Okay, call this meeting of public safety to order, and our first item of business is a presentation from our firefighters on high-rise firefighting.

Take it away, Chief.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Um I just want to be uh clear that we're just doing a real quick educational briefing about kind of the differences between residential and high-rise firefighting and some of the things we do and the differences that we have to um send when we pre-plan them, and then at the end, the fire marshal is gonna kind of talk about some of those um fire codes that have to do with high rises, which really is kind of backwards.

We should have talked about that first, but uh, because that kind of what keeps us safe.

But we'll go ahead and do the uh the operational side of it first.

So, one thing I want you to understand about the differences is it's called reflex time.

On a on a standard structure fire, you know, crews roll up, picture your house, they roll up in front of your house, it's ground level, they jump off, they can pull the hoses, they walk right in the door, they find the fire, they do a search, and they can knock it out.

Um, when we're talking about a high rise, um, and for our SOG, it's anything 55 feet or higher or beyond the reach of one of our aerial devices.

Um, they have to now picture this building.

They get up front on Monroe, they have to walk up, they have to find the elevators, they have to take the elevator to two floors below the suspected fire floor.

All this time, if there is a fire, that fire's building, right?

So we have this reflex time, and it can be a significant delay before we can get water on the fire floor.

And that's in the end, that's what puts out fires is water.

So each additional floor multiplies that reflex time further, and um, when we do get a fire that's uh rapidly progressed, we also have other um equipment we have to bring up and stage below the fire to support those operations.

Um so I kind of talked about this uh just a second ago the the water supply differences.

Um you also have to think when you're on the ground, um getting that hose and that water um from uh uh horizontal plane is a lot easier than going up vertical, right?

So think we're on the ninth floor right now.

Every floor adds 10 PSI of pressure.

We have to pump because we have to push that water up.

Um the occupant load, typical house, two to four people.

Um, this building today, it can exceed a couple hundred people.

We have to be concerned about uh building size, you know, 15 to 2,000 for your normal residential.

Um, you know, we can have floor plans of over 10,000 that we have to search and make sure we we rescue people from.

Um, on non-fire calls, so for instance, on medical calls um at residentials or usually um taking care of at the ground floor.

Um, if we have a medical and we've had it here where the elevator's been out of service, now we have to have extra extra resources.

We have to bring our resources that we already have, and um, you know, get these people down.

So there's a lot more resource demand um on a regular house fire.

We have six to seven companies.

Think a company is a large red fire apparatus with three people on it.

Um, when we have a high-rise fire, we're sending 11 plus, and that's just to get started.

Um, so for containment, um, we do that aggressive attack through the front door.

Uh in a high rise, we send what we call a fast team in, and they're literally coming in with water cans and trying to get there before this fire progresses past a point where it needs you know a certain amount of GPM to put it out.

Uh, just real quick, here's the numbers on uh personnel requirements on a standard residential structure fire.

We're sending 19 firefighters there to put it out.

Um, on a high rise uh where it's not confirmed, we initially do 24, and then on a working fire, i.e., you call in and say there is a fire.

We're in initially sending 33 personnel, and then once it is confirmed, we we strike a second alarm to get more resources coming.

It's a very resource-rich operation uh of which we we have um and we plan for those resources.

And just a quick case study earlier this year at 144 Oak Street.

If you have that picture, it's a high rise residential.

Um, we did have a fire on the ninth floor.

Uh the response timeline, we were dispatched at 9 50 at um three minutes later.

Engine two was so three minutes.

Think about leaving your house.

How far working you get in three minutes, right?

They got from MLK to 144 oaks.

Um, three minutes later, they got to the ninth floors.

Now, mind you, we can take the elevator two floors before two floors below, and then we're hiking up those stairs, those last two floors with an extra hundred to 130 pounds of equipment on.

Okay.

Um, once they got there, they found the fire room, they had two water cans, they got in and they were able to keep it in check and keep it from growing any bigger.

So um, some of the key factors and you know, minor damage, zero casualties to both civilians and firefighters was our fast reflex time, um, our fully staffed fire department, and let's be honest, if we're accredited in ISO one, we're good at what we do in the city of Grand Rapids, thanks to the support we get from you.

Uh the sprinkler system did not activate without that rapid crew intervention, you know, it could have gone farther on that in that area.

So our high rise protocol worked.

Uh we're real happy about it.

And um, yeah, we just wanted to kind of give you guys an idea of what we do from the operation side.

And I'm gonna turn it over to my fire marshal and talk about fire prevention program on the high rise side.

Good afternoon.

Uh thank you for allowing us to come here and give you a little bit of education about our high-rise protocol and our fire prevention program.

Uh, this is uh something that we take very seriously here uh the city of Grand Rapids.

Uh we have a team effort.

It's not just the fire department, it's also uh community development, all the inspectors at work over there and within planning two of our fire hazard inspectors who um uh are busy all day long, every day, making sure that we're safe in the city of Grand Rapids.

So uh they do plan reviews, they're taking a look at these systems before they even get built.

Um so the fire sprinkler systems, fire alarm systems critically important, um, and so is egress stairways and everything that has to do with uh the integrated systems that allow us to have compartmentalization, smoky vac, uh good communications, and getting people out of that structure.

You're in a high rise right now.

Think about how you would get out of here if there are fires to break out over there in the corner.

All right, so think about your exits, which stairways you're gonna take, what are you gonna do if they're blocked?

That's where we come in.

Uh fire prevention division.

We come in uh a lot of times we're complaint driven because a citizen, a resident or somebody who's been in that building saw something, uh didn't feel good with it, and we get a call and we get calls all the time to go and take a look at different buildings.

So before that building even uh goes up, all right, we're involved uh during the construction component, doing roughen inspections, doing final inspections, and that's key.

Making sure that that is uh meeting NFPA 3 requirements and all the NFPAs that have to do with sprinkler systems, fire alarm systems, and those uh elevators and everything is integrated working correctly.

Now you see a term here where it says URCs that has a lot to do with communications.

That's an emergency responder uh radio coverage um enhancement systems.

So if we go into a building that should have been uh you know reviewed to make sure that uh through uh kind of a forensic detail of equipment and making sure that these things are amplified and dispatches reading our messages and we're able to read them.

That goes for fire, police, and EMS.

So those are very important systems.

Um the fire prevention division, our inspectors were also looking at ITM.

We want to make sure that those systems are inspected, tested, and maintained.

So that is critically important that we're doing that, and that we're in each high rise every two years.

We're in that process right now.

So we have over a hundred uh one hundred high rises here in the city of Grand Rapids.

Um, I don't think that's going to uh go down at by any means.

I think we're gonna see an increase, and it's really important that we have your support that we can make sure that our community is safe and our firefighters are safe because fire prevention puts them at the top, and our emergency responders and our community vitally important.

And so we're gonna go out and we're gonna educate our uh property managers and owners and what they need to do.

And if you look over in the right hand side of this uh screen, you're looking at exactly what I just talked about ITM inspection testing and maintenance, that their means of egress are always viable, but they're never blocked, um, that we don't have anything in the way um, or something that could be potentially dangerous in those hallways or corridors that could be uh an ignition source.

So uh all those systems, uh HVAC is also an important thing for compartmentalizing those doors that you'll see there are shut um that everything is functioning correctly, and uh those there are requirements in the city of Grand Rapids or a code set that they send uh those reports to us for review.

So we want to make sure everything is uh operationally correct and not deficient.

That's pretty much it that inspectors do um at a very high value or high level.

Uh but if you have any questions, uh certainly entertain them.

Thanks.

Uh uh, Mr.

Fine.

Yes.

So I haven't to live in a high rise, 28th floor uh positive towers.

And one of the things I want to get clarified is you mentioned that it takes a bit for the water to get up.

Yes.

And I was understanding that the fire alarm systems that are in place uh in our rooms and so forth, that's already loaded.

So there may be water, yes.

That is a that is a water-filled system that you have.

The pumps are critical because if those pumps aren't pumping at the right pressure to overcome the gravity that's and friction loss, um, you're not gonna get the uh adequate amount for that sprinkler head to put out that fire.

Marlon, what we see a lot of times too is those fire sprinklers do a great job of keeping the fire in check from growing, but we still need to get up there and put it out the rest of the way.

So you're saying that the the system is uh armed or loaded all the way to the top.

But that's for you know the the initial response to immediate fire by either heat or whatever triggers that.

Um I guess I was surprised and I'm a little bit wondering why there isn't a storage on top so that your pressure is coming down.

Just that's a design question.

That's the way things used to be done was to overcome that that friction loss and have uh a tower about 35 feet above the highest floor, so we had enough head pressure to hit uh the fire sprinklers uh that was gonna give it enough water and enough pressure to uh take care of that fire.

Um, but the systems that we have now uh we've gotten away from those.

Uh their maintenance um nightmare kind of to have a tower like that, especially in cold weather, like we are here in Michigan.

Uh you'll see them still in Chicago and New York, but uh it's not something you see here in Grand Rapids.

So the fire pump is critical, and in the integrated uh system with a fire alarm, uh that really is a win is early notification to the occupants and uh notification 911, get uh Chief Johnson's crews underway um and making sure that we have the right resources at the right time at the right place.

Thank you.

You have one question.

Um so I was actually living at 144 Oak Street uh while that high-rise fire broke out just two floors above it.

So I certainly appreciate your dedication to this topic.

Um as you mentioned, we keep getting more high rises constructed within the city.

So this is a bit of an emerging topic, though, something we're not entirely unfamiliar with.

Um I'm curious uh what are the standards at this point with regards to using um drones to fight fires with foam.

Is that something that is a practice that's potentially evolving, especially for these high rises where it's difficult to get water up?

Well, I don't think it's just a fire operations question.

Um I don't necessarily have a line site for drone uh attack systems.

