Welcome to the regular meeting of the Public Health and Safety Committee for October 1st, 2025.

I am Jason Chavez, the chair of this committee.

Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

At this time, I will ask the clergy to call the roll so we can verify a quorum for this meeting.

Council President Green.

Present Rainfall.

Present.

Present.

Present.

Vice Chair Wandsley.

Present.

Chair Chavez.

Present.

We have six presents.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I'll remind my colleagues that we'll be using speaker management today.

So please make sure that you're signed up.

And before we move on to the consent agenda and amendment to the consent agenda, I'd like to acknowledge the murder of Mariah Samuels from the North Side and her experience with domestic violence.

I joined the calls from the family that is seeking justice, holding the perpetrator accountable and holding the Minneapolis police department accountable for this case.

Her murder was preventable.

She deserves support from this government, and now she deserves justice and change.

One of her sisters said she loves animals.

She loves her sons.

She was sweet.

She was outgoing and she was free-spirited.

We loved each other.

And she is my everything.

Her family called for help.

And today I am publicly calling for justice and accountability for her family and for Mariah alongside my colleagues.

And I know that when we amend the agenda to talk about the Davis Maturi case, we'll have more to say because what happened to Mariah should have never happened.

And it should have been preventable.

And her family and her loved ones deserve justice.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

I do motion to uh amend the agenda to include uh the walk-on legislative directive that you and I are co-authoring together um regarding uh requests made by uh Davis Motori and can talk more about it once we uh get to it and it's amended to the agenda.

Um, but it's to um ask the uh mayor's administration for the release of their internal review regarding uh his case and shooting.

So with that, I will uh motion to approve of the adding of this item to the consent agenda um and ask for a second.

Second.

Well, seeing that there's no discussion, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say nay.

Abstentions.

That motion carries and the agenda is amended.

Uh colleagues, now we'll start with the consent items.

Item number one is referring to staff and ordinance amendment related to the small and underutilized business enterprise program.

Item number two is referring to staff and ordinance amendment related to regulations for the use of possession and storage of firearms.

Item number three is referring to staff and ordinance amendment related to workplace regulation enforcement provisions and exemptions.

Item number four is approving an appointment to the homegrown Minneapolis Food Council.

Item number five is referring an updated report on the pollution control annual registration fee to October 7th, 2025 committee the whole meeting.

Uh and with that, I'll move all these items for approval and and did want to make a comment.

Were you hoping to add uh number six to the consent?

Okay, and also uh the Davis Mattori legislative directive.

Colleagues, do you have any questions on one items one through six?

Vice Chair Wansey.

Thank you, uh, Chair Chavez.

Um, I just wanted to take a few minutes to speak to this item, which again is the legislative directive that uh Chair Chavez and I are bringing forward, which asked for an update on the internal review made by the Minneapolis police department regarding the shooting of Davis Matori.

On September 18th, Davis Matori emailed the council requesting information related to uh MPD's internal review of the circumstances related to him being shot by his neighbor, John Sawchak last October.

There was a bit of a delay on my end and seeing the responses that he received, but I was surprised to read that upon sending that email, Mr.

Motori was referred to the city auditor's office instead of receiving um an update on his request or actually having his request be fulfilled.

Um instead, um, he was told to follow up with the city auditor's office uh to get uh update on the after action uh request that uh this council passed last October, again, related to uh the shooting he experienced last year.

David Matori's ask was very clear.

He wanted MPD's internal review of his case, to which MPD has stated to media outlets they've already completed.

And I do want to highlight that this is a separate and unrelated request from the after action that will come before council next year that is currently being executed by the city auditor's office.

That said, I have no idea why Mr.

Motori has not received the internal report made by MPD in regards to his case.

And this legislative directive seeks to fulfill that request.

And for the record, I would like to actually quote part of Mr.

Motori's email.

If they referring to MPD, have made changes based on the results of their internal review.

The public should know what changes they've made and what specifically from their handling of the case has led to them making those changes.

And if they are not making any changes based on their review, the public should know why they won't begin that process.

If by their own admission, those changes were necessary.

And I recently learned of the murder of Mariah Samuels.

And notice that both of our cases are eerily similar.

A black person in fear for their lives and a department who can't be bothered to forward a case for consideration of charges in our time of greatest need.

The community and I deserve answers and accountability.

Davis Matori is absolutely right.

Mr.

Matori and Mariah Samuels stories both involve a black resident who in just this year alone was in fear for their lives, and who did all the right things, like submitting multiple police reports, filing the restraining order, and calling the police when their lives were under direct threat.

And in both cases, the Minneapolis police department failed them both, and that negligence led to Mariah losing her life and Mr.

Matori nearly losing his and now having to live the rest of his life with a physical and mental and emotional pain and trauma that I hope no one ever has to endure.

And the same goes for the family of Mariah Samuels.

I hope specifically Mr.

Mattori's words, I really hope motivates this body to continue their commitment towards holding our police department accountable.

And Mariah's story, which is also eerily similar to an after-action uh review that we just had to pass a couple of months because of Alison Lucier's story, who also is a native woman who lost her life after calling MPD multiple times for help while experiencing intimate partner violence and also lost her life.

This has happened just within this past year alone, where we've seen black and native residents do the right things, reach out to their government and city leaders for help and be ignored and have either lost or nearly lost their lives as a result of uh unresponse or dismissal.

So I really hope that this is just one of the steps that we can take to honor Mr.

Motori's request as he continues his journey for justice, and also have this be a reminder of we have so much to do when it comes to also honoring black residents and black women who are experiencing heightened levels of violence in our city and are not seeing their city be responsive to it in a meaningful and transformative way, and that that promotes action amongst this body with our urgent, urgent response.

So with that, I will ask for my colleagues' support on passing this legislative directive.

Thank you for your words, Vice Chair Wance.

I'll see the queue.

And so we have Councilmember Pamasano.

I'll take myself out of queue.

Seeing there's no further discussion.

All those in favor on approving items one through six say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say nay.

Any abstention, those items have been approved.

Um next item is a presentation from various community experts on nonfatal shootings and violent crimes.

We'll be hearing from Dr.

Will Cooley from the Minnesota Justice Research Center, Ramsey County Attorney John Troy in his office, and other experts.

And then pass to Vice Chair Wancy to give an introductory statement on this item.

No thanks.

Chair Tower.

Oh, before our presenters actually come up and start, I do want to give a little bit of context behind how this presentation came about.

This year and last year, this council has had many conversations about focusing our resources on evidence-based strategies as it relates to public safety.

Specifically here in Minneapolis, our clearance clearance rates as it relates to non-fatal shootings, is only 26%.

And that is a low number that demonstrates that we are not getting justice for victims and those who are committing gun violence in our communities and are thus able to still be in our communities and acting um harm.

And last year was a violent year for Minneapolis.

And I do not think I am alone in wanting to see better outcomes and make sure that our resources are being allocated to evidence-based and backed strategies that increases public safety for all of our residents.

And as you'll hear from the presenters, a non-fatal shooting task force was extremely successful in St.

Paul, and the state bill would have supported expanding that model to other cities like us here in Minneapolis.

Unfortunately, that bill did not make it out of this most recent legislative session, but my office continue to engage in conversations with uh the Minnesota Research Center and specifically to learn more about this program and how it could be replicated here in Minneapolis.

So, in that spirit, we invited the individuals who led the St.

Paul program to present today on their success and the work that went behind it so that we all can collectively learn about the benefits of having a non-fatal task force.

And it's my hope that the information that we hear today will help us and hopefully inform our upcoming budget conversations, especially especially those related to public safety needs.

So, with that, I do want to say thank you to Will Cooley at the Minnesota Research Justice Center for providing meaningful education to my office that has led us to better understand how investigations can be a strong tool for violence prevention.

I also want to thank everyone here for taking the time to share your knowledge and your experience as well as your expertise with this body, and I look forward to continue partnerships with you all so that we can also uh create more safer communities on this side of the river.

So, with that, I'll invite our guests up to start the presentation.

Welcome, Justin.

Hey, good afternoon, Council members.

Um, thank you for an opportunity for us to speak to this really important issue.

My name is Justin Terrell.

I'm the executive director of the Minnesota Justice Research Center.

And uh before I hand it over to Dr.

Cooley, I just want to explain a little bit about our organization.

We're 501c3 nonprofit.

We office out of Sabbath and Community Center, just blocks up, just blocks away from George Floyd Square.

Our mission is to transform the criminal legal system.

This is a mission that was brought to us by someone who used to sit on the city council, Tom Johnson, who has also served as the Hanneman County prosecutor before he passed away in 2020.

Um we do our work through research, education, and policy development.

And our goal, just to be clear, is to advance a criminal legal system that we can actually call just that is more fair, more equitable, holds people and systems accountable, and seeks restoration whenever possible.

And so with that, I'll just say I appreciate the comments about Mariah and other community members.

I think it's I think lots of us knew Mariah, and it's it's appreciated the sentiment.

Um with that, I'll turn it over to uh Dr.

Cooley to provide a presentation.

Thank you.

Thanks, Justin.

Welcome, Dr.

Cooley.

Council members, thank you for having me.

So this is all part of our commitment to progress with the uh Minneapolis police department.

Um we'll be launching it this year at our annual conference.

And one of the things we're going to be focusing on is uh solving crimes.

Um just a quick overview.

Um I'll be presenting a little bit about the clearance problem.

Uh unfortunately, Katrina Mendoza cannot join us.

She has COVID, um, but she is the mother of Gabriel Mendoza, who was murdered in Minneapolis, and this case remains unsolved.

Uh, we're going to ask that her testimony be written into the record if that's okay.

Yeah, submitted.

Thank you.

Um then we'll talk about best practices in shooting investigations with David Zimmer, who was with the uh Hinipin County Sheriff, and then talk about that success that they've seen in Ramsey County with uh prosecutor, County Prosecutor John Choi.

So this is a statewide problem.

Um in 2024, only 47 percent of violent crimes reported to police in Minnesota were solved.

We're underfunding and understaffing, the most important thing law enforcement can do to prevent crime, and that's solving cases.

Um in Minneapolis, uh, according to our data, Minneapolis Police Department solved about 65 percent of homicides, 23 percent of nonfatal shootings.

So, again, national problem, and we've been seeing falling clearance rates for these violent crimes for some some time.

Why is this uh happening?

Why are clearance rates falling?

You know, a lot of people say we have more technology.

Um at times we've seen uh a surge in in the number of police.

Um, why did these clearance rates continue to fall?

I think there's four main things here.

Uh one, uh the increase in gun crimes in the underground economy.

As many of you realize, uh, people who are working in the underground economy in outlaw capitalism have good reason not to speak to the police.

And so when they're involved in gun crimes, these become very difficult, very difficult for police to solve.

Uh fewer domestic violence homicides, this is a good thing.

We started taking domestic violence very seriously in this country.

Uh the number of homicides fell.

But that also means the solve rate fell uh because these are not open and shut cases.

A lot of the ones that uh police are facing now are much more difficult to solve.

With domestic violence, it's usually the case that boyfriend or husband did it.

Those are very easy to solve.

It raised clearance rates.

Uh in the 80s and 90s, we saw police capacity shift to the drug war.

The public and legislators demanded police do something about drugs.

Uh in the 80s, we saw roughly a 40 percent increase in police activity around drugs.

Uh that meant that police activity around things like homicide, nonfatal shootings, sexual assaults actually fell.

Um, and so this is the the downside of the drug war.

And in a lot of departments, uh being a narcotics cop became the the glamorous role.

Um in a lot of departments across the country, we saw a fall in status for homicide police, where it was no longer a plumb job in the department.

I think that's something we should address.

But narcotics uh became something a department you wanted to end up in.

And then the last thing, and this is really important: higher standards in terms of good arrests and good prosecutions.

Um, especially in the last 10, 20 years or so, uh, we've seen higher standards in terms of we're not gonna bring this to trial unless it's a good arrest.

We're not gonna bring this to trial unless it's a good case.

This is actually a good thing, as we'll see later on.

Higher standards are very good in terms of these uh cases.

So, nonfatal.

This is the mystery.

Why are homicide clearances actually higher than nonfatal?

Um in the case of a nonfatal shooting, you have a victim who is alive.

You'd think that those cases would be solved at higher rates.

Uh but it's this um disparity is found across the country.

As you can see, in Chicago, only six percent of nonfatal shootings are solved.

Minneapolis is actually doing much better uh than Chicago with its low rates in terms of solving nonfatal shootings.

Problem across the country, researchers looked into this.

How can this be?

We've got we've got a victim who's alive.

And what they discovered is it's mostly a matter of putting resources into it, uh, putting staffing into it, uh, effort and priorities.

