Good morning.

I'd like to call this meeting order.

Welcome to the June.

June.

It's not June.

Obviously.

Welcome to the sub I I wish.

Welcome.

Yes, sir.

Welcome to the September 3rd, 2025 Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee meeting.

I'd like to introduce City Attorney Jennifer Vega, Ms.

Vega.

Please explain the role of public comment if you would, please.

Chair Robinson and committee members.

During during citizen comment, members of the public may address the subcommittee for up to three minutes on issues of interest or concern to them.

The Arizona Open Meeting Law permits the subcommittee members to listen to the comments, but prohibits members from discussing or acting on the matters presented.

Members of the public may speak for up to two minutes to comment on agenda items to be discussed.

Comments must be related to the agenda item and the action being considered by the subcommittee.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Vega.

Now I would like to introduce our interpreter, Elsie Duarte.

Elsie, would you who she will provide um a brief announcement?

Elsie, if you would please.

Yes, thank you.

Good morning.

My name is El C Duarte.

I will be providing interpretation for a Spanish speaking audience.

I will now address our Spanish speaking audience.

So his commentarios será interpretados al momento que usted termina de hablar.

Gracias.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Elsie.

Okay.

Item number one is approval of the PSJ minutes from June 4th, 2025.

Do I have a motion?

Mayor to approve.

Have a motion and a second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

The chair votes aye, passes unanimously.

Thank you very much for that.

Item number two is a recommendation to update Chapter 11 of the City Code to add clarifications to emergency management in the emergency operations plan.

Gentlemen, it's all yours.

Thank you, Chairman Robinson, members of the subcommittee.

I'm here with Rudy Perez, emergency management coordinator.

We're going to provide recommendations for updates to Chapter 11 of the City Code for your consideration and approval and to share the status of the emergency operations plan.

Chapter 11 of the City Code focuses on emergency management and includes provisions for maintaining an emergency management program, creating the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and it outlines the powers and duties of the City Council, Mayor, and City Manager.

It also addresses the utilization of existing services, facilities, and the emergency operations plan.

Starting with updates.

Chapter 11 of the City Code currently refers to the function of emergency management within the city of Phoenix as the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Staff recommends that the office be renamed, the Office of Emergency Management, and the Office's as as the Office's functions are only emergency management, and the current title can create confusion regarding the work performed in the office.

The authority of the mayor and council related to emergency declarations will remain unchanged.

Chapter 11 defines local emergency, but does not define great emergency.

Chapter 5, Section 4 of the City Charter uses the term great emergency within the context of the mayor's powers and duties when a great emergency is declared.

And staff recommends defining great emergency as the same as local emergency and defining local emergency as that term that is defined in Arizona revised statute.

And this is ARS 26301, and it's defined as follows.

A local emergency means the existence of conditions of extreme disaster or of extreme peril to the safety of persons or property within the territorial limits of a county, city, or town, which conditions are or are likely to be beyond the control of services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of such political subdivision as determined by its governing body, and which require the combined efforts of other political subdivisions.

While there's no recommendations to change the authority of the mayor and council, I would like to take a minute to reflect on the emergency declaration process.

The mayor can declare the existence of a local emergency without delay when necessary, and such action is subject to confirmation by the council at its next meeting.

The mayor has the authority to request that the council declare a local emergency.

The council is also empowered to declare a local emergency, and the council is empowered to terminate a declared local emergency.

As stated previously, there's no recommended changes here either, but we felt it was important to address what declaring a local emergency does.

It gives the city council the power to make amend and rescind regulations necessary for emergency management.

It allows the mayor to govern by proclamation.

It permits the ability to accept support from government and non-government organizations, and places the emergency operations plan into effect, rallying the full capabilities and resources of all city departments as written in the emergency operations plan.

And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Rudy to discuss the emergency operations plan.

Thank you, Chief Christ, Chairman Robinson and members of the subcommittee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

I'm here to provide an overview of the recent update to the city's emergency operations plan.

This update represents a significant step forward in our ongoing commitment to public safety, preparedness, and resiliency.

It reflects the collaborative efforts of multiple departments and stakeholders, and I'm proud to share the progress we've made.

To start, a quick overview of what the emergency operations plan is.

The emergency operations plan is the foundational document that guides how the city prepares for and responds to and recovers from emergencies and disasters.

The emergency operation plan addresses the city's hazards and threat environment, including natural technological and human cause emergencies and disasters.

More importantly, the emergency operations operations plan is built using an all-hazards approach, making it both flexible and scalable to effectively address a wide range of incidents.

The updated plan outlines a command and coordination structure that ensures a unified response.

Specifically, the EOP defines the roles and responsibilities of city departments, external agencies, and key stakeholders, ensuring that all understand its function before, during, and after an emergency.

This clarity promotes efficiency, reduces redundancy, and ensures that all resources are deployed where they are needed most.

In the fall of 2024, the Office of Emergency Management kicked off a review of the current plan, which was last approved by mayor and council in 2018.

One of our main priorities was to ensure that the planning process was inclusive and collaborative.

To achieve this, the Office of Emergency Management conducted six review workshops over a four-month period to review all four sections and 33 annexes of the emergency operation plan.

In total, we collaborated with 27 city departments and 15 external partner organizations with a focus on the whole community.

We included representatives from the American Red Cross, the Arizona Statewide Independent Living Council, Maricoba County Department of Public Health, as well as our own equal opportunity departments ADA coordinator, just to name a few.

As part of as part of this update, we have incorporated the recently established city departments into multiple sections of the updated EOP, including but not limited to the Office of Public Health, the Office of Homeless Solutions, Office of Heat Response and Migation, and the Community Assistance Program.

By embracing a whole community planning approach and the valuable input received from our city departments and external partners, we strengthen our collective capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies.

A key focus area of this update was on our mass care and recovery sections, with the EOP now including language on the recently developed and updated city support plans, specifically the family reunification and community assistance center, as well as our shelter operations.

These changes ensure our ability to conduct short and long-term recovery operations.

In closing, the EOP is more than just a document, it's a reflection of our city's practice and stance on emergency preparedness as it supports our broader goal of building a resilient community, one that can withstand, adapt to, and recover from adversity.

Thank you, Rudy.

So that concludes our presentation.

We would like to request your approval of chapter 11 updates in the emergency operations plan.

We'd like to, with your approval, take this item forward to the formal council meeting on October 15th, and we'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I'll turn to my colleagues if anyone has any questions.

No questions, just comments.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to say thank you, Chief, for all of your guys' hard work and working on prevention and making sure that we keep our community safe, that we keep our city safe, and for all the ideas that you guys have had and what you guys have brought in front of us.

I know that we've had um different situations.

I remember during COVID, it was a very difficult time and being able to learn from that and with everything that you guys have done.

I really appreciate the work that all of you guys are doing in the department.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

And I'll make comment also.

The present excellent presentation and really thank you for all the outreach that you've performed leading up to this point.

That having been said, do I have a motion?

I move to approve item two as presented.

So second.

I have a motion and a second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye, pass unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next, we'll welcome Special Projects Administrator Nick Valenzuela and Assistant Police Chief Sean Kennedy to the table for item number three, an update on the city's community safety plan.

And I believe we'll have a couple comments from the community afterwards, after the presentation.

Gentlemen, it's all yours.

All right.

Good morning, Chairman Robinson and members of the subcommittee.

We are here today to provide you an update on our Phoenix community safety plans.

As you recall, in 2022, the city council approved the community safety plans, which was a multi-department collaborative effort utilizing technology and community-based resources to address safety concerns and quality of life offenses in five focus areas along the I-17.

In support of this effort, the city engaged with Arizona State University to conduct an analysis of the community safety plans.

So for today's discussion, we will be providing an overview of the results of the ASU study, including their perceptions of the project, recommendations, and conclusions.

Following that overview, we will share feedback staff received upon sharing the results of the study with our dedicated community committees, and we'll conclude with a discussion on the next steps of the community safety plans.

So we'll go ahead and jump right into the results of the ASU study, and we'll start by just providing a quick refresh of what the goals of the community safety plans were, which were to improve the perceived safety of residents, businesses, patrons, and students, improved processes for outreach, and increased referrals for those seeking services, and reducing the criminal incidents impacting community safety and quality of life.

Related to the goals were desired outcomes that were set with feedback from our community committees, and this is just a list of the desired outcomes for each of those areas.

These were also used to set the crime incidents that we're reviewing as part of the assessment.

ASU conducted their assessment using multiple areas.

The first one would be crime incident data from May 2018 through April of 2025.

This period provided a full three years of pre-intervention data to mitigate any artificial effects of the pandemic.

The date ranges you'll see for the comparisons are displayed from May to April to show a full year of outcomes following implementation of the real-time operations centers in April of 2024.

The offenses selected are relevant to the desired outcomes from the previous slide.

Additionally, as part of the study, the city manager's office worked with ASU to develop a community perceptions of safety survey as a qualitative measure of the community safety plan's goals and desired outcomes.

ASU also attended every community committee meeting, conducted staff interviews, went on ride-alongs, and met regularly with staff as part of their assessment.

For the desired outcomes of reduced overdoses and fatal overdoor fatal overdoses, Phoenix EMS data for suspected overdoses was provided.

However, fatal overdose data from the county was not available at the time of the assessment.

And for this reason, you will see the desired outcomes related to overdoses as neither successful or unsuccessful.

And finally, ASU utilized our department data from each of the departments involved in their assessment.

So we'll go ahead and start with our 27th Avenue community safety plan.

This represents areas one and two as it's split in two for the data purposes, as it is our largest area.

And the first one will be Area 1, which runs from Indian School Road to Northern Avenue from the I-17th to 35th Avenue.

What you'll see is we have pre-intervention average of 5,627 incidents with a goal of 4,896 incidents.

By the end of April of 2025, we saw a 29% reduction in overall crime for this corridor.

Looking further at the data showed this decrease was largely driven by reduction in violent crimes, death-related calls, and trespassing.

We saw a 12% reduction in aggravated assaults, 30% reduction in trespassing, 31% reduction in assaults, and 31% reductions in thefts.

However, we did see higher instances of prostitution and drug offenses throughout the implementation of the community safety plans.

And this increase could be expected as police turn their attention to these offenses, especially as we have received consistent community feedback regarding these ongoing issues.

One key success of this area was the work of the Phoenix Police Department's heat unit with the FBI to close the Royal Inn, addressing chronic drug and prostitution problems in the nearby neighborhood.

Additionally, through the work of Office of Homeless Solutions, we have successfully deployed behavioral health engagement teams with the police department to outreach individuals with behavioral health or substance use challenges.

This this coordination will be something that we continue to utilize more in the future.

Moving to area two, which runs from the I-17th to 35th Avenue from Dunlap to Sweetwater.

We saw a pre-intervention average of 3,267 incidents with a goal of 2,774.

By the end of April of this year, we were below our goal and saw a 35% reduction in overall crime from the pre-intervention average for this corridor.

Looking further at the data showed this decrease was largely driven by reductions in theft and trespassing.

We saw a 26% reduction in theft, 36% reduction in trespassing, and a 69% reduction in shoplifting.

The data did not indicate a trend in assault or aggravated assaults in this area.

And while these incidents did not see a notable rise, we also did not see the reduction we would hope to see.

Additionally, we did not see a reduction or a clear trend in our drug offenses.

For our metro focus area, we saw great success with our Phoenix Police Department working closely with area businesses to implement SEPTED or crime prevention through environmental design principles and securing and renewing authority to arrest forms.

So while the data shows a reduction in overall crime and in certain crime categories, it was important to measure the community's perception of safety, which was done through our perceptions of safety survey.

What you see here is a summary of the perceptions of safety survey for 27th Avenue focused on the areas tied to our desired outcomes.

We saw a slight increase of 7% for the overall perception of safety, with 41% of these individuals responding that they felt somewhat safe or very safe, up from 34% in June of 2023.

