Welcome to the Hampton City Council work session.

Madam Clerk, you call a roll, please.

Councilman Bowman.

President.

Vice Mayor Brown.

Here.

Councilwoman Campbell.

President.

Councilwoman Fairby.

Present.

Councilwoman Harper.

Present.

Councilwoman Mugler, present.

Mayor Gray.

President.

So I'm going to ask City Manager to introduce the first.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

As the council knows, and probably a lot of the community, several months ago, the council took a field trip of, so to speak, up to Richmond to examine different size and scoped data centers.

And the reason why we did this is that increasingly localities are being presented with uh requests for data centers to locate in their areas.

And we wanted to be proactive in this uh effort to make sure we understood and developed a clear informed policy position in advance of any specific proposal as opposed to reacting when and if something came.

Many of the localities across the country actually weren't proactive in developing zoning categories and and use permit requirements and things of that nature, and so data centers made arguments that they were like office buildings or like off or like warehouses, and that's how they kind of took hold in some cities, and we didn't want to do that.

We wanted to be very intentional and very clear about what the zoning framework would be, which isn't to say that we will accept them or we won't accept them, but rather that we know we need to have clear delineation about what would and wouldn't be acceptable in our community.

And so with that as a backdrop, we contracted with SIR, a firm out of Richmond, uh, to help us do an analysis of the various policy and development considerations that the council and the staff should undertake to help us develop that clear informed policy position, and the field trip that we took a couple months ago was the first step in understanding that, but only the first step.

So today we wanted to give the public a briefing about what we're doing, why we're doing it, what we've learned to date, and what we still have to learn.

Uh, we're not at the end of a process, and I want to be abundantly clear, we're not doing this at this point in time because there's any specific proposal that we're looking at or reacting to.

Again, rather, we're really trying to set the stage to make sure we're thoughtful about it, and that unlike other localities that sort of got taken by surprise and storm, that we are upfront and engaging with the community about what makes sense for Hampton.

So, with that, I believe Leonard Sledge was Leonard, were you going to kick this off or we're going to go straight to Reed?

Oh, I didn't know if you wanted to do any other introductions.

Leonard is Leonard Sledge is our chief um officer for community and economic development, and I had you listed as the kicking off the presentation.

So my apologies if I got that wrong.

My apologies for not being here, ma'am.

Uh, good afternoon, Mayor Gray, Vice Mayor Brown, distinguished members of Hampton City Council, City Manager Bunting, City Attorney, Sid Noor, Ms.

Glass, um, City Manager Bunting stated it all.

Uh, there's nothing else uh to be shared in in terms of context.

Uh data centers continue to be a topic of conversation as everyone knows nationally and also within the Hampton Roads region, and to the city manager's point, we just wanted to ensure that we had an informed policy environment, and therefore we're fortunate to have the opportunity to work with SIR, which is a Richmond-based consulting firm, uh, which is actually helping to lead an initiative between the Hampton Roads region and the Greater Richmond region called RBA 757 Connects.

And it's my pleasure to ask Mr.

Reed Watkins to come up with SIR just to provide this briefing and general overview on data centers and digital infrastructure.

Reed.

Thank you, Leonard.

Good afternoon, Mr.

Mayor, Vice Mayor Brown, members of council, good to see you all.

Um what else uh set up for this for me?

Let's jump in.

We got a lot of lot to cover here.

So let's talk about this project first and foremost.

So as Mayor Bunt or City Manager Bunting and Leonard Sledge outlined, this project, this is an analysis.

This is not going to be making a decision, setting a site or approving any project.

This is the city doing its homework.

So city trying to get this head around what is a complicated, nuanced, and admittedly hot topic nationally and certainly at the state level here.

Understand what data centers and digital infrastructure investments might look like here in Hampton on the peninsula and what they shouldn't look like, right?

What's uniquely Hampton's solution to all of this?

So Hampton is choosing to explore this topic and these investments proactively, right?

Not reactively.

As there's plenty of examples, I'm sure you all are can think of of localities here in Virginia and across the state and across the nation that have been reactive when these development deals come across their desk.

So let's start by zooming out a little bit.

Like what's driving all this, right?

And the first and the part of the biggest part of this is that our world is digital more than ever.

The amount of data that is copied, shared, stored, transformed, is not growing linearly, it's growing exponentially.

As a society, we are more and more digital.

And so our use of digital tools and services is really the driver of investments in digital infrastructure and data centers across the country.

We're part of the demand equation here.

So when we say digital infrastructure, what do we what are we talking about here, right?

You can think of digital infrastructure as plumbing for data.

It didn't, it didn't we intentionally use that term because data centers don't exist in a vacuum.

They require energy infrastructure, they require fiber and broadband, wireless systems, satellite uplinks, the tools and systems that connect data from point to point.

They also require compute and storage facilities of which data centers and ed facilities are part of that, but also the cold storage facilities where we store our family iCloud photos and stream Netflix services, et cetera, places where data is just stored.

They also include, especially down here in Hampton Roads, where the federal and cyber presence is very hot, so just like in Northern Virginia, cybersecurity and reliability systems, systems that allow that data is secured from endpoint to endpoint, that it's and it remains up and active even when the climate or other situations might want to bring those systems down.

And then the city itself relies on digital, just like this being streamed live to folks all across the region, the city relies on its own digital infrastructure to communicate with residents, ensure traffic and engineering stay up to date, and respond to emergencies and crises if and when they come across Hampton's borders.

So we're really trying to try and take an ecosystem perspective of digital infrastructure, right?

And knowing that data centers, this is this hot topic in this larger ecosystem.

And this ecosystem is one that really underpins a lot of our daily lives today.

So it's mostly a behind the scenes.

We don't really think about this when we wake up, but digital infrastructure is the systems that we touch from morning to night, from your weather forecast, traffic updates, how your kids sometimes do homework and apply um complete lessons for school to streaming the game or a show or TV show, paying a bill for the city, or even the emergency 911 alert systems, all of these systems and more rely on digital infrastructure.

It underpins a lot of how our the world works today.

And when it works, like we kind of take it for granted here in Virginia and probably in the United States, that it just works here.

That's not true in every locality across the world.

So we don't really notice that this incredible ecosystem lives behind under the scenes.

Um but when it goes down, we all notice, right?

When we can't stream the game or access or complete, submit a homework assignment right up to the deadline.

Um those things slow us down, they get in the way.

We do notice digital infrastructure at those points.

But it's everywhere.

And the facilities that are part of this ecosystem, the data centers, something that's often lost is these things come in all shapes and sizes.

They are a continuum of facilities.

All of them are essentially secure, chilled facilities with computer equipment in them, right?

But the scale and size of them varies depending on the use case.

So I'm sure that many of y'all, I'm sure there is a micro or edge facility somewhere in this building, right here, right now operating that's running City Hall, right?

We have, and most businesses and organizations across Hampton Roads, and largely the country have some kind of network rack or computer closet in the organization that allows the system that allows the organization to run all the way up to several small facilities you may have driven past on your way in to work today.

These things are innocuous, they're small buildings, and they're all over the place.

But what's really gripped the nation and really drives the public conversation around this topic is the far end of the spectrum here.

This these hyperscale facilities.

And they truly are in a class of their own.

We tried to take a stab at kind of visualizing the footprint of what a small or medium-sized facility is compared to one of these hyperscales.

And we hope it just shows that these things like a standard facility you might drive by just vanishes in comparison to some of these hyperscale facilities.

They truly are enormous impacts.

And so there's a reason that the public's hooked onto them, right?

That they they are outsized facilities.

But we would be remiss if we lost this nuance, right?

And whatever our policy and development considerations up are for Hampton, they should include and really be founded on this fundamental nuance that not all data centers are created equal, and they serve different purposes.

While keeping in mind that the public image is real.

This hyperscale facilities do exist and they do have outsized impacts.

But that doesn't mean that data centers are all bad, right?

We shouldn't let one tier or category of these facilities paint our understanding of the entire ecosystem.

And as City Manager Bunting mentioned, the tour that some of you all got to join us on early on in this project process.

We went to both a small facility, the Pixel Factory National, Virginia's a 10,000 square foot facility.

And this might sound facetious, but at certain times of the day, I'm sure that the daycare facility next door is louder than that facility was that we walked in, right?

Kids playing on the playground, probably generate a little more noise than that facility did.

But we also toured a hyperscale facility, QTS, right?

That was behind gates, behind hundreds of feet of vegetation.

You could kind of hear it once you got on the facility.

Those are that's a real hyperscale facility, and those are real, right?

That size and scale exists, and you could tell the difference there.

Um so these are both data centers, right?

But that you would you'd be remiss to say that that's one label that that they're both the same type of facility, right?

Um, and so one type of facility, again, shouldn't be paint our entire understanding of this topic.

So the hyperscale facilities, they do have outsized impacts, and we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge those, right?

This is um this is part of the political and social discourse today, and so there are some perceptions and myths out there that we gotta address head on.

Some are true, some are not.

Um, and that's been part of our process.

So when we look at um data center investments across the country, um they become lightning rods for all kinds of political, societal, and economic issues.

Affordability, sustainability, and energy prices, kind of naming just a few of them, right?

But um the reason we have these images on this slide is just if you look at the signs and movements that are at these protests, it covers all different types of topics.

We they really are a lightning rod for for issues across society.

There's no really one thing that drives everyone up against the to protest these facilities.

Um our own state did some studies on what might happen if we left data center development unchecked in Virginia.

So, as as um you might imagine, this is probably an implausible scenario at this point.

But if we were to say yes to every facility, if by 2040, they would project that our um statewide electricity usage would go up by about 183% from what it is today.

And our average power bill might increase by about 40 dollars per user per month.

So that's that's not nothing.

But that is if we let data center investment go unconstrained in the state.

And perhaps um one of the most a sign of how things are nationally is a recent Gallup study that found 71% of Americans oppose a data center in the area, which is almost 20% more than those that would oppose a nuclear power plant.

So there's no doubt, the data shows that there's no doubt that these hyperscale facilities, they are a, they have hit a nerve, a political and social nerve in the United States, and we have to keep that in mind as we consider what the city's point of view, um, and policy should be with these facilities.

But again, these, at least the impacts for Virginia, reflect an unconstrained scenario, which if you've been following the news here in the statewide level, that is very unlikely to happen.

But that's that would be a reality here.