Homicide cases get more priority.

Homicide detectives, as you'll hear later on, get assigned these cases right away.

In a lot of cases, non fatal fell to the side, and in this case, we did not solve as many nonfatals.

So, as Councilmember Wansley mentioned, uh last year we introduced HF 2742, and this is one of our main requests from this body to help us pass uh HF HF 2742 this year.

And uh we believe the state has a responsibility in terms of prevention.

The state spends a lot of money on prisons.

Uh the state shorts cities like Minneapolis in terms of prevention and investigations.

And I think a lot of uh Minneapolis police department officials will tell you you know, crime doesn't stop at the borders.

Just it just because you have a city line, that doesn't mean it stops.

It goes all over the state, it goes all over the nation, it's global, right?

The state has a responsibility to step in and help with these cases.

And so this funding will dedicate uh teams of police, prosecutors, and crime analysts to work together on these um nonfatal shooting cases.

And you can see the sponsors here, Cedric Frazier and uh Doran Clark right here in Minneapolis.

So this is one of our main asks from this body is to help us pass this and to get resources into the city of Minneapolis.

Um you'll hear later from uh prosecutor John Choi, it matters.

These resources do matter.

They help get people together in the room.

Proven results.

Not many cities are doing this, but there are examples where this is working.

Um 2019, Denver dedicated a unit to solving nonfatal shootings.

Uh in just seven months, they went from solving about 39% to 65% of these nonfatal shootings.

You'll hear later on from St.

Paul, we're very proud right across the river.

Um prosecutor Choi got together with uh the sheriff, uh, the uh city of St.

Paul, um, suburban police departments, and they've raised their clearance rate from 37 percent to 70 percent.

But again, not many cities are doing this is a nationwide problem of not solving nonfatal shootings.

But we see when we put effort and priorities and funding into this, it can happen.

So why?

Why should the uh city be behind this?

Well, the best way law enforcement can prevent violent crime is the certainty of being caught.

We know this.

Study after study shows that this is the best thing that law enforcement can do in terms of preventing crime.

If someone shoots someone, um they have to be held accountable uh by the state.

Um this will enhance trust in government, enhance trust in the police department, and reduce these cycles of retaliation.

I mean, part of the reason these are hard to solve, and I've seen case after case like this, is the police officer goes to someone who has been shot, and that person says, I'm not gonna talk to you, I will handle this myself.

Right?

The cycles of retaliation where a person believes, I don't think law enforcement is the one to do this, I will handle this myself.

So for every one of these shootings, you end up with many, many that are retaliatory in design.

This stops that.

If you solve these crimes uh when they happen, uh you can stop these cycles of retaliation.

Um we know that uh marginalized communities um suffer the most from this in terms of solve rates for homicides and for nonfatal shootings.

If the victim is a racial minority, the solve rates are lower.

So this is about bringing uh racial and economic justice.

And then the double dividend.

Uh we if we really want to cut incarceration in this country, if we really want to do something about mass incarceration, we have to solve crimes at the point when they happen.

This reduces crime in the long run and will reduce our prison population.

The double dividend.

We reduce crime, we reduce incarceration.

Again, this is part of our long-term commitment to progress, which you'll hear about at our conference in November.

Uh alternative response, um, the consent decree and solving these crimes.

The three legs of our commitment to progress.

Uh these investigations are labor and resource intensive.

It is very difficult to be a police investigator.

It takes a whole different skill set to be a police investigator.

And they can take months, sometimes even years to solve these cases.

I was just reading about a case the other day where they had to deal with a main witness and they had to deal with her for a whole year, and it was a difficult uh situation, and so they're very um difficult.

But we can prioritize them and make them happen.

Minneapolis needs many, many more investigators.

Uh, when we first started uh talking about this, um we heard that uh Minneapolis only had 12 investigators handling all the homicides, all the non fatal shootings, and perhaps uh suicides and overdoses as well.

If you look at other cities like Boston, uh they've greatly increased the number of investigators and they're having a lot more success.

Uh look to Boston.

Boston is an incredibly uh safe city.

They also need manageable caseloads, probably five for homicide detectives.

I mean, think about that.

How many could you handle on your caseload?

Uh we probably need about five per homicide detective, maybe a few more for nonfatal shootings, but we have to have realistic caseloads.

We need to mentor and train uh skilled detectives.

Um again, it takes a whole different skill set to be an investigator than just to be a patrol officer.

Uh, we need to mentor and train them.

I I know when I talk to uh students I teach about being a Minneapolis police officer.

This is one of the things I look for, right?

Is this person the bulldog?

Uh can this person think critically?

Um is this person willing to break through some barriers?

I hope when you talk to your constituents and encourage them to be Minneapolis police officers that you talk about these things.

This is about bringing justice for folks, and that's a high calling.

Crime analysts to insist in the uh uh assist in these investigations.

We've heard that at the uh BCA, the state BCA, there's one civilian crime analyst for every four detectives, and they can do a great deal of work in assisting with these investigations.

I know there's a legislative directive to um post clearance rates for the city of Minneapolis.

Um we think this is a good idea, but we got to be aware on some unintended consequences.

Um the national decline in clearance rates was partly the result of higher standards.

You know, these exonerations we've been having over the last, you know, 20 years or so.

Uh this is because in the bad old days, uh too many cases went forward with limited evidence.

We do not want to be back here in 20 years, and the city council said we need to raise clearance rates, and then we deal with a whole bunch of exonerations.

Umintended consequences linked to excessive focus on data-driven results, right?

The last thing we want the message to the Minneapolis Police Department to be is go out and make a whole bunch of arrests.

No, we need good arrests, right?

We need good investigations.

Um let's be very careful and let's be uh realistic about uh these numbers.

Be a partner with the Minneapolis Police Department, mentor, train, uh, help them along, and so we can raise this clearance rate.

But uh just everybody's clear.

We don't we don't uh we don't want a situation like, oh, we're only making arrests in about 20 percent of cases.

Go out and make arrests.

That would be bad, right?

And we see this too often.

When uh police departments are yelled at over the stats, it has lots of unintended uh consequences.

We do believe uh here at the Minnesota Justice Research Center that the Minneapolis Police Department, this is our chance.

This is our chance to remake uh the police department.

Um we've been failed by our police department uh for decades.

Uh it's it's true, right?

Minneapolis Police Department was not a quality department.

I don't I don't see anyone arguing uh it was.

We can look across the river to St.

Paul and say, man, they've had very good policing.

They've had very good policing since maybe basically the 1930s, right?

So there's an example right across the river we can point to and say, that's a quality police department.

Uh we believe the Minneapolis Police Department can be this national model.

Uh policing is an honorable profession.

Again, when I talk to my students, encourage them to become police officers, encourage them to become investigators.

I talk about this, that uh they they they need this clarity of purpose.

And you can't just send police officers and say, go and prevent crime.

Uh you can give them duties like this, provide justice for victims, and this is a calling.

I, you know, I teach at St.

Thomas, it's a religious school, and so I hear from them like it doesn't matter if the victim is a drug dealer.

It doesn't matter if the victim is a sex worker.

Um we work that case.

We work all these cases, right?

They are all equal.

Um that's the vision I hope you can provide for the Minneapolis Police Department uh going forward.

Again, I would like to turn it over to Katrina Mendoza right now.

Unfortunately, she has COVID, she's being very responsible and not uh bringing COVID here.

Um, but I will submit her testimony.

She has very compelling testimony.

Um, she would say she's not here to bash the Minneapolis Police Department.

She knows they are understaffed, and especially in these key areas of investigation, but there's some things that didn't go well in terms of the investigation of her son uh and some things that she would offer as tips.

So I'll um advance that um testimony afterwards if that's all right with you.

Please do.

Yeah, thank you very much.

All right, I'm now gonna turn it over to uh David Zimmer, and uh he's been my partner in this uh realm.

Again, um working across the aisle, working with Republicans, working with Democrats.

Um, we're all pulling in the same direction on this issue.

We have to solve uh crimes.

So I'll turn it over to David.

Thank you.

I'm welcome to David.

Okay.

Council members, my name is David Zimmer, and I serve as the public safety policy fellow with Center of the American Experiment.

I'm also a born and bred Minneapolis kid who grew up in the third precinct and graduated from Roosevelt High School.

After college, I went to work as a deputy sheriff with the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, where I served for 33 years.

For 20 of those years, I served as a detective and later as an investigative commander.

And for several years, I was formally assigned or attached to the Minneapolis police homicide unit.

One of my cases was the drive-by shooting murder of an 11-year-old boy in North Minneapolis.

The case involved dozens of uncooperative witnesses, unfortunately, some from the victim's own family, but also from reluctant community members and from members of two violent street gangs whose ongoing street battles led directly to this murder.

The case took nearly three years to solve, but solve it we did, primarily by refusing to give up or ever set aside the case.

That tenacity and our commitment to forge forward, regardless of a lack of witness cooperation, eventually impacted those very witnesses and helped to break the case open.

I offer that information to you so that you know I'm not a disconnected policy fellow offering a simple presentation.

I'm a passionate, rooted minipolitan at heart, one with a pertinent law enforcement background that brings real world experience to this discussion.

And in those capacities, we often differ on matters affecting public safety.

But on the issue of improving solve rates, especially with non-fatal shootings, we are in agreement.

Improving solve rates not only enhances accountability of offenders, but it enhances credibility in the justice system and builds community trust in that very system.

In short, it's a game changer.

This presentation is intended to be forward-thinking and positive.

It is not intended to criticize the Minneapolis Police Department, an agency that I believe is doing an amazing job giving the staffing crisis it's been dealing with.

Instead, this presentation is meant to enlighten policymakers of the promising developments that are occurring in a handful of law enforcement agencies across the country.

Agencies that have realigned resources to focus on improving the solve rates of one of the most difficult crimes to solve, a non-fatal shooting involving an uncooperative victim.

My portion of the presentation will focus on the best practices that have been identified by law enforcement leaders and academics familiar with this concept.

The majority of nonfatal shootings involve street conflict, and I can tell you they are among the most difficult cases to solve.

As a result, it is not uncommon for a police agency to solve less than a quarter of these cases.

And some, as you heard, um have even worse solve rates, for example, the Chicago 6% solve rate.

If the wound is non-fatal and the victim is less than cooperative, homicide will be contacted, but the case will likely not get an on-scene response from an investigator.

Instead, it will often be assigned the next business day.

That could mean Monday for a shooting that happens on Friday.

Once assigned, the investigator will reach out to the victim, but if that victim remains uncooperative, the case will undoubtedly be given less priority by a homicide detective.

The lack of victim cooperation will ultimately lead to closing the case before it is solved.

This leads to a lack of accountability for the shooter and a lack of justice for the victim and the community.

The unsolved shooting will likely result in confirmation that the system does not work, and that leads to retaliatory violence, more shootings, more murders, and just a cycle repeating itself.

Now it has varied over the years, but I'm told that given current staffing, nonfatal shootings are in fact back with the already overburdened homicide unit.

Homicide detectives will understandably prioritize their homicide cases over uncooperative non shooting victim cases.

Under this method, we have learned that in 2024, the Minneapolis police clearance rate for nonfatal shootings stood at 22.6%.

Again, it's in there with the clearance rates of other large or mid to large metro areas, but it's still not what anyone should consider a success.

This chart plots out the number of non-fatal shooting victims in Minneapolis from 2019 to 2025 projected, overlaid with the approximate annual police staffing.

Now I am not suggesting that this is a proven causation between decreased police staffing and increased nonfatal shootings.

However, the correlation cannot be ignored, particularly as it relates to the number of investigators able to work these non-fatal shooting cases.

Minneapolis is on pace for approximately 337 nonfatal shooting victims in 2025.

This represents a 27% increase over the 266 nonfatal shooting victims in 2019.

If just 22.6% of these cases are solved, that will leave approximately 261 nonfatal shooting victims in Minneapolis who did not receive justice.

And maybe more importantly, hundreds of offenders who will not be held accountable for these crimes of violence.

The good news is there are a handful of agencies around the nation, many who are also dealing with staffing and funding issues, who have found success in solving a greater proportion of their nonfatal shootings by making a relatively simple commitment to reprioritization.

One of those agencies is right across the river, and as you heard, we will be hearing from uh John Choi here shortly about their success story.

I'll summarize the strategy that we are proposing as invest, respond, and reap the rewards.

First, invest.

Invest in the creation of a standalone unit with the sole mission to handle all nonfatal shootings.

Such a unit will prioritize these cases in a way a homicide unit simply won't.