And while the perception of safety did increase, we recognize we have work to do along 27th Avenue as only 41% and responded safe or very safe.

The remaining issues represents the percentage each issue was selected out of the total responses.

So you can see the community has not felt changes in homeless encampments, open drinking and drug use or blight.

Tying those back to the desired outcomes, ASU assessed that we were successful for assaults and aggravated assaults, graffiti theft and trespassing, not yet successful for blight encampments, illicit drug use or prostitution incidents.

And even though open drug sales saw a reduction in the perceptions of safety survey, again, we did not see that in the data, so that was listed as neither, and our overdoses is neither.

For the metro area, we are ASU assessed we were successful for graffiti theft and trespassing, not yet successful for assaults and aggravated assaults, supplied properties and encampments, and again our open our drug offenses, overdoses were listed as neither, and prostitution was listed as neither for the metro area.

Is that is not an issue we saw in the data in that area.

Moving to area three, which represents our Bell Road community safety plan.

This runs from 15th Avenue to 35th Avenue along Bell Road.

We saw a pre-intervention average of 1,975 incidents with a goal of 1,574 incidents.

Looking at the chart, we finished well below that goal with a 43% reduction in overall crime for this corridor.

Looking further at the data showed this decrease was largely driven by reductions across multiple offense areas.

Saw a 17% reduction in aggravated assaults, 33% reduction in trespassing, a 57% reduction in drug offenses, and an 80% reduction in shoplifting.

Key successes in this area included the gating of 19 alley gates along this corridor and the evolvement of the Bell Road business lines and working closely with Phoenix Police in identifying areas and working on solutions.

Reviewing the perceptions of safety survey for Bell Road, we saw a 43% increase in the overall perception of safety compared to June of 2023, and we saw reductions in every category of issues identified for Bell Road.

ASU assessed that we were successful for all of our desired outcomes for our Bell Road Community Safety Plan.

Moving to our Hatcher Road community safety plan, which runs from 7th Avenue to 19th Avenue along Hatcher Road in West Sunny Slope.

We had a pre-intervention average of 359 incidents with a goal of 297 incidents.

By the end of April of 2025, we saw a 38% reduction in overall crime incidents along Hatcher Road.

This was largely driven by a 68% reduction in drug offenses, 54% reduction in trespassing, 25% reduction in assaults, and 17% reduction in thefts.

The success of this area was driven largely by the coordinated outreach and engagement of the Office of Homeless Solutions, Phoenix Police Department, Neighborhood Services Departments, and our community partners in placing more than 250 people experiencing homelessness into shelter or other services in early 2024.

And just reviewing our Hatcher Road perceptions of safety survey, we saw a 25% increase in the overall perception of safety and reduction in each of the issues identified related to the desired outcomes for Hatcher Road.

ASU assessed that we were successful to for all of our desired outcomes along the Hatcher Road Community Safety Plan.

And finally, Area 5 represents our 19th Avenue Community Safety Plan.

This runs from Campbell Avenue to just north of Dunlap Avenue along 15th Avenue to the I 17.

We saw a pre-intervention average of 7,174 incidents with a goal of 6,569.

By April of this year, we were below our goal and saw a 17% reduction in overall crime.

And while this reduction may not seem as large as our other areas, it does represent a reduction of more than 1,200 criminal incidents from the average and more than 1,500 incidents from the peak in April of 2020.

We saw a 14% reduction in aggravated assaults, 14% reduction in trespassing, 12% reduction in assaults, but again, we did see higher instances of drug offenses along the 19th Avenue corridor.

A few key successes for our 19th Avenue corridor included the gating of 64 alley segments.

Additionally, we had a very engaged community in reporting of blight and graffiti in their neighborhoods, and effective coordination with our transit unit working with our community partners and agency partners along this corridor and their involvement in the community committees was successful.

Looking at the perceptions of safety survey for 19th Avenue, we saw an 11% increase in the overall perception of safety.

We did see reduction in encampments, but it still remains a highly identified issue, and its impacts on feelings of safety did not change.

We did see an increase in blight, but also a decrease in graffiti, and we saw a reduction in open drug sales as an issue.

But you'll see as we look at desired outcomes that doesn't match the data, so that was also listed as neither tying those back to desired outcomes.

We were successful for assaults and aggravated assaults, campments, graffiti, theft, and trespassing, and not yet successful for blighted properties.

So as mentioned, ASU has been part of the community safety plans through staff interviews, ride alongside and community committees and in staff meetings.

Some key perceptions they noted were the community was receptive of the community safety plans and the community committee model to work with the city to address these issues and ensure everyone is in the room working together.

ASU also received the same feedback from our staff in working across departments to coordinate and solve problems.

They noted the real-time operation centers in the two police precincts have been successful and very welcome to buy our police department.

ASU also did recognize the following community concerns.

The first one was slow progress in addressing repeat offenders.

Staff addressed this issue, this concern with education on criminal justice processes, increased data sharing for our prostitution offenses, particularly for repeat offenders.

Additionally, the inclusion of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in the community committee meetings provided the community with education on the prosecution of drug offenses, repeat offenders, and helped Maricopa County Attorney's Office attorneys better understand neighborhood problems and who and where repeat offenders are.

The second community concern was regarding the response and wait times to reach the police department non-emergency line and the potential it will lead to an artificial decrease in incidents due to individuals giving up on reporting crime.

ASU did acknowledge this concern.

We spoke with police communications regarding this issue.

However, the systems for the non-emergency line are limited and did not have the capability to track the number of dropped calls for ASU to conduct an analysis on this concern.

Moving forward, this is an area that is being explored as part of the new call triage system.

So ASU provided recommendations from their perceptions and from working within the community safety plans.

These are just six of the key recommendations ASU provided.

First one is make engaging community stakeholders routine in addressing public safety concerns.

Developing a flexible structure mirroring the community safety plans within the city to address chronic public safety concerns.

Periodic monitoring of conditions post-public safety intervention.

Expansion of the real-time operations centers in both staffing but also in utilizing it as a tool to identify emerging trends in crime.

Enhancing promotion of crime prevention through environmental design principles throughout the city, and committing to the core responsibility that public safety is a shared responsibility.

So ASU's conclusions from their study.

The first one is the perceptions of safety goal was a success.

We did see increasing perceptions of safety in each area.

We would like to see additional growth in a few areas, but they are trending in a positive direction.

Second, is that the overall crime reduction goals were a success, particularly with trespassing.

ASU saw trespassing reductions within our community safety plan areas that are not seen in the areas outside of the community safety plan footprints.

As mentioned, they did note an increase in the instances of drug offenses and prostitution and discuss this could be the result of ongoing increased enforcement efforts compared to before the intervention.

However, we often have heard from our community regarding these issues remaining present and the need to dedicate resources to continue addressing them.

And finally, the service referral goal was largely based on qualitative data, but was assessed as successful based on increased collaboration among city departments, police, and our service providers.

Chairman Robinson, members of the subcommittee, after receiving the results of the ASU study, the results were shared with each of our community committees this past summer to gather their feedback and thoughts, as well as provide input on what they'd like to see moving forward.

We'll go ahead and start with our 27th Avenue Community Committee.

And our 27th Avenue committee noted that the community safety plans were success in staff caliber in staff collaboration and engaging with the community as part of the project.

However, they did communicate that there are persistent, challenging issues remaining along 27th Avenue, including drugs, prostitution, homelessness, and blight, and shared the impact these issues are having on our surrounding neighborhoods.

They also expressed that social media is being used to influence demand for prostitution on 27th Avenue.

Staff has noticed this as well, and we will be working with our police department and communications office to combat this narrative.

And finally, they are highly supportive of continuing our 27th Avenue community safety plan to simplify our approach and to address these persistent issues, having the greatest impact on our neighborhoods.

Moving to our Bell Road Community Committee, they noted a positive shift in safety and viewed the data as promising for the area.

They did identify the underpasses and area that had that could use continued focus, and they were supportive of quarterly meetings while we're continuing their engagement with the city moving forward.

For our Hatcher Road Community Committee, they reported cleaner and safer conditions along Hatcher Road.

They noted the effective involvement of their community leaders in our solutions, especially with our outreach and engagement.

They would like to maintain meeting quarterly to ensure the issues don't return to the Hatcher Road area, and they would like the continued involvement of the Office of Homeless Solutions along Hatcher Road.

For our 19th Avenue community, they noted improvements were seen from the citywide coordinated response.

Again, they had ongoing concerns regarding drug activity, blight, and trash remaining within their community.

They also expressed that there was the additional need for more time to assess this area, as this area was one year behind our other community safety plan areas, so they felt this area could use additional study time.

And they are also supportive of continuing the 19th Avenue Community Safety Plan to address ongoing concerns within their neighborhoods.

Chairman Robinson and members of the subcommittee, after reviewing the ASU study, perceptions of safety survey results, and gathering feedback from our community committees, we have reached the following conclusions.

The ASU study identified that significant improvements were made within some of our community safety plan focused areas.

We saw reductions in violent crimes and property crimes, such as theft and shoplifting, and affirmed that a citywide coordinated approach is working.

However, by no means does this success seen we've the success we've seen so far mean our job is accomplished and the work of the community safety plans is done.

We recognize that serious issues remain along 19th and 27th Avenues with regards to drugs, prostitution, and quality of life offenses.

The feedback we have received from our community committees has been valuable in confirming this, and we remain committed to continue working with the community to identify and address these issues and the need to continue strengthening our efforts built through the community safety plans.

With that said, we believe the next steps in the community safety plans are to continue meeting quarterly with the Hatcher Road Community Committee to ensure the issues do not resurface in the area.

Transition the Bell Road Community Committee to a quarterly meeting with the Bell Road Business Alliance to monitor progress.

We'll also continue in our efforts related to the underpass and involvement in community cleanups.

We will continue the 19th and 27th Avenue plans in a more focused, data-driven, and community-informed approach.

This will involve the use of collected data along with the feedback of our community to identify smaller areas within each plan where the highest concentration of crime are occurring.

This will allow for more targeted, simplified enforcement and solutions to address the issues having the hardest impacts on our neighborhoods.

And finally, we will explore the expansion of the real-time operations center to 24-7 operations.

Currently, we are still operating at 19 hours per day, and the utilization of existing traffic cameras to expand the real-time operations center in the existing police precincts.

And Chairman Robinson, members of the subcommittee, before we conclude today, I just want to thank all of the department staff who have worked tirelessly every day, making our community safety plan areas safer.

I'd also like to thank our community committee members who sacrificed their own personal time to serve the city and working with us as partners to address public safety.

We look forward to continue working with them and the community to address their remaining concerns.

And finally, I'd like to thank our city council members who approved this coordinated response to address public safety.

Um this approach has brought together our community, our agency partners, and our staff all together in one room to address very difficult and very complex challenges facing our community.

And with that, this concludes our presentation, and we'd be open for any questions.

Thank you very much.

And before I get to the questions with my colleagues, I know we have three members of the public who'd like to make comments, so we'll start with that.

Um Jeff Spellman.

Is crime really down in the area, or is part of it due to the numbness, people are just getting so tired of it, they give up calling.

I know that's part of my frustration.

Long hold times with crime stop, people just give up and hang up.

I think uh, you know, our two precincts, Cactus and Desert Horizon, have been involved in a uh very coordinated effort and transit detail over the last six weeks.

647 arrests last week alone.

That's in one week.

They had similar results the prior five weeks.

I don't think crime is down when you look at those kind of numbers.

The whole issue of consensual crimes.

I really question how this gets categorized.

Uh, you know, in the last two weeks, my dentist got stabbed trying to get into his business.

There's homeless people he has to kick out in front of his door every single day.

They live on top of his roof every single day.

That's not crime is down.

Those are those are you call those consensual crimes, prostitution, consensual crimes.

Let me tell you, a woman being beaten into submission is not a consensual crime.

And the impacts that that has in my neighborhood is not consensual.

We have four homes in a one-mile stretch of 27th Avenue that are that are invaded by homeless.