So let's look at each of these issues in context, starting with power.

Because power really is this is true.

The pat data centers are outsized users of power.

And it is the single gating constraint.

If you talk to folks in the industry, it's a single gating constraint for where they might choose a locality or another.

Is if they have access to power.

And so we've tried to layer up against some kind of average facilities you might have in mind of what power usage of some of these facilities looks like.

And hyperscale data centers right at the bottom there in red, absolutely, they are in a class of their own.

Looking at 100 plus megawatts of power.

There's nothing that we could find that really in our analysis that really compares to the power usage of one of these hyperscale facilities.

And close behind them are these large co-location facilities, where there might be multiple tenants in a single building.

They do use outsized amounts of power.

But compared when you think about the facilities you might have driven by on your way to work in today, or the facilities that are in this building, you know, large hospitals, NFL stadiums, university campuses, all use way more power than those facilities.

So you're again, just coming back to this point of um, there's nuance to this, right?

Not all facilities are created equal, and the scale really depends, really impacts what kind of um kind of usage they will have on the grid.

So again, but we'd be remiss in saying and not pointing out that larger facilities do have an outsized impact on the grid, and that is a truth no matter where they get built.

So let's look at water, the next one we hear a lot about.

So, in comparison to the power usage stats, um water is modest or even negligible by comparison.

Again, the hyperscale facilities in this same category do use an outsized amount of water.

Um, but that it compared to some advanced in manufacturing and industrial processes, it's still less than stuff that we have across the country operating today.

Um, and that is also just slightly more than like an 18-hole golf course.

Um the larger and mid-size and smaller facilities are all using less water than an H-hole golf courses.

And in years past, these facilities may have only run on air chilling, like they would be chilled through air like standard HVAC systems.

Um, and some facilities use water cooling, and in the past they might have used like evaporative cooling techniques, so they would have pumped water in that would have been evaporated off as it chilled things.

But modern facilities typically use closed loop systems that do require a, you know, they need to ingest water into the system, but they will circulate that for days or weeks or months at a time.

So the the net drain on any water system um is very different today than it would have been in years past.

I mean, an efficiency is some these are the operators of these businesses, they're in business, right?

They're they are trying to deliver value to customers and make money.

Um, and so any things that they any things that they can do to be more efficient, use less resources, they're gonna invest in because it'll help drive the borderline, and cooling through water usage is one of those, just like power is.

So water's a different story from power.

Still up there, especially for the hyperscale facilities, but just not in the same league.

And then noise is another one we hear all the time.

You know, these facilities are extremely noisy.

I can feel, I can hear them while I sleep.

And when we looked at the average, the research on this, on average, even a hyperscale facility is quieter than a busy street or a vacuum cleaner in your home, right?

Now, the thing I think from our analysis, what really drives people's perceptions of these facilities being really loud is when they run backup generators.

And these facilities, part of their operating agreement, need to stay up.

They need to stay operational 99.999% of the time, right?

And so, in order to do that, to maintain that reliability, they have backup generators on site, which they usually were will do like monthly testing on.

And no doubt, just like in your residential community, if you've got a neighbor that has one of those backup generators installed in their home, it is loud when it fires up.

And they run these things on a monthly test cycle.

So there is no doubt when they were testing these generators, that is a loud noise, but it's monthly and it's intermittent at best.

It's not at a constant hum.

So for the, again, if you all, for those of y'all that got to join us at Pixel Factory, some of these smaller facilities, you can barely tell that it's a data center at all.

Um it runs HVAC just like our homes and businesses do.

So it's no louder than standard HVAC.

Um, so again, in the noise, it really depends on the scale, but it's not quite as large of an impact again compared to the power usage of these facilities.

And then another perception we hear is that data centers are hazardous.

They are risky places to live near and work in.

But as I said earlier, these are essentially secure buildings with computer equipment in them.

Secure, chilled buildings.

They're cooled rooms that we we store expensive equipment in and run.

So there is nothing chemically or emission-wise or radiation, electromagnetic or otherwise that comes out of these buildings, besides maybe the noise that that HVAC generates, and the light, the data that's sent in and out of these facilities.

So they are, you know, and the inside the facility, if you're working in one of these, they have all the same hazards that any OSHA facility might have, right?

You need to wear a hard hat in the halls, you need to wear uh hearing protection while you're in the data halls because they're loud hums, right?

If you're working in these facilities, yeah, you need to be, you need to, you're in high voltage environments, you do need to be careful what you touch and um what you put your hands on.

Um but in general, that there's they have the same hazards that any other warehouse facility would have inside for those that work.

So, bottom line on the health and safety thing is um, you know, internally the safety concerns are managed but through our standard OSHA processes, right?

It's it's the workers need to be trained to work in these specialized environments.

But externally, for the folks that live near these places, besides the noise that you might hear from backup generators, the hum of the HVAC, the only thing that's really being emitted from these facilities is the light, the data that they transmit or transform.

So why are they such a hot topic?

Why is this uh why are localities so hellbent on trying to land some of these?

Well, they are unique.

They are a unique type of investment.

Um for one, they don't require a lot of manpower to operate.

So for every dollar of public services they might use in terms of like water or wastewater, whatever that might be, they return $13 to $26 of that, right?

Because they're not large net draws on the public utility system around them.

They also, because of all the expensive equipment that goes into these facilities, they are at the highest um concentration of valuable machinery and tools that you can get in a facility, right?

I mean, some of these facilities have billions of dollars worth of just equipment of just networking gear and compute power, and that just blows other manufacturing other facilities out of the water in terms of just a dollar per square foot.

So, averages that we could find in our research was it's like three times the value of per square foot of other commercial uses.

And then these facilities are they're essentially like as I said before, they're they're secure, cooled shells where we can run high-end computer equipment out of for years to come.

So they're not just flash in the pan things that get built and demolished in five years.

These are investments that the developers and operators are gonna want to keep using for decades to come, right?

So they're long-lived assets that continuously recycle the very expensive equipment that goes into them and return this high value of high value per square foot to that concentrating value there.

So that does that discounts the job size of this, right?

Because while these facilities have all of this expensive equipment in them, they don't really, in the way of direct employment, generate a ton of jobs.

It doesn't take a lot of people to operate one of these data centers.

So even at the QTS facility that we visited earlier this year, you're only talking about a couple hundred folks that are needed to run that giant facility day in and day out.

Now I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there is an entire supporting cast of characters, a supporting industry that allows these facilities to work.

You know, HVAC, electricians, plumbing, all of these things are requiring industrial grade, cooling, water, electrician, electrical systems.

And so there is a CASA workforce, a supporting workforce that isn't full-time employed on these facilities, but it's absolutely called to help them maintain, repair, upgrade, you name it, the um the systems that are in place in these.

So those businesses, the supporting CAS, is in those industries are booming these days because there's a lot of demand for their services that wouldn't exist otherwise.

But as far as the jobs that are on site and full-time, yes, they're they're high skilled but very small workforce compared to the dollar value that goes into these things.

And so as a result, depending on the scale here, Virginia localities deploy the revenue they receive from these facilities in a number of ways, right?

Some counties in Virginia use that fund that that revenue to fund entire portions of sometimes outsized portions of their budget.

Other localities have take direct tax revenue from data centers investment and use it to fund schools, or like in Central Virginia and Raico County, they've set up a dedicated affordable housing trust fund.

Others are in the state, there's examples of others who have asked the developers to help them.

You know, if you're gonna help us tap into our water system, we want you to help us modernize or improve it, right?

So the benefits that come to these localities are not they're not set in stone.

They're kind of up to the localities to determine and negotiate, and they range from kind of broad automatic general fund revenue streams to more deliberate negotiated type benefits.

But those also scale with size, right?

So though for the localities that like Hannah County and Central Virginia that have massive hyperscale data center footprint, they can fund a 60 million dollar affordable housing trust fund.

Now, looking at the city of Hampton and really the peninsula region here, I don't see where, or through our analysis, I should say, we don't really see where y'all are gonna be able to support any kind of hyperscale facility.

Um so I don't we don't think that a hyperscale facility is even on the table for Hampton or the peninsula.

So on one hand, that means like the the outsized benefits of these facilities, like the ability to fund parts of your tax base or fund schools or whatever it might be.

That's probably off the table for Hampton.

Um, but that does not mean that you couldn't generate some deliberate negotiated deal for a smaller footprint, smaller funding amount, right, from a smaller or mid-sized facility that may have a chance of landing somewhere in Hampton down the road.

Um again, that's all potential.

There is no site or deal on the table from this project.

This is just exploratory.

So for Hampton, this looks like a these facilities could be a general fund contributor, a small one at that.

Um they're not gonna revamp the city's tax base overnight.

But um that's up to the city of Hampton to decide, right?

There is no set rule on how you deploy revenue that comes from these.

Um from our our work on this, we've interviewed a bunch of the um anchor and regional stakeholders here on the peninsula, um, including some of the local universities, the healthcare systems, financial institutions, um, innovation and tech leaders, and all of them are talking about some form of cloud or digital infrastructure investment, migration, transformation.

They're all exploring this technology.

So someone at some point is gonna want to build more localized compute, digital infrastructure, networking, you name it somewhere in the peninsula.

It's gonna be part of their operating model into the future.

Um, so for a university system that might look being able to do more high-intensity compute and offer new classes and capabilities and provide new analyses that they could do in different labs on site, or for a regional healthcare system, it could look like being able to support the tens of thousands of connected devices that go into modern health care and essentially saving more lives through additional connectivity and bandwidth.

And then to regional innovation folks saying that um, you know, all of the pieces are in place here on the peninsula.

You also have a very unique mix of anchor, both federal and private organizations that make that could make y'all a test bed, a hot place for innovation if and when the infrastructure and ecosystem evolves around them to support them, right?

So whether it's either of these or another's, right?

I didn't mention the financial service and all that, all of these facilities and organizations are going to be investing in digital infrastructure in some way in the future.

So it's not just the city that's gonna be concerned with modernizing its own digital infrastructure.

It's the businesses that make Hampton, the Gulf Peninsula and Hampton home.

And so when we look out across the country, data center investments don't just show up in nowhere, right?

They don't you if you look at the map here, data center investment over the last couple of years.

There's not a lot of going on in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho and South Dakota, right?

Virginia, Arizona, California, and Texas, especially in the last year or so.

We are all the the front lines of this data center investment.

