All right, welcome everybody to the criminal justice planning council meeting on May 18th of 2025.

It is currently 405 p.m.

I'm gonna have everybody introduce themselves, starting with you, Madam Clerk.

Uh, Casey Bell, Marion County Clerk.

Judge Mark Rothbard, Chief Judge Report.

Scott Hall, Executive Director of Man County, and I am Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears.

We have an approval of the minutes from our previous meeting, which was in November of 2025.

Do I have uh a motion on that?

Seconded.

Okay.

And uh motion to approve the minutes.

All in favor.

All right, the eyes have it.

Uh we're gonna have something from the sheriff's office, but it doesn't appear that they are here yet.

Uh, but I would like to turn it over to our newest member uh of the council.

First of all, welcome, Chief, to uh joining us here on the criminal justice planning council, and uh you were kind enough to agree to kind of give us kind of an overview of what you guys have going on at IMPD.

So we'd love to hear from you.

So with that, Chief, take it away.

Yeah, um, I just kind of wanted to highlight some of our I think successes uh over the course of the last.

Do I have to turn that?

There we go.

Successes over the last uh several years, but uh last year and into this year and and to current day uh reductions in violent crime, and so uh today's uh statistics are um we're down 23% in homicides and 21% in non-fatal shooting incidents.

Uh and I think the important thing to recognize in that is that those numbers uh that we have are still too high, but those reductions uh represent families and victims uh that we have prevented violence from striking.

So uh we will continue to prioritize reducing violent crime under my leadership uh with the the base and the foundation that Chief Chris Bailey established under his tenure.

Uh one of the uh other things that's a priority for us is to continue to reduce the need of uh police response for non-police related types of runs, and I think that's something that this council had discussed previously with Chief Bailey.

And uh we've been working closely with other agencies, including Mesa and uh OPHS uh with our CLCR program here in the county now is is countywide.

Uh all of our service districts are served by the CLCR, and uh we have additional partnerships with IEMS uh to identify the high utilizers of multiple services and the 911 services to identify areas and ways that we can divert calls from uh making it to IMPD officers to respond in in police capacity and and instead send providers or other uh resources to those types of calls to eliminate that uh unnecessary police contact with members of our community that really just need other services.

Um CLCR is currently undergoing some training with Mesa on identifying and refining how we identify and filter uh those 911 calls so that we can improve our efficiency in that area, and we continue to uh work alongside them to triage and identify those particular types of calls.

Uh the other big news uh that I would say is uh really a gift.

I think for for the entire agency that was started under Chief Bailey's leadership, is our strategic plan, which was actually started.

The process was started one year ago in February, and we just uh announced it in February of this year, not long after I took the head of IMPD.

So that strategic plan is really a roadmap for our next five years with IMPD, and it culminated with uh over 1,300 uh members of our community represented by every zip code within Marion County having input in this plan, and then over 2300 uh members of IMPD, both sworn and civilian.

So what came out of that plan was identifying our strategic priorities for the next five years, and the first one is fostering a workplace that supports the health and professional growth of all IMPD employees.

The second one is enhancing community safety through mutual support, trust, and understanding, and then the third is investing in department infrastructure to improve efficiency preparedness and morale.

So as you can tell by uh the order of those priorities, our goal is to ensure that we have an environment where we have healthy and happy employees that are engaged and want to be here, and uh part of that is also related to retention and recruiting efforts, and then also making sure that having healthy and happy employees translates to positive community interactions and positive community outcomes.

So we have to be uh healthy from the inside out so that then we can focus on uh that community safety aspect and continuing to focus on uh those relationships, uh maintaining trust with our members of the community, and uh continuing to establish existing and new partnerships within the community to work alongside each other uh to address issues within the community.

And then that third one was the uh infrastructure and morale and preparedness has to do with our our facilities, uh has to do with uh maybe software, technology, uh equipment needs, uh, to make sure our our workforce is uh prepared and well equipped uh to carry out their duties.

So that is the the high level overview of our priorities, and we do have a strategic plan website that's dedicated to exactly more details and subcomponents of those uh priorities, and then the ability for anybody to follow along with our progress on how we're doing on implementation.