So I think it's time that uh, you know, we take a little different look on the issues revolve involving the crimes perpetuated by the homeless.

Most of the crimes the survey says are crimes committed by the homeless.

We need a vision zero for homelessness in Phoenix.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Next, I have William Brashears.

Hi, good morning.

Uh, thank you for having my comments, uh, Chairman Robinson, the committee.

Just uh my point of view is from the president of the Glen County Vista Neighborhood Association, which is along 27th Avenue between Glendale and Northern.

Um, I just wanted to give a little more granular look about what the consensual crimes um how they affect our neighborhood.

I don't disagree with uh with the report, um, but the first part of the report indicates that there was a abandoned part of the study that was looking at the deeper uh causes of of the um of the crime and and the combination of factors that are happening in our area.

That's the part that may be missing from uh the percentages and the statistics.

It's uh from our neighbors' uh point of view.

Well, the past couple of months, like Jeff mentioned, we did have uh homeless populations take over three properties.

Um, thanks to um uh council on Guardado's office.

We did get those cleaned up in this past week, requiring two 40-foot uh uh containers to uh remove uh what really is a study of what's going on in our neighborhood.

So in these 40-foot containers, you'll get a lot of biohazard, a lot of drug uh paraphernalia weapons.

We knew the hatchet man who had the incident at the IHOP on Northern and 21st Avenue.

He was a long-term resident of our neighborhood.

Um so these kinds of issues have been happening for a long time.

It's a collaboration between organized drugs, prostitution, moving into the unhoused population, who is nightly in a very clear mapped territory in our neighborhood.

Uh is there there is a sorry.

But thank you for continuing the resources for our project.

Thank you.

Next, AJ Marston.

Hello.

As a member of the 19th Avenue Safety Corridor, I'll be speaking about 19th Avenue and the Camelback Light Rail Corridor.

Um, the place that I call home and has been a place where I do errands for over 24 years.

Um, I too am excited and thankful for the results from the safety corridor collaboration and partnerships.

Um the report shows that the safety corridor projects do work, yet we cannot stop here.

And as we've heard, the truth is that not all activity is documented.

And this is at really no fault to anyone.

It's almost the design of the program.

The nature of the program is to share information with city and police partners.

So not every incident has been called in.

Um sometimes hold times are just too long, and we as the citizen just need to drop the call, knowing that we can follow up with our city partners and our police partners.

Just yesterday that happened to me.

I couldn't wait on hold.

I was rather vulnerable on my bike with my phone in my hand.

But as soon as I got home, I sent an email, and the CAO team and our transit team, they replied and they were on it.

Um, some activity, we've heard others mention about the consensual activity, um, happens so fast and moves along the area that there's really no time to call it in.

And when the officers do get there, it has moved somewhere else.

So we do have some results, but we know that these are just some of the parts of the plan that can't be shown with statistics.

Um, I look forward to our continued collaboration and partnership.

Um, I also look forward to some of our long-term solutions and ideas that were mentioned during the meetings.

Um, these solutions um include city business and vacant building and lot hot spots.

Um, we as neighborhoods can do what we can, but we need some help with um city business and vacant areas.

Um, the goal has to be long-term safety that is sustainable.

We have we have ideas that will work, and um, I look forward to um you're okay to continue these projects and these long-term solutions.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much.

That concludes the public speakers, and I know Councilwoman Guardado, you had a question or a statement.

Thank you.

Um, first, thank you for the for the presentation um for all of the hard work.

I know that we've been talking about these areas for a very long time, and I'm getting our real-time operation centers up and running was a challenge in itself, but we um we appreciate all the work um that Desert Horizon has done, that Cactus Park has done, and everyone um that's been part of this, and also I'm gonna be thankful also to our neighbors, to our VAP coalition, to Berkeley Square, to Wolves and Neville, and to all of the neighbors that have come together to really um make a trying to make a dent on the on the challenges and the issues that we see along 27th Avenue.

Um, but looking at this report and driving up and down 27th Avenue almost every day, I know that we are not done.

I I I see the report and I do question the numbers a little bit, and I guess that is um one of my questions.

When we say that we see a 70 17 percent reduction, all these reductions, where do we think these numbers are coming from?

And who who did we talk to to get to those numbers?

German Robinson, Councilman Gordado, are you referring to the crime incident data or the perception safety survey?

Just all the reductions that we saw.

So the reductions in the crime incident, uh, those are those were the incidents that were pulled from Arizona State University.

So those are uh incident reports.

Uh so those were uh calls for service that resulted in an actual incident report from our department.

So they conducted the the three years of the pre-intervention average, and then they took that final year, the 24-25 and compared it to the pre-intervention average.

So if you see, for example, a 17% reduction for assaults, it's 2024, 2025 compared to that pre-intervention average for that specific incident.

So I I get that, and I also agree with with Jeff, you know, that sometimes people just get tired of calling in.

And just for anyone that's that's watching this right now, I just encourage everyone to continue to call in the incidents to call our office to let us know what is happening because I think that we are far from being done, right?

We see the uptake on prostitution and we see what's happening on the different corners.

I know that I keep hearing from neighbors, you know, we appreciate the work, we see some progress, but there's just a lot more that needs to get done and in these in these neighborhoods.

And I and I guess just a follow-up in terms of the ASU ASU recommendations.

I guess my my question is how are we gonna implement that?

Like we have here make engaging community stakeholders routine and addressing public safety concerns.

Don't we do that already?

Chairman Robinson, Councilman Gordado.

Yes, that that that was the recommendation based off of their perceptions of the community safety plans is that was a success as we are effectively engaging our community through these committee models.

I think that recommendation would be just a general generality throughout the city to where this has been a success of the community safety plans.

And so as we look elsewhere throughout the city, just maybe outside of these focus areas, that recommendation to engage the community as part of the recommendations and interventions for community safety.

And then my other question, one of the other recommendations we see here, develop a flexible structure, marrying the CSP within the city to address chronic public safety concerns.

How are we going to afford that?

And how are we gonna make that happen?

Chairman Robinson, Councilman Gordado.

Yes, that was a recommendation again, based off of this model that was set up by the community safety plans by ASU that this could be a model that's used elsewhere throughout the city to address public safety concerns.

I don't think we've had the conversations yet on if that's something we could fund for other areas.

I know we've had very preliminary discussions on just within a half mile of our current focus areas extending to certain intersections.

Um, but identifying the funding for you know additional resources that may be for our real-time operations center or our neighborhood specialists, we haven't had those conversations yet.

I mean, I I just think that's important.

I think um there's a couple of us that are advocating for real-time operations centers and other parts of the city, but it but I do think that um we we need to figure out where is it that that funding is gonna come from and how is it that we are going to really um put in place recommendations that are that are given to us because I think overall, like that's where the frustration from neighbors come from, that we pass policies, that we say we're gonna do certain things, we do these studies, and I think it's all important, and I think the study is great, don't get me wrong.

I I think to me, this just tells me that what we're doing that we're on the right path, but clearly we're not done.

And clearly we need a lot more resources, and um trying to figure out how do we make our real-time operation centers 24-7.

I know that they've only been running for a little bit over a year.

Um, so there's just a lot more work to be done.

But I do think um that at some point I would appreciate that conversation.

You know, where is that funding gonna come from given where we know our budget is going, and I definitely just got briefed on our on our forecast, and I just have a hard time seeing where that money is gonna come from.

But I do think that we need to get creative.

Like I think we owe it to the neighbors.

I get messages all day long from neighbors that don't need their time that come out with us and and are part of of this community, and I think we owe it to them, and we owe it to our children.

I, you know, I see the uptake on prostitution on 27th Avenue, and we have three, four different schools just in that corridor um that's in my district from northern all the way to Camelback.

And I I just think we owe it to them, and I know that I'm preaching to the choir, but I I definitely feel that we need to sit down, have that conversation on where is the funding gonna come from, what is it that we need to do to support our police officers as well.

And and I know we've been very innovative in terms of thinking outside of the box and trying to figure out different things, but we also gotta figure out what are maybe some other partners that we can bring in that can be helpful as well as we're moving forward, because I think that as much as I appreciate the report and I appreciate that we're on the right path.

Um clearly when you live in the neighborhood, it's not it's not great because they have to see the prostitutes every day and they have to see the crime every day.

But I know from our perspective we are doing what we need to do to make things better, but I just think you know, we need more resources, we need more funding, we need a lot more um a lot more police officers.

We need a little bit more of everything, and we just got to figure out where that funding comes from and and what's the plan to make that happen.

But I appreciate everything you guys have done.

Thank you.

Vice Maryland Brian.

Thank you so much, Chairman Robinson.

Um I want to thank you for all the work that um police department and all the other city departments, as well as our our neighborhoods have done in getting us here.

Um, I want to ask a couple questions just of clarification.

In in the Metro, I'm sorry, yeah, Metro Midtown, 27th.

Uh I'm on page seven, slide 14.

We list um graffiti as a successful desired outcome.

But then two slides before, if I'm following this correctly, it looks like um where's that data come from?

Is it just the survey?

Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor O'Brien.

Yes, they're they're assessing that based off of the perceptions of safety survey um from June of 2023 to May of 2025.

Okay, and then in the similar question, I apologize.

The 19th Avenue, we list homelessness encampments as successful or the encampments, yet in the perception, it's the the number is the same.

It went unchanged in the survey.

So, how did we judge the homeless encampments as a success, or how did ASU?

Sorry.

Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor O'Brien, correct.

The homeless encampments affecting safety uh did not change from from 2023 to 2025.

Um their assessment was based off of the homeless accounts identified as an issue, which is the one right above that from 80 to 73.

Um, again, they assessed it as successful, but that 73% is still a very large number for 19th Avenue.

Okay, I appreciate that um clarification for me.

And then I do want to touch on the the calls dropped and the current concern is others have done because we can't track um with crime stop.

I do hope we will be able to look at that for call triage.

I know that I asked you all to look additionally at 911 calls dropped uh in the future so that we can see if there's stuff we've we've missed there.

Um I know we know we have work to do and we're working on that, but but we need to continue to have that that data.

Um I have supported the real-time operations centers from the moment I came on council, and I know it's just a rough number, but I I believe I heard about a half a million dollars potentially to expand it to 24 hours.

Laurie, if you could verify if that is accurate, not right now, but and come back to us.

Um, I think in the two precincts that have it, that additional time and resources will be well worth it given what we're seeing here and what I've heard, and we don't have the data here on how the real-time operations centers are helping our officers to become more efficient and more effective in solving crimes.

Um, so we would see additional in a decrease, I think, with additional real-time operations center.

And I realize we're in a tough budget spot, but getting real-time operation centers to our entire city should be a priority for us.

Um, these are high crime areas, but we have crime across our city, and all of our citizens deserve to have this tool in at their precinct.

I know that a couple of years ago we went out for diversion program study, and and I believe that the draft results are in that's very important to me to look at the data for those diversion programs and find out if they're making a difference because in conversations with with you all and with um our Office of Homeless Solutions, as well as our community members, you know, it has been a constant drum of repeat offenders, right?

We arrest them.

Um, my officers will tell me sometimes I arrest somebody three or four times in a single week.

I know that there are some folks who brought in the the county attorney and our city attorney.

So additionally, the other piece of the data, and I know that I asked for it and and it will come soon, but it's what are our our court rulings in that, right?

It's a whole picture.

So it's great if our arrests are here, and then the attorney is charged, but then what is happening on this end, and how do we make sure that our judicial system understands the impacts of the rulings?

I get some of them are drawn, you know, dictated by state law, but there's some discretion there, and it's important for our judges to understand the impact they have on our community when if and when they are giving a continual slap on the rest.

Nobody wants to walk by somebody doing drugs on their sidewalk when they're walking by the hospital in their community, and that was me.

I don't want to live in that community, and and I appreciate that we're working to try to shut that down and we're seeing reductions, but we need to work harder at that.

