Recording in progress.

Welcome everyone to our uh March 10th study session.

We have three agenda items today.

We are uh going to hear from the uh RP D on uh persons experiencing homeless here in Rochester, then we'll hear uh uh report from our housing uh advocates as well as the counties on uh unsheltered homelessness projects uh prioritization, and then we'll uh uh hear from uh public works on sidewalk gap uh fill prioritization.

So uh beautiful sunny day warm.

I'm hoping to get out of here in maybe two hours.

So administrators, anything to add?

Nothing to add, thank you.

All right, well, let's uh invite our RP folks up to uh give their presentation president of Thursday.

No, no, get close, get a little green.

There we go.

There we go.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning, council president, council members, city administrator.

Um, thank you for this opportunity.

Uh, we were asked by city administrators elms to kind of uh do an analysis and and just kind of a presentation on uh the work that we're doing.

Uh we're working with uh people experiencing homeless and in this community.

Uh I'm extremely proud of what the police department is doing.

They're doing a tremendous amount of work.

I brought some help today, Captain John Turk and Sergeant Greg Gerdo.

I'm just gonna do a quick introduction here and then let you hear from them, two of the people that are really on the front lines here, uh actively and daily uh working with people experiencing homelessness in this community here.

So, what are we doing right now?

Obviously, we're working with uh all the service providers and the entities, our partners with the county, uh any other partners that want to partner up on solving this uh very complex issue.

Uh right now we are providing uh patrolling public spaces and doing as much outreach as we possibly can again encouraging people towards resources.

Right now, our patrol division is actually uh walking the skyways, uh interacting with people experiencing homelessness twice a night every night, uh, once at 11 o'clock and once roughly at about five in the morning.

Uh I will tell you that as we get into the springtime and our calls for service get a little bit more busy, that that's not a sustainable thing that we're gonna be able to continue to do.

But as of right now, we are doing that as much as we can again in that concept of engagement and encouragement of people towards resources.

And then uh what we found today here, and again, um we really did a deep dive into the data to try to analyze what what we're dealing with and and how we're dealing with it and how much resources it's uh taking from Rochester PD.

And again, we're here to present that data uh to you.

Um obviously uh we're an organization that values service and compassion, and we're committed to doing that.

We're committed to serving this community at the highest possible level.

And as police chief, I could not be more proud of the men and women that put on this uniform and continue to serve this community at the highest possible level, policing with their hearts and doing doing it compassionately uh and respectfully with everybody that we deal with out on the street.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over and kind of let them get some details uh in front of you.

Thank you, Chief.

Yep, thanks, Chief.

All right, so next slide.

Um kind of overall the the approach that the police department takes, and we've been doing this for kind of a long time is we call this three three E approach.

So break into the three, we have educate, encourage, and enforce.

Obviously, you enforce being the last thing.

So uh the team works really hard for the educational piece.

You know, what are the resources available?

They've educated themselves, they know the resources that are there, so they can uh pass that knowledge along to individuals.

Uh we have a homeless resource guide, a booklet that they're able to pass out and give to individuals.

We incur or uh educate those on what the city codes and ordinances are in Skyway hours are an example, and then the camping ordinance is another thing that's used as kind of an educational tool.

Um obviously, then it's part of an encouragement as well as we kind of move along and continue to have contacts with individuals.

So once again, reinforcing those local social services that are available, um, offering referrals.

The officers have built a great deal of contacts within the community to even reach out to providers to even help move referrals around and uh talk to providers.

Um that's really primarily the community action team.

Uh Sergeant Joe leads that with the with the team that's uh out there on a regular basis.

If over the course, and you guys are gonna see kind of how we go through the approach and addressing individuals on camps, um, if we do have to get to an enforcement level of that, it's done after there's been a significant amount of engagement that the officers have done or attempted referrals and an encouragement over and over, and that's a very kind of documented process.

So if we reach the point for enforcement, we will be kind of have a history with the individual that we've really tried to work with them very very closely.

So if it's escalates to the criminal justice system, we can say you know, these were the opportunities we were kind of giving them.

All right, so just a little this is just gonna kind of touch on just kind of the efforts to address concerns, you know, the areas of focus that the that uh community action team tends to focus on is camp response, calls for service.

There's also another proactive side as well, which is the patrols that the chief just talked about that happen overnight, and we have a team, the community action team starts at 6 a.m.

and they are actually out doing an additional patrol after 6 a.m.

So partnering with the the regular close-in partners we're working with really out in the field, which we found is the most benefit is the community outreach specialists, so the ones from the county that have been helping us with uh people in crisis.

Uh the patrol division is the chief talks about, is an integral part of that response.

Uh the community action team really has hours from 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

And after that, the patrol division, besides handling other calls for service, will do those patrols twice a night uh through the skyways.