Um I'm not familiar with them, but certainly I think we have enough that we could do surveillance if we have a large enough um incident where we could use our UAVs that I believe the police and some of you know fire still have uh to look for victims, but for fire ops, sir.

Yeah, I think um I haven't seen any systems like that out there available.

And um, you know, at eight pounds per gallon, I think you'd have to have a pretty tough drone to get enough water and some foam material up there to knock it down.

Plus now you're talking about you have to get inside the structure, right?

Because you have to get to the seat of the fire where the fire starts to really knock it out.

And I I know we have drones that go inside, but that's like for more surveillance stuff.

But got it.

We're always looking at you know, technology and seeing what's out there and what's coming on the horizon.

Like I'm my operations division is really stooped in technology, like if we can do it smarter and we can do it better.

Thank you.

I I too want to thank the fire department for bringing this forward.

And what I'm um what's interesting today, I know there's been a lot of concern about the density of development, but as you can see um from the number of uh incidents, uh much of the structure issues uh happen outside of the large high rises, and uh when we're talking about this presentation, uh there was earlier slide about the staffing, the staff intensity.

If it's beyond alarm and you're responding, I think it's almost double the resources or some some something close to that.

But uh the fire department has mutual aid agreements with other jurisdictions.

So if we have to deploy more resources to a high-rise fire, we're able to call on other neighboring uh jurisdictions to cover some of the operations outside of the downtown area.

You want to explain that, Chief?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we have uh agreements with uh Kentwood, uh Walker, Plainfield, Wyoming.

Um if we get tied up uh on an operation downtown where it's taxing the majority of our resources, we'll actually call out to them and let them know we're working a high rise or we're working uh uh uh an intensive fire, and they'll eke into the outskirts of our city and and take uh take our medical alarms for us, take our smaller fires, take whatever incidents we need them to.

So that's all in uh intergovernmental agreements through um mutual ABIT or Michigan uh mutual aid box alarm system.

Sorry, uh acronyms get me sometimes.

Right.

So Mayor, I I feel like um with the staffing that the city commission has approved over the years, and the fact we have mutual aid agreements and the technology that's used in development, the permanent inspecting, um we are as as prepared as we ever have been for more dense development in our city.

So that's all in uh intergovernmental agreements through um mute mutual abus our Michigan uh mutual aid box alarm system sorry uh acronyms get me sometime right so mayor I I feel like um with the staffing that the city commission has approved over the years and the fact we have mutual aid agreements and the technology that's used in development the permanent inspecting um we are as as prepared as we ever have been for more dense development in our city yeah uh I I think that there's a subcurrent here too which is to make sure that we as we build these new structures that we have the that part of the evaluation of the new structures is making sure that we are building our capacity to respond and you know the the beautiful thing about our governmental model is built new buildings tend to produce new revenue either in the source of property tax or income tax and so um ideally new projects allow us to build the capacity to meet uh demand simultaneously essentially so but but it's it's it's important to remember um that these are more complicated systems yeah commissioner yes thanks mayor uh you all mentioned that you get information from folks reporting uh I may have missed it can you tell us where folks can report if they feel as though uh their building is not up to code so that's kind of a two-part question fire service contractors do a lot of the inspections in fact they do all the inspections on those systems the reports come to us if a citizen um doesn't feel you know comfortable or they've noticed something um that is they feel that they're in danger or in peril of they can call four or five six thirty nine hundred call our fire department um it goes into a direct line um and then it gets distributed from there from somebody who's monitoring that line uh but if it's a critical deficiency I wouldn't have a problem with them calling 911 that if they think something is inherently dangerous right now and they feel that they're you know in harm's way call us we'll come out thank you okay thanks for the presentation thank you uh that brings us to our next item which I believe is our um presentation from our police chief on uh current crime statistics good afternoon oh yeah we're responding to obviously the city manager had the uh memo out uh I think it was March 17th regarding uh uh a few things and one it was OPA's benchmarking our our canine policies and practices so uh portion of that uh and uh director davis did a great job on that our portion of that was to uh to respond give an overview of our K-9 program and our policy and practices uh not to put his age out there but I have deputy uh chief baker here who's been part of our department for three decades and someone that has been involved in our K9 program and has been the uh coordinator for a long time and has seen the growth of our K-9 uh program throughout the year so no one can speak to it uh better than he can so I'm gonna have him step up here and run us through it and we'll be able to available to answer any questions.

Thank you Chief good afternoon all my name's PJ Baker for those I haven't met I'm uh relatively new deputy chief of operations for the Grand Rapids Police Department formerly served as captain of uh commander of the West Service area um I'm 52 years old I'm not overly concerned if anybody knows my age and I look forward to celebrating my 30th anniversary with the police department this Saturday as a matter of fact.

I did have the honor and the privilege to serve as a K-9 handler for the Grand Rapids Police Department for about 10 years I served with two different dogs during that time both of them were Nartotic narcotic patrol certified dogs one being a German shepherd named Tara and the second being a Belgian Malino named CAD.

So I've got some experience working directly with the dogs and within this team.

After that leaving the uh K-9 team I went out to serve in some uh some other capacities within the agency and eventually found my way back as the administrative commander of the K9 team and I've served in and out of that role uh probably for a large part of the last eight to nine years currently still serving in that role I serve in that role as a commander of the West service area and uh I'm gonna hang on to it as long as I can but uh also looking at some potential restructuring capabilities or opportunities within the K9 team um and see where that best fits um for some layers of oversight that I think we can build in in the future but I'll address that a little bit uh more as we get to some of those sections.

Um certainly we're this is a response to the um benchmark study that the OPA conducted for us um and I appreciate that there's some insight there that I certainly can take away from I think to understand some of the um recommendations and our response to those recommendations I'd also like to take the opportunity to make ever sure everyone is familiar with our K9 program how our K9 program stands in its modern uh modern capacity.

There was quite a bit of gas where we had no dogs, but occasionally a dog would come and go.

In 1998, Sergeant Mark Mathis had a uh pretty significant vision to bring canines into our police department and help them serve alongside us uh for our communities.

Our team expanded in 98 from one dog to five dogs.

We continue to grow as we saw their value and we saw what they brought to the agency and to our responses, and we currently sit at nine dog cadre.

We have nine total dogs assigned to our our police department, each with its own handler, so nine handlers.

For some context, um around the county, Wyoming police department has four dual purpose canines.

Kent County Sheriff's Department has five dual purpose canines and four single purpose narcotic only dogs.

And throughout the history, our modern history, we've used German Shepherds, we've used Belgium Malinois, and we've used Dutch Shepherds and combinations.

Occasionally you'll see a combination of a Dutch Shepherd and a German Shepherd.

Those breeds fit what we're looking for from our police canines.

It's pretty pretty common national standard to use one of those three breeds.

Our dogs are dual purpose dogs.

I'll use that term several times throughout the presentation.

Dual purpose means that they are certified in first a scent or an odor recognition, and that's either narcotics or explosives.

Half of our dogs are narcotics dogs, half our dogs are explosive dogs.

We never cross-train the two.

If I take a dog that's cross-trained into a search scenario and he alerts on a box on the floor, I want to know as the handler what to expect to find inside that box.

I will handle that alert very differently if I know it's a narcotic search or I know it's a bomb search.

So we're served in a uh we're certified in a odor, and we're also certified in patrol.

And patrol is the national standard for all other things that police canines can do.

Our dogs are certified to be tracking dogs, they're certified to do area searches, they're certified to building searches, they're certified to do article searches, and they're certified in obedience.

And when I say certified, we go to a national certification, we go through a test, each dog and handler goes through the test together, and they have to pass standards in each of those disciplines to get that certification.

Once you accomplish all of those certifications, then you're considered a patrol certified canine team.

Then you add on the additional certification for either narcotics or explosives.

Um there's been recent video here specifically in Grand Rapids that I'd like to address.

I would like to take this opportunity to also do some education on how our canines are used and how they're deployed.

Um I've long said one of the things we as law enforcement general, not just GRPD, but law enforcement is not good at is educating our public as to why we do some of the things we do.

There's been videos that have created questions as to why a dog is sent on a person who appears to be down, is potentially armed or known to be armed, and in need of aid.

Officer involved shootings.

That's where we've seen these videos.

We've used the dog to go forward in front of a piece of cover, allowing officers to stay behind a piece of cover at a relatively safe location and separate the subject from the weapon.

That now gives us an opportunity for those team to either move forward or to move an entire group forward to be able to address injuries on the person that is down.

It's saved us time, it saved us valuable time where we can make that separation.

We're now in a safer place where those officers can go forward, start rendering aid, declare the scene safe, bring in fire, bring in medical, and get to those, get to those uh those shooting suspects.

Our dogs regularly and routinely participate in uh public demonstrations.

Um, by public demos, we'll see everything from kindergarten classes up through groups that are simply looking to um help with our canine foundation.

This uh last summer we did a pretty large demonstration at a park on the west side.

Um, and it was an opportunity for people to come meet our dogs, opportunity for people to come see what our dogs can do, and an opportunity for them to help us, the Grand Arms Police Canine Foundation.

And I'll speak to that a little bit further here into this.

What is the life in our canines look like?

We shop for our canines, we buy mostly imported dogs, we buy all imported dogs.

In recent history, all of our dogs have been imported from European countries, and that is primarily because the um emphasis on breeding in European countries is very different than the emphasis on breeding here in the United States.

Over there, they are they're uh raising a sporting dog or a working dog is very similar to playing baseball to our kids, right?

It is a very big um uh hobby for them.

So the breeding line, the lineage is deep and long, and it is bred specifically towards working dogs.

A lot of our dogs are purchased at the it uh uh as imported dogs.

Today, we average most of our dogs are about one year old when we purchase our dogs.

When I started in this uh this business around 2008, we wouldn't even look at a dog that was younger than two years old.

The demand for working dogs after the September 11th of tax has significantly increased.

Causing that demand, that demand has caused less dogs available for us to choose from.