Thank you, Chief.

Does anybody have any questions for Chief Terry?

Thank you.

What's CLCR?

Oh, I'm sorry, it's clinician-led response.

So they are the clinicians that will field some radio calls uh that we think are nonviolent, uh, that they can be better served by having a clinician response instead of a uniform police response.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Chief, you you mentioned infrastructure, and one of the things that we unfortunately spend a lot of money on is infrastructure as well.

There seems there appears to be a lot of redundancies, and judges probably impacts you guys as well.

You know, we're storing body camera footage or storing body camera footage.

Um that information needs to be discovered, it has to be available on on e-discovery.

I guess you know, partially in observation, just in terms of how much we read in prosecutors' office duplicated in terms of of what you guys have and what you do, and certainly sometimes you guys need to hold on to things longer than we do for various reasons, uh, but there does appear to be some natural synergy there where we could just be paying one storage cost as opposed for you know costs for for everybody who's who's involved, whether that be the courts or the prosecutor's office.

Is there a way that we can maybe work to try to find some level of efficiencies on issues like that as it relates to to infrastructure?

Because I just think of all the stuff that you give us every single day, and how we have investigated cases has changed dramatically, and the amount of information associated with every case has changed dramatically for in positive ways.

But that's a lot of data that we store and we're both storing it, and we pay a ton of money to to store it.

Is there some way we can find some level of efficiency, maybe where we can pass those savings alongside the taxpayer?

Yeah, we would love to explore whatever options are available, and I know I've been a part of multiple conversations on that issue and that very messy um thing that we're both dealing with, and how I mean it it started off with how do we get those large files to you because those files are going to continue to get larger and larger.

And then we do have some legislative obligations with our retention periods now to address, and that's not just with digital evidence, but with physical evidence as well.

So absolutely love to entertain those conversations.

Yeah, it's uh whenever you look at your budget and you see what you spend on storage.

I mean, it's just uh huge, huge number.

Um, you know, it impacts the courts as well, Judge.

Just in terms of the discovery process.

Yeah, I was gonna say we'd love to look at that.

Obviously, there's different obligations to evidence that's been submitted and what we have to keep and prepare, but I'm not so sure that we can't have some sort of central storage for some of that.

Let me talk to Amatov and some other people and see what our obligations, how separate things all have to be.

One thing we always we looked at at one point in time, although it kind of fell through, was looking at a uh electronic file system where you guys would submit your discovery and you know, defense would submit their discovery and we would keep it in one repository, and that would create the uh an appellate file, and that could alleviate some of this.

Not all of it, clearly, because not everything you turn over that's discovery will be admitted.

We all know that.

But doesn't mean you have to you you still have to hang on to it, right?

Um, so yeah, I think that's something we should look at.

Yeah.

Uh there's always a lot of conversations about license plate readers and other forms of technology that that are out there.

I'm personally a big believer in the license plate readers, and I think they pay huge dividends in a number of cases.

Just what what are some of your thoughts on the utilization of some of these emerging technologies that have certainly benefited us in terms of from an investigative standpoint?

Yeah, um, I think that's uh especially the license plate readers are an incredible tool uh for law enforcement that not only uh help us identify uh criminals and solve cases, but also help us find people who uh are just in need of help, like missing people or lost people or lost kids, um, or people that may have been abducted.

So uh as you know, uh that technology has uh played a huge role in solving some of those cases and and helping us uh work through some of those types of cases, uh, but it also comes with great responsibility and um we have to be proactive about our policies and our implementation of that technology uh to make sure that we are um respecting the constitutional uh aspect of that and uh that we're proactive in ensuring accountability within the organization as we utilize that technology.

Well, I'm I I feel like you guys have done a really good job of being certainly safeguarding that information, but also putting it to its highest use in terms of the impact they can have on public safety.

Uh Scott, do you have anything?

No, uh just a quick shout out to to your team.

Uh, as I was walking over here, uh I was in contact with Lorenzo Lewis.