Um I appreciate that ASU recognizes that we still have work to do in our underpasses as well as I know our city staff does.

And I would just ask that we continue to strengthen our partnership with ADOT because the truth is is we need them to step up and do some things that will help us to secure that area.

Um, I have residents whose kids cannot walk a couple blocks from the east side to the west side of the freeway because they have to walk under the underpass to get there, and that's not okay.

Um excited that we're starting to have the conversation uh for utilizing street cameras, and and I want to make sure that that also stays a priority for our streets department as well as us.

Um we can't do this alone.

We must continue to listen to our communities.

We must continue to work together, and we need to expand technology so that our officers and our other departments have the tools that are necessary, and especially in these times when we are short on officers and other staffing, it's not just that.

I know that um I've had our CAOs in Cactus Park talk to me about a gentleman who works in planning and and helps them with properties that are blighted.

And and so there are resources in the city that increase what our officers are able to do, and we need to make sure that that we look at that, the importance of that, and and give them the ability to do that that job and continue to help our officers and our citizens.

I am so grateful for all of the hard work at the neighborhoods, the community members, our officers, Nick, um as well as Office of Homeless Solutions and other departments, um, CAP.

Uh keep up the good work and and let us know how we help you to keep fighting the good fight.

Thank you, Chair.

Councilman Warren.

Thank you.

Uh, what you heard from the citizens, I think earlier, I don't want to steal the remarks, but we let things get completely out of control, and now we're paying the price, and now we don't have enough officers to probably address it because you do need officers, not social workers, as I think you're finding on 27th Avenue.

Um I I don't know how many times I've called police about things I've seen since we last had one of these meetings, but I know I called this morning for someone completely passed out uh outside the gym.

I know it doesn't bother just me because the beauty product store next to the gym, the female staffers have told people are really uncomfortable, like seeing this kind of activity on almost daily basis.

The people living in cars and so forth.

There have been incidences, the gym hired security for a little bit.

People shouldn't have to live like this.

So Mr.

Spellman is right.

The sort of narrative that we're gonna dispend whatever dollar amount it costs, I guess to let people continue to go out and make other citizens uncomfortable.

I think there's been enough discussion at the federal level.

Maybe that's done.

I think citizens have had enough of that.

Other cities, even San Francisco, um, are realizing maybe that wasn't the way to go.

So I called this morning.

I think the person was gone by the time they were sending somebody out.

Um, unless Mercedes are gonna correct me.

Um, this summer there were a couple people.

One, you know, a 70-year-old guy, probably 270, 280 pounds.

He's out panhandling, he's living on the sidewalk every day.

I called it in, I don't know how many times, 25, 30 times to um Phoenix cares.

They talked to them several times, basically begging him to take services.

No, no, I'm good.

You're not good.

You know how you know?

Because you're seven years old and you're living in this parking lot, it's 117 degrees.

And our councilman sees you panhandling when he drives home every night.

That's that's not good.

So that's not an option.

They finally did get him into services.

There's a woman living in her car, same thing, expired tags.

I'm like, you could at least go and I mean the tags, she's not supposed to be out there driving in that thing.

I guess works at the airport.

They got her into services, so that's great.

The fact that it took, I don't know how many calls from me and how many trips from staff, that's not an efficient use of resources.

And it's absolutely bothering the citizenry or paying taxes.

I got a really unpleasant email.

The person was polite, so I should say that.

They just bought a dry cleaner at Greenway and 32nd Street.

And they're like, our customers are telling us we don't want they don't want to come here.

And one woman actually left because all the people milling around and the camp out behind them.

So hats off.

I wish I could remember his name.

It's the officer who she contacted, or I think it was a he contacted, and they went out there and they said, you know, I got paperwork to do, so I'm just gonna do it.

I'm gonna plant myself right here.

And then I guess everybody's scattered.

But I think a zero tolerance policy for this, the vision zero that was mentioned, that is absolutely in order.

And if we don't do it, it sounds like the federal government might want to come do it for us.

The people who are saying, oh, the crime in Washington, D.C., it's at what?

Some kind of acceptable level.

I'm from Chicago.

I I was sort of horrified.

They're saying we don't need any help, except for you know, the 35 shootings that happened over Labor Day weekend.

I guess they're good except for that.

And I'm not trying to be funny.

If you're saying words like that, you're nuts.

So I know you guys are doing the best you can, but I I do think if any of us call or citizens call, this has to be kind of a priority.

The broken window motif that worked in New York City.

Now that mayor, I know the narrative around him has changed too, but please don't forget the incredible change that happened when he took over in the 90s when that city was a dump.

Having spent some time in Washington, DC, the idea that they don't think they need help is crazy.

So I I would just say before somebody else gets the idea that maybe they should send people here, it would behoove us to change the policies that we've had that have not worked.

That's what we got citizens telling us, and they're right.

I'm a citizen, my opinion should count.

I don't know.

I mean, I could probably call you guys every single day if I wanted to start calling around the stuff I see down here on my daily trips downtown.

Now, Jesus sweeping with the bus stops, he'll tell me you don't call every day.

It seems like you call every day.

So maybe I actually do, I don't know.

But I absolutely think we should make this a priority.

And the whole idea that you get multiple chances to say no, no, I'm good and chase away business owners' customers, that's completely unacceptable.

I said years ago at these council meetings, that's just me spouting off, go look at the tapes.

There's somewhere out there.

At some point, a judge is gonna wake up and realize we've abdicated our responsibilities, they're gonna make us clean something up.

And then finally, one of them did.

They're gonna realize they live here too.

And they did, and they made us clean up the thing after 30 years or something over on Jefferson.

So that actually happened.

I also think I remember saying something about there's gonna be a backlash at some point to this, and the touchy-feely policies of the past are gonna look like stupidity in retrospect.

Well, here we are.

So I would say, you know, get police out there if the person's refusing services.

Because there's I at the gym one day, I called on two different people.

It was the two people that took a while for them to get into services.

They finally did accept, and then I decided to go to the dry cleaner.

And there's a guy passed out, like just laying on the sidewalk, looked like he was dead.

So they did go out there and contact him, and I guess he just got to like walk away.

But I do feel bad for the people who work at the cleaners who are always very nice.

It's mostly female.

The place wasn't quite open yet.

It wasn't quite seven o'clock.

And they got to walk over it.

That would make me nervous.

I, you know, I can walk right by him and sort of go, well, I mean, what's the worst that's gonna happen to me?

I guess he could jump up and stab me or something, probably not likely.

In any case, I can defend myself.

But I wouldn't be thrilled if my wife was working at that Tide Cleaners and having to see that first thing on a Saturday morning.

So you guys did go out and contact him.

I appreciate it.

I wasn't thrilled to hear that the best we could do is just make him shuffle off.

He obviously wasn't in a good state.

If you want to see pictures, I've got them.

Nobody wants to see that.

I think you just heard that from a few citizens.

We don't have it kind of like you do at 27th Avenue, but I felt bad for that dry cleaner.

Brand new business, and this is how it starts.

So, yes, we need more officers for sure.

We need them in our parks.

We need to stop this kind of madness that we're hearing about it all too frequent basis.

I don't know about the taking over of houses.

You hear about that in other states.

That's more of a new one here.

I don't doubt that it's true.

How could that even happen?

I get that it happens in other cities.

They've been poorly run for decades.

No reason we should follow their lead.

So I appreciate sorry to spout off, but I I definitely think a more focused effort on this particular area would certainly make me happy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I the only comments that I will make are pretty much what everyone else has said with regard to the real-time operations centers.

Um obviously we want to see an expansion there because clearly it does help when you talk to the officers.

Folks will tell you how effective it is and how it helps them to be um better at their jobs.

So that's one issue it's been raised.

Well, I'm sure we'll discuss it later.

And um another concern I had, and it was already mentioned was the drop 911 calls.

So we'll we'll talk about that more, Lori, if we could.

I saw Chief O'Donnell Jordan taking notes on the whole thing.

So I really appreciate that, and an opportunity for us to talk a little bit more about zero tolerance in certain areas.

So we'll get into that.

But um, Nick, thank you very much for the presentation.

It's greatly appreciated.

A lot of hard work goes into it, and but clearly we know we've come a long way, but we have a lot further to go.

It's really what it amounts to.

So, with that, thank you very much.

Next item, item number four is an overview of the police department's overtime usage and management process.

We'll welcome police assistant Jody Wolf, police assistant director, Jody Wolf, and deputy budget director Aaron Mertz to the table.

And I have to add that this is something I had requested.

There has been a lot, um, a lot said and a lot written and reported about the police overtime.

I think it's important for folks to understand a little bit more completely about what we have done in light of everything, where we are going and what we hope to accomplish.

So, with that, Aaron and Jody, the floor is yours.

Good morning, Chairman Robinson and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to share information about our use of overtime in the police department.

I'm joined by Aaron Mertz, who's our assistant uh deputy director of our budget and research department.

Um, and we're gonna give you an overview of that overtime.

The challenges that face our department are not unique, they're shared by agencies across the United States.

This includes filling sworn vacant positions, achieving our hiring and recruiting targets, as well as managing our overtime and a reliance on that overtime to meet operational and service demands.

Our department has been actively working to address these challenges and their impact on our operations, on our budget, with a focus on employee wellness as well as community safety.

Whenever we talk about overtime, it's very helpful to talk about them in terms of categories and types.

The first category that I'll share with you today is mandatory overtime.

This includes activities that are operationally necessary, and these may be planned or unplanned activities.

Types of overtime that fall within this category include overtime driven by staffing shortages.

For example, if we have a patrol squad who would normally be staffed with seven officers, yet only currently has five.

We can fill those two unstaffed shifts through the use of overtime.

Special events also is a type of overtime that we would use within this category.

And this is for events like the Super Bowl or the Final Four, or providing traffic support to special events downtown, like our Diamondbacks baseball games and our sons basketball games.

We also enjoy visiting dignitaries to the state of Arizona, and we provide uh support for those activities as well.

And our officers, as a consequence of their responsibilities, will provide uh testimony and evidence during trial.

Uh proceedings as a result of their activities.

And then we have employees, officers, and detectives that have to respond to crime scenes when those crime scenes occur.

The second type of of our category of overtime that we're going to discuss is discretionary overtime.

This includes activities that are necessary but can be planned in advance.

So we have more control over the utilization of this type of overtime.

This includes activities or types of overtime like training with an operation of a workforce of our magnitude that's 24-7, coordinating mandatory training, which is required for all of our sworn employees, can be challenging when you have employees that work on third shift, coordinating either them attending training or instructors to deliver that training can be challenging, and overtime can be used to help meet that gap.

Additionally, our detectives have requirements and responsibilities to move their cases through to successful resolution.

We do that, and that's captured under case management activities.

And then, of course, we can plan crime suppression activities and prevention activities to address community concerns as well as criminal activities that exist within our neighborhoods.

I'd like to note that there are no absolutes when it comes to categorizing or typing the type of overtime.

These categories help us understand the general context of these activities and the types of overtime that's used to meet our operational and service demands.

If we look at the overtime that was used in the mandatory overtime category during fiscal year 24 and 25, we see six primary types of overtime that are included within that category.

The largest of which is minimum staffing, and as I shared previously, this is overtime that is used to meet staffing needs so that we can respond to calls for service and other commitments that we have from an operational perspective.

The second type of overtime is call-out.

This is when we have a need for officers or detectives to respond to crime scene or incidents when they are reporting from a non-work or standby status.

Holdover activities include those activities that an employee must complete before they leave their workplace for the day.

For example, if we have an officer who's made an arrest and requires that individual to be booked, the booking must be completed as well as the paperwork associated with that before they leave the end of their workday.

Those activities are often well beyond the end of their shift.

I've shared with you that special events we staff as well.

And then we have employees that remain in a standby status subject to call out when the event arises.

And then less than 1% is attributed to our court proceedings or court activities.

Mandatory overtime accounts for 81% of the overtime that we utilized during fiscal year 24-25.

