the Van Andel Arena along with uh 21 Live and as well as I think a uh uh theater uh uh play that was happening.

So everything went well, and it not only went according to plan, it went better than planned.

And so I really want to thank uh everyone for their uh work and hope uh we will have many, many more safe experiences joining that venue, and we'll continue to learn from that as we plan to open the soccer stadium.

Yeah, so thanks, Chief, and and certainly thank you to the f uh to the folks in your department who were um visibly and maybe maybe helping people with a learning curve on the new traffic patterns.

Um, you know, which the first time you find out that there's a there's a new uh sheriff in town, so to speak, on traffic in a neighborhood, uh, you know, closing down market is a new experience for some people.

And so I, you know, we're gonna have some more learning to do.

I always think about the roundabouts we got on wealthy street.

When those first went on, I thought like no one in Grand Apples is ever gonna learn how to use roundabouts.

Those are European, this is not gonna work.

Uh and there were lots of mistakes in those first in that first year.

Uh and I drive that wealthy street all the time, and everybody knows now.

If you're in the right lane, it's because you're setting yourself a turn right, and if you're in the left lane, you get to keep going down wealthy street.

And I don't have people cutting me off anymore.

So, you know, same thing here.

I think we're gonna have a learning curve, and so I appreciate your keeping an eye on that.

I think probably we're gonna have to get through a number of shows before everybody really gets uh the lay of the land.

And you know, we'll have people more people figuring out what their parking options are and and how to do that even better.

But yeah, thank you, and thanks you know, the city manager.

This has been your baby for years.

Um, so really, really glad this went well.

Um I also uh wanted you know, uh for for the you know the people out in uh out in TV land.

Uh downtown ambassadors, saw a lot of them out very visibly.

Um, and uh so I walked through the Hart Side neighborhood and and by Hart Side Park on the way to the amphitheater, and everything was fine.

Uh it was great.

So, really, really glad that we had a coordinated positive experience, and I'm looking forward to a lot more fun the summer.

Mayor, I want to highlight for this committee.

Um, I know we've talked about uh violence, uh, and the chief highlighted the six uh lives that were lost, and three of them uh were teenagers.

And this morning at the city uh committee of the whole, there was a presentation about our summer programming and violence prevention efforts, and so uh members of the committee.

If you would like to see that in more detail, it's uh it is online and you can go back and look at it.

But we are uh having programs at our community centers.

If we want to have night programs with community partners, we have summer job employment programs and and it targets uh the very ages, at least two of them.

You have to be at least 15 years or older, 15 and 24 to work in our grow 1000 program.

So happy to continue those this summer, and hopefully that will help uh prevent um some of the unnecessary lives lost in addition to good patrol and presence with uh the police department having their full staffing, and I know with summer coming there will be officers out more visibly on bikes and uh even using mounted patrol occasionally.

So I want to thank them in advance.

Yeah, and I don't want I don't know, I don't want to speculate too much, but like I strongly suspect that our last double homicide, somebody knew that young man had a gun other than him before that all happened, before the the shooter uh took those lives, and GRPD can respond.

And if they see, I mean they've got eyes on our street to the to the extent they can, but like we need our citizens to to be calling in.

I mean, all of the illegal gun uh collection activity you're doing, um, the more we can have a see something say something ethos around any gun being on the street, uh, the closer we're gonna be to preventing those kinds of future harms.

Um because you know uh I've got I got a bumper sticker, it says guns turn arguments into tragedies.

Um, you know, uh a dispute between two unarmed people uh has a very different arc than a dispute where one of the people has a gun and things can go so bad so quickly in just a matter of a second or two uh and and you know a whole community is traumatized and and people's lives are ended, and a lot of other people's lives are changed forever.

Um so it's it's just terrible.

I mean, again, uh it it's it's terrible the level of uh access uh people have in situations when they should be working on conflict resolution um to be to be having things go in that direction.

So Mr.

Fine.

Um just curious on the large events like this.

Does the city require the owner to provide a certain amount of security or wayfinding to help manage crowds?

Um, there's a lot of people in one spot.

And you know, just curious about that.

We we um our special events office works very closely with the police department on permitting activities, and there are requirements for street closures and also for security, and the chief can talk more of that.

Yeah, obviously, there are special defense coordinator is gonna work with uh the obviously the facility, whoever wherever's having the event, and kind of coordinate what kind of security that they have, uh, what kind of traffic issues uh that we've seen and kind of collectively work together to figure out what's the what needs covered where we've fallen short, uh obviously with how our officers work with the Van Andor Arena, which we've been doing that for years, obviously.

We have our our outposts to get people into the uh facility safely.