Agencies that have made the investment have seen dramatic increases in their solve rates for nonfatal shootings, and a corresponding break in the cycle of retaliatory violence.

Respond.

The nonfatal shoot team must respond to shootings as if they were murders and devote all of the resources and efforts given to a murder.

Some agencies call these nonfatal shootings almost sides to emphasize that they are nothing less than a failed homicide and are deserving of the attention and resources that homicides receive.

Reap the rewards.

The city will realize an improvement in solve rates, which will lead to improved community trust in the police department and the criminal justice system, and a reduction in retaliatory violence.

Given the results of those law enforcement agencies that have made this investment, it represents the type of investment that agencies can no longer avoid making.

The benefit far outweighs the cost.

My slides are messed up here, so I'm just going to keep going.

From my professional experience, including information I gathered during a recent forum in Washington, D.C.

on this very topic.

I offer you these additional best practices to ensure the effort gets off the ground and is successful once it is.

First, support.

This effort requires top-down support from political leadership down through police executive leadership down to the unit commander.

Those working these cases need to know that they are supported at every level.

As a former law enforcement officer, I cannot tell you enough just how important that level of support is.

Just do it.

It's more important to get started now than to wait until that mythical time when all staffing and financial obstacles are no longer in the way.

Start small if need be, but start.

Dedicate resources to get this effort off the ground, at the very least with a commander and a couple of investigators.

Then consider partners like the Sheriff's Office, the BCA, and federal agencies that can create force multipliers to help offset staffing shortages.

Hand pick personnel.

This is a priority.

Selecting the right commander and the right investigators is the most important aspect to making this initiative work.

This cannot be a seniority-based selection process or a position for a burned out homicide detective.

Investigators need to be self-motivated, mature, tenacious.

They cannot become disillusioned by uncooperative victims and witnesses or heavy caseloads.

Experience has shown that investigators who have been successful in family violence cases, sexual assault cases, juvenile investigations, and narcotics cases often have the temperament to become successful non-fatal shooting investigators.

The right investigator will ensure this effort succeeds, while the wrong investigator will ensure it fails.

Staffing ratio.

Finally, civilian support.

Leverage all the civilian support the agency can muster, but do not consider civilian resources as a replacement for police investigators.

They should be additions to the effort, not alternatives.

So let me end with this.

Investing in a non fatal shooting unit will result in improved solve rates and a corresponding drop in retaliatory crime.

These results will only enhance the city's ability to secure more personnel, funding, grants, and partnerships.

If the MPD commits to this effort, it will realize a benefit that will far outweigh the cost.

Thank you for your time.

I will be sticking around for questions or discussion, and at this time I'll turn it over to Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.

And at this time, I'll turn it over to Ramsey County attorney John Choi.

Oh, thank you.

Welcome, Count Attorney Choi.

Good afternoon, uh Mr.

Chairman and uh members of the committee.

And uh thank you, uh Councilmember Vice Chair Wandsley for the invitation to be here today to tell you a little bit about the story in um in St.

Paul and Ramsey County.

And I want to just make it very clear that um no one agency can do this alone.

In fact, I'm here to represent uh a team, a collaboration that was put together uh during a really difficult time.

Um I want to first kind of tell you the story in terms of how kind of some of this might have started.

And I would say that it kind of started for us in the midst of the pandemic.

And at that time we were uh experiencing things all over this country that we had never experienced for the uptick and violent crime that we were experiencing, the the thing about carjackings, we had never seen carjackings before.

We had never even counted for them.

Um and you know what we started doing?

We started blaming each other about why this was happening.

The police would blame me for not charging a particular case.

You know, there was people that were trying to figure out like who got released on low bail or whatever it might be.

I would deflect oftentimes to say, well, those were judges' decisions.

And it was also a time where there was just a lot of conflict in Ramsey County.

We had just the county had just closed boys, totem town, and just there was a lot of finger pointing.

And you know what?

Uh we really sucked.

We sucked at solving crime, doing what we were supposed to do for the people.

But uh just through some intentional, what I call, I I think just being a better person and leadership of trying to get into the room and thinking about what our jobs are, uh, which is to listen to one another.

Uh I think also to show up with humility and recognize that I could be wrong and that we need to make changes.

And so we had some really, really hard conversations.

And we created a group called the Violence Reduction Leadership Group.

It's an informal table comprising of the elected officials, and we had some of the most hard the hardest conversations that we could ever have.

But we came out of those conversations with some consensus.

And the agreement to stop blaming each other, to get into relationship, and to start kind of working together.

And one of the uh important things that came out of that conversation was let's focus on some of these clearance rates that we think are really low.

So auto theft was one of them.

But another one was looking at the nonfatal shooting.

So I was at a conference in 2022 and I heard about what Denver was doing.

And at the same time, the mayor was talking about this.

And so there was this coalescence of wanting to do a better uh job around this and recognizing that, hey, if you're pulling the trigger and we're not solving these crimes, we are not doing right by the public and the people that have been harmed.

And quite frankly, we're sending the wrong message that you should do that again.

And I also want to make clear, too, because I will talk a little bit about that.

Uh because they might think that they could retaliate themselves.

That might be, but I also want to make it very clear that you know, a lot of times why people carry guns in our community, and even when they're not supposed to be having guns, is because they are in fear of their lives.

And so we need to reckon with the fact that the the participation and the cooperation puts people uh in harm's way.

And so we thought about all this as we thought about this uh initiative.

And so this is uh so the first thing we did, and we didn't have any money.

We just cobbled it together, but we took a trip to Denver because Denver was our North Star, because we heard about Denver being the place where they went from I don't know, 20 or 30 percent to over 50 percent, and uh the the data says it's over now 60 percent.

Um so this was a delegation from Minnesota, uh, St.

Paul, uh a lot of St.

Paul police officers, my office, uh, also uh BCA superintendent Drew Evans and uh and my Mark Osler was here from the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, and we went there to learn.

And what we came back with is uh that we were really inspired.

Um this is not easy in any way, but we recognized that we knew how to do this because what they were doing uh in the in this concept, and we added in St.

Paul.

I want to make sure that St.

Paul police get a lot of the credit because they had to do the most heavy lifting in terms of reconfiguring some of the things that were talked about before about creating a standalone unit, et cetera.

That's not easy an easy thing to do, but they did it.

Uh but the the we would focus on that case clearance, and then we would also say it out loud that like our clear clearance rate today is this number, 35 percent.

And to say it out loud to tell our people, the public that we want to improve that.

And we said our goal should be 50 percent.

Um, because we thought that would be a good start, right?

And we were all comfortable with that.

And so the concept was uh I think relatively simple, um, that we would treat, like as you had heard the case just like a homicide.

That means that when there is uh a shooting incident, that the police investigators would go out there right away, start looking uh for evidence, video evidence, talking to people, et cetera, going to the hospital, integrating criminal intelligence analysts, uh uh, and then also putting in some resources to prioritize forensic testing.

Um and then also reckon with the fact that many of the victims and the witnesses are maybe um in fear of um participating with the police and the prosecution, and to develop out a concept that Denver did not have, which was to uh uh create an emergency safety fund uh that we are now starting to use.

And so I'll talk a little bit about that.

So I want to am very thankful because uh and I should have Governor Walls and um the legislature at that time, they had some excess money.

And so uh I was up at the legislature trying to lobby for this initiative back in uh 2023.

Um instead of specifically funding us, what they did is they just gave pots of money to cities and counties.

So I believe like St.

Paul got 13 some million dollars, this county got about six some million dollars.

And of that allocation, we use some of that to kind of jumpstart some of these things.

So what the Board of Commissioners did is they they could have used that for anything, but what they decided to do was uh to create a fund that I would administer for local uh uh uh uh local police uh investigative costs like overtime for the suburban agencies.

Uh we created a victim witness safety fund of $800,000 and $200,000 over a four-year period.

And we've only spent about five, fifty thousand dollars of that thus far, but I know that that that experience is gonna start ramping up because now people know how to use it.

And it's word is getting out that this could be really helpful in that moment of crisis when you feel like you are not safe and you need to maybe get out of town or you need some other assistance or resources.

That's how we've been using those dollars.

And then uh we had two years of expedited forensic testing, and uh we are now uh we've just included that into my budget.

Um and then uh we also paid for an additional investigator in the sheriff's office.

And then uh credit to St.

Paul City Council and our mayor of St.

Paul, uh.

Melvin Carter, um, he provided the resources to the police to create a standalone unit.

And I think that's one of the hardest things to do because you you're kind of buying that, and if you get better outcomes, you've got to sustain that.

Um so it's not a part of the homicide unit.

It's a standalone unit.

They took their their very best investigators from other places, brought them together, and then kind of created out a St.

Paul model, and then they work very closely with the Office of Neighborhood Safety, uh, as well as our public health uh uh navigators as well in the county.

And so just that coordination is uh what in St.

Paul, uh, many of the cases, uh 95 percent of them uh were in St.

Paul in 2024.

Uh because we started all of this.

Um the work started in the fall of 23, and we were launched definitely towards the end of 23 and for sure in 24 for the St.

Paul Police Department.

So from January of 24 until the end of the 24 calendar year, um they improved their clearance rate, the meaning St.

Paul, 37 percent to 70 uh.5 percent in one year.

And a big part of that is also like the work that my office does and working with those investigators, we have a dedicated prosecutor who is assigned to work with the non-fatal shooting unit, and her job is to uh help uh the investigators uh submit chargeable cases.

So we work with them at the very beginning part of the process to make sure that we address the evidentiary issues and that they're doing more of the investigation that's necessary for us to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Uh and then uh in 2025, I think there's a lot of things that are certainly correlated to this, but this is certainly one of the things.

And so in 2025, right now we have a 30 percent reduction in shots fired from the year before, and uh we are a 70 percent reduction in homicides.

In fact, it didn't knock on wood here because the year is not over.

Uh, but we are this could be like a uh like a a decade record, you know, for a long time that we haven't been this low.

Um and then uh with regard to the uh Ramsey County Sheriff's Office, they use that investigator to work on some more recovery of firearms.

And in the suburban agencies, uh they've uh have a clearance rate of 75 percent, three out of four cases were cleared.

And uh they've been um uh participating in a lot of the trainings that we've also provided with the resources that were being available.

Uh and then of course, a big part of this too is that the prosecutor needs to, if we're gonna say together that we would like to see uh more of these cases, then we have a commitment to charging them.

And as you can see in 2024, uh that's a very high uh uh charging rate uh for for any particular crime.

Um and the seven or eight percent is just an indication that they we just didn't have enough evidence.

And they like we talked about before, we do not want to charge people with crimes when there's not enough evidence uh because if we get carried away with that, then we're gonna have un uh wrongful convictions, et cetera, right?

And then here are the numbers.

Well uh here are the numbers for 25, but it looks like maybe that slide isn't in there.

Oh, there it is.

Um the number is gonna be by the end of the year the same as the year before.

You can see there's a number of cases that are still pending.

Um, and so that might be that we're just doing more investigation, but those cases will get charged.

I would imagine that are the numbers here to me indicate that it will be very similar to last year.

Um and so my final comment on all of this, and it's kind of as I began, you know, we uh all elected officials and public servants, we're we're all doing something to try to make things better.

But oftentimes what I see is that we're all pulling, but we're not pulling in the same direction.

And I I just really believe that um we can accomplish so much if we can show up in relationships and in our work to find the places that where we can agree.

And if you think about it, you know, the Minnesota Justice Research Center and the Center for the American Experiment are together telling us that this is something that we should do.

We should listen to them.

And we need more of this just throughout our communities in our country about trying to figure out ways to serve the public, get better outcomes, be accountable to the people, tell them that we're gonna try.

And uh if we have strong goals and strong investments and support for one another, even if we might come up a little short of those goals, we're still on high ground.

So thank you for the uh the time and the opportunity to present uh some of the collective work that we are doing uh across the river.

Thank you, Con Tony Troy.

We really appreciate your presence and helping us with this presentation today.

I'll first pass it to Councilmember Pomsano.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and um thank you very much for this presentation.

Um I take it that you come here in a spirit of being interested in sharing your ideas with Minneapolis.

Um I was a little bit um confused during the briefing last week as to what what the ask is here.

But I think you've made that clear in your presentation.

But just first, maybe obvious to those who work in this field generally, but a general question is how do you clear a case?

Um because to my knowledge, the way that you clear cases is if the person um dies, if there's a complaint, meaning if there's a charging, um, if there's the a decline of charging, right?

And then something else called exceptionally.

And I don't really understand what exceptionally is.

So I'm curious, not an officer.

Can you explain what does clearance rate really mean?

What how do you clear a case?

If someone has an answer to that, that would be helpful.