So the age of dogs that you have to choose from has dramatically dropped.

Now we hit the goal of we want at least a one-year-old dog when we start to test for these dogs.

We will go to an importer, depending on which importer we use.

We uh we have a relationship with many of them here in the region.

Um will have very large operations.

There's one in Indiana that we can pretty much any day walk in there, and they would have 20 dogs available for sale that we could go in and test.

Um others do smaller, smaller batches.

They import five, six at a time.

We run the dogs through a selection test.

We'd like to try to see what their drives are, what is their genetic makeup to this day, and that gives lets me know what I have to work with for shaping that dog in its future.

How do I train that dog?

What does it have?

But there's some genetic makeup that we need to be able to see there that I know I can work with.

Biggest one being ball drive.

We test how much do they want the ball, tennis ball, uh, croquet balls, whatever ball that they happen to be using at the time, how bad do they want that?

Because that's their reward.

When they do something that we ask them to do, we're gonna reward them with that ball.

I want a dog who wants will do anything for that ball so that I can use that to help shape some of his drives going forward.

Our canines live at home with their handlers.

We require that.

You'll see that pretty uh pretty common in our region.

If you get other places in the country, you'll see that there are teams that they take their dog at the end of the night, they put it in a kennel.

There's kennel staff who takes care of that dog over the weekend while they're gone, they come back in for the next shift, they pick up their dog and they they go to work.

Um we get a couple of benefits from having our dogs live with their handlers.

One, the handler dog relationship, the bond, the amount of training time that goes on inside their home, and that dog gets socialized with that handler's family.

When my dogs lived at home with me, they lived with my three little girls, they lived with my wife, they knew how to interact with children.

They knew how to interact with people who were not police officers and had nothing to do with with what we were uh what our operations looked out here.

Those lessons that they that those dogs learned in my home transformed out into the public.

They were useful to us out in the public.

Our K9 team is just that is K-9 team, not a K-9 unit.

The big distinction here is our K-9 handlers are patrol officers.

They are assigned to a patrol team, they're assigned to a service area, they're assigned to a beat, just like every other patrol officer you see out in a cruiser.

We give them additional duty as a K9 handler.

So we assign them a handler, uh K9, we give them the training to specialize in that.

However, they are responsible for all policies and procedures, all practices that any other patrol officer would be on the street.

On top of that, they have another layer of oversight with the K9 program.

The average career of our police canines is seven to nine years.

After that, they go home and retire with their families.

While they are working dogs, while they're assigned here, they are property of the city of Grand Rapids.

Once they retire, the handler has the opportunity to uh to purchase that dog, and they take that dog home and they live with their families.

We have yet uh in my history.

I don't know of any dog that wasn't taken home by their families, and I don't know a family that would allow that canine handler to come home without their retired dog after their service.

Our dogs are well trained.

We expect training out of our handlers on a daily basis.

You can't live with these dogs inside your home without training on a daily basis.

These are high drive, high-intensity dogs.

They would be miserable pets if you did not take care of them in your home properly.

These guys, these dogs, every time they eat, they have obedience, they'll have to follow before they get the opportunity to eat.

When given water for the day, they will work through obedience commands.

That training is invaluable.

That that training is is helping to build that bond, it's helping to build that relationship between the handler and the canine.

Weekly, we give each of our canine handlers a minimum of six hours on duty training time.

So it is scheduled is set up so that half of our dogs are trained on a Tuesday, half our dogs train on a Wednesday.

It's the same dogs that they deploy with, so it's all the dogs on A rotation.

They may train on Tuesday, all the dogs on B rotation will train on Wednesday.

Monthly, we'll bring that entire team together, at least our nine dogs.

Often we invite in and we allow in outside agencies to train with us.

We learn from outside agencies.

We also learn from teaching outside agencies.

Um it's very rare that we house a 12-hour canine monthly training that uh is not uh that we don't have participants from outside agencies that come along with us, and we welcome that.

Uh we spoke earlier about certifications.

Our dogs go through an annual certification.

They actually go through two.

We have an annual certification here at the Grand Arts Police Department, our own local test that they have to perform to be able to deploy on the street.

We also go through the international international police work dog association, IPwata.

They have a national certification requirement.

So a minimum of once a year, our dogs go to a IPWATA conference, or we hire an IP water trainer to come in and run our dogs through the test for every discipline in which that dog is certified for.

Now, a learning to become a dog handler is not simply learning how to train a dog and how to operate with a dog.

It is all the police tactics that come along with operating with a dog, how to care for a dog, and building it out like that.

The biggest benefit we find in running it ourselves is one we run it the way is fits into our policy, our procedure, our local ordinances, and two, we give the uh that new handler the opportunity to understand how to train dogs.

So that throughout that seven to nine year career with that dog, they can learn how to solve problems as they come up in uh in training throughout that career.

We took a look at the years 2021 through 2025, so five-year period, and our K9 teams documented 14,500 hours of training, 14,500 hours of training spread out through the nine dogs, and that's the documented training.

I stress the documented portion because I know there's a lot of training that goes on in their home.

They aren't taking the time to sit down and write down how they fed their dog that night.

There's a lot of training that takes place that uh that does not make the documentation.

Before I move on to the next slide, that's a Sergeant Kenny and Rocky in the uh bite suit there.

That suit is uh well padded, uh made of uh material that holds up to this kind of work.

That's K9 Digo, and uh that is a typical bite suit, coat, pants, snatches in the front, and uh generally no helmet, gloves, anything like that is needed because we're pretty confident in where we expect that dog to go.

The skill of decoying, the skill of catching dogs in this, is a uh is a skill that becomes mastered with time, and it is invaluable to the dogs.

That that decoy, that catch can teach the dog more than I ever can on the other end of the leash.

Right, they learn from how that decoy responds to some of that stuff.

As I said earlier, our K-9 team is just at a K-9 team, our their patrol officers with the extra responsibility of K-9 handling.

Their budget comes out of our patrol operations budget.

Generally, we run at about an eleven thousand dollar budget per year, and almost all of that money goes towards feeding these dogs and paying their vet bills.

Most of them annual checkups will also treat some injuries along the way.

Um we asked the Grand Arts Police Foundation for a lot when it comes to K9 uh equipment, sometimes even replacing K-9s as we get retirees.

The foundation has always been extremely useful to us, and those people who were who have donated to the foundation over the years, I couldn't be more grateful to them.

In 2024, we took up a fundraising operation.

We took the we looked at the need for ballistic capabilities for our K9s.

They're the vests, ballistic vest, same vest that I'm wearing today, made specifically for a K9.

Up until this point, K9 vests have always been available.

They were always big, bulky, they were basically big blankets that you strapped on to the dog.

The dog couldn't operate very well in them.

More importantly, couldn't regulate their heat very well in them.

Today's technology has come a long way.

So what they develop in a canine vest today is so much better than what we had to work with before.

So we took a look at that 2024.

We partnered with 30 by 30 fundraising and the K9s of valor, and we were able to raise 28,000 dollars to outfit all of our dogs with a ballistic vest.

That dog you see sitting on the uh side of that slide is wearing a K-9 storm ballistic vest.

These vests protect from stabbing, they protect from shrapnel.

Quite often our dogs are going through um broken glass, uh, occasionally the razor wire, and they do have ballistic capabilities.

They are able to stop relatively uh common handgun uh size um ammunition rounds, ballistics.

Vests need replacements just like ours.

They are rated for five-year shelf life, so they will need a replacement every five years.

Take a look at how our dogs were used again, 2021 through 2025, period.

Our dogs had 3,482 K9 applications.

Those are documented times where one of our K-9 handlers arrived on a scene, they got their dog out of the car, ready to deploy.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the dog was used.

There's a lot of cases where a dog, uh K9 handler may show up to what he thinks is a burglary.

As they start to investigate that, they realize it's not an opportunity to use a canine or it's not a place that would be appropriate for the K9, K9 gets put back into the car and it's never deployed.

That is still an application.

That dog that that K-9 team was called specifically because they were K-9s.

Out of those 3,482 applications, the highest number there you see in the center center is sent to application.

They're looking for either drugs or they're looking for explosives.

Next to that is the 631 K-9 tracks.

Somebody has committed a crime, has fled the scene of that crime, believed to be on foot, and we're asking the dog to track that person from point A to where that subject is at.

385 times are deployed to uh assist SRT operations, 347 times.

They conducted an article search.

Article searches are uh are quite invaluable to us.

They they um they produce quite often.

So what I'm asking the dog to do at that time is to go into a specific area, generally an outdoor area, occasionally an indoor area.

But I'm asking that dog to look for human odor on anything in that area.

So a yard that nobody's been in because it's two o'clock in the morning, nobody's been through that yard, and now there's nobody in that yard.

That dog can go out there and he can find a quarter that was dropped in that yard.

You can find a set of keys that were dropped in that yard.

You can find a set of a baton that fell off an officer's belt.

We recover a lot of evidence through our article searches.

And we can now go testify that I believe that was dropped within recency because my dog only alerts on human odor of items that are in that backyard.

194 times conducted a building search.

Is a building either believed to be burglarized or a sequestered felon is hiding inside of that building.

Those are the two opportunities where we can do a building search.

We did 156 public demos.

We had 84 physical apprehensions.

So 84 times out of those 34 uh 82 applications, a physical apprehension.

By physical apprehension, I mean a canine bite.

The dog was sent and physically bit somebody on that deployment.

We had a total of 474 arrests were made and specifically because of the canine.

Canine only gets credit for that arrest.

If that rest can be shown, it would not have been made had that canine team not been on scene.

474 arrests during that five year period.

84 of those resulted in a canine apprehension or a physical bite.

Of note, out of those 84, 78 of the people who were apprehended were released from the hospital after short treatments and lodged at Kent County correctional facility.

Our biggest concern for somebody who has sustained a dog bite is infection.

We take them to the hospital, we make sure they get properly cleaned.