There's been a string of pretty high-profile burglaries that were taking place on on the Northwest side, and two weeks ago we were able to file a number of cases against some of the juveniles involved, and then today uh we were able to pick up everybody else who was involved in that case.

And I know that was a situation that caused a lot of consternation on the Northwest side.

Uh, and I cannot say enough good things about Commander Lewis and and his team uh and uh as of today I believe everybody's in custody and we're working through that process in those cases filed.

So just wanted to say thank you for how attentive everybody was to that and putting us in a position where we could file that case.

That's great news and uh took a lot of teamwork for sure.

Yeah, great, great, great job by by everybody involved.

Um that's all we have on the kind of the the formal agenda.

I I guess to to just open it up, you know, I want to make sure these meetings have value and you know are worth the trip over for Judge Rothenberg and for Scott and and other people.

I mean Judge, is there anything you want to see us tackle or get into in these meetings that you think would make it worth everybody's time and you know, make this something where uh we have a little better attendance?

I think just being transparent with some of the processes we do in each.

I mean, as far as the tenants from the public's one thing as far as attendance from the participants is that's something totally different.

I think these meetings should be used to certainly fund the public, because there's a lot of questions.

I mean, how does this work?

How does this work?

What our sentencing ranges, that kind of thing, and we're trying to do from the judicial standpoint more trying to do the judicial standpoint more of an outreach thing.

Uh one thing we've talked about is even doing potentially small podcasts just explaining, you know, what our charges, how they get filed, how they come to us, that kind of thing.

And I think this is a good place for that, but I think there are other issues that you know come across uh from the public that we could address, but I think that's a case by case situation.

I don't think there's necessarily anything that unless it's emergent, I don't think.

The part of the problem that we do have is we have a lot of committees.

We do.

Right?

We've got tag, we've got community corrections board, we've got JRAC, we've got this.

Uh I'd rather not see it duplicative, but or duplicative.

Uh but you know, I I think this one is the one that sort of has all the players that should be at the table for the public to see, so.

Okay.

Does that mean you're volunteering for next week next month's meeting to give a little presentation from the judiciary?

Put something together, or at least I'll have something put together from I'll have someone put something together.

Okay, all right.

Well that's uh I think we were supposed to do that last time, but we got slowed out, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'd love to love to hear the the perspective on the judiciary and also uh grateful for your effort in terms of having those conversations with the community and being more transparent with the community about just some of the judicial process.

I mean there's a lot of misunderstanding, I think, right?

Yeah, why can't this person get the death penalty?

Well, there's a lot of reasons this person can get the death penalty, or merely it doesn't qualify for the death penalty.

Right.

Yeah, no, I've uh I've been in a couple of those community meetings.

Yes, uh where you certainly uh people have interesting perspectives on what you can and can't do.

I wish I had as much power as people thought I did.

So they don't really want us to have as much power as they think we should do.

Right.

That's the other problem.

I know.

I I tell everybody Chief Terry has that power.

I can't do that, but the the chief can't.

Is that the line I should be giving?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, she she she can do that, but I can't.

Uh Scott, do you have anything?

Yeah, just piggybacking off that.

Um, I I do think this is the opportunity.

This this, you know, meeting is an opportunity where we can kind of educate and and provide a lot of information.

We've I think we've historically we've done a pretty decent job of kind of running down the numbers and you know, like courts, obviously we do we address the jail and where they're at, but we've kind of done those good summaries of this is what we've done, but I think explaining how it is we operate uh as a system and and how we the interplay uh and selfishly, you know, speaking from from my perspective, you know, we're kind of that unknown entity and and you know, to the extent there's there's a lot of confusion in the public about what judges and prosecutors and and what the police can can and can't do, you know, for for us and and then I would say I don't want to speak for Christine but Carl, but you know, for us at probation, there's so much confusion about who does what and we're the same, and but no we're not and and explaining those differences I think would would be beneficial as well.

Sounds like I have another volunteer for next meeting.

This next meeting is gonna be incredible.

All right.

If you feel like you want to wait till next year for the court, that's fine too.

Right.