Also like to acknowledge that we have Representative Frazier in the room too.

Thanks.

Council members and council member Paul Masano, um, I'm gonna be vulnerable here.

I was a uh sheriff's commander of investigations for about 10 years.

And that's a hard question to answer.

You know why?

Because there is no consistency.

Uh a solve or a clearance rate in one department might be different from another department.

And so um there are it really gets down to what your definition of clearance is.

And so as you all move forward in the city of Minneapolis in the police department, you have to come up with a real clear definition of what clearance means, because it it isn't the same around the country.

And um, so some agencies say, well, when we make an arrest, the case is cleared.

But that might never lead to uh uh charge or a conviction.

So it it's really a matter of definition, and and you all need to decide what your definition is gonna be so that you can measure how that clearance uh improves or or degrades.

Yeah, I mean I I think that's a really important question, especially because we're saying that we're comparing clearance rates from city to city, and even in between Minneapolis and St.

Paul, I don't know that we have the same consistent understanding and probably have changed the understanding and definition over time as to what clearance really means.

Um, I think um I see and I I don't have broad experience in this, but I see in this last slide still up that Mr.

Choi has an impressively high charging rate here.

Um and I'd be curious what that looks like here in Minneapolis.

But I think this concept as a whole is maybe a little bit more difficult to apply here in Minneapolis.

But I think we can all agree that we'd like to be able to clear every case.

Um course we understand that solving non-fatal shootings is a strong deterrent because the offender could face consequences and things like retaliatory response can be reduced.

You know, that there's things here that are part of basic psychology.

Um this idea isn't new or controversial really, but here are some of the places that when I sat with this information last week, I see it getting stuck.

Is I I did go and look up and thank you, Mr.

Frazier, for being here.

Um there was a bill proposed at the state last year.

Um, but I don't think did it get a hearing?

I don't think it even got a hearing.

And I did see that the bill didn't have much money attached to it and didn't seem to be taken real seriously.

And that's just my own opinion of it after poking around with people at the state.

But regardless, this bill would have provided state-funded grants that could be used for investigations, and we're all for that.

Um I would like Minneapolis to be supportive of such a grant proposal.

Um I think that for IGR to really prioritize this and spend time lobbying for it, it would have to be a significant uh amount of money, and I think I'd like to name Minneapolis specifically, or maybe cities of the first class.

And I say that as I look to our IGR chair just for her consideration as to how we might add this to our IGR agenda.

Um I also wanted to highlight that to my knowledge, MPD is already doing a lot of this work.

They're working through recommendations that they've received and ways that they can increase their non-fatal case closure rates.

And again, case closure versus clearance, these might be two different things.

Um how do I know that?

Because I asked them.

Um I'm curious from the presenters if they are familiar with or maybe they also are working with the National Public Safety Partnership, because that's who MPD has been working with on this exact topic.

Um my understanding is that MPD received a report with 14 recommendations about a year ago, and they've started implementing, they've been implementing these recommendations across since 2025 and meet regularly with these external partners.

So maybe this is very similar to what Mr.

Choi showed us.

Um I think that simply putting more of our own finite resources toward this isn't maybe the answer in the short term.

Um we need experience investigators, and that takes time to develop.

We are hiring more people as fast as we can, but they're not able to step directly into an investigator role.

My understanding is you need to be a sergeant to run an investigation.

Um I think that the post board themselves, and again, I mean, feel free to step in.

The post board themselves has requirements on how many years that takes.

In fact, I think the chief had been at the state lobbying to decrease that number of years from five years to three years to hold certain ranks and have certain authority because of not just Minneapolis, but you know, overall the state's um challenges in recruiting more officers and getting people up to speed quickly.

So I know there's a limit as to what civilians can do versus sworn officers.

I know they can't write a warrant, I know they can't run an investigation, but they're important helpers.

I wish we had more of them.

Um I'm curious when you speak about having investigators, are you it in my informal conversation with you?

I you were talking about civilian investigators, and is that aren't there limits on what civilians can do versus sworns?

I mean, again, I think civilians can be extraordinarily helpful in solving cases, but are I think we are limited by the state in that regard?

I also was able to understand and confirm and reflect on.

We used to have a specialized team for this, just like St.

Paul.

We used to have a specialized team that would go out any time of day or night, respond to these in the same way.

And my understanding is we don't currently have the staffing for that, is our homicide unit has 14 investigators and two civilians.

So I think the civilian investigators, you know, uh civilian staffers, we need more of them.

Um we need more really smart people helping us in the police department.

But can you compare Minneapolis to St.

Paul to me?

And maybe Mr.

Choi knows, or maybe one of you know in terms of there were 378 non-fatal shootings in Minneapolis last year.

Do you have a sense of numbers in St.

Paul?

I don't have the actual numbers, um, but we can look at this number here.

Um as you can see, it looks like about uh in this is 2024, so a little bit over 80.

Am I right on that?

No, all cases would be about 90 that were actually cleared.

All right.

And then present it to our office, because if they're not cleared, they haven't solved the case, and so then they it wouldn't have been it wouldn't be coming to us.

So uh just because of this initiative, um uh we had a you know uh certainly we didn't have this many uh non-fatal uh shooting cases.

They would either be attempted homicides or um first-degree assaults uh that would be coming to our office.

And so this is um uh these these are these are the cases that are the that have the case designation non fatal shooting uh and then with a prosecutor working with the investigators.

So it looks like about 90 cases or so came to our office as a because of doing this initiative.

I Googled it and it said 103, so it maybe that includes the rest of that, and maybe Google's wrong because I would say that's the same.

This is the numbers from our case case files.

So far this year, Minneapolis has had 50 homicides, and Google says St.

Paul has had 10.

Yeah.

Does that sound about right?

We're on a historic um reduction from the previous years.

And again, not gone wood, we haven't finished the year, but we might we may end the year uh better than we have in a long, long time.

Yeah, that's great.

I you know clearance rates and how we define them, I think can sometimes be misleading.

And here's one example.

Um victim count doesn't equal case count.

This annunciation mass shooting, that's not 21 counts, it's just one.

And that can be very extraordinarily time intensive, not to mention heartbreaking, but the way we count cases here aren't always the same.

Um I want victims to know that they're heard, right?

Not just cleared.

Um that they matter.

This goes back to the very first point that Councilmember Wansley was making earlier.

I want victims to know that they matter to us and to and through our police response.

Um I want them to know that we'll follow up on their well-being.

Um so I I think, and as I search for answers between closing a case and clearing a case, right?

I think that sometimes MPD closes a case such that it could be reopened instead of clearing it, meaning never to look at it again.

And I just want to leave space for what that means.

And I think that if we're serious about um trying to figure out something here that we would um take a good um careful look at this.

So I really appreciate this um case study.

I really appreciate this concept.

I think it's a little bit difficult to apply it here in Minneapolis with some of the other work underway.

Um but I really appreciate your presentation.

Thank you.

Uh next up we have Council President Payton.

Thank you, Church Javas.

Um, and uh I also want to thank you for the presentation.

This is the exact type of conversation I think we need to be having as a city, one that advances us from this kind of overly reductive conversation about crime and safety and policing and into a much more mature and sophisticated one that can recognize where we're falling short and use that as a point of humility to actually make real improvements.

That's just a preamble to ask kind of a really uh in the weeds question, because I feel like a takeaway from this is that it would be wise of us to follow in St.

Paul's footsteps and create a standalone unit dedicated to these types of crimes.

Uh when the City of St.

Paul made that unit, did they add net uh staff to create that unit, or did they reallocate existing staff, or was it a combination of of those two?

I can provide a little bit of detail, uh, Councilmember Payne.

Um I know that like the in creating the unit, uh, what they did was they took investigators from other investigative units.

So there was a cost there.

You know, like I know that you know, I've had a career of uh focusing on sexual assault investigations, and I think somebody came from out of that unit, right?

And so they cobbled together uh people.

And then what they did was with the money that they received from the city council and the mayor, I I think they did some backfill uh try to do some backfilling and also funding of overtime.

Um, but the the whole conversation about making sure that the police agency has enough resources, that's a really critical one.

Um, and so that's just something that, you know, through conversations, hopefully, you know, you guys will figure out what is best for your own city.

But that's how that happened, I think, by the mayor and the city council having some resources to give to the police to say how you want to do overtime backfill, whatever it is.

We just need to have this.

This is something, and I think that's part of the big part of it is like the the highest people the mayor uh you know is saying this is a priority, and the chief is saying this is a priority, and so you guys just need to figure out how to reorganize this, and we're gonna create a standalone unit.

That's that's weak, it came down to the pure leadership in St.

Paul, I think.

Thank you.

That's really clarifying.

Vice Chair Wansley.

Thank you, Chair Chavez.

Again, I just want to say thank you to all the presenters for coming forward and even seeing some surprise faces like Representative Cedric Frazier for joining us.

Um, I do want to start my comments off, which is something or in response to something that was shared by my fellow colleague, Councilmember Palmasano, is this idea that victims will know they matter when they receive justice.

And that justice can be served through reducing the number of unsolved cases that we have in our city, specifically related to nonfatal shootings.

And that's honestly, I I do think we got misled here.

Clearance rates are actually not that complicated to understand.

It's a case that is either resolved or not resolved, or better yet, solved or not solved.

That is literally it.

Did it get thoroughly investigated as was highlighted in the presentation sufficiently enough to then be rendered over to the prosecutorial body, which could be the county attorney's office for further um action to be taken and in the a way for traditional justice to reign and hold parties who omitted harms in our communities accountable.

That's the basic level understanding of what a clearance rate is.

Are we solving crimes or are we not?

And yes, we should, and this is what I believe the basis of this presentation is really thinking more critically of what metrics are guiding the ways in which we are solving crimes.

But it first has to go back to the recognition amongst this body in leadership specifically, um, which we know under government structure, the mayor or currently mayor Fry has authority over MPD.

We have to start with a recon recognition that we do have a problem.

And Minneapolis data was presented to this body very clearly that noted how many non-fatal shootings we've had, and then correlated that with a low clearance rate, meaning we are not solving sufficient cases.

And I I want to put that in personal perspectives, and I think our presenters did that.

That means there are hundreds, if not more loved ones who have not received the answer, or residents who have not received the answer about the outcome of their case, where something happened to them, it nearly losing their lives, or a loved one nearly lost their lives.

They are not receiving any follow-through on their case.

That is a problem.

And this body, as I highlighted in my introductory comments, has been wrestling with this idea of how do we solve for that then?

How do we reprioritize as you highlighted as a best practice existing resources, particularly honing in on our investigations?

And I'm happy to hear that there's broad support about, you know, making sure we're investing in civilian investigators as a sub a supplemental um effort.

And we this body actually took that on.

We heard MPD needed 12 additional investigators uh last year, and this body funded five of those 12 requested for civilian investigators.

We funded that.

That is happening right now.

This body has actually devoted resources, and we're seeing somewhat of a hesitance or resistance towards actually implementing those resources.

I would love to see um a world where yes, we could do 30 investigators as what was highlighted.

And it's very clear we need to invest more thoroughly in the investigative capacity of MPD, both through the sworn and non-swarm uh pathway.

Because there's a backlog, and that backlog re reflects hundreds and thousands of residents who don't have an answer for what's what's happening with their case, and that's unacceptable.

I did also want to um follow up on another question regarding the the composition of the the task force itself because one of the recommendations was you have to have the right talent, be part of it.

Um I did want to ask if there was particular recommendations around recruitment.

Um it said just pick the right people, but if there's criteria or best practices that shared around who to bring in potentially if um any of the presenters had uh information related to that, Vice Chair Wansley.

Um in my presentation, I talked about some of the best practices that uh identified some investigative units that make like a a very good uh garden for uh pulling investigators from.

So family violence units, um, sexual assault units, juvenile units, and narcotics units tend to um have uh the the uh investigators that have the experience that would that would really work well or translate well to a non-fatal shooting case because you have you know sometimes reluctant victims and witnesses in those cases that it takes a an investigator that has the maturity and the tenacity to move beyond that reluctance and and stick to the case because they want to solve the case and not just move on because I have a uncooperative victim.

So that there is uh best practices out there on what what types of investigators make for you know a potentially really successful nonfatal shooting investigator.

And like I mentioned, it's probably the worst decision would be to take your most senior homicide detective because he's really good at homicides, but has been doing it for 35 years and is burned out.

That's not the place for him.

Thank you for that.

And then a follow-up question that I had was uh once financing was put in place for the task force, um, how long did it take to get it up and running?

So more of like the implementation piece.

The the Redemption County Board resolution that appropriated the money for the victim emergency fund and the overtime costs, et cetera.