When it comes to discretionary overtime, we have five general types of overtime that fall within this category.

Worked in day, in day is a scheduled day off for employees.

So those activities like case management for investigators would be conducted in particular on a day off so that they can move those cases to successful resolution.

Other is a type of overtime where if the activity doesn't fall on one of the other types that I've shared with you, it gets captured there.

Training, meetings, and pre-briefings round out discretionary overtime.

To share with you what a pre-briefing type of overtime is, this is afforded to specific assignments within the department, such as patrol sergeants, where they are afforded time once a week to prepare materials for their squads to brief prior to their deployment into the field.

Discretionary overtime accounts for 19% of the overtime sworn overtime utilized during fiscal year 24-25.

If we look at these together, you can see that we have both mandatory and discretionary overtime, and our largest driver of overtime is minimum staffing.

As staffing challenges have persisted, and we observed an increase in overtime use, we established a leadership committee in 2023 to greater learn, understand, and manage overtime in our department.

That leadership committee was comprised of executive staff members, command staff members, and labor management and labor unit members.

First, we needed to have a good understanding of how and why overtime was being used.

So we did a lot of data analysis, data collection, and discussions around the data that captures what we do on overtime.

Knowing that and doing an examination of existing policies and then identifying opportunities for improvement to better manage and control overtime, we made recommendations with regard to revising those policies and introducing resources and monitoring tools for staff and supervisors to use when it comes to management of overtime.

Then, of course, as we revise policies, then we need to ensure that staff and supervisors understand those new expectations.

And so training is developed and then delivered so that those individuals can be better users and approvers of said overtime.

As a result of the committee's recommendations and efforts, and the subsequent efforts of the working group who has continued to meet since the committee was stood up in 2023, two years ago, we have developed internal resources for the utilization of our employees.

This includes uh frequently asked questions, a comprehensive list of approved overtime codes types and those definitions to ensure individuals are using them appropriately, the development of training resources as well as deployment of those resources, and a real-time dashboard that allows supervisors and leadership to understand on a more real-time basis of what and how and why overtime is being used.

To recap some of the policy revisions that have come out of those efforts, I'd like to share those with you now.

Policy revisions include limiting work hours in a 24-hour period as well as in a work week.

It prohibits the overlapping of overtime requests.

This addresses when an employee shift may end and they continue to work, making sure that there's no overlap of activity between those two events.

Policy now requires at least one day off per week on a regularly scheduled day off, as well as requiring thorough documentation and supervisory review of overtime.

That includes the require uh requiring timely submission and review of those overtime requests, and then any exception to policy would require executive level approval.

In addition to these efforts by the committee and subsequent working groups, we have continued to collaborate with the city auditor.

The City, our engagement with the city auditor is really to understand what our policy says and whether or not we're following that policy.

So do we comply with policy?

Does policy match practice and does practice match policy?

And then to identify opportunities for improvement, how can we be better?

Because that's what we're always striving to do is be better.

And then also understand the implications, the impact on our operations as well as our finances.

One of the challenges that we have experienced and that we acknowledge is the system that we are currently using to request review and approve overtime.

It's called our lots, our overtime tracking system.

It's a legacy system, which uh in a couple weeks will be my 25th anniversary with the city, and we've been using it for almost that entire time.

So it's it's a little bit old.

Um, one of the challenges related to it is that it's highly reactive.

Um, it's overly manual and it's post-event oriented.

So when I like to describe it, one of the ways that I describe it is you're always looking in your rear view mirror, not looking through your windshield.

So it's corrective, not proactive.

So that's a challenge that currently exists and will continue to exist until replaced.

The second challenge that we have is with supervisory review and approvals, in particular with consistency in those decision-making processes across all of the supervisors that we have within the department.

Consistency and compliance with policy is a key to success.

And with that, I'll turn to my colleague Aaron to share with you the financial implications.

Good morning, Chairman Robinson, members of the subcommittee.

As Jody said, I'll talk a little bit about the financial implications to start out here of overtime costs.

Now, the impact of overtime is significant on both the general fund and on the public safety specialty funds.

And as you guys know, both of those funds have significant pressures on them.

Overtime costs are primarily influenced by two main factors, right?

The number of hours worked, which is fairly self-explanatory as the number of hours worked increases, the amount of overtime costs the city pays will increase as well.

The second uh factor is the value of overtime.

So that's influenced primarily by pay increases, right?

So most recently, that's been the class and comm study that was passed by council, uh, as well as negotiated labor increases that increases the value of overtime, it ultimately increases the cost.

One other factor that impacts the value of overtime is fringe benefits and specifically uh pension costs.

I want to talk about the current pension rate is about 93% for sworn positions.

So that's the the rate that gets paid to the public safety pension retirement system.

Sorry, will you repeat?

I apologize, Chairman.

Will you repeat that number?

Yes, ma'am, absolutely.

It's 93% is the current PSPRS pension rate.

For reference, uh, Vice Mayor O'Brien, that number was less than 25% about 15 years ago.

So over the last 15 years, that amount has increased significantly, which has driven some of the cost increase in the cost of overtime.

Finally, I'll just talk briefly.

Staffing shortages obviously have an impact on overtime as well.

That increases the hours worked component that we just talked about.

Now, what you would typically expect that is the number of vacancies increase, there's less staffing resources available, and that results in more overtime needing to be worked.

Conversely, as the field count increases, there's more staffing resources.

You would anticipate seeing a reduction in the amount of overtime needed.

We'll dive into these numbers a little more concretely in just a moment.

First, I want to give you just a big picture overview of where the city's uh police budget has been over the last 10 years or so.

This chart shows how additional resources have been allocated to the department over the past 10 years.

You can see that's true for both the general fund, which is shown in red.

It's also true for all funds, which is shown in blue.

Now, this is primarily driven uh by increases in personal services costs, that is people costs.

89% of the police department's general fund budget is personal services.

So if there are increases, you know, in that in that area, it's gonna impact the budget, and that's kind of what you see playing out over these last 10 years.

Again, the class and comp study, negotiated labor increases.

There are all are also other drivers that contribute to that, uh, service enhancements that have been added to the department over that time period, um, additional contract equipment costs, things like this.

But but again, personal services is the main driver there.

So now let's drill down just a little bit on sworn overtime specifically, and on the sworn filled count and the relationship between those two.

So, just as a reminder, the sworn hiring target is 3,125 officers.

Now, that number was established by council in the wake of the great recession after the specialty funds had gone negative due to the recession, due to the reduced revenues that were coming into those funds.

So the funds had gone negative, council enacted a hiring freeze and used attrition to bring those funds back into balance slowly over time.

But 3,125 positions is the sustainable hiring target that they've been working toward over the last several years.

So here's that picture of the where the sworn hiring count has been over a 10-year period.

It's that red line on the chart.

You can see that the high water mark was in fiscal year 1920, where we had a field count of roughly 3,000 officers, a little bit more, and since then there's been a significant decline.

A couple things I want to point out about this chart.

The first is that it shows a little bit of that relationship that we talked about earlier, where in the early part of the chart, say fiscal year 2015-16 to 2019-20, you see increasing staff counts over that time period.

We have additional staff resources, and by and large, you see decreasing overtime.

Now, conversely, you see the opposite relationship happening recently, right?

Where the field count has dropped noticeably, and you've seen an increase in the in the cost of overtime.

That's one thing to point out.

The other thing that I'd like to point out is that it's not just about the the staffing count, it's also about the value of overtime that we talked about.

So, what where you can see that in this chart is really in fiscal year 22-23, where it jumps up to about 45 million.

Uh, that was when the class and comp study took effect, right?

So, police officer pay went up, the value of overtime went up, and just as an aside, you recall that overtime is paid out at one and a half times the normal rate of pay.

So, when the value of overtime goes up, the cost of overtime goes up, and that's what you're seeing in those last several years of this chart.

Now, the budget and research department, uh, police fiscal staff all analyzed sworn position costs, overtime, vacancy savings throughout the year, but but really specifically during two processes during projection review, uh, which is going on right now.

That's the city's process to project position costs throughout the rest of the year and input them into the city's budget system, Sherpa.

And then again, during three plus nine, the main budget setting process.

But but again, that analysis is going on throughout the year, monitoring where overtime costs are, where vacancies are, and how those two interact with each other.

I do want to mention that there are inflationary adjustments in the budget to overtime every year.

That's mostly to account for things like um employee step increases, merit increases, potentially the impact of negotiated labor increases as well.

But but you will see some inflationary adjustments to overtime.

Overall, one main area that police staff works on is trying to identify the amount of overtime that is needed, looking at their available staffing, determining staffing models and figuring out you know how much overtime is truly needed.

But at the end of the day, overtime must be absorbed within the budget.

Um whether that's going to be covered by vacancy savings or other departmental savings.

And one challenge is that we have to balance overtime with other departmental needs as well.

So that kind of brings us into this next slide.

And it this slide is going to try to answer a question that has come up several times, which is where do all the savings on vacant positions go?

Uh and another kind of related question has been why don't they cover overtime?

So we'll walk through this for fiscal year 24-25, the year that just ended, and we'll look at the general funds, sworn vacancy savings and overtime budget versus uses.

So to start out, last year on average, the general fund had about 470 vacant sworn officer positions.

Now those have a value, right?

The they were forecasted.

Uh the excuse, I should say the forecasted position of a vacant officer at step one is about 164,000.

So if you multiply 164,000 times the number of vacancies we had, comes out to about 77 million dollars in savings that are potentially available to cover those uses that we were just discussing.

Again, there's also an actual sworn overtime budget, and the budget, including the cost of fringe benefits that go along with overtime, totals about 45.3 million dollars.

So in total, you have about 122 million dollars to work with to cover overtime, and then the other uses that that I mentioned.

So we'll walk through those now.

You can see the cost of overtime last year, including fringe costs, was about 98.6 million dollars.

Some of those other uses that I mentioned.

The first is from fiscal year 2122 to 2324.

The city council added a number of items to the police department's budget using vacancy savings.

So during that time period, roughly 150 positions were added.

The vast majority of those were uh positions meant to support sworn staff, civilian investigators, police assistants, detention officers, but those had a cost.

At the time, they were vacancy savings were added.

There was vacancies available, so though those were added to offset the cost of those additions, and it meant they were net zero at the time, but we have to still account for those vacancy savings now to be able to continue to provide those services.

So that's what you see there.

The other main item that needs to be covered with vacancy savings is the public safety specialty funds transfers.

These are transfers that are needed to keep the public safety specialty funds solvent.

Again, we just talked about the situation that the specialty funds were in in the wake of the great recession.

This transfer is what it enables those funds to maintain a healthy minimum fund balance.

Last year that number was 19.4 million dollars.

Um now we do an annual multi-year forecast of the specialty funds to determine the amount of subsidy that is needed.

I will tell you that this year that amount is lower.

It's lower for for two main reasons.

The first is the TPT increase, right?

Two of the specialty funds, Prop 301 and Prop 1 derive their revenue from sales taxes.

So because of the TPT rate increase, they are benefiting from that.

Now they are benefiting, but in the long run, they still have significant structural challenges.

That is the amount of revenue coming into those funds is still not enough to cover all of the position costs that are in those funds.

So over the long run, they will continue to need subsidy, even if this year it's a bit lower.

There are also vacancies in those funds.

We're making progress on the filled count, but the vacancies also provide some some temporary savings.

Yes, sir.

Chair, thank you, Chair.

Aaron, um, I and I appreciate the additional explanation, but could you go back and explain?

Because not everybody understands the specialty funds and and why it is we have a fund that we have to move money from one bucket to another.

So could you lay a little bit more foundation on that, please?

Yes, Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor O'Brien.

Yeah, so the specialty funds are um distinct voter-approved funds that are funded not by the general fund but by by a separate funding source, right?

So again, Prop 301 and Prop 1 are funded by dedicated sales taxes.

Um PSCF, the public safety enhancement fund is that is funded by franchise utility fees.