Keep in mind my term does end, December 31st.

I I appreciate uh your perspective, Judge.

I'd love to hear it from you.

Your PJ term, not your it's chief judge though, that way.

Chief judge, yeah.

CJ, all right.

Yeah, I like it.

That's great.

So I didn't ask for it.

Madam Clark, do you have anything that you'd like to see discussed?

Uh no, I I always learn something coming to these meetings though.

Okay.

Well, even if it's based on my ignorance on what the acronym is.

Well, I I get replacement with acronyms.

It's just the nature of our work.

Yeah.

Yes.

For sure.

I know that the sheriff's not here, but I do want to bring up one thing in the materials.

Okay.

If I could.

Um and that is I know that they had been working with DOC for DOC transport, but I see that numbers getting up there a little bit higher.

In the past, I've I've worked with the sheriff, and I'm certainly willing to do that again to talk to DOC to try to get transport a little bit better than keeping two hundred and thirty-two people there.

Right.

So what's an idea ideal number for you, Judge?

Like, they want it, they wanted, I think the agreement was to to have less than a hundred people there.

Okay.

I'd have to contact uh you know Colonel Martin and or Sheriff Forrestal or even Kevin Murray because they are in talk with DOC, but I'd like to see less than a hundred people because they're supposed to be transporting these people on a regular basis.

So I believe it's two transports a week.

Yes was the plan.

Okay.

This actually ironically came up in a conversation today.

Um community corrections leadership statewide.

We had a call, and this you know, it is not unique to Marion County.

There are a number of counties uh facing maybe not as bad uh a number, certainly not as high a number, but even percentage-wise, maybe not as bad as as we're facing here in Marion County, but it is um it's relative to the size of the county.

Yeah, it and it is statewide.

Um it's not happening in jails all over.

Right.

Okay.

Well, uh, I feel good about the next meeting because we're gonna have a wonderful presentation from Judge Rothenburn.

Uh Chief Terry, welcome to the meeting.

We appreciate uh everything that you provided here today and look forward to further conversations with you and then uh I'd also love to follow up with someone on your staff to kind of talk about maybe how we can look at addressing some of these deficiencies, in particular as we move into budget season and we start talking about storing all of this information.

Is there a way where we can maybe reduce some of these costs?

Uh would be great.

Alright.

Uh am I missing anything besides enjoyment.

Actually, not to drag this out any longer, but two quick notes, maybe a good news and a bad news.

Um the the bad news is that we in community corrections statewide know that we will be taking a very significant budget cut uh from our uh Indiana Department of Corrections grant.

Uh we do not know the exact amount though.

We know roughly statewide it's a seven million dollar uh cut to our budgets that's out of a sixty million dollar budget.

So we're gonna be going down to about fifty-three million statewide.

Um we have our spring statewide conference this Friday.

Uh the Department of Corrections is always in attendance uh on the Friday morning.

We are hoping to find out what that amount looks like for each of our individual counties.

Obviously, as you said, going into budget season, that's gonna be very important for us to try to figure out how we're gonna navigate the p coming year uh in that situation.

And then maybe to end on a higher note, um we as an uh as an agency are gonna be participating with uh George Mason University this summer uh on a study.

About a year ago, the American Probation Parole Association released their national standards uh for community supervision and use of best practices across the nation.

Uh we're gonna be participating with them to basically grade ourselves and or not grade ourselves, have someone else come in grade us.

Um I'm confident in in our agency that we've done really good work, but you know, obviously the the best thing to do is bring someone uh you know an an outside set of an eyes, uh independent set of eyes to come in and and and kind of check our work.

And um again, I'm I'm confident that it'll work out well for us, but if there are shortcomings, things we need to do better, uh where we need to improve, this will help us focus in on that.

Who has a conference the Friday before Memorial Day?

The Indiana the Indiana Association of Community Corrections Act Counties.

Okay, nice.

Well, you uh you're certainly earning your money that day.

It's only a half day on Friday, so it'll be all right.

Well, so certainly appreciate it.

Uh motion to adjourn.

So thank you.

I appreciate it, everybody.