And that's because these investments go where low cost or reliable power, strong connectivity, of which Virginia, because of our relationship to Northern Virginia and all the federal facilities and institutions up there, and then also down here in Hampton Roads, all the cyber facilities down here, we have some really robust fiber infrastructure that runs all throughout the state.

So connectivity, talent is also here in Northern Virginia and in Hampton Roads on the cyber side of things.

Others states will be looking to how we make decisions about this technology because we're gonna deal with it first and the most so far.

And so on that bigger picture, I mentioned that or Leonard kind of teed up the fact that we we work with um RVA 7x7 Connects, which is a mega regional organization that's trying to leverage the business and infrastructure assets of both Richmond and Hampton Roads to enhance our collaboration as a single combined market, right?

Um and when you look at the assets that make up the Richmond, Central Virginia region and Hampton Roads together, we have these four enablers in spades.

We have robust terrestrial networks, we have an internet exchange in Central Virginia where internet traffic is routed and deployed to other parts of the network nationally.

We have diverse energy sources, we have and a deep tech and cyber talent pool.

And so we have all of the makings, not something that's unique nationally, but globally.

So that's happening at the mega regional level.

At the regional level here, you're the Hampton Roads Alliance, a regional um economic development organization, has defined through their deal framework four industries that are that they see as already defining the region and what they want to double down on and invest in into the future.

And those are defense, energy, aerospace, and logistics.

And talking with folks at the Alliance through this work and others, you can bet that digital infrastructure is a foundational element to all four of those industries, right?

The defense, energy, aerospace, and logistics industries of the future are gonna run on digital technology.

And so they want to they're anyone that you want to try and attract to the region is gonna want to understand what is the digital infrastructure look like.

That's gonna be core to their business moving forward.

And then in your own draft strategic plan, I know it's in draft format here, but you all even have a strategy around investing in infrastructure, including internet connections and to recruit industries that align with Hampton's strengths, including emerging tech.

So this is this is something that y'all are stating as a city is a strategic priority.

So you'll are already you're already part of a mega region, a region and locality that is taking digital infrastructure seriously.

And this project just kind of is dovetails with that very nicely, I think.

Y'all are treating this as a strategic decision to make, not a cash grab, right?

This is a strategic lever for the region.

And so when this is just a little background on the project, when we look at trying to understand what y'all's digital infrastructure policy could be, it's a nuanced topic, right?

So we broke it into 10 different work streams or categories of vision, sighting, fiber infrastructure, water and power, you name it all down the list here.

And so we have tried to investigate with our team, talking with members of Hampton's staff, so the city staff, to understand what, for example, your sustainability standards might be.

What is uniquely Hampton?

What incentives or community trust expectations should we have built into our recommendations so that what you what we deliver to y'all at the end of this process is not some generic boilerplate digital infrastructure policy, something that's uniquely Hampton that fits the locality and community that this that calls this place home.

And so City Manager Bunting already mentioned this, but one of those recommendations is gonna be some kind of zoning decision, right?

Because as she mentioned, there is no current zoning for digital infrastructure and data centers in Hampton Roads or in, excuse me, in the city of Hampton.

So in order for y'all to kind of get your hands around these facilities and treat them like the nuanced um use case that they are, you're gonna need to explore some kind of zoning ordinance to define them.

And whether you tier that based on the size of the facility, recognizing that hyperscale facilities represent enormous impacts on power, water, potentially noise, community impacts, while smaller facilities don't.

Um that nuance could be included in your in your um in your ordinance here.

But bottom line here is that this is um you really this is this is the most important tool in y'all's toolbox as a city to take control of this and have a clear policy on this as having some kind of zoning ordinance.

Um and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that similar work is happening across Mercule Boulevard and Newport News, right?

For to y'all, um you you see that as a dividing line, there's two localities, but for the rest for most of the region, um you're one peninsula, and so whatever we come up with for recommendations and policy for the city of Hampton, it needs to talk or at least coordinate with what's going on in the Newport News as well, because developers and businesses will look at y'all as a market, not to individual localities.

So people might live in one and work in another.

And so we got to find a way to make sure that there is some regional coordination when this thing is finally delivered.

Again, that's down the road.

There's nothing set in stone, as City Manager Bunting mentioned, but um that's just something we want to keep in mind as we move into the final stages of this process.

And so um I'll kind of end where we started here of what we'll be delivering at the end of this project.

So we want to deliver a tight analysis of policy and development considerations for digital infrastructure and data centers, and that's gonna include a clear vision, like where this fits what's right and not right for the city of Hampton.

Um, some recommendations for where you should go next, whether that's from a zoning ordinance or standards definitions, you name it, that could be a lot of things included in there that could be a clot applied across sites, tier have some nuance that we talked about earlier in the show today.

Um, identify some resources, partners, performance measures, things that y'all could do to put in place to um demonstrate transparency, hold developers accountable, and make sure that you're you're you keep everyone honest and open no matter what deal comes across your table down the road, and then um we want this to be shared ready for use, right?

This is um you we've looked out, we've tried to look as part of our analysis of other cities and localities doing this across the country.

Y'all are being very proactive and ahead of the curve on this.

Um, so I want to have so we want to make sure that y'all have the ability to share and hold this final set of policy recommendations up and have it be a playbook for your own digital infrastructure leadership, showing that the city of Hampton is truly forward-thinking and innovative when it comes to data centers and digital infrastructure more broadly.

That's it.

Any any questions?

Questions?

Uh, Councilman Bowden.

Uh I want to say thank you for the presentation.

Um, did an outstanding job.

About a year ago, I think we uh approached this just wanted to get a look at it, and I can tell you honestly, none of us knew anything about data centers.

We were all just simply born off of perceptions.

So, with the tour that was planned, um, the two facilities that we visited, the information that you gave us, is it was an eye-opener.

Um, there are things that we can discuss to uh our constituents if someone has a question, but what I did uh ask the city manager to do is um set up a town hall meeting so actually um the citizens can hear what we heard, and and the perceptions can go away, you know, concerning the noise, water use, electricity, uh, the sizes, because like I said, we saw small ones, large ones, um, so it was definitely an eye opener, but again, I want to thank you for the time uh for putting us this together for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

So let me back up to a couple of your slides.

One, you kind of laid out uh what's driving uh the need for data centers, and I guess here in the city, we have servers somewhere uh in a server room, which is a I guess a l a small-scale data center because it has racks and it has uh servers on it.

I guess you know there's this TV station and this infrastructure probably runs on a server and uh computer network and I guess our 911 radio system probably operates on a server somewhere, and that server is stored somewhere in this building or off-site somewhere.

And so you talk about the demand for servers and the demand for data centers is driven by the increased demand for digital infrastructure through the products and systems that we use every day.

So you know, you uh there are a lot of people who are concerned about data centers, and but what what happens if we say if our policy position is no data centers in Hampton?

Well, let's say Hampton and NUPA News, because I think one city in the region recently said no to mega data centers.

I don't I don't I'm assuming that means that they're open to a certain size, but they said no to mega data centers.

So if we as a region uh decide that we don't want data centers, what does that mean for our region in terms of economic development, job creation, uh, and so forth, not with the data center industry, but with those who may consider wanting to bring a high-tech business to our our community.

That's a great great question, Mayor Gray.

Um, you know, digital access to digital tools and services underlies like most ways that business gets done today.

So whether it's defense uh energy, aerospace, or logistics like the deal framework for the Hampton Roads Alliance or Financial Services or Healthcare or higher education, all of them are gonna look for and be looking for, and I can tell you through our conversations are looking for access to compute resources and digital infrastructure today and tomorrow.

So you can see it as this foundational element to getting work done today and well into the future.

So being being totally against like a blanket no to all data centers would be um would limit businesses and organizations' ability to grow and evolve with technology as it does, right?

It and that would probably cut across many, many industries, not just the four that are in that deal framework.

It would be um yeah, it's a foundational element there.

Any other questions, comments?

Council members, okay.

All right, well, so we would look forward to uh your final analysis on this and what we you know what our takeaways are from that and uh but thank you for a great presentation today, which I hope is informative even for us because I agree with Councilman Bowman.

I mean, we all had heard about data centers, but until you stepped inside of one and kind of see what it is and what it looks like and understanding how it works and uh how it uses water uh and you know the difference in a large-scale data center and a small scale data center uh was was very informative for us to be able to understand what they uh what they're all about.

City manager, awesome.

Mayor, as we transition, I'll just acknowledge for the public record, we will work to set up one or more, probably more than one of those town hall um town halls or round tables that Councilman Bowman and you were describing, so we give the public the chance to interact and ask the questions they want to ask and express what they want us to take into consideration before we get to a proposed zoning structure, but just to wrap it up, um, in case people came in late, it's really essential that we look at this proactively so that we don't end up behind the eight ball.

So we'll continue to move this along this summer and early fall in hopes that we can bring you a recommended zoning um construct, if you will, that will represent what we all have learned collectively about it and also what we hear from the public that they would like to see reflected.

Okay, thank you.

I'll snack you read.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

Mayor, do you want me to introduce the next item?

Yes.

Um the next item will be presented by Deputy City Manager Brian DePopio on behalf of our strategic priority leaders.

Uh we we have six of those, and if if we had each of them speak, we would make a much longer day.

But they I do want to acknowledge the great work that they have been doing alongside uh Brian and um Assistant City Manager Jason Mitchell and myself to update our strategic plan.

You may recall we had a big community meeting several months back at which we asked the public to weigh in on the work that had been done by our stakeholder groups, and it was it was largely validated with some tweaks.

We brought that to council, and council made one very important observation, and that was it lacked a lot of input from the youth and young adults.

And that's not atypical when you do things like uh large community meetings, they tend to be more uh frequented by um older, and when I say older, I mean 30 plus year old adults, right?

That we're more established in our careers and our lives, and so we have time to go out to meetings like this.

And this council, I want to applaud you for being very sensitive to the fact that when we're doing a strategic plan, we're planning for our community, not just for the people who live here today, but the people who are gonna grow old and come to our community, and so we really needed to have that youth voice, um, and that includes everyone from our young people still in school to those in college and those recently graduated from high school and college.

And so you gave us a challenge, and I want I'm really proud of the work that the strategic priority leaders and our assistant managers did to go out and respond to that challenge.

Mr.

Popria is going to update you on the work that they did do to get that youth input as well as the tweaks that came out of that.