Those funds pay for a specific number of positions that were approved by voters.

Now, again, the amount of revenue coming into those funds is not enough to cover that number of positions, and so they need assistance, and the general fund is the assistance, it's the thing that subsidizes those funds.

So, for further clarification, the voters approved a tax, but along with that tax, they voted for a certain number of positions that should be paid for by that tax, but it wasn't um passed or approved in a way that calculated for increases to support that.

So the city of Phoenix taxpayers use some of our general fund money to fill in the gap there to continue paying for those resources.

Yes, Chairman Robinson.

Is that a fair point?

Yes, that's correct.

And part of the challenge too has been those increasing costs over time.

So again, the pension rate when those funds were created and approved by voters, significantly different than it is now, likewise for the for the cost of officers.

So that's one of the drivers that has caused those to become out of balance and require them to need additional subsidies.

Thank you for the additional explanation, Chair and Aaron.

All right, thank you.

Uh I'll continue here.

One other smaller item hiring incentives that continue and referral bonuses, a much smaller amount, but but one million dollars.

And so in total, again, looking at the the value of sworn vacancies, the value of the budgeted overtime we have versus all the uses, you can see that they that those um resources were actually exceeded by the uses by about 12 million dollars.

So I think this highlights that you know again, overtime is a significant challenge on the department and something that that has to be managed very closely.

Now I'll give just a really brief picture on the current state of hiring trends.

I know there's a presentation later at this subcommittee, so I won't steal anyone's thunder, but just very briefly, again, the sworn hiring target 3,125.

As of August of 2025, we're at 2,636 filled positions.

That does include recruits, which leaves us with a vacancy count of 489 positions.

Recruits that does include recruits, yes.

So those in the training academy.

Yes, Chairman Robinson Vice Records.

And do we know?

Well, we're gonna get it, but you don't know the training academy number off the top of your head, do you?

I'm sorry, Chairman Robinson Vice Member Brian, the number of recruits currently in the academy.

Yes.

I don't have that specific number.

Okay, actually, I may, I think it's about a little over 100 currently.

Okay, thank you.

Mr.

Chair Vice Mayor, as of August 27th, the total number of recruits in the academy was 101.

Thank you, Laurie.

Um, again, planned hiring for the current year uh is 245 positions.

Now, what the slide doesn't show is is attrition, right?

We know that attrition will occur due to planned retirements through the drop program, unplanned attrition, recruits that don't make it through the academy.

But overall, in one of the slides we previously looked at, and again, in the data we'll talk about later at the subcommittee, there are very positive trends in hiring and in the field count.

So that's a really positive thing to see for the department.

Um, with that, I'll pass this presentation back over to Jody.

Thank you, Aaron.

Councilman Robinson and members of the committee.

While our hiring numbers are positive, we still have been uh faced with persistent challenges with regard to staffing.

These staffing issues, as Aaron described, um, are a combination of reasons, including attrition through retirements, both planned and unplanned, a decrease in in applicants uh since we saw our staffing numbers significantly decline, the impact of the pandemic, and frankly, negative portrayals of law enforcement.

However, our department has been single focused on addressing these vacancies.

Um, we've utilized with city council supports, marketing strategies, increases in pay, resulting in a surge of applications, as well as resulting in the need for additional academy classes, which our colleagues will share information about that shortly.

Also, due to city council's efforts, our department is a market leader in Arizona when it comes to pay and benefits for our colleagues seeking law enforcement professions with the city of Phoenix.

As I shared with you previously, the challenges and the experiences that our department has seen over the past several years are not unique.

These are the same challenges that are faced by other departments across the country.

This includes uh staffing shortages, recruiting challenges, and a reliance on overtime to meet our service demands and operational needs.

This is validated by a study that was conducted by the police executive research forum.

A reliance on overtime has also resulted in significant community interest and overtime management, which echoes leadership and department interest in um controlling and managing overtime.

The measures that have been implemented when we look to our other cities across the United States are very similar to the ones that we have implemented here.

This includes enhanced record keeping, management oversight, as well as training resources.

Our efforts don't end, our efforts continue.

We will continue our efforts in effectively addressing these challenges, both in staffing and on a reliance in overtime to meet operational and service needs.

This includes collaborating with our city to auditor, also in conducting uh inspections to ensure that our employees and supervisors are following policy, as well as developing a data-driven forecast model to determine how much overtime is needed for to meet our operational and service demands.

As I shared previously, our current system is very much a corrective process or approach.

It's retroactive.

We're always looking about at events that have already happened, as opposed to forecasting what our needs are looking forward.

And we're working internally to develop a data-driven model that will forecast those needs, and then collaborating with our partners in the city like budget and research department to determine the financial impact.

And then the city, we're very excited about this, has also engaged in a procurement process to update the city system for a new time and labor uh system to manage what our modern needs are as opposed to our our legacy system.

In conclusion, mayor, I mean uh councilman Robinson and members of the committee.

We are dedicated to refining our overtime management in a continual effort.

This is something that requires engagement on both of personnel, supervisors, and leadership on a daily basis.

We will continue our efforts in addressing our current system limitations while we look forward to the replacement of our time and labor system in the near future, as well as a heavy focus on policy compliance and supervisory review to ensure consistency and practices, ensuring compliance with policy.

With that, Councilman Robinson, Chairman, thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Committee members, thank you as well, and we will open it up for questions.

Okay, thank you very much.

Let me before I get into anything, let me ask my colleagues if they have any questions.

Councilman Warren.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I have a couple questions.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you.

Um excited to hear we're we're having a new time and labor system.

When do we think that that will be implemented?

Chairman Robinson and uh Vice Mayor O'Brien.

We believe that that procurement process is opening very shortly.

Um, and then of course, we follow the procurement processes, complete the procurement, that'll come back to you as in front of the formal council for approval once that RFP or that procurement process has been completed.

Then we'll procure that process, develop an implementation program, and then uh deploy it system-wide.

That's an enterprise solution, so it's for the entire city.

So it is coming soon, um, but there is still a methodical process that we follow in order to get to that point.

Okay.

And how do you how will you project going forward?

I mean, we're looking at our 400 and sorry, 89 vacancies.

So explain to me how does it look when we are trying to project over time in the future, especially given the fact that we don't know when a celebrity or somebody of status comes and we're required to provide them with security.

Thank you, Chairman Robinson and Vice Mayor O'Brien.

Um, there's a couple of different ways that we're looking to do this, and we'll focus it based on activity.

When we look at patrol operations, understanding what our current staffing needs are, current staffing levels are, as well as utilizing a data-driven model that's been nationally acknowledged in order to predict the number of personnel that we need to meet the calls for service and activities that exist within those geographic regions.

We can predict what resources are required in comparison to what resources we currently have, that gap or that delta that exists, then we'll drive what our overtime projections will be, in particular to patrol.

Specific to your question with regard to dignitary visits, we look back historically as well as projecting forward what those events are.

For example, if we have and host another Super Bowl, we can look at what resources were required for that event, understanding that those types of events are scheduled well in advance to be able to project what that sort of demand will be, as well as what where are we at within the national election cycle.

Next year we'll be heading into to midterms.

So it's going to be an interesting year.

We'll have lots of visits.

Um the scope and the footprint of those visits are and the safety needs, we'll be able to project based on the number of visits, what that mathematical model will look like, and that starts to build out your forecast for the future.

We can do the same thing with regard to investigations, crime suppression activities, training, and so on.

So it becomes a proactive approach.

It will be a learning experience because it'll be the first time that we've uh undertaken this type of initiative, but it's moving from um a retroactive approach or a corrective action approach to a proactive approach.

And I appreciate that work and especially related to bringing our our labor system into the 21st century.

Um it is important for our community that the we do better in this area.

I do want to go back to your your slide on mandatory overtime versus discretionary overtime, and you had the other category, but you didn't really outline any particular type of others.

Can you help me with an example or two?

Especially given that it was six percent, whereas meeting and pre-briefing each were one percent.

So I would be concerned that there that there are enough categories and other that maybe it should have its own categories.

Councilman or Chairman Robinson and Vice Mayor O'Brien, thank you for the question.

Um, and there is a as a catch-all code or type of overtime in which the activity doesn't fall under another traditional accepted um overtime type.

Uh activities that this could include um and it, for example, if you had um somebody who came in to provide um support for uh a community action officer event.

Um, if that's not corresponding to a scheduled day off, there's a break in time from when the employee left and came back.

That could be the employee could choose other as a type of category or type that that would be included.

There's this includes multiple different types of activities, it just doesn't fit into one of the other traditional types that we have.

Okay.

I I guess I would like to us to look at how we can be more specific.

I would hope that if my CAOs are attending um an event that is a community event, I I look at that as being a meeting, still it's a meeting for them with with their community members.

So I'd hope we can be a little bit more aggressive in having categories that they would choose from, and other should absolutely be an exception so that we can see where that's going.

Um, so we can account for the time and and provide transparency to our community.

Chairman Robinson and Vice Mayor O'Brien, that's one of the challenges that we've had with the system.

In addition to the categories, the types, we also utilize index codes to provide additional specificity.

We didn't get into that level of detail today, but we're happy to share that with you.

Additionally, again, it's a corrective action approach.

So as an employee isn't certain about what type category or index it falls into, they choose other.

Um so we do capture it and then we do review it.

The supervisor is the first level of approval when it comes to the to overtime.

Um, and so they are reviewing to ensure that the document documentation provided with that activity is present, and then that it that it complies with policy and and moving forward with that.

So it is definitely an opportunity for improvement, which is one of the reasons we stood up the internal resources, which provides a list of those overtime codes and index indices that are utilized, as well as definitions for those so we can ensure consistency and selection when they submit their overtime requests for payment and approval.

Wonderful.

If you could provide the subcommittee with that further detail, especially in the other category, I would very much appreciate it.

Thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Um first of all, thank you very much for the information.

It is truly appreciated.

Simply because a lot has been said about police overtime, a lot is gonna continue to be said about police overtime.

And I want us to fully understand what it is that we're doing, why we're doing it, and what steps were taken in the future to decrease um the amount of overtime that we're using.

Because what's really interesting, and there was a national news story yesterday about the Secret Service that is woefully understaffed, and that they are going to be calling on local law enforcement agencies whenever the president, vice president, and other members of the presidential executive team travel.

So that is going to be something that we're supposed to be reimbursed for it, but we know how things take a while.

That's something we're gonna have to be aware of, and it's gonna come down the pike.

But as we went through every or as you guys went through the whole presentation, one thing that stuck with me, and I cannot help but think it's more about supervisory accountability, supervisory um oversight.

And I know that's built into it, but I certainly hope within the police department, we are truly holding our supervisors, sergeants and lieutenants, most definitely, but commanders accountable for the amount of overtime that's being used.

We need to make a change.

You know, it's we have a significant budget that we have to deal with in the next couple of years, and the police department overtime budget is a big part of that.

So it's going to be critical that everyone within the Phoenix Police Department understand, especially the leadership of the Chief One Down that everyone understands their role in helping us to not just meet our budget, but to do everything we can to you know supplement it.

And I mean supplement from a standpoint of doing the right things.

We shouldn't be spending some overtime just to be spending overtime because people think because we have these vacancies, we have the money to spend on it.

That type of thinking has to go out the window.

So I know that's going to be shared within the organization.

I certainly hope it is, and I think it needs to be.

So with that, unless there are any additional questions.

Um Aaron and Jody, thank you very much for the presentation.

I know it's been a long day so far, but we have one more presentation, and Commander Joe and Commander Myers, if you guys will come to the table.

Commander Joe and Myers will provide an update on the police department's hiring and retention.

That goes into a lot of what we're just talking about.

So I don't want the two of you to feel the pressure, but there is a great deal of pressure on what it is that you guys are doing these days.

So the table is, I mean, uh it's all yours.

The presentation is yours.

All right, try to live up to those expectations.

Uh good morning, Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor O'Brien, and members of the subcommittee.