Occasionally there may be a stitch or some stitches, and the person is released.

Six of those 84 were admitted to the hospital for one reason or another, but five out of those six were admitted for reasons other than the canine application itself.

They had some other underlying injury other than the canine bite.

Our canine team is governed by the manual procedures, not simply the canine manual procedures, but the entire manual procedures.

It also has significant uh it lays out what our canine supervisors expected of him when doing a bite or an use of force review.

Our policy is heavily developed off of Graham v.

Connor.

Uh, the totality of the circumstances leading up to the reasonableness, uh, severity of the crime, the need for apprehension, or the risk that's being um that it is the risk that two officers or citizens, and is that person actively resisting police officers.

Our canine handlers go through all other police training, so they go to all mandatory trainings, not just those that are uh specific to canine handlers, and we work heavily under small team tactics.

When I say we, I mean the Grand Rapids Police Department in general.

In the uh appendix of the manual procedures, you'll see a section specifically for tracking, and that refers to the small team taxes.

What I mean by small team tactics is when a tracking operation or a search of a building is going to be forced, it's not simply that canine and canine handler that are going to accomplish this.

A team's going to be put together, it's going to take multiple officers to accomplish these tasks.

Somebody's going to take charge of that team, generally a supervisor and on street supervisor.

It could potentially be a team leader.

All of our policies, including the K-9 policy, are reviewed by CLIA, the Commission of Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Less than 5% of police agencies globally receive CLIA accreditation.

We're proud of that CLIA accreditation, and we're thankful for their uh their acknowledgement of our policies and procedures.

We'll talk just specifically now about some of the recommendations that came from the uh OPA's uh report at uh here at the public safety committee.

Um there's certainly some things we can learn about those and we learn about from those suggestions, and I'll make notes of those as we go through this.

The first recommendation was to classify canine apprehensions as a use of force.

This uh study is correct.

Nowhere in our policy does it specifically say canine apprehension is a use of force.

However, it is very clear, not just to our canine handlers, but to our entire agency that a canine physical apprehension, a bite by a canine, will be considered a use of force and will be used as such.

We look at our manual procedures 9-1, which is our use of force uh procedure, and it gives us a definition of what force is the attempt to establish control through physical means in the presence of a resistance.

An officer asking a canine to go physically apprehend somebody certainly meets that uh that definition.

In MOP 6-8, which is our canine policy, three different times it requires a use of force report.

So the reporting requirements for any use of force are uh are required three different times throughout the canine policy.

The last that I've got noted on there, MLP 6-8 is states that if upon review of a use of force and or internal review, it is determined that the canine handler or police service dog acting inappropriately, then appropriate remedies, which may include supplemental training and or recommendation for discipline will be taken.

That's very similar to language that's used in our use of force.

It triggers the same oversight and review as any other use of force in uh in our agency.

Second recommendation was to narrow the canine apprehension threshold.

Exactly when can we use these canines?

This gets a little bit difficult if when you look through that policy because of all of the things that a canine can be used for, having a blanket.

This is when we can use the dog is not always practical to the handler or to the responses out there.

So we do it in a couple different ways.

First, from the the canine MOP 6-8.

Uh we have a section specific to building searches.

So again, we're gonna send a dog inside of a building that we believe has either been burglarized or there's a sequestered felon inside, or when ask that dog to search for the that person.

Building searches uh may be used for building searches believed to be burglarized, or the canine may also be used to search buildings where a felony suspect are believed to be hiding to escape police apprehension.

So believed to be burglarized or felony suspect inside for a physical apprehension, a straight send of the dog to tell my dog simply standing next to me to go apprehend the person standing out there, running away, whatever that case may be.

The canine handler allows police service dog to make a physical apprehension.

The following totality of the circumstances will be considered.

These factors include the severity of the crime, the potential threat to citizens and officers, and whether that subject is actively resisting or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

Those three things have to be met.

The totality of the circumstances is probably the most important part of that, I believe, because that's the part where the canine handler has to think about everything else that is going on around here.

Are there other people around?

What is the weather outside?

Where specifically are we located, what crime are we working on?

The list goes on and on and on as to what makes up the totality of the circumstances.

Recommendation number three establish vulnerable population protections.

We believe the several areas of our manual procedure already addressed vulnerable populations.

Um 6 8 and 9 1, which is our canine policy, and our use force policy require the use of the totality of the circumstances.

We just just discussed that.

We also have policies specifically addressing the uh deaf and hard of hearing, impartial policing, youth interactions, response to persons with mental disorders.

Those are all things that have their own policy that also have to be considered while working with canine or simply while working patrol out there.

Having its own policy certainly signal to the signals to the handler or to the person making these decisions that those are factors that have to be considered.

They are part of the totality of those circumstances and have to be considered when when deploying with a canine.

Lastly, uh, this is a bit of a repeat uh physical apprehensions before that canine handler is it's again requiring that totality of the circumstances.

I don't want to belabor that point, but it is where that all then gets tied into the canine deployment.

Recommendation number four expand transparency and reporting.

Our current reporting of canine apprehensions is consistent with all other uses of force, right?

It's consistent with with our takedowns with kick strikes, stuns, any other use of force, our current reporting with canine is is very consistent with that.

That is codified in our internal affairs manual procedures 3-8, which requires the internal affairs commander to coordinate annual analysis in conjunction with units identified within the manual procedures, and that includes use of force incidents.

It's also reported on the GRPD use of force task.

Um sorry, data dashboard.

Fifth recommendation was a standardized warning language and documentation.

This is one of those spots where I think we can learn something from, and I think we're in a good pretty good position to do it right now.

Currently, our MLP does require warnings, and it lays out a uh framework of what those warnings are required to state and what our accomplished goal for those warnings are.

In MLP 68, which is our uh canine policy under tracking operations, it notes that if the suspect's location becomes known during a track, the canine handler will attempt to have that suspect surrender without a physical canine apprehension.

We saw this in play just this past weekend.

Officers responded to a shooting.

The subject had fled from the shooting on foot.

He cleared a couple fences, ends up going to a backyard.

Officers see where he left the roadway and went into the backyard.

Canine was asked to track.

That dog went in, he tracked over a fence, tracked through a yard, tracked through another over another fence, through a yard, and as he comes out of a backyard along a driveway with cars parked in it, they hear the suspect yell out, hey, I'm over here, I'm over here.

I give up.

Canine team track and the tracking team stops, they pick up pieces of cover, they're able to order that suspect out.

He's compliant.

He comes out, surrenders, we take the suspect in custody.

That same canine and canine handler now work back along that track.

They have an idea of what this suspect's route is, and they find the handgun that was used in the shooting along with the magazine that would have been separated from that handgun.

Still continue with warning language and documentation.

Building searches in our building search specifically, it says canine handler or a designee must announce the canine team's presence and the probability that a sequestered person may be bitten.

The announcements must be at a sufficient volume to be heard by those inside.

Anyone inside will be allowed sufficient time to exit the building.

In large buildings, the announcements may have to be repeated prior to entry into separate areas of the building.

If in the judgment of the K9 handler, the announcements will compromise officer safety, the announcements need but need not be given.

So totality of the circumstances, and then talking about uh use of force reporting.

Those two things are uh that are both part of the canine, but specifically the um use of force reporting is part of our use of force report.

Certainly, if you did anything outside of the norm, outside of the requirement.

The norm here for this building search is you will give announcements and you will give sufficient time for surrender.

If for some reason there was a safety concern that you could document why that wouldn't be be the prudent response, that is certainly something that you would have to document afterwards.

In the review process, that's certainly a question that the supervisor would be asking.

Why would we not give announcements here?

And there are reasons for that, right?

There are places where I could be setting myself up for an ambush under specific information that says if I call out now, there's a good chance I just alerted everybody to where I was at.

Okay, it's quite rare.

It's rare that we don't give announcements, but it is certainly documented when we don't.

Uh for all off continue with uh standardized warnings for all off-lead apprehensions.

The canine may be uh deployed off lead to make an apprehension after the handler has given verbal warnings.

The multilingual portion, that's puts I think we could improve.

Umhere in our our our policy does it require a multilingual.

Um also it's pretty rare we have handlers or have had handlers in the past who can speak bilingually.

We currently have a bilingual handler, one of our newest handlers is bilingual, and I think that's something we might be able to take a look at and tap into.

If nothing else, teach our handlers how to do that.

There are certainly I can remember responses that I went to calls that I went to where it was a high likelihood that having a different language would be useful to me.

We have certainly used other officers.

I've asked officers who can speak other languages to come.

I tell them what I want for announcements, they repeat them in there.

So it's not something that we're foreign to, but it might be something we are able to teach our own handlers to be able to accomplish some of that.

On a deployment this past weekend, a building search of a building that had been burglarized.

Announcements went on for well over 30 minutes.

This wasn't a large building.

This was an average size apartment building, and the information available to the officer indicated that it was likely the suspect was on one specific floor.

They were pretty confident they knew where the suspect was.

They gave well over 30 minutes of announcements without response and eventually had to go in and search the building.

Recommendation number six was require supervisor approval before deployments.

Again, we talked a little bit about small team tactics.

There is no actual requirement for supervisor approval in most K9 deployments.

Current policy does establish supervisor approval where supervisor approval is required.

The current structure lends itself to small team tactics.

In the K9 MOP for non-serious offense situations, when requested, the K-9 handler will respond and evaluate the situation to determine if the use of police service dogs is appropriate.

When there is no danger to the handler, the officer, citizens, a physical apprehension by the K9 will not be permitted.

So that goes along with that threshold sum.

We have non-serious offenses addressed.

Also, Grand Eps police canine teams may be used with supervisor approval in special circumstances.

Some circumstances warrant special consideration prior to the deployment of the K9.

Again, a place where we would consult with a small team, small team tactics, which would be overseen by a supervisor.

K9s have some unique abilities.

They can lend some unique safety to a scene that there is nothing else out there that can't.