There's also security on hand inside, and our officers obviously respond inside once the traffic is in to uh assist with another line of security or level of security.

Thank you.

Yeah, but for more specifically, their DK security was on site providing security, and they were they were very present and visible uh throughout the event, making sure people remain safe.

Thank you.

I appreciate the presentation, Chief.

I just wanted to thank our planning director, Kristen Turkelson and the planning department, the planning commission that took so much foresight into the planning of the operations of this new theater that we're all benefiting from.

Uh I do also want to just ask the chief.

I in a presentation recently to the public safety department, we learned that some of the parking waivers that were granted to the Accursure Amphitheater, uh we're going to put an extra amount of work on our licensed and badged police officers.

And there were specific requirements where some of your officers needed to come out of their particular patrol routes and into that space where we couldn't maybe hire a third-party security.

Forgive me if that's incorrect information.

Are you finding that this is going to create an increase in staff needs in in days like that, or am I making up these?

I'm not aware of that.

Okay, great.

Okay, well, then it's wrong.

That's good news.

Yeah.

All right, but I did secondly just want to say thank you in all sincerity on a very serious and tragic issue.

The event that took the lives of both Jeremiah and Savannah happened near a public school.

So I just wanted to compliment the department, the Grand Rapids Public School and their board and their leadership.

I thought the way our police and public safety worked with our public school system to allow space for both children and for the educators in that space was truly professional in the midst of what was an awful tragedy.

And so I just wanted to say thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah, and I was out there 25 minutes after it happened, and uh they never get any easier, right?

And it it always hits a little bit different when it's a child, uh, a youth, and uh the department uh handled it professionally.

The uh, you know, from GRPS, everybody collectively uh did a great job.

Obviously, some some neighbors there that were helpful with things.

It was just uh nobody wants to see it.

It's uh it's a perfect example of senseless, and that's that's one word describes it's just it's just senseless and unfortunate.

Yeah, Commissioner Koger.

Yeah, in line with uh committee member uh Jim uh committee members' um comments on that tragedy.

So uh thank you, Chief Jerk, for the uh your team dealing with that.

But I also want to lift up for this committee that a part of the Third Water Equity Fund that we just uh were we're passing later on, but uh the whole commission supported was a new idea.

So it's tentative, it's not drafted, there's not big ideas, but um there are big ideas, but there aren't specifics just yet, which is the uh trauma or psychological emergency response pilot that will hopefully be able to supplement the all the work that we're already doing in terms of trauma.

I know we offer counseling after things like this happen, but I am so thankful to my colleagues and the city staff who are committed to this.

So we've set aside 150,000 to work through what does a trauma response look like.

So once we have the shooter, once GRPD does their role, like what does it look like afterwards to say the city of Grand Rapids has had a collective shared trauma?

Now what?

Right, and following up with that in the city saying we want to help even further.

So I'm really excited on uh that uh allotment for that.

150,000, it's a good investment, and uh I thought this would be good for this committee as well.

And we also did uh put 250,000 aside for Girl 1000 and violence prevention as well.

So the third ward equity fund uh led by Commissioner Purdue and myself, we really thought uh that this was really important and want to put dedicated dollars towards it from that.

So, so thank you.

Thanks.

Any other comments or questions?

Otherwise, uh thanks, Chief.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, everyone.

Mayor, while while um we're still talking, police it may I give a brief update on the police chief uh search process.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um, as many of you know, uh, we had to begin looking for our next executive after Chief Winstrom's uh departure, and I'm so grateful for Chief Joe Trigg uh stepping up in the interim leadership and all those uh in the department who also stepped up to continue to provide uh good leadership.

Uh but now we have to move on to the next phase of the process, which is uh the permanent search and replacement.

And I want to thank the members of the public safety committee, those of you who participated in the RFP uh evaluation to give uh some feedback on the selection of the search firm.

And as I announced a few weeks ago, based on that uh feedback, we've uh selected uh public sector search and consulting, the same firm uh that helped in the last two searches when Chief Payne was hired, as well as Chief Winstrom.

And so they are actively recruiting now, talking to uh candidates um across the country as well as internal to the organization.

Uh Chief Trig has indicated that he is going to uh be a candidate, and I'm so grateful for his uh interest.

And it appears, well, not final.

I wanted to give this update because I'm not certain if uh we're gonna get a chance to um have more advanced conversation uh of it, but we'll have the hiring and selection process uh the week of June 17th.

More details will be coming out, but I fully expect that uh the public will get a chance to meet the finalists as last time on uh during that week, very likely here in this room or whatever uh venue we identify, as well as um uh there'll be other uh panels uh throughout the time that they're here.

