Welcome to today's business session.

Our first item for business session is approval of minutes for business session of October 14th, 2021.

Is there a motion?

Second.

The move and second, all in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All right.

The motion passes.

We now have a uh police explorers program presentation.

Guess we usually start with Captain Kobenaw and uh we'll let you take it away.

Uh good morning, Mr.

Mayor, members of the city council, um, city manager Platt.

Uh good morning.

I'm Captain Martin Cobanaugh, KCPD.

I'm the City Hall liaison officer.

Um, this is our October monthly update.

Uh we'll be providing uh information in regards to the KCPD police explorers program.

With me is Major Mark Folsom from the Investigations Bureau.

He will provide insight into the program and what the program has accomplished and the future of the program.

And without further ado, uh Major Folsom.

Morning, everyone.

Thank you for uh allowing us to come and tell you a little bit about what we've been doing with the Explorer program at KCPD.

So we're Explorer Post 8600, um, which is interesting because uh that was the number of uh the original police explorers post, which started in 1977, and then it you know it it died out along the way.

I don't exactly know when, and we've had a couple reincarnations of it before we started on uh November excuse me, September 11th, 9-11 of 2019.

Uh we only slowed down for four months during COVID.

We we didn't meet during that time, uh, but we got back to meeting, and uh it's it's working out really really well.

So our purpose is giving youth an opportunity to explore a law enforcement career to see law enforcement to see if they would like to pursue a law enforcement career.

So it's a great opportunity for young people to decide if this is a job that they want to do.

And it's not just being a police officer, it can be anything within uh the police department, uh dispatcher, crime scene tech, all kinds of things like that.

We're we're trying to expose them to every bit of that.

Um it's also a vehicle for community interaction and mentoring, of course, for for these young men and women.

Uh and then we get to showcase KCPD as an organization and and tell them why Kansas City Police Department is such a good place to work and uh such a good city to uh police in.

We've recruited youth from all of the people in Kansas City.

So we've got uh a very very diverse group of young men and women who uh come from all parts of the city in many different school districts within the city.

We want to encourage youth to join us in law enforcement, whether it be um in a law enforcement capacity or a non-swarm capacity.

So it's a recruitment tool too, but we're trying to help these kids uh see if this is what they want to do.

So you must be between 14 and 20 years old, actually, it's until you turn 21.

You can be an explorer, and when you turn 21, you can be a police officer.

Um and you have to live in a school district that is within the borders of Kansas City, so that means like Raytown, Gladstone, you name it.

Those those kids that go to those school districts that fall within Kansas City, they're good to go to, and I think they're they're a good resource to possibly work for us someday too.

We asked them to maintain a 2.0 grade point average, which isn't real strict, but we want to make sure that they're not spending their time uh getting in trouble that that stressing the importance of school and um you know don't put this program or any other program ahead of school.

So we started actually in 1971, I was wrong.

Chief Kelly.

I I said 77, but at 71, Chief Kelly started it.

We got our different versions in the 90s at Metro and East Patrol, and we started planning for this post in 2018.

Uh Chief Smith had been to an IA International Association of Chiefs of Police meeting in Philadelphia and had been assigned.

All the chiefs there were assigned um explorers to to tag along with them and help them out while they were in in at the conference.

Um so the chief was very impressed about their uniforms and and their demeanors and in general their programs, so he thought this would be a great thing to do here in Kansas City.

Now at the time we were one of the only major city police departments in the country that did not have an explorers program.

So the Heart of America Council Boy Scouts of America they approached us and wanted to see what they we could do to create a post because they're our partners the Heart of America Council is so we had many meetings with them Colonel Oakman who's now retired was was our original advisor for that and he helped in the planning with Major Wayne Stewart who's retired and myself and that core group handled all the planning that it took to kick this thing off we have all leaders that have completed youth protection training through the Boy Scouts of America that's so we we can say hey we take kids safety very serious at all times and just because we're police officers doesn't mean we shouldn't uh be doing the same things as other volunteer leaders so we took that training to keep the kids safe our first meeting like I said was 911 of 2019 so our our post is funded by KCPD we pay for everything this isn't a a separate program that's getting paid by any other entity we're taking it out taking it out of our budget to make this thing happen.

We pay for the following items registration fees for the adult leaders and overtime to facilitate the program you have to have leaders at the meeting so that's a pretty good expense and then the uniforms as you can see I got three explorers here with me today and they're all wearing the uniform and we provide that we provide a long sleeve uniform shirt short sleeve uniform shirt tie collar brass name tag the sewed on explorer patches badge and explorer patches a black leather belt the police trousers which are the exact same trousers that that the police officers use and an explorer t-shirt which we use for different activities like when we did fingerprinting and it's you know it's it's a mess when you throw around the fingerprint dust so we had them wear t-shirts that day so all this we ask of the explorer youth are to provide the registration fee which is 45 dollars and you have to pay that once a year and if they don't have the money financial assistance is available a pair of black socks and a pair of of plain black shoes or boots so we we handle most of the expenses our post is operated entirely by KCPD.

We have several volunteer officers who serve as leaders and mentors and we get input from the explorers on what in topics on what topics interest them and they want to learn about then the leadership committee which meets once a month talks about what topics they have and then we organize the meetings to make them happen.

This includes determining the locations and getting assistance from officers who work in those units like when we did the tactical teams we have members of the tactical teams come and help do the presentations because they're the subject matter experts we meet every other Thursday from 6 30 p.m to 8 p.m and we meet year round except on holidays our home base is at South Patrol and a more majority of the time we are at South Patrol for our meetings but we meet where the topic takes us like if we had to do an activity up at the academy we'd meet there the crime lab headquarters wherever it is so we're very mobile giving uh the youth an opportunity to see a lot of the police department in a lot of the city so here's the uniform we chose with the chief's approval I spoke about it before what we um what we provide and this is one of our our young men who is in the program and I take a picture of all of them once they once I issue them the uniform so he was one of the more recent people that joined and that's what we look like oh and I wanted to make sure that that the uniforms were not the same as police officers so that it wouldn't be confused with police officers.

But yet they would look official it was a uniform so those are the badges and patches if you're following along again they don't look like the police department's badge and they're sewn onto the uniform.

Also the the the shoulder patches which they have one on each shoulder that was the original patch that the police department had and we cleaned it up a little bit this one's a little sloppy on my PowerPoint the print on it but that gives you an idea what they're wearing to signify their KCPD.

This one's a little sloppy on my PowerPoint print on it, but that gives you an idea of what they're wearing to signify their KCPD.

Designed our own explorer shirt, which I told you all about for wearing it different activities, and put stuff on front and back.

So I won't spend time on these slides.

Um since you've got the or on the topic since you all have the PowerPoints in front of you.

But I have a bunch of pictures, so I'd rather show the pictures.