And those should be considerations in that section of the manual procedures allows for that.

Recommendation number seven, mandate bite report review by IAU.

This is mandate mandated.

And we talked about the requirements that after that review or an internal review, that if they're uh if the service dog acted inappropriately, then there's certain remedies that are available to them.

I want to spend some more time on how a bite review takes place, and I've got a specific slide for that, so that we can spend some time on that as we get to it.

Clarify training methodology and policing.

Our training methodology comes primarily from the agency or the organization, the international organization in which we are certifying with.

We certify with the International Police Work Dog Associ Association, and there's an excerpt there from the specific apprehension section of the patrol bike work certifications.

Requires that in phases requiring that the canine apprehend the suspect, the canine must fully engage and hold the suspect.

This is reiterated two additional times throughout the test.

Lastly, including demographic tracking and reporting.

Current K9 apprehension trackings and report is consistent with all other uses of force and tracking complies with administrative order 21-06.

We stay very close to this is a use of force, just like all other uses of force, and it gets the same same requirements for reporting.

Okay, so when a canine handler is involved in a use of force with their canine, they have a physical apprehension or a canine bite.

The first thing they're required to do once the scene is made safe is notify the canine unit supervisor.

Canine unit service supervisor is a sergeant who is also a canine handler.

He is part of that team and he supervises that team.

That canine supervisor will generally respond directly to the scene and start a bite review investigation.

They can have a designee get it started if they are unavailable.

They will generally respond even from off duty because it is much more um conducive for them to see, talk to, feel everything that's going on out there.

Once they start that byte review, they complete a byte review report.

And their purpose for doing this is they gather all of the information that they can gather about this apprehension.

They put a report together, and that report is filed to the forward to the internal affairs unit.

That is one other component.

The internal affairs unit now has available to them when they make their use of force decision review.

Just like all other use of force.

IA may consult with the training unit.

They will consult with the canine unit, they will consult with the experts in those fields for gathering information.

This gives somebody with the knowledge of why, how our dogs operate, dogs in general operate, gives them opportunity to explain some of that to somebody who may never have owned a dog, which is our internal, maybe our internal affairs commander.

So for our bite procedure review, it is very similar to our general use of force reviews, works its way through the internal affairs process.

It has the extra layer of somebody who has canine handling knowledge who also oversees this investigation.

This is our current cadre of canines.

Uh a couple of note canine boon there, top middle.

That is our uh newest dog.

He is not yet certified.

He just came out of K9 school.

He's working through our our in-house school right now and working towards certification.

Um you see K9 Digo there, he was uh recently injured on on duty and uh made some social media.

Um he was the replacement for um canine prior who was involved in a car accident.

So we do go through uh we do go through injuries to our canines for sure.

Our canine who was involved in that K9 accidents living at home along with Digo and family, and they got a house full over there.

So in closing, uh in closing, I'd like to point out I believe we have a good canine policy.

We have a strong canine team.

Our team is good because we select good people for that team.

It's a process to get on this team.

I put a lot of work in making sure the people who get on this team have shown that they can make good solid decisions while under extreme stress because I know that's what I'm asking them to do when they become part of this team.

We outfit them with good canines.

We spend time finding good dogs, well-bred dogs.

We give them good equipment to work with.

We give them top of the line training.

We give them the time to train, we give them the training, we give them the policy and the procedure and the ability to understand that policy and procedure and apply it to their street applications.

The team doesn't get good without those things in place, and I'm happy that we have them.

I'm happy to take any questions.

Thanks.

Colleagues, uh fine.

Mayor, yeah, uh city manager.

I was just gonna add to the presentation or the questions.

So thank you again and had a chance to talk to Deputy Chief and Chief extensively, and but just want to uh confirm out of transparency.

So he went very detailed through the manual of procedure policy references, and that may be some of the public uh and this commission's uh committee's uh uh view of of those policies for the very first time.

And it's because it is a well-documented policy, but it has been primarily internal and unlike the rest of the general orders, not available online.

Is that accurate?

No, sir.

The policy that I refer to here, almost all of this comes from annual manual procedure 6-8, which is public.

Let me reframe the canine training manual.

That's different.

Yes, that's what I'm at.

The training manual, I'm sorry.

Um that one is the one that's internal and not online.

Yes, sir.

Um, and you've had some discussion internally about uh providing more transparency around how the canines are are trained, how they're similar to how we train the officers.

Uh have uh have you made a determination of when that might be more publicly available?

I don't have a set date for, sir.

There is nothing in that canine handlers manual that I wouldn't share with anybody who would like to take a look at the canines handler's manual.

My my thought is it hasn't been made public up to this point because it is very generalized dog handling type things.

It's not uh with the exception of some of the canine uh bite review portions, it's uh it talks about make sure you have a kennel in your home and make sure you have a kennel outside your home.

I think there's a uh some reference to um a dog being injured and how to how to supply some of those things.

Very much willing to make that as public as as you would like it to be.

Yes, sir.

Uh Mr.

Fine, you want to know?

Well, thank you.

Appreciate it, Mr.

Chair.

Um I had the opportunity to vis to participate in that field uh training last Wednesday, and uh really appreciated as I would determine it uh as scenario planning.

So we were out in uh abandoned building, office building, uh, and the site conditions, no air conditioning, and it was pretty hot and smoky, and the building is partially trashed out.

So there were several places that the dogs, as you see, there's nine of them there.

I thought it was twelve, but uh that just the way it uh the coming and going.

So one of my first observations is how disciplined the dog and the trainer were throughout that time, the comings and going, and as a spectator, I was not uh dressed down by the dogs.

I mean, it was just treated with great respect.

So um a couple other things.

I was very struck by the family dedication.

That's a whole unit that has that dog year-round, and it they plan around their vacations and and so forth, but the safety issue is is very uh evident with the people showing their pictures of their kids and so forth.

So um the discipline of the dog uh and the trainer for what they're doing when they're in the um operations is very striking.

Um I really appreciated the amount of repetitions we went through.

Uh there's about four different scenarios where you hit somebody laying on a floor in a closet, and the dogs had to first, you know, scope that out and then you know, uh, do their thing.

Um they uh simulated uh somebody crawling into an attic where you could hear something going on up there, but when that dog got there, it wanted to climb right up into the attic and uh made a few scratch marks and eventually, you know, somebody you know their leg came down, and that was the end.

Um the dogs can be very ferocious going for extremities, that is legs, arms, etc.

And some of these uh what we call decoys uh just had you know bareheaded and no gloves.

So it was a very impressive um the other thing is that the all the handlers had to be very physically fit for the conditions that they're going to be in, whether it's once they apprehend somebody or um just managing the canine itself.

Um so I feel that our um the excess the expertise and the fire hose treatment you got here today uh is what happened in training also.

You know, we just kept going for three and a half hours, and uh it was a very um realistic uh experiment.

And uh I came to feel that I would fear a dog attack more than I would death itself.

Um because they can be pretty uh ferocious in their uh barking.

So I really appreciate the opportunity uh to do that and the openness of the uh and the willingness for you know us to come out and have a look and see what what and ask any and all questions that we wish.

So thank you very much for your presentation.

But um the backup there is it this is a very tight-knit group of people that really look out for each other, and there's times that they know what what they're thinking, and they in the hallways nodding, and you know, you can see their eyes just uh covering what's without saying too much.

So thank you.

Well, thank you for your observation, sir.

I appreciate you coming to that.

Thank you.

Commissioner Thank you.

Thanks for this presentation.

Um Deputy Chief Baker.

It sounds like you've got you know like you knew a lot of stuff and you had it very detailed.

Thank you for providing that.

Um I just mine are just a few clarifying questions and then um probably, you know, city manager.

You you kind of talked some of this, you know.

We we heard from OPA, then we and now are obviously hearing from the department, and I think then if we could talk about what that process looks like in the future, um, you know, some of the things that we heard were, you know, maybe the first time reviewing it, is it a clarification?

There's you know, some calls for some additional oversight.

How does that fit into OPA?

So I'm gonna put that to the side for a minute.

Um, but can you I I want to make sure I'm understanding when you said the article search, so does that mean if you're on the scene of something or looking to apprehend somebody, and you had mentioned like um like you give them if you can explain what you what you mean by article search around making it.

Article searches specifically is looking it says dog searching just for that and article, it's not doesn't have anything to do with the person search, it doesn't have to do with locating people.

Um we I would train it with my dogs with a quarter.

That's that's why I made that about a quarter, right?

Okay.

Um generally once a day, I would throw a quarter out in my yard someplace from my deck, and I would tell my dog to go find that quarter.

And what that dog's doing is searching that backyard where there hasn't been any people for or a lot of people, you know.

We may have been in the backyard, and he's looking for something in that yard that still has human odor on it.

That quarter may be something they can go find.

We've seen dogs find things as small as shell casings.

We've seen them find things as large as uh uh firearms, right?

We they regularly find firearms, but uh like for example, a narcotic detection dog who does not train on gunpowder or any other explosive that comes with a handgun, okay, can find a dropped handgun in a yard in a field because they're working off the human odor that's on that handgun.

Okay, not because they have anything to do with the components of that fire.

So it's article search specifically is looking for an article.

Okay, but it's uh sounds like it might be if somebody is missing, or it might be if they're looking for a certain type of generally for evidence recovery.

Yeah, so around a scene of a scene of a crime looking for um a cell phone that's been dropped or is not accounted for.

We can take a dog and search some of those areas, and it's also has been useful many times in finding an officer's piece of equipment that has fallen off their belt while in a foot pursuit or whatever.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, I just wanted to understand the difference mostly between the physical apprehensions and then the article search.

Two very different things, yes.

Um and then you had shared too that there could be instances where you know, maybe obviously you're you're um responding to a call and then make a determination that the dog, the canine does not need to be used.

Can you prov can you share some examples?