Well, we'll get uh more community feedback, department feedback, feedback from law enforcement uh executives as well as uh other uh stakeholders, neighborhood stakeholders.

So um some of you may be asked uh to participate.

Hopefully, you'll well can't have the entire committee on the panel, but the entire committee can certainly watch online or come to the public forum.

So we're looking forward to uh moving forward in that direction and hopefully uh make some announcement uh doing this summer in July.

Great.

Thanks for it.

I appreciate it.

Um and I think our next uh next we're getting a presentation from Mr.

Davis.

Um, although our screen's gone blank, so maybe we're not.

There we go.

Well while Mr.

Davis is coming.

Uh if you'll permit me uh to put some context around today's uh conversation.

If you recall uh back in February, members of the city commission uh after one of the office involved shootings that we had asked for some policy review.

Uh one of the reviews specifically was to go over the 12 officer-involved shootings and look at uh some of the facts and factors since many of the cases were closed out, and Chief Trig did that here right in front of the public safety committee.

Uh the next item was a benchmarking uh study of our pursuit and canine use policy as a request from the city commission, and uh I did ask uh that the Office of Public and Accountability take the lead on that effort with input from the police department and identify model agencies and relevant comparison points.

Uh asked them to help us understand the practices of other jurisdictions and see where we might have an opportunity to improve our policies and ask the police department to also uh provide an overview of their policies as well based on the feedback.

Today is an interim report, it's not a final report.

Hopefully, we can come back to you in the month of June.

Uh we're still fact gathering, fact-finding, and uh developing a response to uh what I have uh charged the departments to do, and Mr.

Davis can give a little bit more insight on the process thus far, but the full report will be uh I anticipate next month.

Thank you.

So, Mr.

Davis, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Well, good afternoon.

Yeah, the city manager said uh much of what I would say.

I will indicate that the K9 policy benchmarking analysis is in draft form.

The draft was provided to the city manager.

Feedback was provided uh by the city manager of the police department and staff as such.

OPA is working to incorporate the relevant uh feedback and anticipates that the city manager indicated bringing that report back in June.

Uh the draft report does include a review of uh GRPD's policies as well as nationally recognized professional organizations uh and associations and the canine policies of Pier Cities.

Uh again, we anticipate releasing this report and providing a briefing to this committee at your June meeting.

Thank you.

One question I'd have um Mr.

Davis is um uh you're working I'm assuming you're working with our uh uh police department on on putting this together.

But the the city manager referenced this was uh foot pursuit generally.

So I don't know if that's a longer term conversation and you're focusing in particularly on um uh canine policy now.

But um uh the the two the two are sort of in the in a in a tight space together.

So are we gonna have any analysis of that or are we only looking at canine at this point?

My my understanding of what the uh city manager's direction uh is related to this was canine policy and canine pursuits specifically.

So that's what this benchmarking is uh based upon.

Okay.

So it may be that we want to get a presentation on um fruit pursuit policies, you know, sometime in the future and maybe talk about our benchmarking on that, but that's the it's the canine that you're specifically looking at next month.

That's correct.

And the reason, Mayor, I just want to be consistent with the March 17th memo that uh shared uh publicly at this committee, and it said a potential update in May.

That was the time frame, and so this is our update, and we're still uh we're still in flight in terms of the developing the the report.

Appreciate it.

And can you can you remind me of the duration of time associated with that?

I know I've read the memo.

Uh just trying to remember for the for the looking at the canine.

Yeah, we we uh capacity.

We and again we intended to give the update in May.

We knew we had a lot of stuff happening this month with uh four meetings in a row uh with the budget, and so hopefully June will be the date that we come back with the full policy.

The other part uh of the memo spoke to an evaluation of the CAP process.

And um we thought that we would be able to uh provide an update in June or July.

Um I'm thinking that's still possible, probably the July date now since the uh other policy will be in June, is what uh what we're targeting.

Was it over a span of five years or oh okay, and in that capacity?

Um or the 12 incidences that you're looking at or so so what we were asked to do is a benchmarking analysis, which means we're looking at the canine policy, the written canine policy uh in comparison to peer cities in comparison to recommendations from nationally recognized organizations.

We're not looking at individual incidents over a certain period of time.

We're uh specifically looking at policy, comparing it to best practices in policy.

But uh to your point, you when we looked at the shooting incidents, it was over at least five years, and I think uh Chief Trig actually showed more historical data than that on some use of force issues, but this one is more policy than going specific incidents.

Right.

Great.

Well, thanks for the uh thanks for the update about the update.

Thank you.

All right.

Um no further questions uh colleagues and uh thank you all for being here and thanks to all of our public safety folks for doing what they do.