That was done um, I think in September of 2023.

And as soon as the board passed that resolution, we were able to do the the part that my office administered and the in St.

Paul they made it a priority, I think, to put it into the have it effective in 2024.

So they were able to kind of I think they started a little bit before 24, like maybe in December of just getting all that planning in the fall in the in the winter, and then I think those monies uh they use to to fund whatever they were doing.

Okay.

That's good to know because I probably will ask or follow-up meetings around also some of the the upfront budgetary allocations, either through existing staffing that they repurpose to also you know ensure a strong start to the implementation.

If that's known.

You mentioned some of the figure amounts, or you you're in uh the county attorneys in with like the victim uh emergency response initiative or emergency response.

I don't have it in front of me.

But the eight hundred victim witness emergency fund.

And but we were very fortunate because the timing lined up so perfectly.

It was in that past legislative session that Governor Walls and the legislature agreed on having uh public safety resources sent out to everybody in the state of Minnesota.

And every city in Minnesota, every county got a big chunk of money or put something that they were never expecting.

And so St.

Paul got 13 some point some million dollars and the Ramsey County got six point some million dollars, and they decided to use a portion of those one-time monies to jumpstart this program.

So that in that sense it made it easier because they got these resources and then they were saying, what are we going to do with it?

And at that time, there was coalescence in our community about the mayor wanting to do this and the chief uh agreeing that this would be an important priority.

I wanted to work on this, and the sheriff wanted to work on this, and our board said, let's do it because we are increased we got increased violence and we need to do something, so let's use some of these resources.

And the the victim emergency fund, they allocated $800,000, but they said, well, let's make it last.

So let's do $200,000 per year.

And like I said, in that first year, we only use $50,000.

So we have some more money to maybe continue on with it.

But now we're starting that experience now of having to use it.

Um I think we'll prove dividends in our future out years.

Thank you for bringing or giving more context to that and also getting the ways in which um the states uh really help with it.

Um I think what you're naming as that state allocation was the the public safety aid that we also received um, I believe at least around $19 million for.

And I think going back to a point that was raised earlier, it would be powerful.

I think oftentimes we think believe that, you know, the state has to take the initiative around some of these innovative public safety solutions.

Um while we will love, and I'm pretty sure many of us are going to champion the bill to get additional resources to keep doing or to start work like this, um, we also could just do it ourselves, which I think was also in the presentation, and be able to at least show up with our St.

Paul partners or Ramsey County partners to the Capitol saying this is why you should look at this as a statewide model.

And you're you mentioned some of the suburban counties or sorry, suburban municipalities that participated in this too.

Um I think that would be powerful to say you have two of your largest cities who have implemented this, they're seeing ideally great outcomes along with some other smaller municipalities and to support our statewide electeds in their advocacy for making sure, you know, cities all across the state are seeing reductions in and homicides or almost homicides and also seeing higher clearance rates.

So I just want to say thank you for giving that additional context.

And those are all the questions and comments that I had.

Thank you.

Next up is Councilmember Rainfill.

Thank you.

I I too am grateful for everybody who's come over today to present and uh Representative Fraser, thank you for coming off off your busy schedule.

Uh I just have a real quick question for you, uh County Attorney Choi.

Uh back in 23, you had gotten some money from the state for uh juvenile offender housing.

And how does that program integrate with the with these shots fired shooting things?

Is there now that you're getting these kids help off-site, is that lowering the juveniles?

I notice your youth cases are pretty small.

Um I think they're separate things, but the connection though is that during this time period, remember I talked about where we were blaming each other, right?

Um that's an example of another, I think, solution that came forward.

We st we said we're gonna stop talking about Boys Totem Town, and we just need to get better outcomes.

We started listening to one another and what the judges were saying, and what they said was is that we needed to have some placement, more placement options instead of having to send kids to Utah or whatever it might be, and it's really more of the minimum.

Or back to Snelling Avenue.

Yeah, or just you know, what it's expensive to send them to treatment places all across the country.

Uh in fact, I know you're doing that in Hennepin County.

Um so we needed to find a figure out a way to build something out.

And so uh we still haven't gotten there yet.

They're still negotiating with the the vendors, uh, but they should be doing that sometime this fall, I believe.

And that and that's the county that's doing that.

But in terms of like that, so that I that's why it's not necessarily related uh to this type of work.

I again I I think it's just it's really this is more of an investigative prosecution strategy that goes to, and there's multifaceted parts of the solution.

And this one just goes to just simply solving more crime and making sure that the message is out there that if you pull triggers and try to kill somebody, uh you will get caught.

In fact, the research will tell you uh, and it's been consistent that the most important thing is to actually able to apprehend or catch people who commit crime.

If you if you're not good at that, um uh that's the that's the most important thing.

And so that that's why we decided in Ramsey County to really focus on that solve rate clearance rate after some really hard discussions.

And it's not about like your clearance rate is low, and so you're doing something bad.

That's like the wrong place to start.

Like someone's doing a bad job.

That's what gets people defensive and then us not working together.

It's actually let's collectively support one another and work together on trying to improve that, and maybe that could be the theory of change.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I think for me, I don't have any questions, but I was looking at the presentation, and I'll just read it out loud because I think it's important.

I talked about how St.

Paul was inspired by the Denver model and created its own St.

Paul model and brought their clearance rate from 37% in 2023 to 70.5 percent in 2024.

I know that you all talked about it.

I think at the end of the day, that is a big jump.

And I I just want to say that I appreciate the presentation that was given to this committee today because those metrics and those numbers are huge.

And I bet it took a lot of work from different partners in St.

Paul and Ramsey County.

And I don't think that we can just look at that today and say that we shouldn't try to learn some new strategies from the work that you all are doing.

What I'm taking from the presentation today is that you all have done some deep work with different partners from different levels of government, and you were able to address an issue that was impacting St.

Paul and Ramsey County together.

And I feel like what I'm getting from this presentation is that there is an opportunity to learn from folks across the river.

So I just want to say thank you for for taking some time here today.

Um I know that we'll always be doing some advocacy at the Capitol, but there are things that are under our jurisdiction here in the city, and I think the presentation you all were able to give us today gives us an opportunity to push for some change to address some of these clearance rates that we do have that we need to acknowledge are not the best and that do need to be improved in Minneapolis, and hopefully through this presentation we can actually make that happen.

So thank you all for being here.

It is greatly appreciated.

I don't see anybody else, and Vice Chair Wansi is always very appreciative that you're always taking initiative in committee to make sure that folks that come here help us learn new initiatives and ways that we can improve the city because ultimately we do want to make sure that this place is livable and safe for everyone.

Um with that, seeing no one else on queue, I appreciate you all for being here.

I'll ask the clerk to receive and file that report.

And our next item is a report related to care courts and access to behavioral health treatment in Minneapolis and Henman County.

This is a response to a staff direction passed at the beginning of the year led by Councilmember Rainbow.

And I'll invite Sarah from the legislative and policy research advisor with our policy and research division to get us started, and also give the mic to Councilmember Rainville if you would like to say something before we start.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that.

I just want to thank my colleagues for voting to move this forward.

It's uh a lot of information.

We have a lot to talk about with each other, but I think uh we see some paths forward.

So I want to really uh shout out our our uh research people for the great job they did.

So thank you.

Welcome, Sarah.

Uh thank you, Chair Chavez, Councilmember.

My name is Sarah Renner.

Uh I am with the legislative policy and research team.

Um I just drop my pen.

Um and I'm speaking about care courts and access to behavioral health.

Uh the legislative background, as mentioned.

Uh last year in January, uh, the city council asked policy and research to conduct a landscape analysis of state and municipal action to boost treatment for mental health and substance use disorder, the two together, otherwise known as behavioral health treatment.

Uh they also asked to assess the degree to which behavioral health treatment is available in Minneapolis, um, particularly for the unhoused, um, and to identify potential options to improve access to treatment and care.

Um my ref my presentation reflects this structure.

And as always, there are uh a lot of uh additional specifics and city examples in the report.

The big picture.

It remains more difficult for all of us to get mental health care than to get physical health care.

In 2020, NAMI reported that well over 200,000 Minnesota adults who required mental health care did not receive it.

It takes 11 years on average for people with mental health symptoms to receive treatment.

The unhoused suffer disport disproportionately from both mental illness and substance use disorder.

In fact, this last July, among 2,300 unhoused persons in Hennepin County, 69% reported a mental health diagnosis, 36% reported in alcohol or drug use disorder.

In keeping with the council's request, the report is focused on people with serious mental illness, cooccurring substance use disorders, as well as compounding conditions such as brain injury.

People in these categories have serious functional impairments.

They have conditions such as major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder.

Their conditions require lifelong rehabilitative services.

In Minnesota, about one in five unhoused persons has a serious mental illness.

Around 20% of those admitted to Hennepin County jail on any given day have both serious mental illness and a co-occurring substance use disorder.

People with cooccurring disorders have much better outcomes when the disorders are addressed simultaneously through what they call integrated treatment.

However, that is rare, including in Hennepin County.

Only 17% of adults with this co-occurring disorders receive treatments for both conditions.

BIPOC populations are less likely to receive mental health care in general.

Barriers include costs, stigma, and difficulty of finding providers that can understand their background and experiences.

Certified peer recovery specialists are an important way that municipalities, including Hennepin County, are addressing the lack of diversity among behavioral health professionals.

So there is an urgency to do what the city can to meet the needs of people with behavioral health illnesses, given the range of existing and potential funding cuts, particularly for the unhoused.

The order also instructs the U.S.

Attorney General to seek in appropriate cases the reversal of state or federal judicial precedent in order to permit more involuntary commitments, specifically for persons who are on the streets and cannot care for themselves.

At the same time, the White House budget proposes massive cuts to both behavioral health and homelessness services.

Medicaid cuts and work and work requirements starting in January 27 will impact the ability of Minneapolis residents to secure behavioral health care, including medication for opioid use disorder.

In August, Minnesota, the state of Minnesota terminated the housing stability stabilization services due to fraud, cutting off Medicaid funding that Hennepin County was using to help people with behavioral health conditions stay housed.

In much more positive news, this July, Hennepin County won a state grant to institute a voluntary engagement pilot for people with serious mental illness.

The grant stems from revisions to our civil commitment law to include engagement services.

The grant will enable the county to send certified peer specialists or practitioners to assertively try and engage people with serious mental illness who are service resistant for up to 90 days.

The pilot rests on evidence confirmed in research for this report that through persistence, compassion, and relationship building, more people voluntarily agree to pursue treatment.

Adopted in 2022, California's CARE Act has been implemented by all counties in the state for about one and a half years.

The CARE Act is framed as California's response to the inadequate provision of mental health services following de-institutionalization in the 1960s and resulting from the resulting intertwined crisis of behavioral health and hopeless and homelessness.

The act empowers civil court judges to order adults who have committed no crime into monitored care plans that include housing, social services, and treatment for addiction and service and serious mental illness.

Anyone, including first responders, families, providers, can petition someone for care courts, and then to fund these services that the care courts provide.

Voters narrowly passed the measure, and billions have been distributed to counties to fund both treatment and supportive long-term housing, specifically tailored to the seriously mentally ill.

During this time, participants can refuse care.

There is no there's no enforcement.

Opponents, including the ACLU and disability community, argue that care courts are a pipeline to conservatorship in which a person's rights are taken away.

They point out that if people fail after a year in care courts, it's easier for the courts to assign them to conservatorship, which is roughly akin to Minnesota's civil commitment.

Because BIPOC communities are disproportionately unhoused, critics point out that they are most they are most likely under care courts to end up in conservatorships.

After the first 1.5 years, the data does not show that care courts have led to increases in conservatorship.

It is likely too early to tell.

Thus far, only 550 people are receiving services through care courts.

A couple of counties noted that they found through control trials that it takes twice the time and effort, including months of engagement and multiple staff to motivate unhoused persons to appear in court.

Some evidence suggests that the counties who seem to be enrolling and graduating more people, such as San Diego, have invested more in skilled outreach staff who are trained to work persistently with the most service resistant.

And then turning to access to behavioral health treatment here in Hennepin and Minneapolis.

Per Minnesota statute, Hennepin County has executive responsibility for the mental health continuum of care.

In Hennepin, about 75% of people with serious mental illness are served by community providers.

The county's behavioral health division oversees and coordinates this dispersed continuum of care meeting with community providers once per month.

And many people think of mental health services in terms of medication, hospitalization, and therapy, but it's actually in reality more complex.

The services are on a continuum that range in intensity.

And in Hennepin County, the more severe the mental illness, the greater the gaps in service.