I am pleased to say that largely the youth that we added agreed with what had already been done.

But they did have some interesting insights, and we want to share those with you today so that you can look at how we might incorporate those, and then we can bring to you after any feedback you all have an actual plan to get updated and then be move into the implementation phase.

Hopefully, we'll bring it to you in August unless you have a lot of changes.

Okay, that's the point of today's meeting.

We're not gonna repeat everything we've given you before, but really focus on the the changes that came out of the youth voices.

So I'll turn it over to Brian.

All right, thank you very much.

Um I'm gonna dive right in.

As you all know, one of the key elements that we that we have as we go through our strategic planning process is broad-based community engagement, as Mary had said, and one of the observations that was made was we really needed to do some some focus at focused efforts to get the youth voices engaged, and so that's what we've been doing over the last few months.

Last time I was before you uh presenting the update on the plan.

Um, to start off, as Mary had said, the uh the community or the the the additional um engagement that we did and feedback that we got really um reaffirmed a lot of what we had already been working on and had already established in the plan.

And so um the foundational elements that include the city's vision, the mission and values, those haven't changed based on the feedback that we've gotten.

Um also uh the strategic priority areas.

These are strategic priority areas that we've had and been dealing with for several years now.

They include economic growth, educated citizenry, excellence in government, safe and clean community, family resilience, economic empowerment, living with water, and placemaking, those also haven't changed.

Those are those continue to be the framework that we're working within as we uh as we work on finalizing the strategic plan.

And of course, as Mary had also mentioned, the uh the the other uh the strategic priority leaders who've really been helping us lead this effort to get the plan completed are all listed here that have been participating at that level, and so we greatly appreciate the work that they've been doing.

Um additional uh community sessions that we've had.

We've had online survey of community members broadly.

We've also done focused efforts by reaching out to Hampton City schools and engaging the senior classes of the high schools that uh are in the government classes, and so you know they were able to bring them together in in uh in the auditoriums, and we were able to have some some dialogue with them.

We also uh conducted focus groups with college students from Hampton University, Virginia Peninsula Community College, Bryant and Stratton, and we we were able to get feedback from them, and we did also do a focus group with the military, because you know the military is an important part of our community.

There's a lot of young younger folks who uh who are engaged in the military and and work for the military.

So we wanted to get them engaged as well.

And then a lot of the people that come to the hiring fairs that we have with the city are also um of a younger demographic, and so we also engaged people who attended our hiring fairs since last time we uh we briefed council in January.

Now we asked several questions.

One of the key questions, as has already been mentioned, is there overall agreement with the strategic plan and where we're heading?

And the answer to that question was yes.

We asked all these groups that same question, and the answer overwhelmingly was yes.

That doesn't mean that we didn't get feedback that that resulted in some some recommended changes, which I'll go through as I go through the presentation, but you know, overall they thought we were on the right track.

Um we uh we asked questions of college and uh students and high school students.

What would encourage them to stay in Hampton?

What are the types of things that we need to incorporate into the strategic plan that would make them want to stay after they graduate?

And the military community, what do you look for when you relocate to a new base?

What are those types of things that would attract military families to want to live and shop and and visit and work in Hampton?

So those are some of the key questions that we asked, and we got a lot of feedback based on based on those questions.

And so with that, I'm gonna go through in each of the strategic plan areas, kind of touch on the high level changes that we made based on the feedback that we had received.

Relative to economic growth, um the feedback that we got was you really need to have a better a stronger emphasis in the plan on the retention of existing businesses, and so that's something that of course is really a bread and butter for us.

It's something that we recognize, something that we we consistently try to do is grow and nurture our businesses, but they said that really needs to be in the plan.

So um so that's one of the changes that we're we're making to the plan.

Um they also um suggested that we create a new goal to expand programs to support the growth of swam businesses, small women and minority businesses.

As council knows, we've had multiple um briefings on council on our swam business initiatives over the years, that has continued to be a priority for us.

Um it needs to be reflected in the plan, and we're making that change.

Um, also there was uh a request to add additional entertainment districts in the city to give people more fun things to do in the city.

Again, that's something that we've been working on, but really wasn't reflected in the plan.

So we really um so we've added that into the plan based on that feedback.

Um other changes to the plan under educated citizenry included apprenticeships.

You know, not everybody is going to go to a four-year college university.

They said, you know, you really need to reflect that in the plan, and so we we we've incorporated that concept into the plan, as well as the importance of libraries in the continuum of lifelong learning.

A lot of young families go to our libraries, experience the literacy and and other education programs when council was at the library earlier this week.

We had a uh uh a science demonstration program, so there's a lot of great educational programs that take place at our libraries, and the uh the feedback that we got really suggests that we we add that to the plan.

Um, excellence in government.

Um they asked us to use more inclusive language that so that everybody feels as though they're part of this part of the plan.

There was other changes that we made that were more um you know administrative for lack of a better term, where we combined two strategies to avoid repetition.

Um there were two strategies in the plan that basically were saying the same thing, and so we've gone ahead and we've we've merged those.

Um we also added references to community volunteerism, we moved two strategies from under one goal to another goal to really better align those strategies with with the goal that they were under.

Um, and we created a new strategy to specifically uh relate to maintaining and and improving the infrastructure in the city.

That was another piece of feedback that we got back through the additional engagement.

Um in terms of family resilience and economic empowerment, we created a new strategy to strengthen and the uh coordinate community efforts to support our homeless population.

Of course, in last the last budget that council approved in May, that was a big emphasis in that budget, and and that was something that also came through in our our community engagement around the strategic plan.

Um, there were some other changes that we made in terms of moving strategies to better align under the goals, like we did in the uh excellence and government area, and then there were some strategies, there were four strategies that were incorporated under family resilience and economic empowerment that really better fit under the placemaking strategy and excellence and government strategy.

So we moved some strategies around.

They continue to be in the plan just in different more appropriate places.

Living with water, what we heard back was we're on the right track.

There was really no feedback that we got on living with water that suggested that we really needed to change anything in the plan.

So that remains consistent with what we presented in January.

Under placemaking, there was a new strategy that was created relative to civic engagement.

And then a strategy also to make or some changes to a strategy to make sure that it's reflective of including all elements of the city's population.

So those were the changes in placemaking.

Safe and clean community.

There were a handful of different changes based on the feedback that we got through our engagement.

And the first one is to create new strategies emphasizing the data-driven crime prevention and targeted interventions and balanced approach to enforcement and prevention.

That's something that we've been doing.

We've had a heavy emphasis on our public safety strategies over the years.

And so it really that's another one of those examples of things that we are doing that really, you know, people recognize you really need to show that in the plan.

They also suggest that we shift focus from reducing youth violence to preventing it.

Again, that's really reflective of the strategies that we have and have been employing in this area because we've been wanting to get youth engaged on a positive path so they don't get caught in the the uh the the cycle of crime and violence.

So it's really reflecting the essence of what we're doing, more better better reflecting the essence of what we're doing in the plan.

Um also asked us to include more inclusive language, broaden our safe and clean efforts to reflect the work that we need to do in our business community and commercial corridors, and expand the goal to address really the changing community needs around our aging population, was some additional uh changes that were made to the plan based on the feedback.

So the next steps in the process, as uh the city manager had outlined at the beginning is you know, we're presenting this information today.

The full detail of the updated draft plan is attached to the this agenda item, it's also attached to our website for people to see and the actual language that was changed.

And so we wanted to give council an opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions about these changes, and if there's any additional changes we need to make, we would make those between now and August 12th.

Our current schedule calls for us to try to bring this back to council for final approval on at the August 12th City Council meeting.

Um, and then after the plan is adopted, the next um the next step in this process will be to develop what we're calling an implementation plan.

And if you think about an implementation plan, it's what are the tactics that you're really going to, what are the actions you're going to take to make those strategies happen.

And so that is an ongoing effort.

Um, you know, we continue to do that.

The the the strategic priority areas are areas that have been in place for a long time.

And so some of that will involve sort of looking at some of the uh existing tactics that we're using.

Are those still relevant?

Do those still continue?

Some of it will involve are there gaps, are there new things that that were identified in the plan that we really need to work on and identify what the actions we need to take to make those happen.

And then there are and and so one example of of this and how this this kind of goes is you'll recall last year, council received a presentation on our uh improving our development permitting process.

One of the strategies in the plan is to be the best and most the most customer-friendly development permitting process in in the region.

And so we already have several um recommendations that came out of that study that was done previously that we're working on implementing, and so that's something that we would just say, okay, we have this, you know, this is already in place, we just need to get it done.

Other things like you know, we're getting ready to move forward with master updating the master plans for Buckrow Coliseum Central and downtown.

That process will develop will develop plans around here's how we're gonna implement some things around placemaking, some things around living with water, some things around economic growth.

So that will be incorporated as part of that implementation plan as that is developed.

So that just gives you a little bit of a flavor for for how that part of the process will work.

Um the other thing that we're will be doing is uh reviewing and updating our performance measures and the data data analytics that we use to track our performance and make better decisions, and so you know, we really want to look at our performance measures, we want to look at the way that we're using data, and we want to make sure that we're tracking the data that helps us achieve these strategies that we we've worked on and developed with the community.

So that's kind of the next frontier in this process.

Um, a lot of the work you know continues and is ongoing.

Like I said, some of these strategies we already have good solid plans around.

Um water plans are another example.

They were mentioned in the living with water strategy area.

So those plans are already in place, and it's a matter of making sure that we're continuing to execute those plans and then really looking at where where we might need to uh need to do a little bit better job and and share up some areas that may have been identified that are newer in this in this process.

So with that, um that concludes uh my presentation.

As I had mentioned earlier, the strategic plan is on the city's website for people to be able to view and see uh you know what it looks like after these changes have been incorporated.

So I'd be happy to take any questions or comments from council.

Questions, comments from council members.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Mugler.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, uh Ryan, for the presentation.

Great presentation.

Um, just trying to wrap my head around um what time frame, what period of time from here for what is this plan?

Like how long is this plan supposed to last?

Is this a three-year plan, a five-year plan?

Um, the the strategic plan is typically a five-year plan, and and so we will be moving forward over the next five years, and we typically try to try to update it about every five years.

Okay, um, okay.

I'm looking forward to you know, the actionable steps that are gonna come in this next phase.

So I think that you know, as a council we're all pretty comfortable with the goal statements that we have and and what you all have done to nuance them based on further uh community input.