It doesn't need to be sp but general where hey, this was maybe initially thought it was, and then like you said, you put the dog away in the vehicle.

So um relatively recently, officers responded to uh what appeared to be a burglary in progress.

Neighbors called said, Hey, the house next door is vacant.

I can see people climbing through a window into that house.

House has been burglarized from everything we know of that based on what they were given by the uh by the neighbors.

However, officers had previous knowledge of this location, they know that it's often used for a squatting location.

There's no real intent to commit a lot of crime inside of this house, simply looking to get out of the elements.

Instead of using a canine, which probably would have been within policy from what I know of that incident, they decided not to spent longer time saying, Hey, come on out of here, get people to surrender, and we're able to do so.

They didn't expect from what they knew to have enough threat inside there to warrant a canine bite.

Instead, they decided to work on surrenders, then ultimately go and search it without a canine, or you may go search that bringing the canine on leash, not allowing the canine to search in case something different develops while you're inside the house.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Um and then my last question is um when we're looking at the overview of OPA recommendations and then your responses item number six.

Um the it's six-eight point three, the non-serious um non-serious offense situations.

Can you define that for this body as well?

What is to what is seemed to be a non-serious?

So I think non-serious is very similar to what we just talked about, that that what looked like a burglary to start with, and you may have the actual crime of burglary or the elements of the crime of burglary, but because of some other factors you know, um, say you know that they are 12, 10-year-old children.

That is a factor you should certainly be using to make a decision on how we're going to how we're going to search that.

And a dog may be removed from those situations, even if they potentially fall within policy, some of the decision making that goes along with that.

I think another portion of that, or I think um uh another clarifying to that.

The next section is Grant Earth's police canine team may be used with supervisor approval in special circumstances.

Some circumstances warrant special consideration prior to the deployment of a canine.

Um that is a that is a little bit more difficult to understand, a little more difficult to work with, I think, and that is more of a a spot that uh the the uniqueness of the work that a police officer can get into, and then adding a canine response to that can be even more unique because of the abilities of the canine that there may be incidents where it doesn't fit anywhere else inside here, and because of that, we're gonna put a lot of time into making a determination as to whether this fits for a canine, and two, we're gonna ask for some some help in making some of those decisions, small team tactics.

Okay, and then I guess I did have one more question if I can ask.

Um, is the so we're talking about obviously if there is a use of force of the bite occurs and the reporting associated with that, and then you mentioned that sometimes they could be on leash where the officer is leading but has them on the leash, right?

So you use that example.

Is there any other sort of I don't I don't want to call it in between, but you know, I'm thinking of dog dogs, you know, bark, are they is that also something that might be um a preaction, say to like a bite?

I mean, obviously knowing that the people are move potentially peeping up people are moving around.

So is that something that's assumed to happen before a bite or not necessarily assumed.

Um I wouldn't say uh no, it's not assumed that that happened before.

I think to your question where we would see that use the most is again back to a building search or somebody refusing to come out of a a bedroom when they're they're under arrest, refusing to come downstairs.

We may bring a dog and make canine announcements, we may allow that dog to bark.

One of the things uh Mr.

Faye and saw work on this this week this past week is we need to get our dogs to the obedience level where they bark when we tell them to, they stop barking when we tell them to.

When we talk about canine announcements at a burglary uh scene or at any scene where we may tell we may make announcements that the dog is on scene and he may be sit, you may be bitten injured.

I want that dog to bark somewhere in there, but when I tell them to, so he's not barking over my directions.

Then I want to be quiet while I give another set of instructions or give another set of announcements.

So controlling that bite that bark is certainly part of that.

And yes, we have very we have success in having our dog bark into buildings, and people say, Yeah, it's enough for me.

I'm coming out and they surrender.

So, yes, that is an intermediate level, I think, to answer your question.

Thank you.

Uh yes, uh Deputy Chief, thank you so much for the presentation.

Uh what is the probability or frequency of error by the by the dog?

Um that's just one capacity, then also what language is often used when it comes to the commands that are given.

And then also uh I know you mentioned that uh on occasion there may be no announcement that's been lifted up to the suspect, what is done in the other capacity.

Um start with your first question.

When you ask what is our frequency of error, are you talking about order specifically?

Yeah, amongst the dogs, right?

They like they may bite in the wrong area.

Oh, gotcha.

Uh very very low for physical apprehension.

Okay.

Um majority of our accidental bites.

If we have a dog bite outside of where it was intended to bite, comes from training.

And it comes from a lot of times error on the person who is catching that dog, not so much on the dog or the handler that's deploying it.

So it's quite rare.

Um, I trying to think back to last time we a canine bit somebody that was not intended to be bitten, and it and I I have a hard time coming up with that's quite rare.

Languages, you asked about languages.

Some of our dogs, depending on where they came from, where they're imported come, may have already started on a language.

A lot of them don't.

A lot of the dogs have not had any kind of training by the time they come to us.

Um, truly what we have done in a lot of cases our handlers default to a mixture.

Uh there was a time when we used a lot of German, we use a lot of Dutch, and we lose a lot of Czech at the that time.

Um of the words create tactical problems for us out there.

For example, stellen, S-T-E-L-L-E-N is one of the languages, commands for go and bite somebody.

Stelling starts with a strong ST, so does the word stop.

So we would start that command, stop.

And the dog may mix it for stellen.

We don't use the word stellar, right?

So we had to take some of those out.

So to answer your question, we have a a mixture of language.

A lot of it's English.

We do a lot of it just because the handler's gonna revert to that under stress.

So I don't want to get too complicated on a lot of these things.

So uh we do use a lot of English for that.

We do have some words that hang around.

Foot, P H U T is the word for come stand next to my leg, and that that command seems to hang around for some reason.

So there's some of those.

Um your last question was uh centering around what what do we do when those officers may not make the announcement to the suspect.

Okay, is your question why they wouldn't make an announcement?

Right.

Um tactical considerations, right?

So if there's a place where I believe um somebody we did a track now recently down behind Kenoche School down Kalamazoo 32nd area, a large wooded area.

There's a lot of trails that run through there that are used by normal everyday citizens.

Um our officer started checking the trails for what they believe to be an armed subject.

They eventually see him, he leaves the trail and goes into a a large wooded area.

It's very thick.

It's not likely the person went very far into this wooded area.

Uh that tracking team led by a sergeant uh made the decision not to make canine announcements there.

One because it was clear the person already knew police were on scene.

It was clear that it likely cleared that a canine was on scene, and it was likely they were in very close proximity to this subject there, who they believed to be armed.

So to not draw specific attention to, I'm standing here and I'm about to come find you.

They went without giving uh warnings on that specific track.

And they documented it very well why he made that decision.

Commissioner.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you so much.

Deputy uh Chief Baker, uh, I think that this was a very timely presentation, as I know some uh neighbors who I represent have called for us to do away uh with the canine team, and I believe in part that this is uh due to only seeing the injuries or as uh the pastor noted of the when the bite did not happen correctly.

Um I think community uh members uh I'm hoping that the level of transparency that I deeply appreciated today uh will um uh is also appreciated by our community members and will allow folks to receive a more full picture of the K9 team.

That's my hope today, and I think that you all uh did uh a good job in in having transparency and uh and giving us a more full picture.

Uh I think the commitment to not looking away from the pain of our community must be ongoing.

So I'm also looking forward to the future review of other policies like the foot chase policy.

Uh and I do have a question for Mr.

Davis if we have time of and you all, I'd love to hear your feedback on how you all felt the collaboration or the synergy between your department and the OPA was during this process as you reviewed.

Um I from the outside it looks like it went well uh and that you all worked well together.

Um I'm happy to see it, uh, but just want to um hear uh where you all uh stand on the collaboration.

Sure.

And if I may uh I appreciate some of the points that you made.

One point that I I I want to make clear, and I don't think I got uh took the opportunity to we have spent the vast majority of this time talking about canine apprehensions, canine bites.

It is about the least likely thing we do in our canine deployment.

It's very rare that we have these compared to all the other work that our canines do.

Now I certainly understand why that is, right?

There's nothing that um it is something that needs to be very well governed, what very well regulated and very well um checked on the other side of it.

So I I certainly understand that, but it is a relatively rare experience for our canine handlers.

I will tell you from my perspective, um, and this is my first time working directly with with the old case.

I don't have a whole lot to compare it to, but I thought this went went quite well.

I think there's there's certainly some things we can do, uh continue to to improve on.

Um but uh I I appreciate the work that was put into this.

I appreciate the thoroughness that was put into the OPA.

Um there is certainly I spent a lot of time in my policies, reviewing my policies because of those things, and that's never a bad thing.

So Mr.

Davis is coming up, and and Mr.

Davis, I uh maybe this is a good time for me to uh win on her a little bit.

So um I think that there are um a number of things we talked about.

A lot of it was training, and I don't think that that's uh frankly something that say the city commission is gonna be really uh uh in a position to make great recommendations on, like, gee, I think you should spend more time on uh how you feed your dogs or you know, how often you groom them.

But um, or or certainly I don't mean to minimize my my my daughter has uh has a had a guide dog and I know there's insane amounts of time that's put into getting consistency and I mean even how you feed the dog actually is part of training, right?

I mean she had to do food refusal every day with that dog.

Um but uh you know so so putting that to one side, and that's you know it's good to hear that, and I think I have it I personally at least have a pretty high degree of confidence that that's you know you're taking that really seriously, you're doing it well, um, and and and that's great.

Um then there's the question of like reporting, like what do we do after an incident, and that's something that's a category, and that's something where I think um OPA, city commission, police department, we can continue to have the conversations about what, where, how can we tighten anything up?

Is there are there ways we can make things more transparent?

Um then there's I guess maybe the question of let's let's call it deployment for lack of a better what better way to say it, like when the dog is sent out, do you do you have uh verbal warnings, those kinds of things.

I think maybe the stickiest one, but I think it's one we're gonna have to we don't have I don't I don't expect the conversation to end today.