Hennepin coordinated services include, for example, outreach, such as health care for the homeless, as well as clinics such as behavioral health care, the behavioral health care center at 1800 Chicago, as well as intensive residential treatments, these are known as ERTS, and rehabilitative services such as employment and housing, which is as well as services for justice involved residents.

This is because the same people are generally signed up on multiple waiting lists as well.

So, in essence, the data on the demand and the supply of behavioral health services appears in in Hennepin County to be to be quite limited.

From my research into other places, it appears that New York City and California counties have somewhat of a better are somewhat better able to identify shortfalls.

The New York City City Council has zeroed in on housing for the mentally ill as well as assertive community treatment known as ACT.

Counties in California have identified the need for long-term supportive housing tailored to the seriously mentally ill.

The county identified a shortage of treatment that simultaneously addresses mental illness and substance use disorder.

And as I mentioned, evidence shows this type of integrated treatment is most effective for those with the co-occurring disorders.

It was also explained that unhoused persons who want who want it can rapidly receive substance use disorder treatment.

However, the same is not necessarily true for mental health treatment.

That takes longer, particularly when people are undiagnosed, as the diagnosis process can be quite quite lengthy and difficult when you're unhoused.

The county's behavioral health division indicated that more can be done to enable unhoused persons in Minneapolis to access timely and quality behavioral health services and connect them with housing services.

They expressed their openness to working with the city to this end.

Minneapolis's BCR, operated by Canopy Roots, responds 24-7 to 911 incidents where a mental health component is contributing to a crisis with no safety indications.

The Minneapolis Fire Department oversees and manages the city's contract with canopy roots.

Interviewed providers expressed appreciation for the speed and the compassion with which BCR responds to crises.

To overcome service resistance, BCR responders honor people's choices and seek to build trust, and this is very much in line with the SAMHSA best practice guidelines.

BCR explained that they interact with people who are unhoused on a consistent basis in line with the fire department's new data reporting requirements.

I understand this data on the number of unhoused will be made available.

The fire department canopy routes have created a clearance form to collect BCR data and send it directly to the city's computer-aided dispatch.

This process would facilitate the creation of a city public dashboard.

Otherwise they refer people to services.

Most common are as reported by them are Hennepin's COP Mobile CRISET team, MPD embedded social workers, the county's Project Child and Family Response.

In an interview for this report, BCR explained that shelter beds were not available at certain times for certain demographics.

They also explained that beds for undiagnosed, unhoused persons experiencing a mental health crisis were not always available when they needed it.

Hennepin County behavioral health subsequently explained that 1800 Chicago does have such beds.

That is unlike COPE or EMS or the cities I looked at, the other mobile crisis teams that I looked at in other cities.

After handling a call, BCR responders complete a questionnaire with no names attached.

When responders encounter repeat persons, they may not know them, but they may know them, but they don't necessarily have, they don't have access to the write-ups from past encounters.

The Minneapolis, sorry, the Minnesota Justice Research Center is currently conducting an evaluation of canopy roots.

That's expected to be released shortly.

SAMHSA's best practice guidelines for mobile crisis teams emphasizes the importance of ensuring the continuity of care following a mental health crisis, including follow-up appointments.

SAMHSA describes mobile crisis teams as a key part of a mental health crisis continuum of care.

And as such, they they advise that teams work with other entities, including counties to ensure the right services are available at the right time.

The report highlights examples of Portland and Albuquerque.

These cities employ data on the availability of services from their mobile crisis teams to continuously improve their behavioral health and homelessness services.

Hennepin County is now seeking to strategically position and align services delivered by COPE, alternative response teams such as BCR and embedded social workers.

In Hennepin County, whether a person experiencing a mental health crisis gets into a gets to a hospital or not, that can be an important factor in whether they ultimately receive care and treatment.

If a health or peace officer deems a person who appears to have a mental illness to be an immediate danger to themselves or others, Minnesota Minnesota statute allows but does not mandate health or peace officers to involuntarily transport the person to a hospital.

This is called a mental health transport hold.

In interviews for this report, concern was expressed by multiple parties that a lack of that there is a lack of clarity around transport about around the process of transport holds.

BCR, Healthcare for the Homeless, and NAMI, Minnesota expressed concern that transport holds are not happening when they should.

However, the statute allows for the MPD to make an independent assessment of whether or not to enforce a transport hold, including when that hold is written by a mental health professional.

Further compounding this is that there is a lack of data on the number of transport holds issued and the number enforced.

Without that data, it kind of complicates any effort to evaluate this issue.

As elaborated in the report, transport holds are precarious and trustbreaking for patients and as well as time consuming for law enforcement.

There are alternatives to law enforcement transportation.

In Amsterdam, they transitioned from the police to psychiatric ambulances.

And in doing so, they found that there was actually less coercive, there were actually less coercive measures needed in transport in transportation.

The state of Colorado has recently established secure transportation services specifically for people in behavioral health crises.

In LA and San Diego, mobile crisis teams conduct involuntary transportation.

In Minnesota, like 43 other states, it is legal for either a health or a peace officer to conduct involuntary transportation.

In Hennepin, there are multiple steps between being involuntarily transported to the hospital and potentially set in potentially civil commitment.

Once a person is transported to the hospital, they are assessed by a select by select medical professionals who determine if a 72-hour hold is needed.

If that's the case, the medical professional professionals evaluate the whether that person meets the threshold for civil commitment.

In Minnesota, this means the person is mentally ill or chemically dependent and is likely to cause substantial bodily harm to themselves or others, or has demonstrated a failure or inability to provide themselves with necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical care.

If the hospital recommends petitioning for civil commitment, a medical examiner's statement must be subsequently must subsequent subsequently be issued that supports commitment.

If that's the case, then at that point, Hennepin County conducts a pre-peritions assignment assessment, sorry.

This includes interviewing people and considering the person's entire file.

If the petition is then recommended, the case is sent to the attorney general at a county attorney who also makes a judgment about whether or not to petition for civil commitment.

It's only at this point that it goes to courts and the courts, among other things, determine whether all less restrictive alternatives to treatment were already pursued.

And that's uh the civil commitment process.

Finally, options for consideration.

Um the findings from this report suggest the city has at least three opportunities.

Um the city has an opportunity to engage more initially service resistant clients in voluntary engagement program.

Uh and that's through specifically through Henneban County's new voluntary engagement pilot.

Um and this would be this would entail connecting BCR's front-end services to the county's 90-day voluntary engagement program.

And through that, more people who are initially resistant may agree to pursue care and treatment voluntarily.

Uh the city also has the opportunity to better integrate the crisis response continuum of care, including to improve behavioral health services for underserved populations with better communication between BCR and the county and more connected data systems.

Um surface gaps and barriers affecting different populations can be identified and ameliorated.

Better information sharing can also facilitate more proactive follow-up to mental health crises.

In addition, the public data transparency around mobile chlorisis teams, as highlighted by examples in this report, contribute to public accountability and trust.

And finally, the county behavioral health uh division has offered to work with the city to explore ways to improve behavioral health services for unhoused persons while also working to connect them with housing.

Um the county indicated more could be done in this regard.

And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

I'll see if anybody is on queue for any comments or questions.

Council President Payton.

Thank you, Chair Chavez, and thank you for this really thorough report.

I actually um had lots of early conversations with my colleague and was very hesitant to aggressively pursue this because I had to have real concerns about um consent when it comes to access to care.

Uh but I I feel like what this report is really outlining is a number of gaps in our continuum of care that we could fill before we even get into a conversation about um removing people from the streets against their will.

I think and and this even highlights this conversation about service resistance when people are not even offered, they're not aware of the services that are available, and even those offers are sometimes not completely illuminating to what is entailed in those services.

And so I think that there's just this is just really revealing the amount of work that's ahead of us when it comes to deeper coordination and integration with with the county when it comes to some of these services and how we could be a better partner.

So I'm just really grateful that you've kind of outlined this, I think pretty clear roadmap for us.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rainbow.

Again, just a follow-up from my earlier comments.

Thank you so much for those very, very thorough research.

This is fabulous.

Uh it's a little daunting in that we do have a lot of work ahead of us.

It just shows the gaps and what needs to be done.

Uh and I look forward, you had said that uh the canopy roots is going to be uh evaluated.

There's a report how soon will that happen by the Justice Center?

Yeah, my conversation with them was uh they they mentioned that and it would come out any day uh or any week.

I've been refreshing the page and it hasn't come out quite yet, but uh I think it's anticipated.

Okay, and I'm just looking at my notes.

I have one last question.

Let's see if I can find it.

I I choke and scratch a lot here, so I can't even read my own.

Oh.

Uh there was a gap uh to go back to the pageable California care courts.

Uh there were 2,042 career court petitions, uh, but only about 550 are receiving services.

So that's a pretty big gap.

What what happens when they're between being petitioned and actually uh receiving the services?

Uh really large number were not eligible.

The eligibility for care courts is quite uh narrow, actually.

It's it's for people who are uh schizophrenic or on the schizo-effective disorder uh spectrum.

Um then some limited uh additional persons.

Um and it's also the only people that are eligible are have to be not involved in any kind of treatment.

Uh so it turns out that there was a lot of expectation that from families uh that they would be able to use care courts to um to basically as a as a uh the as a as a way to prod people, their loved ones into into treatment, and it turned out that that's um that they weren't eligible.

And it turned out that that's um that they weren't eligible.

So there is some disappointment in in California over that.

So um there's been a lot of rejections of petitions.

But uh but again, it's also somebody could be petitioned and then not appear in court.

And that was some of the conversations I had in the counties were that uh getting that person to appear in court, it was just sort of an intimidating um prospect for uh someone who's um you know uh usually has imp stress has implications if you have mental if you have a serious mental illness.

So there were a lot of people who who uh especially the unhoused who may have been petitioned uh by someone, but they they haven't uh signed up, they haven't gotten into the process because they haven't yet appeared.

You have to appear you have to appear in court and show up for a number of appointments.

So that's where that that assertive outreach uh really comes in.

Sure.

And then in your conversation with California, this is my last question.

Uh do you think they're gonna adjust that so perhaps where it could be more people that will be eligible for receiving services that won't be such a narrow uh scope?

Yeah, there's legislation actually they're considering now to uh widen that to bipol people with bipolar disorder as well.

Um and they're also considering um sort of defining further uh that if somebody is already receiving treatment but it's not a treatment that meets a certain standard, they also could be uh care court participants.

So they basically are expanding the eligibility.

Uh but that's for the California legislature to decide.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I don't see anybody on the queue.

Thank you for the presentation.

I I personally don't support the California care court model.

Uh but I did see in the presentation when it came for options for considerations that did talk about exploring ways to improve behavioral health services for unhoused persons while also working to connect them with housing.

And I think that fits right into like a housing first approach where you help get someone the housing first approach and adjust mental health uh addiction, housing services, those employment opportunities to help have have the ability for someone to stay in safe and stable homes.

But I appreciate the presentation.

I just want the public to at least know, like on my end, I personally don't support this method because I think it does uh create a lot of unintended consequences for unhoused neighbors, and I don't think it's the approach to address the issues they're facing that community.

And I at least want to make sure that I made some comments here today because I personally don't agree with this approach, but I do appreciate and I did vote in favor of this legislative directive because I think it's important for the public to at least have this information before them along with colleagues here.

So thank you.

Uh I don't see anybody else on queue.

So you know for the discussion, I'll ask the clerk to file that report.

Our next and final item is the Office of Community Safety's quarterly update.

I'll now invite staff to give that presentation and I'll ask the clerks how long do we have uh Mr.

Chair, we extended captioning, so we have that until five.

Thank you.

We won't we we need to but I appreciate that.

Thanks, Michael.

Welcome, Commissioner Barnett.

What's our cutoff time?

Oh, gotcha.

Well, good afternoon, Chair, uh Council members, um Todd Barnett, the Commissioner of Community Safety for the City of Minneapolis uh today.

We're giving our uh uh myself and other uh departments under OCS is giving uh the quarterly update um as you know we're supposed to give it uh last month, but some technical difficulties, so we're following up today.

Uh just a reminder to the public, the Office of Community Safety uh composed of um five departments under it, uh 911, emergency management, fire, neighborhood safety, and police, of course.

Our um mission is to provide coordinated comprehensive and equitable safety services to all residents and visitors, and as you've heard many times, the um vision as a city where all people feel safe, social disparities are eliminated, and all residents can access opportunities and resources.

Social disparities are eliminated, and all residents can access opportunities and resources.

For quarter three, some highlights that I'll share with you.

One was Will Christensen coming over to be the design implementation director.

That's the position that was previously held by Director Harrington, who moved uh to the Department of Neighborhood Safety.