But um, thank you very much.

No, thank you.

And one of the things, and uh, one of the things that you'll see I think over coming council meetings is you know, we use typically the second meeting in each uh of each month of council to focus on a strategic priority area.

So, what we'll start doing is as we talk about the things that we're that we're doing, we'll kind of try to tie them back into the goals and strategies that you're seeing in the plan now.

Did you imagine Bunny?

If I may, I just want to add a slight tweak to what Brian said.

We typically I typically call them five to seven-year plans because once we get this piece done to your point, we need to have community-based implementation teams that are defining the specific strategies, and that does take a little bit longer.

Um, and that's because we view it as a community plan, not just a city government plan.

This is not just what we as city government are gonna do, but what are we gonna do with the faith-based community?

What are we gonna do with the health-based community, what are we gonna do with nonprofits, neighborhoods, residents, etc.

And we will assuming you will all adopt this, we will then quickly convene citizen stakeholder-based groups for each of the priority areas, and they'll go to that next level of definition you're talking about.

And so that because that takes time, that's why I I more generally say it's a five to seven year plan because there's iterative work that still needs to happen.

But for us to kick off that next phase, this this plan we're bringing you gives the guardrails for what they would be focusing on if that makes sense.

Comments from council members, okay.

I got one, Madam City Manager.

Um, and we just discussed this briefly yesterday.

You know, when I joined the Bloomberg City Leaders program, and addressing poverty was the the uh the problem that I took to that program and what they invested in in the resources, and when they decided which track, they have three tracks one innovation, collaboration, and data.

We thought that we needed to be on the collaboration track with data, but they said no, you need to be on the data track.

And so being on the data track, uh, they wanted to help us build our muscle in the use of data, which is the way that they described it.

And uh so I thought about that as we're looking at these strategic priorities, and my and and I saw data mentioned in a couple of them.

And so my my initial thought is that perhaps under each strategy, there ought to be a statement about using data to identify problems and then to you know measure performance.

But as we discussed, that could be solved by having one statement under excellence in government about you know using data to identify the problems and then tracking the performance and outcomes on the other end of that.

So uh I know that there's one data statement under safe and clean, there's another data statement under excess in government, but maybe they could be combined in one statement that would you know lead us to always want to kind of review the data to look at the problem up front, and then you know, once we decide on what the solutions are that we use data to track that, and so maybe if we use that in kind of everything that we do, we get better and help build more muscle in the use of data.

Yeah, and if I may just elaborate for those council people who haven't had the detailed conversation, the mayor and I had the specific statement.

We were thinking about maybe beefing up, if you will, is under excellence in government, and it's EIG 4.6.

It currently reads use data and performance metrics to track progress, share results publicly, and refine strategies for greater impact.

But what we were thinking it that really sounds more reactive than also proactive.

And so we'll probably come back to you with a modified statement here, making it clear that we're gonna use data and performance metrics to identify where we need to focus, then track progress, share results publicly, and refine strategies for greater impact and make it also clear that although it's in excellence in government, it applies to all of the strategies.

So that's that's what I would consider a tweak, but it's an important tweak to send this the message that we want to send that we're gonna that we are and will be an even stronger data-driven culture.

Yep.

Any other questions, comments from council members?

Okay, all right, thank you, Brian.

Looking forward to uh final product.

I do want to say too, but I I mean, regarding the you know, additional uh input that you got from the younger generation and the fact that I think what I heard was that when we would wanted to reduce uh youth violence, they said prevent youth violence.

I thought that's a major shift in the way we think about violence in our community is that we shouldn't accept any amount of violence, and our our goal ought to be to have zero violent crimes in our community.

You know, I know how difficult that is to attain, but yet if that's what we're striving for, I think that makes us better.

So I'm glad that that input from the younger people got us to tweak that particular one and really kind of focus on preventing all violence.

And since you brought up the youth mayor, if I may, just a little plug, and hopefully we'll get to recognize them towards the end of the summer, but just to show you that we really took to heart what council challenged us to do with involving young people more in the development of the plan, but also ultimately, the execution of the plan.

We've worked this year with Hampton City Schools to have one of their summer business institutes be all around placemaking, which of course is one of the seven priorities.

And you all know, for the public who may or may not have heard Mitchell Silver, he talked about this principle that comes out of the Center for Public Project Spaces called the power of 10 and how really great cities have 10 great destinations, and within those great destinations, they have at least 10 great activities.

And a lot of times the thinking that goes around that is driven by adults.

So we decided this summer to use one of the summer business institutes to engage roughly 40 young people who kicked off their work this week to think about placemaking and that power of 10 from the perspective of youth and young adults.

And by the end of the summer, we'll be getting a report from them which will be more along the lines of some of it will feed into that strategic plan implementation group.

But some of those more detailed strategies, Councilwoman Muggler was asking about.

But I'm really proud that the Hampton City Schools got really excited about our engagement with young people around the strategic plan, and that they agreed to let them spend a summer project on helping us flesh out placemaking from the youth perspective.

And I think we all look really forward to their results.

They're even going to make a trip down to Raleigh and meet with Mr.

So Mr.

Silver and see what Raleigh did to address these perspectives from the young people.

So this is just a way of teasing up that you're absolutely right.

We need to make sure we're involving young people at every stage of the game.

Thank you.

Okay, I think our final presentation is uh the one we've been waiting for drum roll, everybody.

But never least we are pleased to have with us uh Chief Widman today.

Each July council receives an update from the police chief on crime statistics, both you know, because this is about the time of year that they've gotten not only we had our data, of course, for last year, but other cities report to state and federal data sources, and we want to look comparatively, and it also gives us a good snapshot for how we're tracking this year mid-year.

And so the chief is going to talk about a variety of those data points, but also what we're doing and where we're progressing.

Um, and so we look forward to the presentation each year.

By all means, we hope this will be an interactive session between you and the chief.

And just as a teaser, because you just mentioned about prevention versus responding.

In August, we get the report from the Office of Youth and Young Adult Opportunities, which is really focused on the prevention and intervention aspects of our strategy, and of course, they and the police work really well together.

But if we did both reports on the same day, we would be here all day.

So today is Chief Bidman's turn, and next month you'll hear from Hugo Morrison and his team.

Okay.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council, Madam City Attorney, Miss Bunting.

Thank you for the appearance today.

Um, first and foremost, I'd like to thank my team from the Hampton Police Division's Intel data and analysis team because they actually did the data mining for me to get the real statistics for me, and also the support of Miss Angeli Sink and Miss Amanda Fisher Boyd to give some visualization to it to make sure I can, I guess make it easier to digest for the public as they uh view the information that I'm presenting.

And typically what I do is what I like to do is rather than just exist in the current, I like to show the trends, the patterns, and where we were and where we are.

And typically to get an accurate depiction of that, typically you use a couple years of time to make a comparison to see, you know, where we were and where we're headed, as well as any trends, anything that's consistently or apparent as an issue for us over time, whether that be a location, individual or a particular type of incident.

And this depiction, as you see, the comparison for the last year to date, and then I also collected five years of data.

So you can see the direction that we're traveling in, and with that in itself, you can see for, say, violent crime, we're down 10.5% for the five-year mean.

Um, and then for property crime, we're up 1.1, but totally our crime is up just 0.2% as it relates to the last five years.

If you look back to last year, even in comparison, you'll see that the change from last year to this year of violent crime is down 12.6%.

Property crime is down 8.9%, and overall, the total crime is down 9.1%.

In a broader spectrum, again, you'll see additionally where we are with the violent crime and the property crimes.

I broke those down into two different categories.

Violent crime, of course, would be anything involving a crime against a person, a human.

And so for our uh murder, negligent manslaughter, homicide, if some people would call it that.

You'll see the difference.

Um, we're down from 2025 to 2026, 50 percent.

Uh, for sexual assault and rapes, we're up 11%, which I'll speak to in a moment.

Uh, robbery is down 32%, aggravated assault is down 4.5%, burglaries are down 3.2 percent, larcenies, which would include larcenies, shoplifting, ABC stores, convenience stores, and things of that sort are down 6.4%, and also our motor vehicles are down 33.3 percent.

And then if you look at the numbers again, you'll see over the course of five years what that five-year average is, that's what our mean capture is.

You'll see the change over five years, and where we are in relations to where we were five years ago.

Uh, again, murder manslaughter down 58%, sexual assault up 42%, robbery down 26%, the aggravated assaults down 9.6%, burglaries down 23%, larceny is up 5%, which I'll speak to, and motor vehicle theft is down 23%.

So again, speaking to our quarters, we'll compare where we were last year as we are to this year, and why is that relevant to you, say quarters?

Because predicated on what time of year it is, whether schools in session, whether universities, colleges, and um, other higher education institutions are available in close proximity to us or what have you, it affects the density of our population.

Of course, when you have density of population, you have more occasions where the instances of crime can occur.

So in this quarter, second quarter, which is reflected message.

I'll keep going anyway then.

April 1st to June 29th, making the comparison 25 to 26.

Again, you'll see for the same time period last year.

Uh, in comparison, we're at 50 percent for murder homicide.

Again, the sex assaults were up by 18 percent, robberies are down 31 percent, the aggravated assaults are down, burglaries are up, larcenies are down by 13 percent, and motor vehicles are down by 21 percent.

And this would be a good time, I guess, to speak to some of the places where we have demonstrated some increase.

For example, for the rape sexual assault, historically, the numbers have gone up because uh some of it comes from education to the public as it relates to say victims of sex assault, sex offenses.

The numbers recently have gone up because we have a lot of historical cases.

A historical case may be someone that was victimized as a juvenile, and through awareness and through courage, decide to report now during this time period that say several years ago they were a victim of an assault.

Subsequent to that, we make those reports now, and so the capture timeline is whenever the report is made, even though it may have not been a recent offense.

And in those instances, more times than not, typically the offender we've identified as a family member of romantic interests or someone they've come in contact with via social media or dating application.

That gives us a higher probability of uh identification as well as prosecution in those instances as well.

By virtue of that, because some of these offenses may uh on occasion involve multiple victims by one offenders within the same say family dynamic, the numbers are gonna be higher, the clearance rate will be higher because we've identified the subject, but then for future offenses, it is less likely through the benefit of prosecution.

The other area where we had an increase, which we'll move towards is the larceny.