I don't want it to end today, but um is the question of application.

And so um when we say totality of circumstances, I think that you know, as a as an attorney uh and and maybe Mr.

Davis has a little bit of this response to like if you say um we're gonna deploy using totality of the circumstances, that's really on the and there's always a continuum between judgment and laying out specific criteria.

And there are lots of places where we don't use totality of circumstances at all.

So if we're doing a speed trap, for example, we don't say, well, we looked at the totality of the circumstances.

So no, we look at the radar gun.

If they're going over the speed limit, they broke the speed uh limit, and if they're not going under the speed limit, we don't care if they're driving a new car or an old car, um, whether it's yellow or blue or whatever.

There's no totality there.

Um and I get that we're dealing with complexity here, but I as I understood some of those OPA recommendations.

I just want to focus in on one that I think bears some more conversation, and that is um in the in the MDOP, this is on page nine now, uh uh 6.8.2 1D sub E, the fit which is physical apprehensions.

Um you said, you know, obviously you evaluate totality of circumstances, and that's great.

Uh but then it said factors include the severity of the crime.

And then I guess there that's obviously good and healthy, but um there are some things for which we have said some things are off limit, and we know this, like there was a Supreme Court case that said you can't maybe 1987, and Mr.

Davis can help me out on this, but that said you can't shoot after a fleeing suspect.

You can't so before 1987 that happened in policing and afterwards we're like, no, you're not allowed to unless unless some pretty tight set of circumstances, right?

We all know that was a change in policing.

Um but severity of crime doesn't really tighten your language much.

And so the OPA's suggestion was serious violent felonies.

And I think that we ought to have some more conversation about, like I can imagine areas where it wouldn't be only violent felonies that you for example, so the burglar example, nothing violent has happened if you've got a house that maybe somebody's taking a television out of.

Um but that might be a really high risk situation for our officers.

Um I mean, my dad taught me a million years ago when you go into your house ever, you say hello, and I'm like, why do you always say hello when you go into the house?

And he said, Because if someone's robbing our house, I want to give them the opportunity to BS their way out of the situation and pretend that they were, you know, mistaken about whose house they were in, rather than have to have them shoot us dead, right?

I want them to have a graceful exit opportunity from our house that doesn't involve, you know, violence.

Um that's a long way of saying, you know, burglary doesn't count as a violent crime if someone's in boosting my stereo while I've been on vacation.

But those can be really, really dangerous situations.

Um so I I guess what I'm saying is I would welcome continued conversation about whether we can tighten up language.

Like I don't think any reasonable officer would say, uh if I see somebody loitering, that's a serious enough crime that I should deploy a dog.

That doesn't make any sense.

Um so we we all I think we all know what's off the table, and we can have a question about what's on the table, but if we can tighten some of that criteria, I think that might be productive work.

And I'm not committing to any please.

The examples I used here are sure hypothetical examples.

They're not even examples.

They're but I think I think that this is some that those specific questions of like whether we can articulate better rather than say totality of the circumstances, which isn't a very tight criteria, if we can say these things are, you know, these are areas where we do that.

And you've done some of that.

Now that's a long way of saying, let me stretch in the other direction.

And I'll give you a specific example.

Million years ago, my first house, I was dumb, went out for the evening, didn't lock my house, came home, house is dark, and I don't remember turning the lights off.

And I go to the door and it's not locked.

I called GRPD, because I didn't have the courage to walk into a dark house after several hours of not being around in what was at that it was behind Miss Tracy, my house.

So, you know, neighborhood, I wasn't com completely confident that I wasn't gonna come back to somebody in my house six hours later.

Well, that's uh fairly I mean that's an area where I call GRPD.

Well, that'd be a great potential use, it seems to me, of a dog going into the house first.

If the homeowner is like, yeah, you can send a dog into my house.

I'm not allergic, go ahead.

Um it doesn't quite fit your burglary because I don't know there's somebody in the house.

I just want somebody besides me going into that dark house first.

Well, our officers might want somebody other than them going to the dark house first.

Uh if it's canine.

Now I know you've got your supervisor handler uh exception, but I also wonder if like you we might write policy that said if the owner of the property gives consent or something like that.

Like there might be areas where we could stretch use of dogs because the owner is saying, yeah, go ahead.

I know I know my kids aren't home.

Go ahead and have your dog run through the house.

So I think there might be areas where we can uh in both directions, maybe have more liberal opportunities for for canine use because they're a great tool, but also be like, okay, these things we can all agree probably shouldn't enter into the mix of evaluation.

Sure.

I know that's a long comment.

But one respond to the one comment that does it does strike for me.

Um thing that I try to stay focused on, especially when talking about um uh adding limitations, these dogs not only save lives of the handler of the officers, our citizens, and our per are a person who's committing a crime.

And I say that because there are times when a dog may be able to give you distance from a problem.

It may give be able to give you information that the only other way we get is by sending an officer armed into that same situation, right?

Um if you think about K-line K9 Eli being stabbed over on the west side during an appointment.

He was sent into an basement.

Hours and hours of SWAT, hours and hours of of gas was deployed.

Last before an officer goes down that basement, they send an officer down that basement.

And I hate the K9 Eli was stabbed.

I'm thankful that he survived that.

But I'm I have I confident how that situation likely would have ended quite differently had we had to send officers down there first, both for the officers and for the suspect.

So I I try to be mindful of that element that the canine can add to for us as well.

Yep, yep, exactly.

Uh so Mr.

Davis, yeah, we've we covered a lot of ground, but love to hear your I'll keep it very brief.

So first uh thank you, Commissioner, for the question, and thank you, DC Baker, for the presentation.

I will say uh as it relates to the interaction throughout this process, it has been better than any other process I've tried to navigate uh since being in this role.

And I think that it should be credited to Chief Trig in many ways and to his team, but definitely to Chief Trig.

I appreciate the fact that uh Chief Trick is attempting to navigate this differently, and it's clear.

Uh, and I think that's not just because he's in this role and is new.

I think it's the person that he is uh based on the experience that I've had with him.

Uh I started some of this work when he was still in IA and he had similar positions then.

So uh we don't agree on everything, and I don't think that should be expected from a police department and oversight uh agency.

They're not designed uh to agree on all of the topics.

However, we should be able to work together well, and I have seen the start of some of those things in ways that I didn't with former chiefs.

So thank you, uh Chief Trig, and I'm grateful to the department for that.

As it relates to the actual recommendations, we still stand by the recommendations we made.

Uh and our report, we believe when we consider all of this or consider the totality of the circumstances, right?

Uh part of what we're considering is the perspective of community members.

So the way that the policy is written is not just uh our officers able to find it and know where the information is.

It's also about the ease of uh connecting with that information for the public, which is part of the reason we made some of the recommendations that we did.

So I won't go back through those because our recommendations remain the same, but super grateful to the police department for the way they're navigating this space.

Thank you.

And it may be that we're um in a honeymoon period with uh uh Chief Trig because he's only been here for 25 years.

And he did come, he did come from a skeegon, so you know he's kind of new to the community.

Um but well I've been taught you just enjoy it.

Um enjoy the honeymoon.

Uh I'll take it and thank you, Mr.

Davis, for responding to my question.

And uh it seemed as though that is the response I was expecting.

Um and I think that is very promising to community.

I think community needs to see this type of partnership, uh, both uh this uh office and department work for the people and uh seeing them collaborate in a way uh that is going to uplift our neighbors is very promising to me.

And again, I look forward to reviewing uh the policies that we've set forth that we're gonna review in the near future.

Mayor, let me um offer in response to Commissioner Sasi's um early comments and maybe pick piggyback on Commissioner Kilgorse.

I think uh this was a real big first step.

There's a lot of information that we've never publicly talked about um over the years, and so this is very helpful.

What would I think uh be a good next step is to um be as transparent with the training um manual as we have with the manual of procedures with the police department's open to um the breakdown that uh deputy chief uh baker shared today on bites and uh uses and uh uh different applications, that was very very helpful.

So I think um somehow maybe uh annually having some uh similar breakdown on those uses of force.

And then the other part, I think uh as you you've talked about the process uh treating canine application uh in terms of apprehension as use of force through I IA, uh, but also uh that's still eligible if uh the complaint is not satisfied that could be reviewed at CAP.

I'm not sure how often that that's happened.

Um and that would Mr.

Davis may have that information, or certainly police department, but also to monitor uh when complaints go beyond IA to our citizens um appeals board would also be helpful in the outcomes of those determinations.

And um I think this is a a good start, and the last would be um just want to be clear though on on supervisory approval.

That really is one of the main points of departure from the recommendations from OPA to the police department, um, and both expediency practicalness of it, we and and and just you supervisors not always imminently present when when there's a situation.

We and just you supervisors not always imminently present when when there's a situation.

Right.

And as uh Deputy Chief Baker um uh stated, since we have a uh K-9 team and not a unit, there are patrolmen and and women and and they're responding and the complexity of you know things have to have to happen now, but uh having that piece of liability in their hand, that tool, uh we expect a lot of them.

And I think uh DC Baker explained kind of what they go through and the standard that we have that we push them kind of to the brinks um to make those those tough decisions.

Um so that's why we uh that one's a little bit more difficult just to say yes, it's an easy thing to do because it's it's it's just not uh other K9 units, correct me if I'm wrong, uh but uh they have the supervisor embedded, it's a unit.

If they're responding, they're responding as a unit, not an individual team uh member.

So thanks.

So you wanted to move on to crime sets.

Yeah, and I'll just recap uh real quick.

Obviously, the K-9 uh is invaluable as as Deputy Chief Baker said, safer for the subject and the officer and everyone involved.

I think accountability is a thing that helps drive our crime down.

Um when suspects uh create crimes, uh it doesn't mean uh they're lost in the world to us, but uh accountability helps uh you know keep our community safe.