Um, I'm here with my partner, Commander Leaf Myers uh to present an update on the Phoenix Police Department's recruiting, hiring, and attrition.

Um, this report provides a comprehensive overview of our staffing trends, challenges, and progress over the year.

Uh just before we go into the numbers, I want to thank, as you just heard from Deputy Director Director Aaron Merth.

Uh, usually he's one of the smartest guys in the room, and uh he that his team at budget and research have been instrumental in helping with providing the data, along with management assistant Alexa Martin and assistant director uh Megan Avalos.

Um, this chart here displays our monthly application numbers for 2024 compared to 2025.

Uh as you may recall, in June of 2024, uh we began putting in place many process improvements.

Uh, we spoke to our applicants and we took a deep dive into the application experience.

Um, we looked at how we were communicating with our applicants uh throughout our process, and we partnered with CDHR to streamline the handling of the applications to make it as efficient and as positive an experience for our applicants as possible.

So, as you can see, as a result, since June of 2024, there's been a significant significant increase in applications all the way through 2025, and we peaked with 518 hires in January.

Um we want to thank the council for the recent approval of funds to help us uh process these applicants.

We are charged by the case management software that we use per applicant at about $50 per applicant.

So we thank you to the council for approving that uh fund those funds to uh help us process those applicants.

Um here we can see how the increased applications have impacted us year to date.

As you can see, when we add up the applications for all the months year to date, we have had more men and women apply from January through July of 2025 than we did all of 2024.

Uh here we can see the how they increased applications uh increase can be seen in the lateral and reinstatement applications as well.

As you can see, when we add up uh all those, uh the we are on track again to exceed last year's numbers for laterals and reinstatements as well.

Uh and again, and here we and when compared to 2024, we can see that the hires for allows and reinstatements for the first six months of 2025 are on tracks for us to exceed last year by almost double.

So the increase in applications has also translated to actually more recruits hired compared to last year.

In 2024, the department hired 22 women and 145 men as police recruits.

In the first six months alone, the department has hired 14 women and 138 men.

Based on this chart, we could potentially double the amount of sworn officers hired in 2025 versus 2024.

However, we recognize there's room for improvement.

As you can see, based on this data, we see there's a decrease in total percentage of women hired in 2025 compared to 2024.

However, on a positive note, we are on track to double the total amount of women hired in 2025 compared to 2024.

To make sure we remain focused on our 30 by 30 objective, we're continuing to prioritize outreach in our recruiting efforts to women, and some things that are planned in 2025 include working with the mayor's women's commission, uh making uh women focused conferences and recruitment events a priority.

Uh, some of those include uh our college partnerships at GCU.

We are specifically going to uh women's softball games uh where we have a high population of uh female athletes, women interested in those events, and we will be at those recruiting events uh in force.

Uh in addition to focusing on process improvements, we believe this increase in applications is due to our renewed focus on community-based recruitment.

Uh, for example, our recruiting team now actively partners with detectives from the community response squad and regularly engages with the police chief's advisory boards.

So a little bit of history.

The advisory boards are composed of community leaders and has a detective assigned as a community liaison, and the core values of these boards are to foster unity between the community and the Phoenix Police Department, build trust through open communication and collaboration, provide a forum for listening to community concerns and co-creating solutions, and then enhancing the quality of life for all members of our community.

Uh, we found that these face-to-face interactions with our recruiting team and the community uh has helped to address community perceptions and concerns about law enforcement and that firsthand experience to address any kind of questions that they may have about pursuing a uh career in law enforcement.

Uh, they also empower the community members to help amplify our recruitment messages.

Um, personally, when I've gone to these community meetings, I've had numerous uh leaders come to me and say, How can we help to get your mess your message out there?

How can we help distribute your materials?

Um, so there are force multipliers for us.

Uh, there are 12 advisor boards, including the African American Advisor Board, LGBTQ Plus Advisory Board, Face Faith-Based Advisor Board, and Hispanic Advisory Board, among others.

Uh, in addition to these types of events, uh, we'll continue to partner with community events such as uh Councilwoman Gardado's Maryville Resource Fair.

Thank you, Councilwoman, for that invitation.

We'll be staffing that this weekend as well.

So we'll re continue to go to events like that, which we'll be out in the community with our recruiters.

Uh we believe the focus community-based recruiting is reflected in the applicant demographics as well.

So, as you can see here, the applicants for 2025 closely reflect Maricoga County Census data.

And for reference, the Maricopa County Census data also closely uh mirrors Phoenix's uh city demographics as well.

Um as always, we continue to strive towards staffing a department reflective and representative of our community.

Here you can see the same success we had in representation in our applicants holds true in the total for recruits hired thus far in 2025.

Uh, specifically, you can see that uh county demographics show and the city of Phoenix demographics also mirror this that uh seven percent of our population is African American, and you can see from this year uh from January through July.

We've the recruits that we've hired, 10% are African American.

Same could be said for our Hispanic population, they are very closely mirroring uh our county and city demographics as well.

Here you can see the ultimate impact that we hope to achieve, which is bigger academy classes.

Uh academy class sizes have grown in 2025, uh, and with class three peaking at 45.

Uh, this growth reflects the success of our expanded recruitment pipeline and improved retention during training.

Uh to address our attrition, uh, we recognize that attrition is uh part of the equation, and attrition is highest among officers with less than one year of service or between one to five years of service, and those are the training years, and then there's a dual trend in the reflection of uh retirements uh where we have officers over 21 years retiring.

Uh, we are closely monitoring these trends specifically at the academy and field training levels, and to help me uh help us talk about that is my partner commander of Myers.

Thanks, Will.

Uh good morning, Chairman Robinson, members of the subcommittee.

I'm Commander Leaf Myers.

Thank you for your time this morning and the opportunity to provide you with an update on the academy and field training staffing.

Jumping into the academy, we'll take a look at the 2024 comparison versus this current year.

If you look, we are we've already have 147 recruits uh this year.

Currently, we have three classes operational with 101 recruits.

As of September 22nd, we'll have an additional 40 start the academy.

This number will have already surpassed last year's total.

In addition to that, this year we were operating at a 92% retention rate compared to last year.

We're at an 81%.

As we move to our field training component, you'll see that the total number of officers differ from the recruit academy numbers.

This is due to recruit injury or academic concerns.

We do retain these employees and place them in the next available class.

We typically average about 10 to 15 ish recruits that get redeployed in the next class.

If you look, we are currently operating at a 91% retention rate this year compared to a 69% last year.

And if we we already have more OITs this year compared to all last year.

Moving in kind of a snapshot of where are they now?

Uh we took three complete calendar years of data from 2022 to 2024 and took a snapshot of where they're at.

We have currently hired 478 recruits from that time period.

There are currently 305 active sworn employees.

An additional 27 have taken civilian positions within the department, dispatchers, detention officers, and etc.

Over the last three years, we have lost 146.

Typically, we average about 15 to 17 in the academy, and the remainder are within uh the first year are in OIT.

Admiral, I'd like to ask a question.

Most certainly.

It'll never get old, Kevin.

Oh, I know.

Okay.

Um, so this is very concerning to me.

Um, I appreciate the other information and the work you're doing and the progress that you're you're apparently making.

But the 30% is high.

It costs a fortune to advertise and get the applicants and then get them to actually go through all the testing and then go to the academy and then become officers.

And that 30% just seems high.

Um that's just if they go on to become accountants, nothing against being accountants, but that's just wasted money by the Phoenix taxpayer is a waste of your time.

It might be have been an interesting life experience for them.

But we need bodies in the uniforms out on the streets, and 30% just seems like I don't even want to you probably can do it, like how much it costs to get to somebody to this point, and then to have them drop out.

You know, that's probably millions of waste of dollars, I'm guessing.

Um, so I appreciate your focus on the demographics and all that, but really we need bodies in the uniforms to address the issues that we were talking about earlier in this meeting at other agenda items.

And so if you could cut that in half, maybe focus on that, maybe lead with that in the next presentation, because to me that's the compelling number.

Um, it's fantastic that you might have twice as many.

I think that's I think that's what I heard, twice as many new officers as last year.

But if then you're turning around and losing 30% of them every year, that's then that chips away at that.

And also, you know, the doubling it, that still doesn't get anywhere close to our goal.

It would be easier, probably to keep people who've already expressed an interest in Phoenix.

Then they passed all the testing and they got through the academy, and now they're actually out on the street, making them happy and validated in their work.

Um, I get because it was mentioned, I think by Jody, that you know, frankly, the public, the media, whatever hasn't treated officers very well the last few years.

I'm certainly aware of it.

It's been absolutely appalling.

There's no doubt about it, and now you reap what you sow.

We're actually seeing the results of that with some of the anarchy that citizens talked about here on our streets and people just doing whatever the hell they want.

But to chip away at that, I would really focus on this 30%.

I'm sure you're doing exit interviews and so forth.

Um, but really, I mean, sometimes you do something, but to for them to get all the way to this, and we didn't fare it out as an organization that this isn't for you, and to spend all that money, it just seems like somewhere along the line there should have been warning signs and pivot to find somebody else to get into the uniform to get out in the streets to help our citizens.

So I'm happy to hear any comments you have.

I'm sure these are things you thought about yourself, but that is that is just that's a high number.

For further folks for further clarification, that 30%, these are folks who are all the way through the FTO process.

Or just graduated, which uh yeah, Chairman Robinson members of the subcommittee, that 30% is both in the academy and within the first year.

So that's we've typically lost about 80 from the academy and then 60-ish from within the first year of the of that 146.

Okay.

And I recognize, like um, Councilman Warren was just saying that you find out fairly quickly whether or not the job is for you.

And I think I know some of that you're not going to be able to identify until clearly.

And this is, you know, I don't mean this in a flippant way, until you're the first unit on that homicide or that that fatal accident or something like that, and you see something like that, and you take stock of whether or not you can deal or want to deal with something like that.

I get it.

I don't know that you know there is a way to really determine that.

Some folks.

Well, that's more of a statement.

But yeah.

Can I ask you I thought maybe that was a question, but it sounds like it was a statement.

I think more of a statement.

Yeah, but I guess just for me, I would I would say this.

Um, at some level, these officers, these people who are filling these uniforms, they're not interchangeable parts.

We all have different skills and so forth.

I I hope you're doing to the best of your ability.

Maybe somebody isn't cut out for work in the night shift in an area that's got higher levels of crime, but they could at least stay in and do the paperwork, and then when we have the Super Bowl, they can go out and help with that.

I mean, it just seems like at some level we're desperate.

If I sound desperate, because it's because we're actually our desperate.

I mean, this is a this is a trying time.

I get so freaking furious when I call, and I'm not I'm not criticizing the department at all, but like this morning, I know it's gonna be a while because you don't have enough officers to cover the huge area that Desert Horizon and Black Mountain cover, and so with few officers because you you are forced to rotate them out to cover the higher crime areas.

So I know that the person just sleeping on the bench isn't gonna have a contact with police, which may dissuade him in the future from just passing out wherever he wants on a lovely Wednesday morning.

But the way to address that is to make sure we're efficiently using our resources and not asking people to the last agenda item to work ungodly amounts of overtime.

Um honestly, we really need to maximize the use of the officers, so we can't keep sending them out to talk to the same people over and over again.

That's an inefficient use of resources, too.

There are a lot of ways that we can take our 2500 or 2600 people and deploy them.

Military officers have to do that all the time throughout history, they've done it.

Smaller armies sometimes win because they're better at deploying their resources.

The 30% concerns me.

Uh, I think he did at the outset, uh, Mr.

Chairman.

I they did mention that that some of these are not officers who were already out in the field.

Um, so I I definitely got that part, but it's still even if it's half, even if it's 15%.

I mean, we're paying retention bonuses and stuff, right?

In the contracts, so these people are actually foregoing at relatively.

I'm I'm assuming most of the recruits are probably in their 20s.

I'm guessing, or probably not much older than 30.