Um, our larcenies went up, and we'll speak to it, and it's focused as to why that would have occurred, because we've identified the locations that are most prone, most problematic, and so we have some things in place to address that.

So we'll go with the last three-year trends, and as you'll see, 2024 was a highlight year for us, whereas the numbers were the lowest that they've been in the past.

2025, we did have a spike as related to the violent crimes with the 10 homicides.

But again, currently in 2026, we're back down to where we leveled off consistent to the highlight year of 2024.

And the same remains the same through several other categories.

As I spoke to previously with the sex offenses, that increase where you see there was an increase of three offenses this year compared to last year.

And then for robberies, again, that violent crime category throughout is down.

The aggravated assaults, which can be anything from an assault with a weapon to an assault that causes a severe bodily injury to uh use of a firearm, also is down, and it's predicated by the numbers.

If you look, um the change from last year, murder, homicide channel 50.

Uh councilwoman, I'm sorry, I didn't see yes, yes, ma'am.

Thank you, Chief.

I just want to make sure I understand um the numbers that you referring to.

So if something if I if someone were had a sexual assault two years ago, and they didn't report it until this year, that's the number that we're looking at.

Is that correct?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, so it's the it's the year that it's reported, not the year that the offense took place.

Correct.

Otherwise, we would have to do the data retroactively.

Okay, and so the reporting is exactly that, whenever the actual incident is in fact reported.

And so there have been some instances where someone may have been victimized over several years, but it comes to us as one report as the date to which it was reported.

And then subsequent to that, we have recently identified their pattern.

Whereas if someone moves, say from Hampton to Newport News, same victim, same suspect.

Both Hampton and Newport News will collect that data, although same victim, same suspect, it appears for statistics and for the data collection that there are multiple offenses in different localities, jurisdictions, but it could still be the same victim, same suspect, and in that predatory nature, it could also be the same offender, may have multiple people in the same family to which they offend, and then that would be a different offense that we collect as well.

Within the same family dynamic, if there are multiple victims, we'll end up with multiple reports.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Um, and then again, the robberies are down, aggravated assaults are down.

So generally speaking, for from last year, the violent crime is down uh over 12 percent.

So we also capture one of the focuses for the police division, of course, is violence involving firearms.

So again, capturing the last three years, so we can have a comparison of where we were and where we are, and how successful are we in mitigating the problems that we may have seen in the past.

As you can see, and even as I previously mentioned, we're down 50 percent as it relates to uh murders or uh homicides, but also for fatal and non-fatal shootings, we are down, whereas we have five this year compared to eighteen last year.

We have 22 that were non-fatal uh compared to 49 last year, and I think again to give credit to our efforts not just in the police department but generally speaking across the board.

It's a relationship that we have with the youth and young adults, it's a relationship that we have with um parks and recreation and leisure, whereas we find opportunities to engage the communities to speak to the young people to identify those that are in crisis or at risk of committing acts of violence or being victimized by acts of violence, and subsequent to that by engagement with that program, they get wraparound services uh to identify the needs, whether it be for mental health, whether it be for assistance with education, whether it be with substance abuse, employment education, whatever that looks like, but it doesn't just involve that individual, it involves the entire family because it's that family unit that is probably in need of services, and by virtue of providing that people see options and opportunities and can make better choices about how they want to proceed through the community and through their choices with dealing with conflict and teaches them the skills for conflict resolution.

And with that, this is a representation of that.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, Chief.

Is that um what you were just addressing with the um how you know whether or not you're the victim, whether or not you're the person who is going to be the perpetrator, or um the mental health services dealing with the families at the operation ceasefire?

The operation ceasefire is one of the programs.

And so we haven't married ourselves to one singular program.

We basically make it unique to the needs of the individual.

Also, another program which has been very supportive with the uh Commonwealth Attorney's Office, and he has the operation ceasefire program, but he also has a JCAP for those young folks that are interested in maybe pursuing uh a career in the judicial system in some capacity.

It gives them some engagement, it gives us an opportunity to engage with the young people again and have that resource referral if that's what you want to call it.

So giving them more options and having the realization that there are other options outside of their little network or their little community, and that proves to be helpful because even by virtue of that, you know, if they're successful and they can reach out to others to give them the opportunity to be successful and know what programs are available and exist to support them.

Okay, because I know with the um operation ceasefire, they you know, you all kind of come together with the different arms with the courts.

Yes, ma'am.

You, the police department, commonwealth attorney's office, um, uh, and other areas to look at specific individuals and how you can help them and even with the progression of how they're they're doing and and what you know um what their next steps may be, depending on what um areas they're you know uh or decisions that they're making.

Okay, but I dare to say that our success is predicated not solely on what efforts the police department applies to issues that we've identified, but just the collaboration citywide because of all the other departments we're able to engage with and and leverage the the options or the resources that they have to address any issues that we've identified, whether that be through you know uh community engagement with parks, records and leisure going into the neighborhoods and the communities that we've identified as maybe having an increase in activities that may be problematic down the road and actually hosting a community event within that community for one, so they have access to it because where they're president of the community, they don't have that problem of transportation to allow them to have other opportunities to know what other resources are available in the community, whether it be right league sports or some of the activities that are currently going on at the beaches and the parks to give them the summertime activities so they can make uh I guess better use of their time.

Um so it's and I've never personally experienced an occasion where I've reached out to another city department in support of something that was specifically or typically described as a police matter without receiving some support to mitigate the issue.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, ma'am, and so you'll see the demographic for the age group for young people or young adults, um, whether it be by victim or suspect, that data reflects the efforts not only for the police department, the community, the city of Hampton, as well as youth and young adults, prior or before the numbers reflected a younger population of offenders and victims.

And as you can see from the data itself, that demographic has shifted to a more mature group.

And so the assessment, or at least my assessment of that is that is capturing the group that have aids out of programs or have already made a determination as to how they want to proceed with participating in criminal activity.

It was before we really had, I guess, uh perfected our efforts with that younger community.

So as you see the age groups have changed, I think that's because now we're seeing the benefit of our efforts with that younger demographic and those more mature, I won't say older, or more mature group, have I guess been involved in that activity for a longer period of time, and subsequent to that, they're maturing into uh criminal behavior, which is of course detrimental to them.

And again, the pattern remains the same as it relates to our uh burglaries or property crimes or break-ins, however, you want to term that.

The two places where you'll see that increase, though, will be our larcenies, okay, the larcenies, and I'll speak to why the larcenies typically have that increase.

And if you look in the model in the ABC stores, because we broke the category down so we could be more specific and intentional about where we direct our efforts to mitigate the problems.

We make different categories, and that's why we broke it down by charge descriptions.

So larceny of ABC stores, that's one of our peak locations.

And then you'll see larceny shoplifting, that's another one that's in a peak.

And I'll go into further detail about specifically where this is occurring and what we are doing to address those.

So for our shoplifting, you'll see at the very top is the target store, which is in the PTC.

And when I say shoplifting, it's up.

Any crime, of course, is a problem.

Shoplifting is probably the most prolific because it's probably the easiest to get away with.

It's probably more likely that someone that gets away with it on one occasion will go back and try to perpetrate that same crime again.

After that, you'll see the food line right here on uh Mercury and Fox Hill area corridor, Walmart, and then the Walgreens.

And so we've been able to be successful in trying to mitigate some of that and get those numbers back in.

I won't say acceptable because any is not acceptable, but to have more control over it is working very closely with the team out at, say, Panessa Town Center, because the Peninsula Town Center not only do they have security, they also have a loss prevention team at the um target store.

We've also become members of the mid-Atlantic Organizational Retail Crimes Group.

So we have the resources not only of Hampton but also the Mid-Atlantic region.

The problem there, well, not the problem, the reason why is because these people are not just unique to Hampton.

So if they're in Hampton New Pano's or anywhere else in the region, we can share information.

We can identify suspects that may be in another location and have our uh personnel be on the lookout for them should they come to our area as it relates to the food line, the food land food line management team has been amazing.

And this is what we will see happen as we become more proactive and more aggressive in our attempts to identify the problem and then hold those accountable for the problem is the numbers will go up because we're more conscious and we're making a better effort to identify the crimes that occur and those people that perpetrate those crimes.

And so when they come on board, for example, if they have a more aggressive management team or more aggressive loss prevention team, they're more successful at identifying crime occurring and making those apprehensions.

So we will see a spike before we see it go down.

I think that's the trend that we're in right now, and as it relates to our uh larcenies and shopliftings in those areas.

The next problematic location would be our Virginia ABC stores.

And that is not unique to Hampton.

That this is one of those items that we've uh had extensive conversations with the Virginia ABC enforcement branch.

Um they've been working with us to enhance their camera uh capacity.

Also the employee awareness and employee reporting, as well as doing some product protection, whereas the high dollar items are less available and less accessible to those that might want to commit those larcenies.

And again, similarly, uh by working with the uh police department, hands police division, and the officers that are assigned to the districts by which those locations are.

Uh we've been able to be uh preventative, proactive, as well as effective as at apprehending those perpetrators.

Problem there is a lot of those larcenies are motivated by that substance abuse or that addiction.

And subsequent to that, we're not so much uh a deterrent as much as we would want to be because the desire is overwhelming in those instances.

Again, one of the heavy focuses, as I mentioned previously, is our firearm violence suppression detail.

Uh we've been working with the Virginia State Police.

The Virginia State Police have been most supportive of City of Hampton and the Hampton Police Division in that they have given us, and for lack of better terms, essentially assigned additional troopers to the city of Hampton to support our violent crime enforcement, our firearms suppression.

And by virtue of that, what we do, we use a two pronged approach.

Not only do we have the uniform officers that are on patrol, and we also use intelligence and data collection to do that.

So our real time information center, our um gang unit, our surveillance unit are instrumental in identifying specifically the people that we've already identified through patterns of life that are most problematic, most likely to commit a crime or who have committed a crime before in the city and most likely to reoffend.

So with that, it's a targeted approach, whereas we do the surveillance, we do the intelligence collection, and we do data intelligence driven policing for those target individuals.

Subsequent to that, we're usually in the places that we expect them to be.

And if they commit an offense, then we're in the right place at the right time to effectively uh respond to that, or by our mere presence and tenacity in those spaces, they're less likely to occupy those spaces.

And as a result, just year to date, this is not a capture of the entire year, but it's there have subsequently 74 felony arrests, 15 misdemeanor arrests, uh recover 23 firearms, but those numbers go up daily.