As far as the collaboration with uh Director Davis and OPA, it's it's been great, right?

I I'm gonna stand by.

Uh I want to be an open book.

I want to be transparent, not just the word, but I believe in how we do things, and I also understand that uh we can be better.

Uh so I'm I'm open to the uh change.

We got to do a better job of educating things.

Uh DC Baker and I talked about doing a presentation for the K9 unit before this even came out with uh city manager's memo.

So we kind of blended them together.

I think it was perfect time because I think education is key.

And we know with policy, sometimes things are in even anything in our department.

It's it's within policy, but we thought it should have been done better.

So we're always trying to be better at things, and it's not just uh words I'm using, but that's our standard.

And I I'm glad uh uh DC Baker did a great job.

I could have came up here and read some slides, but not with the passion and education uh that he has.

So uh great job.

All right, uh crime stats for the month.

Uh auto thefts.

Uh you see, we're still trending down, which is good.

Once again, it's um uh I think a tribute to uh our staffing is up, and we have young and men young men and women uh that are out there working, appreciating the city they work for and the department they work for, and they're bringing uh uh energy out there to make an impact in the city.

Uh that's just a breakdown uh by month, you see, as uh summer's always gonna be.

Okay.

So now going through?

No, no, it was not expanded.

Okay.

Go back to where you were.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

All right, I think we're we're right here.

Uh just up by month.

I see the uh summer months are always gonna be the uh the higher months with the all the thefts.

The robberies uh still trending down.

Same thing when I talked about the the auto uh thefts.

More men and women out there um uh dedicated to the city and this department.

You see half the number from 2021, if you know uh person shot uh through through June here.

Um never a uh a great number, something we're always gonna uh work to to reduce with from the fatals and non-fatals there in the next slide.

I'm kind of going fast, I know we're limited on time, but uh same graph plotted on on where our our shootings have fallen the um in the map in the by ward and service area forward next to uh uh homicides.

We were up to up to nine uh this year, and um I'd love to see that number at at zero, and that's something we're gonna continue to uh work to uh get there.

When this next slide, we talk about the nine people that have lost their life.

There it's it's a name, it's a story that you've heard me you know uh say before.

And all these tell a story, and uh we'd like to have this at zero.

It also brings me to the point of our relationships that our men and women uh make with the uh families of these victims.

Uh as I I won't put their name out because I didn't have permission to do that, but I think it's important to um uh show kind of the relationship that's built with our men and women when they uh they solve a case because they want to see accountability, they want to see justice for these families.

And one of the family members on here reached out to to our officers and thanked us for the for the work that they done uh responded to the scene for for their love one that they lost and invited us uh to the service and made sure they were gonna mention um us at the service and just anything that um uh they could do for us uh because of what we've done for them.

Those are the type of relationships that I'm proud to see that our men and women build in these tough situations because that's who the men and women in the department I've been a part of for for 25 years.

Uh clearance rate, national average is still 55 percent.

Uh and you see us uh so far this year.

Yes, we've had nine, but we've solved uh we've cleared all of them, uh which is a testament to I think a lot of things.

The hard work that our men and women uh are doing, but also maybe uh you know, tied to some of the um uh transparency and relationship building that I hope we're doing uh as an agency uh because we know there's some crimes that that that happen that don't go get reported and don't get reported enough, and I want that trust uh with the community that understand that uh you know a safer community needs both police and community working together, and none of us should want those that are committing these violent acts roaming around our streets.

So I'm happy to see that number.

Uh as far as uh recorded fatal overdoses year to date.

You see, there's 14 and 193 illegally possessed guns recovered through June.

Uh as you see all saw on social media, um the reference uh when we responded to uh the shooting where four people were shot on uh early morning, July 5th.

That was after the fireworks after midnight.

Our men and women uh responded to uh a subject that was critically shot, and they had trouble uh due to the crowd size there of getting emergency personnel in there to get uh advanced medical care.

Uh they made the decision there to commandeer pretty much a mega mover, loaded the uh injured subject on that and went, took them over a hundred yards uh to the ambulance.

Uh you'll see the video here when I show it.

Um the officer's out of breath because he's also trying to hold direct pressure while running alongside, and it's not a very easy thing to do.

Um but also seen what I've I've seen in my career, especially in my supervisor roles.

Our men and women care.

Uh it doesn't matter who you are, what you've done out there on the street.

Their job is to uh uh represent this city and and bring public service and to save men and women's life that they can and get them to the uh advanced care if they need.

This is a uh email that we got from a uh a nurse from emergency department um at the hospital.

And I'll just read verbatim.

Uh your team needs to know that they saved this young man's life and they went above and beyond for this patient.

From the EMS report, it sounded like it was identified by police that the victim had life-threatening injury from the gunshot.

The scene was not safe, so they carried the victim to the ambulance and held direct pressure to the victim's gunshot wound to help control the bleeding and rode in the ambulance to the hospital.

This was most likely what saved the victim's life that they did not recognize the seriousness of the injury, and if they had not held direct pressure, the victim would have bled out from his injury.

Once again, something I've been seeing since my I've been reviewing videos a long time.

And uh it's what I've seen from our men and women, and it's something that we're gonna be more intentional about sharing, because I think it's good for our department, it's good for our city and our community.

Um and I think we have the video associated.

I'm not gonna talk to us.

Hey, everybody get back.

Get back.

We have to get an ambulance here.

I'm not talking to the sidewalk right now.

I am telling you to get to the sidewalk.

We don't touch me.

We gotta get the ambulance here.

Get to the sidewalk.

No one fucking you get to the firewall.

Don't touch me.

Get to the sidewalk.

Get to the sidewalk.

He is a little relevant.

In his growing area.

Yeah, I got it.

So uh that young man is alive today.

He's got a long road from what I've what I've heard, but he is alive today uh uh because he's men and women uh took action.

Uh we have uh a great fire department and EMS uh services, but they have protocols as well.

Uh and it's our job to try to uh make that scene safe and uh approachable.

And if uh for the officers uh and the sergeant on that scene to think outside the box and think, okay, this isn't uh working or it's not gonna work in time.

Let's let's let's get the injured uh to more advanced care.

Uh just shows that uh their amount of care and you see them scrambling.

They care, and I you can see that in their faces, so I'm proud of that.

Um and we have one more video just in uh in light.

So this is just an incident where our officer engaged a young man and had a little bit of a fitness contest.

Hold back for you.

Ready.

What?

What you better keep going, you better keep going.

King is back.

Oh goodness, King.

You won, brother.

Once again, this is this is this is a great moment.

I love it.

I mean, I've done this at points in my career, our men and women have done this more than you know.

We just not we're not good about sharing it, right?

And that's I think that's something that uh we want to do differently just to uh be more intentional about it, because I think it has it has value.

So um that any questions?

Thanks, Chief.

Um, yeah, good videos.

Uh it was it was rough to watch that July 5th one.

Um boy, you know, really wish everyone out in the community would understand, like when something like this happens, how important it is to get aid um to people right away.

Um the uh so thanks for thanks for sharing both of those.

Um the the only other thing that struck me that maybe is worth reiterating again uh in this context is our there's sort of an axiom in law enforcement, which is that one of your strongest deterrents generally is people knowing that they'll get caught if they do something bad.

If no one gets caught, then you kind of lose your you lose a lot of your disincentive.

Um so uh our license plate readers are obviously reading license plates, and that's got to be one of the things that plays into the fact that our auto uh theft numbers are going down, is that we're apprehending people who are taking cars that aren't theirs.

Um and license plate readers are designed in large part to do that.

And I just want to reiterate we are not sharing that information with the federal government.

We are um that is a law enforcement tool, whether or not we change to choose to modify policies on that.

I just want to point out that the uh license plate reader cameras obviously interplay with auto thefts, particularly and other thefts too.

So yeah, like I said, uh accountability uh is is huge in deferring crime or in uh making a impact, and we've seen that by adding bodies and adding presence, and it's it's no secret.

You can research it.

Thank you.

Ms.

James.

Thank you, Chief Traeg and Brenda Davis and Baker.

I you guys mentioned that education would be a great tool and something that we need to do more.

Is there plans to do something within the community, specifically this house leaf site like a MLK park with your canine and the education that would be a positive experience to build upon?

We're open to everything.

I actually to even expand further than just uh K9.

I had talked to our our uh our training captain about you know because we have training that's that that we can open to uh the community, and you know, we sometimes we do that through CAB.

I know CAB has uh use force training coming up here uh soon, or we got the uh civilians uh police academy, all these different ways.

But I was kind of thinking outside the box, what if we brought the training to the community?

Because sometimes the department is a a barrier, you know, plus it's hard to park.

Uh not much parking, but uh but uh how could we bring it out to the community?

And I thought of MLK and obviously the beautiful building they have out there, but what what that would look like.

So we're brainstorming some ideas right now, whether we you know bring some some some mats out there and some SPAR pros to show use of force stuff, other decision stuff, canine stuff.

It really wide open.

So yes.

Um as a citizen, thank you, thank you, Chief, and and thank you to the whole the whole meeting was uh pretty enlightening uh on today and and optim optimism is in is in the air.

Uh as a citizen on this public safety committee, uh I truly do believe earnestly that uh while all citizens are not public servants, but all public servants should should be good citizens.

And that lighting that vein, um uh we see and hear everything that you all do to put your lives on the line for us and and just uh and we hear you and we see you and we thank you.

Uh and uh hope that carries on the same spirit of DC uh Eric Freeman, uh who passed away um a year ago about this time we were celebrating 34 years, I believe it was of his service, and just know that your labor's not in vain.

So thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

And we are four minutes away from uh our pub our city commission meeting.

Uh city manager.

Yeah, just one note uh on the slide um appreciate the nine homicides being solved this year, but I think that 2020 numbers closer to 38, not 18.

I think it was on the slide that may have just been through June, though.

It's through June.

Through June, okay, through June.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, everyone.

We're adjourned.