We'll uh Kristen, of course, will lead the work for the Safe and Thriving Community Report, and also uh following up with the NYU policing project.

We have Scott uh Westerman, who Scott is our director of communications who's coming over uh with uh deep experience and knowledge and public access um media uh strategy and other things.

And then uh believe you already knew that Andy Schubman is with us as the chief of staff, and uh you know his main focus is working within all of the city departments and helping us coordinate uh services uh and also working with external partners.

As far as um the NYU policing project, they've finished uh the first phase of their work, uh and we will and they uh will continue to guide us on reform work and best practices moving forward.

Do you know the Safe and Thriving Communities Work Group just had their second meeting uh this week, I think last night, uh, and that um work will continue as we move forward.

And then uh OCS, uh, OPS, uh cities comms.

Uh we're really leaning in into the uh again the MPD's recruitment campaign and attracting a diverse uh workforce.

And then lastly on this slide, uh OPS story page went live.

That's a new way for us to share the important work that's happening in our departments and also to highlight the people behind the work.

Looking ahead to quarter four, um again, uh we look forward to working closely with our partners at NYU and making sure the insight that we're gathering from them uh that we're moving in a direction that makes sense uh and it's practical uh steps to take for our uh ecosystem.

We continue, like I said, we had the second meeting of our Safe and Thriving Communities Work Group, uh getting them up to speed, onboarding them uh as they inform us as we move forward on our community safety ecosystem.

By the end of the year, we should have a report from our independent monitor, Alifa.

Um you know that work uh is related to the settlement agreement with MDHR.

And um, oops, one thing I did uh should have mentioned at the end of this slide is that we continue to increase our awareness for uh public service announcements and making proactive communication.

I think you saw that uh for the 4th of July when all five of our departments alongside um State Patrol, Park Police, and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office did a public service announcement in which um Chief Tiner talked about safety around fireworks, um, state patrol talked about DUI enforcement.

Uh we had the park police talk about park closures and road closures, and our sheriff uh talked a lot about remaining safe during the 4th of July weekend.

And Chief O'Hare, of course, talked about the protocols that were in place for the 4th of July in crime prevention.

And then also uh in the third quarter, Director Sayre from Emergency Management appeared on KSTP to talk about the plans related safety plans related to kids going back to school.

Um so that's the end of my part of the presentation.

I'll have director uh Christensen come up and talk about the work that he's doing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Good afternoon.

My name is Will Christensen.

I'm the director of design and implementation for the Office of Community Safety.

And I want to provide a brief update on our work so far to advance the Safe and Thriving Communities Report and the NYU policing project asset and gaps analysis.

So far this year, we've completed 22 actions, two action items that we expect to complete several more this year in the Safe and Thriving Communities Report.

Excuse me.

This is building on a foundation of work that has already been completed.

We'll be prioritizing recommendations going forward.

Thank you.

This work requires collaboration across the city.

And I'd like to highlight a couple of the recommendations that have been implemented this year and recognize several key partners.

We've embedded mental health clinicians in the emergency communications center.

You'll hear more about that in the coming slides.

Key partners in that effort were 911, of course, as well as performance management and innovation.

We built uh contract monitoring competencies for program staff led by the county attorney's office with input from many different departments.

And we've identified all community-based staff who engage in community relationship building.

So we're thinking of community safety ambassadors, community liaisons, community navigators, community health workers.

There are more than eight departments who participated in this with staff who spend more than 50% of their time in community.

I'll pause here if there are any questions.

Perfect.

Then I'd like to hand this rest of the presentation for our team over to Christina Dowling, Senior Project Manager in OCS.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez and Council members.

I'm Christina Dowling, the senior project manager in the Office of Community Safety.

To continue the quarter three design and implementation update looking at the Lake Street Safety Center, which opened on November 4th.

We've held a total of 419 visitors.

I know the slide says 382.

That was at the time that we originally had uh published this slide deck.

In May of 2025, we did add a new resource to the center, which is for community to file a non-emergency police report.

Since we've launched this, we've had a total of seven people come to the center to file a non-emergency police report.

And we continue to amplify this service on our webpage, flyers, brochures, events, and have communicated this with the social service providers to update this information with our clients.

And looking at this next chart, I want to highlight two areas on here.

And the gray area marked other.

This is for meetings with providers.

So people have visited the center to meet with crime prevention specialists, as well as GMCC, as well as our Lake Street Safety Ambassador.

And then the other section I want to highlight is blue, which is titled Outside City Services.

This is when people visit the center asking questions about what does the center do, what services and resources are available, and who office is out of the space.

One thing I do want to mention is that since the June 2025 meeting update, we've modified the hours of the center.

Effective August 18th, we've changed the center hours from 11 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

Tuesdays and Thursdays to 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

We've always said that we would make changes to the center based upon data.

And one of the data points that we looked at was utilization utilization of the space from 5 p.m.

to 7 p.m.

And realize that not many people were visiting the center.

And actually, in looking at the data on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m.

to 4 p.m., 85% of the visitors came in during that time.

Moving on to the next slide.

We continue to track utilization of the center both based upon providers in the space and conference room usage.

So since the last update in June, there's been an increase in the large conference room usage, and this is due to the safety ambassadors coming online in May of 2025.

They utilize the large conference room twice daily for their check-ins.

And since safety ambassadors are full-time in the space, we do not have them sign in like other providers, which are the safety center agents who are there full-time Monday through Friday.

Moving on to the partner survey section, we did a survey of the providers in the space, which ran from May 2025 to June 9th, 2025.

Some highlights from that survey include that the responders' experience at Lake Street Safety Center has been positive.

They found opportunities to collaborate with other staff in the center, and they find that this space is close to the community that they serve.

And finally, in looking at the check-ins, there's been an increase with the BCR team as their teams and responders and supervisors have been in the space more.

Finally, looking at quarter four highlights.

We held the Lake Street Safety Center open house in June, followed by a number, another one, excuse me, on September 24th.

These events help raise awareness about the center and highlight the wide range of services and resources we offer to the community.

The photo of the left was taken of the summary event.

At the September Open House, we welcomed nearly 60 visitors.

And thanks to the generosity of the Minneapolis Police Department and GMCC, we were able to provide backpacks to attendees who also had a chance to enter a raffle to win a bike.

During the event, we invited visitors to complete a survey, and initial results indicate that most attendees were previously unaware of the center.

This valuable feedback will help guide us as we explore new ways to increase community awareness moving forward.

And as we continue to increase collaboration with the city and county social service convening providers, we just held our quarter three, actually yesterday from 9 a.m.

to 11 a.m.

We had nearly 65 providers in attendance, and we also asked them to complete a survey.

I recognize that this just happened yesterday, so we are still going through the survey results and we'll be providing an update during the quarter four presentation.

And then finally, we've had two Safe and Thriving Communities Work Group Meetings, and we'll continue to meet monthly with our next one on October 21st, running from 4:30 p.m.

to 6 30 p.m.

I will now turn it over to Bethlehem Yahala work with the Office of Performance Management and Innovation.

Thank you and welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Chavez and Council members.

My name is Bethlehemmy Hollow Work, and I am a program manager with Performance Management and Innovation.

At the last PHS committee meeting, we shared updates on community safety pilots, and today's update will focus on key progress and upcoming milestones.

To support the design and planning of the traffic control response pilot, representatives from Minneapolis Traffic Control, MECC, and PMI traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina in July to conduct a two-day site visit with the Charlotte Meckleberg Police Department to learn more about their civilian crash investigator program.

The visit provided an in-depth look at their operations, training, and implementation of the program.

Overall, the program has improved response times, reduced strain on law enforcement resources, and maintained high quality crash reporting through review process that ensures reports are accurate and compliant with state standards.

Police officers and 911 dispatchers strongly support the program, noting that CCIs free officers to focus on higher priority calls and law enforcement specific tasks.

For example, even in cases when police call response is needed, CCIs handle reporting for non-injury crashes while police officers step in only for enforcement needs, which then reduces overall on-scene time.

CCIs average a 30-minute response time and have filed approximately 3,000 crash reports from January to July of this year, covering roughly 38% of eligible crashes.

Looking ahead, the work group plans to review data, program goals, resource needs, and legal guidance to determine which elements of the CCI model will help inform our pilot design.

A few of the key considerations include purchasing pickup trucks, as you can see here on the slide, which will help traffic control agents transport traffic control materials and clear hazards.

The use of electric electric electric vehicles also supports climate and vision zero goals.

As well as establishing clear dispatch protocols to ensure officers, dispatchers, and traffic control agents understand roles and responsibilities.

A key takeaway from Charlotte's 911 leadership was that well-defined protocols help dispatchers know when and where to deploy CCIs, improving both response time and resource allocation.

This was also a valuable learning opportunity for our own MECC assistant director to hear firsthand.

Lastly, developing comprehensive training for traffic control agents in partnership with MPD focused on legally allowable duties and reporting requirements.

While the CMPD CCI program has only been operational since October of 2024, its model has demonstrated success and they are considering expanding the program to meet the capacity and resource needs expressed by CMPD staff.

So as we continue to move through the implementation phase of the embedded social worker pilot, the social worker position was offered and accepted in July.

A few new updates to the slides since the originally scheduled OCS quarterly presentation to this committee are that the social worker completed training at both Hennepin County and MECC in early September and took her first call on September 26th.

Looking ahead, we are outlining a transition plan as MECC will lead operations in collaboration with the county and provide future updates on the pilot.

PMI will continue to support continuous improvement efforts as needed.

This transition reflects PMI's role as internal consultants, ensuring that after implementation is complete, ownership shifts to the responsible department to ensure consuming continuity, consistency, and long-term success.

And that completes our portion of the presentation.

Thank you so much.

Next, uh we have the MAPS police department, and then we'll ask questions from the first two presenters.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Yeah, good afternoon, Chair Chavez, Vice Chair Wandsley, Council members.

I'm Deputy Chief John Kingsbury.

I oversee the Patrol Bureau.

Quarter three highlights, as you can see, our violent crime and overall crime continue to trend down year over year.

Key metrics include homicide, shooting victims, and robberies all being down, and then property crimes, specifically auto thefts and burglaries are down as well.

One of the things that's been a focus of improvement for MPD has been the response time to priority one calls.

Prior our response time for us is defined as the time the call enters Q and is impending, and then first officer arrival.

So as you can see on the one side, it breaks it down by precinct, and then year over year response times that you should note our median response times.

And as you can see, they trend up since 2019, peaked in 2024, and then have slowly started to go down a little bit.

So we are seeing a little bit of improvement, but it still continues to be a focus for us.

Quarter three highlights, the first precinct has opened up over on 12th Street.

Recruitment continues to improve.

We currently have 54 CSOs with 17 more starting on Monday.

We also graduated 29 from the academy last Thursday, and another 21 recruits begin on Monday.

We've had a busy uh summer for special events, and we've made it through without any significant negative events.

Looking ahead, uh, one of the things we plan to implement is a permanent watch commander.

The watch commander typically over the years has been rotated among uh police officer lieutenants at that rank.

And what that job is as being the point of contact and the person who overall watches the city during non-business hours, nights, weekends, and holidays.

We hope that moving people or lieutenants into that permanent position will create some stability and consistency in that role because it is very important for the city.

Next, we have moved into part three of use of force training, and we will complete that this fall.

That allows us to update our policy once that is completed.

Our early intervention system and wellness training begins this fall as part of in-service as well, which will focus on EIS, the new EIS policy, as well as uh wellness concerns and wellness uh education for officers.

And then the last thing is leadership training for all supervisors that's begun this fall, and that's every sergeant and lieutenant and above in the police department will receive that training.

The next few slides are in response to some questions from some of the council members about MPD overtime.

Some of the background since 2020 and the downfall or the number of officers has declined on MPD.

Our reliance on overtime has definitely increased.

We still generally have the same call load respond to and the same investigation numbers and the same special events to support, and we're doing it with far fewer numbers.

So that's why our overtime overall has gone up.

Besides being short staffed, one of the other areas that officers are pulled from the streets, and this is an example of that it's not just all being short staffed, uh, is that our training is much more.

So in 2025, we've had eight to ten additional days of training that we haven't had in the past that pulls officers from their primary duty assignment and requires us to fill that with overtime.

These bottom three bullet points are ways that we've used overtime to fill shifts.

One is the critical staffing overtime, which is voluntary when a shift is identified as being vacant, we fill it can fill it that way.

Also, every sworn member, officer, sergeant, and lieutenant is required to work one extra day during a 28-day schedule.

And then mandatory overtime also can occur, that being such as a shift holdover call load necessitates additional officers remaining on duty.