Of the 128 traffic stops, those traffic stops are specifically for the target people that we know are problematic in our community, and then the other items which would be field interviews, summonses, and search warrants, and again, our real-time information center, which has been just so essential for us to do data intelligence led policing.

Rather than feeling the need to do this broadcast of enforcement effort, we know who the target individuals are.

We know the patterns of life of the target individuals, where they frequent, what the crimes are that they are most likely to commit, also the people that they're most likely to victimize, and then strategically place ourselves in those places.

The benefit of that as well is we can use covert, uh uh cameras, uh data collection, um, human sources to collect additional information to make our efforts uh more productive.

Currently, in the real-time information center, we have 685 cameras.

Also included in that are the licensed place readers.

Uh we have coverage in, I dare to say, the majority of the places within the city where there's going to be a density of population.

We also deploy those cameras when we have some areas that we know we're going to have dense populations of people, special events, or a location that has been problematic in the past.

With that being said, we have live data integration.

So dozens of feeds.

We will deploy drones, which actually feed information, our body one cameras are also attached to that.

And then, which I'll speak to in a little bit, gunshot detection system, which we are moving forward with.

Again, the most important component of that is our partnership with the community, the residents, as well as our business partners.

And so we have a faster response because it improves the information that is going to the officers.

We can be proactive rather than reactive.

Uh we get information that is time sensitive, and we can action that information as soon as possible to make sure first and foremost we mitigate and prevent rather than respond to an incident.

So the new program we're moving forward with now, currently, um uh I don't want to give a timeline, but it's already in motion, is drone as a first responder.

And essentially, if we get an emergency dispatch, we can use our drone pilots to then deploy a drone which is at a uh a station of a stationary mounted location.

We've put some places strategically throughout the city where we have the most coverage, the fastest response time, so we can have those units in place.

Benefit there being is first and foremost, any traffic that might exist, any obstacles that might exist, we have distance and safety for both citizens and officers.

We can get information real time and we can get information deployed to the officers responding as fast as possible.

We can make an assessment of the need for additional officers, emergency equipment or support services.

Improve safety, we can assess any potential hazards, whether that be say a hazmat scenario, we can use it for emergency management purposes.

Example, if there's flooded areas, if there are obstructions for access to emergency vehicles, if we have a natural disaster and we need to make an assessment.

If the fire department has a need for a drone for, say, for example, uh infrared technology or heat sensing or rescue, we can also use that.

Lost children or adults, it's also going to help us in that effort.

The advanced optical zoom and thermal imaging is highly effective in again locating suspects, having access to low-light environments or access to areas that we would not be able to readily deploy officers prior to because of some sort of obstacle, obstruction or traffic condition.

And we currently are projecting four launch stations.

Again, we are in the process of finishing the actual infrastructure needs for that.

We're collaborating with the Hampton Fire and Rescue to provide additional public safety responses.

Public works, Mike Barry, he's been instrumental in assisting us in getting the instrument infrastructure established.

And the other portion, and I have to get kudos because you're looking at my vice, because I know we had a conversation about the axon and that platform and what it would do for us.

And a lot of the things that I've previously mentioned come by way of us expanding with the support of City Council and Ms.

Bunting, of expanding the platform, the Axon platform to give us all these additional technology tools to enhance our ability to respond and collect information and be responsive and collect evidence if we're doing an investigation.

But the other thing, and I know mayor had mentioned something before about a gunshot detection platform.

And so with this new technology that's available through Exxon, we have the detect gunfire uh program, which is called Flock Raven.

And essentially what that will do is with the camera systems that we have and the additional uh software and hardware that we are acquiring, when there is a gunshot, not only will we have the benefit of triangulating where it came from, but because we have over 600 cameras throughout the city, those cameras will automatically feed into the location to which that sound came from, and then real time provide us information so we can readily identify if there are any victims or there are any suspects, any vehicles, and the surrounding conditions attributed to that gunshot fire.

We'll be able to detect by virtue of that software any street takeovers, and we can detect those early.

You say how would you do that?

Because if either we can make the adjustments to capture uh live radios, mufflers, screeching tires, and things of that sort, which would be indicators of such an event.

And then again, we can not only capture visually that information with the cameras that are gonna be tuned into those locations, but also then capture the people responsible by virtue of their tag informations, get early information about where that location is or where they may be going, and then properly deploy the resources to mitigate the issue.

And so recently it's been real popular in the news, not only for Hampton, but I'll just say the East Coast, generally speaking, pop-ups, takeovers, and car meets.

And so the issue there is that the hardest thing is catching up to the information.

So the benefit we have with our intelligence unit is we're constantly searching social media for anything that suggests that there's going to be a large gathering of people.

Not so much that large gatherings of people are problematic, but some of the nefarious actors that show up would be problematic.

Being proactive, we need to be in the space when those things happen, at least have the information about that.

And so our intel unit, when they get that information, we do a crime awareness bulletin, we send that out to operations or to any specialized unit that needs to have that information so we can be in that space to make sure, again, we make sure there's a safe environment for all that either attend, visit, or occupy those spaces.

Can't remember exactly when it was a couple months ago.

I know pursuant to Ms.

Gunting's um assistance, she coordinated the actual effort with Mr.

Ed Reed.

And so we met with Virginia Beach Police Department, city manager, police chief, and some of their uh personnel to have that conversation about pop-ups and large gatherings at the beach and how we need to better respond to that, what support systems are available for us to do that.

There was some discussion about some legislative efforts that I know are moving forward.

I don't know exactly where we are in the stages of that just yet.

And we spoke about challenges, not only general as it relates to the ocean front spaces, beaches, those resort communities, but also how it impacts the uh the adjacent communities.

Because example, if Virginia Beach shuts it all down, they're gonna press into Hampton.

So we have to be responsive to that.

We have to have a legitimate plan that's going to be able to respond positively to that.

So there were some conversations.

Again, there's a uh legislative proposal that's supposed to assist us with that and give us better tools, more tools to respond when those occasions happen.

What we've done internally, we have we do our data mining, but we also now through the data mining, so the information is available to all that need no, we have event notification tracking.

And so essentially, if someone has a special event, they have a if we get information about a pop-up or a party of something of that sort, whether it be at a beach, a park, Peninsula Town Center, Fort Monroe, we collect that data, we provide that information to all of our internal resources, and that looks similar to this.

This is live, it's real-time.

So if should an event become to our awareness, say within the hour, it would be available on this um interactive real-time sheet.

And so, what it does is we're not able to do it right here, but should you go over one of the icons, it will give you as much information as we can tangibly use at that time about the event planner, what the expectation for uh attendance is, whether it's a sanctioned event or not.

Uh, an estimation of uh what resources we might need to deploy to that to help again make sure it's a safe event.

And this again, I say it's real time because uh some things come up without announcement.

The pop-ups are usually done by social media, so it is in real time and fast, but through the constant effort of the intelligence unit that we have, and I'm constantly data mining for those things using keywords, key locations, we're able to keep this up to date, and that's proven to be a very effective tool for us as well.

Speaking specifically to Buckaro, as you all know, we have the Hampton Shoreline Operations Station, like to write through you all's picture in there to give you a plug.

That was like good.

And so, what we do there is waterfront safety, we provide resources, information about resources, provide first aid, assist with missing children should they get separated from an adult or guardian, and uh speak to the employment opportunities.

And most recently, of course, when the season comes around post-graduation, the uh opportunity to do internships.

Another unique, well I won't say unique, another thing we have done recently that it is different than the way we've operated in the past, partnered with uh parks and rec leisure, uh coordinate with Mr.

Daryl Crittinen.

We had a conversation about how can we more effectively be present in our beaches and our parks because uh essentially that was that tends to be in a location where we need to have presence and have the ability to take enforcement action should someone not just voluntarily comply.

And so what the police department has done is absorb the park rangers, but by virtue of doing that, we just had to enhance that effort.

And so now and all the park rangers come through the police department's uh criminal justice academy.

Upon graduation and completion of a field training program, they have the same authority and powers of any law enforcement officer where they would not have had that in the past.

By virtue of that, not only could they take the appropriate enforcement action in those locations prior to waiting for a regular Hampton police officer to arrive.

Should there be some spillover in other parts of the city, because they are auxiliary officers with the police department as well, they can take action throughout the city if the need arises.

So it's a force multiplier for us.

It gives them more authority in those places, the beaches and the parts where they otherwise may not have been able to take enforcement action for other criminal offenses that would have occurred in those spaces.

And it allows the operation, excuse me, the operations officers to focus on other areas throughout the city where the things that we are uh we tend to most frequently do or we're required to do, we can exist in those spaces without the distraction to another location.

It also stands to give us the benefit of having officers to support us when we do other city events, because again, they're sworn they can help work in those assignments to support us in those spaces.

So then again, we don't take as many resources from the operational officers that are in the cities' communities and neighborhoods doing what they do best in those spaces.

And so the inquiry would be about recruiting and retention because we're always working hard to make sure we get our numbers up in that space.

And so I celebrate the fact that we had the most retention and the least separation than we've had in the last five years.

And just give you a quick little breakdown of for reasons, and I've always preached that people will not leave for money.

That is not the case.

More times than not, again, demonstrated by the graph.

It's a career choice, um, everyone's not suited to do this work.

Nutrition, whatever the case may be.

And so I wanted to demonstrate that our efforts in recruiting are successful, whereas we now implement a biweekly recruiting and retention meeting.

So every two weeks we sit down, I have my command staff before me, I have my recruiters, my personnel staff, members from human resources, and we continually manufacture strategies that are gonna be most effective for recruiting and retention because they both have to come together.

We can get them in the door, but our effort is equally uh uh motivated to keep people here.

Uh we speak about the employee wellness and appreciation and what that looks like.

So we host internal and external opportunities for employees to network, have some benefit of socialization and and partnerships, uh bridge gaps, uh recruiting strategies and opportunities.

Again, we spoke to that.

And our cadet program and our partnership too with Hampton City, Hampton City Schools Alps program, where we use the cadet program as a pipeline for an officer, and that's become so very successful for us.

Uh, reason being a great majority of the officers, either uh through interaction with young people as school resource officers or in the community, it affords them the opportunity to also recruit.

And with that being said, we have a great many of the members of the community, young people that look to law enforcement as an opportunity for them.