I'm guessing.

I don't know that you mentioned that in here.

You know, they're they're leaving what when you're a younger person, a lot of money on the table.

Um there's gotta be a way to say, hey, let's look at this again.

Maybe we can find something else that keeps you here, helps us, and maybe lets us deploy somebody who is cut out for working the night shift in a higher crime area to go do that more often.

I I hope everything I'm saying is stuff you're rolling your eyes and going, yeah, idiot, we've thought about all of this.

But if you haven't, I mean, and this is the result we're getting, then more screening is clearly necessary.

It's one of those two.

Um, so I'd be happy to any comments if you have.

If please don't call me an idiot, though, if you can avoid it at all costs, uh for morale for me anyway.

Chairman Robinson, Councilman Waring, member of the subcommittee.

That actually dovetails into my next slide, but is concerning for me as well.

So moving from in 2024, we did a better job of capturing data, especially as with doing exit interviews.

Um, this is our best data moving forward.

So from this point on, we'll do a better job of capturing the exit interviews from the academy.

What the three most common types of people leaving are personal reasons.

This includes family support, relocating family back with their immediate family, pursuing military careers, rule violations, absenteeism, and those type of things, and then we had some firearms concerns from the academy.

During the highest two categories in field training were personal reasons and job performance, again, family issues for personal reasons, and then transitional struggles with shift report writing, that type of thing.

And what brought my focus is the personal reasons that are are on both categories.

And what I've done is actually slow that down when when people come when uh employee comes to me and that uh want to leave for personal reasons.

I provide them with a day off to go home and talk it over.

Uh, it's an emotional reaction, it's an emotional decision.

Um, I don't want to find want to find out the why, so I'll bring them back in and I'll talk to them about the why.

And just to give you an anecdotal story, we had a recruit two days two or three days ago that wanted he had a bad day at the academy, he had a bad day at home.

He spent two hours driving on the I-10, and I can relate to that.

I felt his pain on that one.

So he had a bad day, and he said he called up and he said, I'm I'm I want to quit for personal reasons.

I brought him back in.

We found out the why, found it out.

Like, hey, take another day, you're doing great in the academy, you're doing all this stuff.

He went home, talked it over with family, and he's like, I still want to be here, had a bad day yesterday.

So as we slow these personal reasons down and try to find out the why, I think that's a benefit.

Now, hopefully, moving forward, we'll see some of these categories reduce.

And if I could just add to that, Mr.

Chair, uh, members of the subcommittee, this number was concerning to all of us when we were looking at the data and and seeing how many people who have invested in not just going through the application process but going through the academy and field training, you know, were leaving the organization.

While that number is not unusual when we look at what happens in other academies, we don't want us to be the norm.

We want we want to be the exception, and we want to have the lowest um attrition rate when it comes to folks who are who are trading out of the academy or field training.

And so that is going to be a focus area of ours, and we want to make sure that the investments that we're making and that these individuals are making in Phoenix are something that we're going to you know continue to see bear fruit.

And a couple of these things, you know, job performance and and some of the personal reasons, as Commander Myers alluded to, can be addressed, and we can find solutions for those things.

And so it may be working individually with each and every um recruit or officer, but we are willing to do that in order to make sure that we have the highest success rate possible.

So I just want to assure you all that we've had those conversations and that we are going to continue to work on bringing that 30% down.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Vice Marvel O'Brien.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, first of all, relative to applications and increasing our academy classes, uh, it is incredibly gratifying to see all the hard work that has been done the last couple of years paying off.

So thank you very much for that.

Um, you examined the the hiring process, you and you've determined where we could do better, and then you've delivered on those changes.

Um I do want to talk about the numbers though that we were just talking about as well.

Um, one of the things that I talked to leadership about is how do we provide um a little bit more hands-on real life exposure to this job.

And um, I am very thankful for the police department and fire department's really great relationship because the fire department, you know, they do write-alongs.

They the cadets can hang out at the station, um, they go on calls, right?

So they can do a 24-hour shift.

I realize that there is a significant difference between what fire department does and what the police department does, but I would challenge you to find out ways to make the doors open to folks who think they want to become police officers to spend more time with our officers on the streets.

And and I know that that's not going to be a foolproof way, but getting some exposure up front may cause them not even to apply or uh, you know, and and we want people to apply, but if it's the job's not right for you, then we want you to go find the right job for you and and for you to be happy and for us to find the people that are this job is right for.

So um, and then you just did I hear you say report writing was a concern, Commander, for some of our folks.

Yeah, Chairman Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor O'Brien.

Yeah, so some of the concerns were report writing.

What we've actually done is twofold is when we pre-hire them, we're now putting through them a writing class.

So we're helping with those some of the report writing efforts, and then also we are sending the pre-hires through as many ride-along shifts as we can so that give them that real life experience.

Wonderful.

That is great to know.

What when did we start doing that?

Probably about two months ago.

Okay, so we'll we'll see in another six months to a year if that's paying off.

Um, relative to report writing, I love that we're we're sending them to a writing class, but there's this new thing called AI.

I would be really curious if they're I I'm not curious.

I actually know because I've been approached by some companies who who are doing report writing for officers.

Now it doesn't mean it doesn't have to be checked and and make sure that it's accurate and it got done the way we need it to be done, but that might be something we need to look at if if that is a challenge for our our young recruits.

Um, the other thing that we talked about prior to going on break, I believe, was uh having the folks who provide mental health support and coaching in the academy.

Do we still have that available to them?

Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor O'Brien, yes, we still do.

Okay, wonderful.

Now I want to flip back to our uh the recruitment hiring and recruitment hiring and attrition report.

Um, because while this 30% number is incredibly concerning given all the investment, I would tell you that I'm also concerned about how many folks you highlighted leave with 20 plus years of service, and would like to see in the future on this report more about those folks, because it is great that we're starting to fill those vacancies, but having all of that knowledge and experience, walk out the door, and my c colleague, Councilman Waring often says it frequently.

Those folks that are leaving with often at 20 and those early years of 20s probably haven't gotten to go through drop and are leaving a ton of money on the table.

And that there's something to be said about what's going on there that they're walking away from additional financial security uh for them and their families potentially, but they're walking away with experience and knowledge, and we've invested a lot in them.

And we'd like to to learn more and see more in this report about what we're doing to retain them and um keep them in our department.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you.

I just had a couple real quick comments about the presentation itself.

Um, Commander Joe, with regard to total recruits and applications and stuff like that.

I'm guessing, and please um tell me whether or not I'm right or wrong.

The key to processing those applications is having the detectives to do what you need them to do.

And clearly we're losing some folks because we don't have enough folks to do what we need to do.

Uh Chairman Robinson, Vice Mayor, and uh members of the subcommittee, absolutely correct.

Um, when we looked at our data and when we looked at how we were processing our applicants, uh, we looked at it from a case management uh perspective, kind of like a detective bureau would.

Um, and we looked at how fast a detective was able to process an applicant.

Um, and it did come down to personnel.

Um, the amount of detectives that can process an applicant um does impact how how many more we can process in a month.

Uh so that's true.

Clearly, a big part, and I've heard this from a couple students over the last couple semesters, is the first agency that gets back to them is the one they're gonna go with.

And you know, and I I know obviously you guys are aware of it.

I would implore you to do as much as we possibly can to reach out to folks as quickly as we possibly can.

Another issue I think was about slide four with and you have to pull the slide up, it's about the lateral and um reinstatements, folks coming back to the organization.

And I don't need the answer now, but if you can as you look at it or you do the um interviews, the people who are coming back, can we find out why generally?

My guess is the grass seems greener and they find out that it really isn't.

And the very last thing I'll make a comment on when you give us um the recruits by demographics and stuff, are we citing the Maricopa County workforce population, or are we actually citing the population in general?

Uh Chairman Robson, uh Vice Mayor Member Subcommittee, we're citing census data for the total population.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

And obviously, we're trending in the right direction with regard to um everything that's happening with why the retention rates.

I think the retention rates are looking very good.

And I think the last comment I will make is Vice Mayor O'Brien just made a really good point about who's leaving, you know, people at 20 years and why they're leaving.

But I will share something.

I had a meeting yesterday with some folks from the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, and Chief Junior Donnell is in the room, so um I haven't had an opportunity to tell you about this yet.

But they talked about um the fact that they had an they had a member who was not real happy with the Phoenix Police Department for a variety of reasons, and was outspoken, sent an email to the ask the chief, and Chief Giordano and I heard the same thing when um assistant chief, executive assistant chief um was in the role when Dennis Orrender was in the role.

But the fact that you guys are getting back to folks, it's critical.

It's really important.

And Chief Giordano, to the point I'm making, you made an impact on somebody who's decided to stay around.

They were fed up, they were mad about things, you responded to them, and they felt um, and I was getting this through the folks at plea.

They felt that um you had a genuine interest in them.

And I think that was one of the things that you said in your interview with us is that you're gonna concentrate on those at that 20 plus years and try to figure out a way to keep them around.

I think you're doing it, and what you guys are doing at the training academy and the hiring process, it's critically important that we put our best foot forward.

I think you guys are doing it, things are trending in the right direction, so I thank you for that.

So there are no other questions.

Oh, I'm sorry, one more question.

When you say we're short X number of officers, is that subtracting the number of officers we have now from the I believe it's 3150 or 3125?

Is that is that the number that that's where you're coming up with it, Lori?

Are you nodding?

Was that yes, Mr.

Chair?

Councilman Ware.

We just have an issue.

I wasn't sure.

The um the count that you're talking about that is our target is three thousand one hundred and twenty-five positions.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

So I would say that's a fictitious number too, and the situation is even worse um than we think.

Um, because how long has that been the number?

It's been several years, and the city has grown since then.

I'd be curious how many citizens City of Phoenix has added since that's been the number.

So on a per capita basis, things are getting worse.

I would refer you why that's important is because I'd refer you back to first more officers is better, obviously.

But second, uh, if you fellas were in the room earlier when I talked about the dry cleaner that was just purchased, I think was existing business and was just purchased by this fella, and he's like, Well, the officer stuck around, so the problem seemed to solve itself that people kind of scattered because they didn't want to be around an officer.

Now, if you feel the need to just leave because an officer's sitting there kind of makes me wonder what you're up to.

I've seen that as I've been on my walks, like officers pull somebody over, and then all of a sudden a couple cars decide now they need to leave too.

I've watched cars do almost it's almost hilarious.

It's like they're creeping in a cartoon or something to try to kind of get out of the way of any officers.

Makes you kind of wonder what's going on there.

Um, but I I would say this, you know, with per you know, with fewer people in the and more people in the city, fewer people in the department, it's actually become it's just a war of attrition.

It's actually getting a little bit worse every day as a few more people move here.

So that number, well, it would be great to hit it, and we're years away, it looks like from that at the current pace.

That that's not gonna be like, oh, pish posh, we're done.

We don't need to keep focusing on this.

We absolutely need to keep focusing on it all the time.

Um so I might suggest we come up with a new number based on whatever the national standards are and so forth, to frankly give citizens a more realistic perspective of what our real target should be.

That will be unpleasant.

You won't like to do it, we won't like to hear it, but it's not if it was 3125 in 2020, that's not what it is anymore.

So thank you, Chairman.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um, Commander Myers and Joe, thank you very much for your presentation.

Oh, no, there were no other questions.

Okay.

Um, items six and seven are for information only.

The community assistance assistance program, um fire department and the Phoenix Fire Department staff and response time.

Do uh any of my colleagues have any questions on either those those items?

No, okay.

Last item is a call to the public, and I know the folks who are listed have left.

And are there any other requests for future agenda items other than what we've already talked about?

Okay, thank you.

This meeting is adjourned, and that's how it's done done done.

I was asked to say that.

I don't know why.

Thank you very much.

Also with us today, our MAG executive director, and former city manager of the city of Phoenix and Zirker.

In formerly the mayor and value metro CEO, Scott Smith.

Thank