The overtime distribution process can vary a little bit depending on the type of overtime we're talking about.

There are two components to that voluntary and mandatory overtime.

Voluntary, just that the officer chooses to do it.

Mandatory overtime is the officer is ordered to do it.

And then secondly, or the second component is what type of overtime it is.

Is it general overtime that any officer can fill, or is it more specialized, such as a canine officer to bomb tech that needs to fill that role?

Some of the bullet points below are used as an example of how overtime is distributed among the precincts when a shift is deemed below minimums.

So this is voluntary and general overtime.

It fits into those two categories.

What happens when the shift is posted is the supervisor will identify vacant shifts on that schedule, and a vacant shift needing filling is can be found by looking at the minimum staffing required and then the actual number of officers working.

So that gets us to where the number of officer extra officers that will be called in or asked to come in to get us up to minimums comes from.

At the precinct level, it's first offered to the officers and the supervisors on that shift, then in the precinct, and then after five days, it opens up citywide to any officer, sergeant through lieutenant that might want to come in and fill that shift.

A couple things to note is that when the schedules are done, shift supervisors are responsible for evening out the schedule, meaning there should not be a day with five or six open shifts and a day where we are surplus officers.

They should keep it as evenly distributed as possible.

Top overtime areas is you is at the patrol level and in the precincts.

That's no surprise, that's where the most identifiable open shifts come from, as well as that's where we have the most officers that could earn overtime.

And one other thing to note too since 2022, we have increased uh programs such as the late night safety plans in Dinky Town, downtown, uptown, as well as the curfew task force that um accumulate overtime to go out and perform those extra jobs.

The overtime approval process.

This is just the administrative component.

Note that most overtime needs to be pre-approved by a supervisor.

And after an officer works at overtime, they enter it into the timekeeping system that needs to be done generally by the end of the shift.

Once that's submitted, it goes to the supervisor for review, which includes looking at the proper coding, proper work hours, et cetera, that have been entered in for overtime, and then that is approved.

So that highlights the importance of supervisors looking at the overtime and holding people accountable for being inaccurate.

Additional accountability measures include current policy, which prohibits working more than 160 hours in a 14-day pay period.

Also, in that in that we require eight consecutive hours off in every 24-hour work period, as well as one full day off every seven-day period for officers.

Note the quarterly audits are currently being done.

Right now, that's out of the internal affairs unit, but it will be shifted to the implementation unit where they look at everything from hours worked, uh, overtime, rest periods, etc., to make sure that officers are maintaining or remaining within policy.

These are just the policies that reference overtime and accountability.

So you can go and look at those should you like.

The main policy is 3-701, that's our overtime policy.

But the other policies, although not directly referencing overtime, they do impact it by requiring certain job or certain duties of supervisors as well as the officers.

And then the last slide.

I know I flew through there fairly quickly, so that completes the presentation.

Thank you.

So colleagues will take questions on the first presentation to want to get on queue.

Council President Payton.

Think it's your Chavez.

Yeah, I was wondering if that updated uh payroll system is gonna help you have more accuracy when it comes to tracking not just overtime, but also buyback and off-duty chefs.

Chair, vice chair, council president.

Yes, it will.

Uh it is designated to improve everything from off-duty buyback hours and all have it in one place, because that's been the biggest problem with our current system is not all the data is in one place and um calculated the same way.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Wancy.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, well, I'll already have you up here.

I won't go in the order.

But going to slide 16 um regarding just Q4 or sorry, Q3 highlights.

Um it a follow-up status around the domestic violence work group highlight project.

Um from my understanding, their presentation, uh, they highlighted that that pilot would come to a close last month.

So what is the status of that?

Uh my understanding with that uh, Vice Chair, is that it started mid-July and would go for three months.

I don't know if it's completely closed yet.

I know that they're looking potentially at expanding it to another precinct to get more information.

Okay, that I think will be uh follow-up, uh staff follow-up because it would be good to get clarity.

And also, I don't think it's reflected in MPD's budget, uh, assuming who would be funding the expansion or its continuation.

Do you have a sense?

Uh Chair Vice Chair, I don't have an answer for that.

Uh I don't know what the required funding would be for it because we are using a lot of it, a lot of current resources and just changing processes.

Okay.

Um so follow-up question around what's the status of it in terms of has it expired?

Is it still ongoing?

And then uh any funding implications related to it being expanded.

And then uh for also over time, do you have a year to date just cost of what we've uh expended so far on the CSOT?

Oh, see, Vicky.

No.

Chair Chavez, Vice Chair Wansley, Vicky Stone, Vicki Trozwick, MPD Finance Director.

Um, the current CSOT through August is 11.3 million.

Uh 11.3 million?

Correct.

Okay.

And this is still tied to the LOA that was passed under the contract that's set to expire in December, correct?

Through the chair, vice chair, that's correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh that's the question that I had for MPD.

Uh my other question is related to actually OCS specifically.

All right.

Is that Nesting?

Let me go back to the slide here.

Who had slide 10?

Um, I believe that was OC still under OCS.

Yep.

Um, wanted to get uh understanding on slide 10, of course, the safe and thriving communities work group meetings.

Happy to hear that those are ongoing.

I want to understand what is the status of their compensation.

I know in the mayor's 2026 budget, it was proposed for elimination.

So one to know if that compensation had gone out for them as they've started this year.

Chair Chavez, Vice Chair Wansley.

Uh currently, since it's in this year's budget, I believe that is for this year it's good.

And I think even under the mayor's considered budget, it is still within OCS's operations.

I'd have to double check.

Um, but I believe that it's still the case because we knew we wouldn't we needed to keep that.

So you're saying you uh you all are looking at absorbing it because I believe that budget allocation was made originally towards the clerks just around ABC appointments, or was it to be to OCS?

I think that was at least um I'd have to look back at the last budget, but I think that was a potentially a council amendment during the amendment process last year.

So I think it was to our office.

And you're saying right now that it's still being pro or like some way absorbed for 2026 for that compensation to be ongoing.

Uh Vice Chair, I believe that is the case, but I'd be happy to follow up if we'd like to include that.

This is the staff memo.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Those are the questions I had.

Thank you.

Let me check who else is on queue, Councilmember Rainbow.

Thank you.

Just a real quick comment uh to the police department.

Those major events that happened this summer without Isman is just fabulous.

I mean that's what we need to get the city re-energized again.

And everybody did a great job for the 911 operators on Dalm.

But I know that's a very tiring time of the year for police officers.

It's hot.

Their families tug on them to enjoy the summer with them, especially over the 4th of July.

And I just want to send my appreciation for a violence-free uh event schedule.

Thank you.

Councilmember Pomasano.

Thank you.

Did you have a slide where you had um numbers of shooting victims?

Earlier.

I believe they were non-fatal shooting victims.

Um it says shooting victims, do these mean nonfatal shooting victims?

Uh Chair Child as Vice Chair Council.

Yes, it does.

Um it says that they're down, um, does that also include all of those injured at anunciation?

We know that there were 21 nonfatal injuries in that incident.

Uh Chair, Vice Chair, Council members.

This PowerPoint was put together uh in anticipation of this being done a month ago.

So I think those numbers are different.

What I have here.

Um year to date, 256 fewer victims.

I see.

Um I I think this sort of relates back as we just kind of try to think holistically about these things to the presentation we had earlier about non-fatal shooting investigations.

Um incident doesn't really talk about the number of people, and we talk about some of these things in different ways.

Um addition to what you just said that this doesn't include enunciation data.

Can you tell us broadly speaking why shootings are reported that way?

It just feels like the numbers will not reflect the true numbers of injuries in our city due to gun violence.

Chair, vice chair counsel.

I don't I guess I'm not really following the question on on why they're on why the shooting victims are numbers are reported this way as a total or I guess I'm just asking, is this um is this just the way we've always done it that we um that we don't talk about the true numbers of injuries, um, but we talk about them in in incidents in the way that we kind of group and categorize incidents.

I guess I'm still not understanding this this is the way we've traditionally, especially over the last few years, um, talked about these numbers to compare them year over year with the number of victims.

And I think that's maybe I I know I'm having difficulty um clarifying my question, and I think it's perhaps because we we try to compare them year over year so we don't really change the way that we look at them.

Um thank you.

I just I'm just trying to think about this in light of the last presentation.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Uh we may proceed with the presentation which is here.

Hello and good afternoon, Chair Chavez, Vice Chair Wansley, community members.

My name is Rachel Sayre, and I am the director of the emergency management department.

As a reminder, uh the mission of our department is to prepare the whole community for disasters and to coordinate the city's response as well as recovery.

In Q3, um, as the last presenter noticed uh noted, this was uh developed before uh the shooting at Annunciation.

So there are there is some content in here that is a little bit old.

I will note that as we go through it.

Um the first thing we did, one of the things we did in Q3 was to celebrate emergency management awareness month.

Uh that was a chance to just recognize this profession and field across the country.

Uh we worked with our communications colleagues to add floods and flash flood alerts to our automated alert system that is available to everyone in the city so that they get alerts from the National Weather Service.

Those are pushed directly.

That's part of our big push this year to help increase the city's preparedness at the household level.

We also this uh this quarter revamped ReadyCamp.

Actually, tonight, the first ready camp in its revamped more accessible format is being held.

That's in partnership with the Minneapolis Community Education Program.

As the commissioner noted at the top, we shared information earlier in August about uh preparedness for back to school.

This quarter, we held an emergency operations center uh set exercise.

We were meeting to hold a unified command exercise, but that has been postponed given we were running an active response.

This quarter, we also conducted quite a few trainings, including for many of the enterprise leadership as well as city council members on their roles in emergency response.

And we coordinated and conducted a training for a emergency operations center operations chief role.

Um I'll just say a few notes um since it was in Q3 but isn't on the slide just given the timing.

On October 27th in Q3, we activated the emergency operations center to respond to affected community needs as a result of the mass shooting at the Church of the Annunciation.

We also activated a second emergency operations center in response to two mass shootings in one day on Lake Street in mid-September.

For both of these emergency operations center responses, we worked closely with city, county, and state departments and with community partners to identify needs and meet the needs of the affected communities.

We operated two neighborhood assistance centers, which collectively served over 400 people over six days.

These assistance centers provided services such as mental health from the county and other partners.

They provided services such as financial reimbursement for victims of crime, snacks, water, and referrals to other services.

Looking forward, as I've mentioned in trainings, recovery is the longest part of any disaster and emergency response cycle.

For both responses, we are actively working with the communities toward offering ongoing services such as mental health and victim services on an ongoing basis.

Also looking ahead, um, we continue to work.

Um work was pushed back a little bit given our response time this um throughout this last month.

We're working with other partners on developing guidance around air quality.

Of course, we always have this potential for severe weather.

And then there are lots of potential operating environment shifts that were working closely to coordinate with other departments across the country to understand um how everyone's navigating the situations they're facing.

Uh we were planning for a functional exercise in November, but again, because of the month spent on response, that is going to be moved back.

And we are still working on a community engagement strategy to have that in place by the end of the year.

We've also launched a program called we're calling ready together that is for community organizations to facilitate them going through the same planning process that we do as a city for emergency preparedness.

That is it.

I will turn it over to Chief Tiner.

Thank you, Director Sawyer and colleagues.

I just want to do a time check.

I do know that many folks uh, you know, it is past committee time.

I want to make sure that folks can get home and go to their appointments.

Uh we have the fire department left, we have neighborhood safety department left, and then we have uh 911 left.

Uh I'm trying to do a time check.

I feel like if we want to get up by maybe not 4.15, maybe we can do the fire department and maybe 911.

And then sorry, Director Hangton, but save the neighborhood safety department for next cycle, because that is a longer presentation.

Um just trying to get a temperature check here.

Or if we just want to forward the rest of these to next cycle.

Sure, Chavez.

I need to leave in five minutes for previous engagement.

Jim, for sure.

What I'll do is I want to make sure that folks in committee can actually get the rest of this presentation.

Um what I would recommend is we uh just uh delay this presentation towards one more cycle so colleagues can still uh make sure we get the rest of the presentation.

I want to thank staff for being here.

A lot of the presentations that we got today were really important conversations that led us to coming to uh 41 PM.

Um so we'll just work with uh the Office of Community Safety.

We'll have conversations offline tomorrow and we'll figure something out.

So I appreciate you being here, Chief.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues.

Uh on the motion to move this item to the next public health and safety committee, which is on October 15th.

October 15th.

Uh that is a motion I am making.

Just a second.

Any comments, questions, concerns?

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any polls say nay?

Any abstentions?

Great.

Thank you.

So seeing no further uh business before us, I will declare this meeting adjourned.

Done.