And I advocate because a young person that may not want to go into the armed services or may not go to college, this still is a great opportunity to find employment.

And with that, they come in, they get an introduction to the police department, they get an introduction to law enforcement in the city of Hampton, the city's government.

They don't have to make a choice to be a law enforcement officer, but it gives them exposure to the other opportunities that exist within the city.

We've been very successful, and a great majority of those young people end up staying long enough to reach the age of majority, whereas they could be accepted as a sworn police officer, and that's proven to be very successful for us.

And I'll entertain your questions.

Vice Mayor Brown, Chief.

You gotta be first.

Um the most thorough report I've heard in a long time on crime and stats and strategy and the innovative new things that you're doing.

I guarantee you your drones can't do what happened on Saturday, can they?

No, sir.

Okay, I didn't think so.

Yeah, that you laugh for sure was awesome.

And nothing to do with my question.

Uh the and I think I'm glad to hear you say about BuckRock because that's been a concern.

Um, summertime is coming, and people for some reason get a little uh more rambunctious in the summertime.

And uh, and I I hear that we are uh exploring resources in various uh areas of the city, particularly with the cameras and real-time cameras.

What are we doing with the mobile unit?

Are we taking that around to various areas where you know that crime is pretty uh prevalent?

I think I mentioned it before uh it's hard for me to say there's specific areas.

There are some occasions where it's as you compare to the rest of the city, maybe what we call a hot spot.

We're saying there may be a couple instances that bring an area to our attention.

Um difficulty in just concentrating on, say, neighborhoods or communities are people of fluid, they they're in vehicles, they may not be from our cities.

So I don't attribute an issue with a specific neighborhood or community as much as an individual.

And so the benefit of the intelligent, just sorry, the intelligent led policing is rather than use this broad general approach, we identify the people that are most problematic, and then we're wherever they are.

And it could be that they're in Newport News, but because we have the Virginia State Police, if they leave Hampton, they think they can go to Newport News, and we can cross that line and we can address it accordingly.

We have a great relationship with uh Newport Newpreneuse Police Department, Chief Drew.

Communication lines are always open, and so we're able to again follow them wherever they exist and get the support of those people to help mitigate it.

So if they don't want to come to Hampton or stay in Hampton with nefarious intentions, that's all well and good.

But when they do, we'll be in the right place to deal with it.

And for I'm sorry, to one other reference buckrow, you mentioned Buckrow is the thing that we do for Buckware also that proves to be effective for us is because a lot of these people are young folk.

We use our school resource officers because they're most familiar with the young people, and so we deploy the school resource officers when it's off season to Buckrow because they can readily identify those people that might be problematic.

Nine times out of ten, communication is the most effective tool because they know the officer knows them and maybe a family member, they know they'll see them again when the school year returns.

And so a great majority of the time that in itself is an effective tool to get ahead of any problems that might occur.

Now, I I know in times past, but will you be doing it again?

Cause it was very uh successful.

The mayor also did one, uh PSAs, PSAs, uh, particularly about people not locking their vehicles and even if and even their weapons in the cars.

Yeah, we do for that again.

That's the most problematic occasion.

That's the way by which most firearms are stolen and and make it to the street and used in crime.

And and the we bang our heads on the wall with that one because it as much as we message it, unfortunately, there are a lot of people that don't heed to that safety warning.

Uh and so it is the easiest way for again people that should not be in possession of firearms to possess firearms.

But we will follow up, especially during the warmer season season to uh address that.

And this is something that I noticed that I don't know if we do it anymore.

It may not be uh best practices.

Uh do we still do uh checkpoints where I remember as a rambunctious young man driving several times?

Okay, yeah, we're not allowed to do those in the case.

No, sir.

Okay, sir.

And again, that I understand why not.

It's inconvenient to a lot of people, whereas fortunately, because again, the technology has allowed to just be very specific.

And so, with that, for example, if they're monitoring the cameras and they see somebody looks like they might be having an issue controlling their vehicle, via that we can send an officer very specifically to locate, identify the driving behavior of that person and then deal with that person individually, opposed to whoever passes the checkpoint.

Now, I missed this point as my final question.

You do you say that park ranges?

I know they have the you know they're sworn officers, do they have arresting powers?

They do now.

Okay.

So that you can use okay.

I thought you said that.

Okay, great.

Yeah, prior to the park rangers were not um they're more along the lines of say constables in the areas to which they have the authority for the uh ordinances or violations that existed in the spaces that they occupy.

And now they take a city of Hampton oath, and with that oath, they can do law enforcement activities throughout the city.

And I'd prove most helpful.

We had a park ranger recently graduated that was in the area of a violent act that was the first responder just because they were commuting to another location and was able to render life-saving assistance.

Yes, sir.

Well, yeah, thank you.

Yes, sir.

Councilman Bowman.

Chief Wagner, I want to say this is a very impressive report that was very well put together.

And I just want to commend you and your team because it doesn't take it takes uh your whole team to get numbers like this.

Um I also want to commend you because every time I look at on TV or I'm on Facebook, I see that your entire team they are engaged in contests, going to events, um, and this the different commercials, and I I think the camaraderie um sends a strong message that your team they are 100% committed to doing the job.

With that said, um, on one of the um the shoplifter, so shoplifting is has increased.

Do you feel that the law or is it a law that the retailers cannot apprehend, hold, or detain a shoplifter?

Typically, they have loss prevention personnel or security that they hire for that purpose.

It depends on the uh policy of the particular businesses as to whether or not they can pursue or detain, and it that's going to be predicated on company policy.

More times than not, in the interest of safety of the employee.

They rather someone steals something and there's no conflict or you know, injury to the employee, and they'll report it.

And if we're fortunate, we're able to be able to you know follow up and make apprehensions.

But I said that because I know two instances where they fired employees and store managers.

And uh I went to a store the other day, and a guy was walking out with a 70 inch TV and he's looked at me and said, You want one?

So, okay, just thank you for the answer.

Yes, sir.

Councilwoman Campbell.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Great job on the report, sir.

Um, I did want to put a plug in for the bid officers as I go to the various meetings, and they're in there and they're engaged with the the retailers and the citizens, all of them have expressed appreciation and the effectiveness of that.

So I would just encourage continuing that program and kudos for that.

Yes, ma'am.

Councilwoman Mugler.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Chief, for this very thorough report.

Um, I have to say, thinking back to your first report, which was, in my recollection, super brief.

This is incredible.

Um, this is a really really follow instructions well.

Well, that's always a good trait, but um, I don't know who instructed you, but this is really terrific material, and I'm really um proud of the five-year average uh change, um, and happy to see you know we're moving in the right direction with those things.

I have to say, as a as uh a woman on this council, um the the rape and sexual assault numbers are concerning to me.

Um and I know that you you talked about the fact that people are reporting uh issues that have occurred previously currently, so are you saying that specifically is what affected this particular number or that just happens?

Um that's consistent in that type of offense.

Right, whereas there may be some years where the abuse is carried out over a significant amount of time, and then at some point either someone moves out of the home or they're separated from the offender, or they're no longer at risk, they'll start to report or they'll report to us.

Or someone else that may have information regarding that uh incident might report.

And so, as it relates to say, comparatively speaking, we were just having one of our uh meetings just recently.

We only know of one instance where the offender was a stranger.

Wow, that's interesting.

Okay, um, but anyway, just uh just an area that is you know it is concerning to me.

I don't know, you know your work and and um how we can make any changes in that regard, I don't know, because as you mentioned, so many of them are sort of a domestic scenario.

And I I I say credit, not to minimize the type of offenses that they are, but I think the general public awareness and the support and responsiveness to those offenses have given people the empowerment to come forward and make those reports, and by virtue of that, as it would compare to previously where people were either ashamed or not supported or didn't feel like the system the justice system would properly manage their their complaint, uh I think that has given us more people coming forward, bringing it to our attention, and I much rather have those people identified so we can properly deal with them than to I guess hope that they would not and remain in silence.

Sure.

So it's a move in the right direction.

The numbers are up, but by identifying the offenders, I'm pretty confident that the numbers will come back significantly because those that offend typically re-offend.

Thank you.

Sure.

Um at one point in my career I worked in higher education, and I do know that you know, on college and university campuses, there is a high incidence of uh sexual assault and and rate that occurs, and I don't know if you have any statistics on that, but does that have any bearing on our numbers uh as a community?

I would have to do a deep dive, and the only reason I say that is because a lot of the statistics are related to someone that one is known to the other, um, and I don't want to speculate, but I think in that maybe in that setting, there might be some influence of narcotics and alcohol.

And so I would which I'm not opposed to do with the deep dive and actually do that type of data extraction and have a more accurate response for it.

I just think it's a fair analysis just you know just to see if that affects our community versus another community that doesn't have higher ed and their you know, city limits.

So we could target our awareness messaging, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Um I'm really excited about the drone um piece and and all the camera work that's uh on the way and in you know in place already, and and and so forth.

So I'm interested to see what kind of impact that might have to us.

I think it could only be positive, but um, you know, all the all the specifics that you've told us about it certainly makes good sense.

So I don't know what it's cost us, but it sounds like a good expenditure.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you so much, ma'am.

Other questions or comments?

All right, gee, very thorough report today and uh look forward to uh looking at uh continued improvements in our ability to reduce crime and prevent crime in our community.

So thank all your men and women for what they're doing because they're all doing a great job out there.

Good to go.

Thanks, sir.

Thank you.

Our last presentation uh for the afternoon.

Yes, sir.

Are there any regional issues?

Um, any items for new business, all right.

With that, I'll ask the clerk to uh read the uh motion required for closed session.

The motion required is to convene a closed session pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A8 to consult with legal counsel regarding legal issues associated with special assessments, service districts, and grant funding, and recommended amendments to the zoning ordinance for state code compliance.

You need a motion and a second, move uh approval of the the motion as stated by the clerk.

Second, all right, to call the roll, please.

Councilman Bowman.

Aye, Vice Mayor Brown, Councilwoman Campbell.

Aye.

Councilwoman at Airby.

I'm sorry.

Councilwoman Harper.

Aye.

Councilwoman Muggler.

Aye.

Mayor Gray.

Aye.

So we will convene and close session at uh 3 15 in the Lawson conference room following the closed session.

Council will reconvene the open meeting in the same location in order to certify the closed session and then proceed to adjourn the meeting.

So with that, see you in the laws in at 3 15.