I got Pepsi, that's my power drink too.

I knew can be a good thing.

Thank you.

I'm all set.

Thank you.

You came prepared.

We need a paper table.

Yeah, we do.

All right.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Um, we're here to start the budget hearing for the Department of Police.

Um I am Donna Moore, Chair of Safety Committee.

I am joined by my fellow counselors.

Councillor Hudson, Counselor Jones Rouser, Counselor Never say right, right.

Aaron Wright.

Counselor Caldwell, Nave, President Paniagua, uh, Counselors Monto and Majuk.

And I'll let you guys introduce yourself and take the take the lead here.

All right, thank you very much for having us.

I appreciate it.

With me today is First Deputy Chief Rich Trudel and Lieutenant Jen Grimmy, both uh very instrumental in putting together this budget.

We put together to uh uh to kind of walk through some of these things, uh a presentation that'll be on the screen over here, uh just over uh counselor Hudson's uh shoulder.

So a bunch of folks uh as I mentioned, Chief Trudell was was uh deeply involved with this as long with uh Jen Grimmy, Lieutenant Jen Grimmy, Evan Loving, Stacey Jennis, and uh Julie Castile Castellito that uh really helped to create this uh budget.

We looked at a lot of data over the last five years or so to try to put this uh to budget together as as uh as uh best that we possibly could.

So I really want to give them a shout out first because they put a tremendous amount of work on.

There was a lot of meetings about this.

And and the other thing that we also looked at is in the future, as first deputy chief uh and and Lieutenant Grimmy work on this budget with those folks up there is how can we also present solutions the next time that we come to this?

When we look at calls for service, how can we consolidate things?

How can we present uh solutions over the next fiscal year to ultimately um present more than just uh ask for money but also solutions for for some things?

So we have some ideas that that we're working on, and uh as the year goes on, we'll be sure to present those all to you.

In terms of department staffing, this is uh this goes back to July of 2019.

The staffing has been on uh on a decline here, but uh I'll show you here in a few minutes that uh although it's been on decline, there's been incredible work by the sworn and civilian members of the Syracuse Police Department to uh to answer calls for service, conduct investigations, and then do support operations to keep the police department uh providing quality services.

So the sworn uh personnel are deployed uh in these areas in the orange in the orange graph, that's the uniform bureau that's overseen by uh Deputy Chief Jim Milana.

He has uh approximately 65% of the of the department uh with respect to sworn personnel.

The support services bureau is overseen by uh Deputy Chief uh Jason Tom, and then the investigations bureau is overseen by Deputy Chief David Metz, and then obviously uh then you have the the chief's office as well.

So three hundred and sixty-four total sworn uh personnel, and this is the deployment throughout the department.

Uh you know, the as I mentioned at the beginning, I think this is a good opportunity to to highlight some of the great work that the police department is doing.

This is a call, this is calls for services compared to other areas.

I get this question quite quite frequently.

That how uh how do we compare it to other agencies?

This is just one 24-hour period.

Uh 500 calls for service, those are calls that come into 911, but then also self-initiated activities where officers are conducting traffic to traffic stops, doing property checks, what we call COPRA curves.

These those are our walking beats that that have become uh cornerstone for our reduction in gun violence, but also community engagement.

So a lot of great work that uh that gets done here, and you can just see the the sheer volume of calls is as uh compared to other agencies, what uh Syracuse Police Department is ultimately responsible, uh responsible for the uh the you know one thing that also comes up uh quite frequently, but this isn't this is an area of of progress.

I've said many times that progress is not a finish line, it's a responsibility.

But one area is ultimately how long does it take for for folks to get uh police officers to get to a call for service?

But then also there was a uh a change in our dispatch policy protocol, and and the commanders uh and supervisors for the police department did an excellent job implementing this this new change, and this has helped significantly reduce our our calls or our wait time for people to ultimately get uh get involved.

A lot of self-initiated activity that's that's going on.

I think the the one that I particularly want to highlight, these are everything in the police world is an acronym, but in the top left-hand corner, the the COPs, those are our Copra curve stops.

One of the things that we've heard over the years is we'd like to see more officers out in the actual streets uh doing walking beats.

And and this has been a uh a project that that came through um Latif, the mayor's office to reduce gun violence, Pablo when he was here, Chief Trudel.

There's a lot of folks that worked on this.

But but increasing our foot patrol presence has been something that's drastically improved over the last uh three years.

This is the 2025, the 2025 highlights.

You take a moment just to recognize some of the folks.

We have our support services folks that do all the training for the police department.

They've been putting through two police academies a year, tremendous amount of work, but that includes our Calia requirements.

The the police department was just re-accredited for Calia.

We're also that's a federal accreditation, then we also have a state level accreditation.

But with that comes a lot of training requirements.

We we uh encourage the training requirements, that's how we get professional police services.

But that's an incredible work on the support services uh support services bureau.

But you also have technology that falls in there and and a lot of other folks uh that that uh Chief Tom supervises.

Recently, we've the investigations bureau that's overseen by Deputy Chief Metz, they've conducted many, many search warrants or or operations out in the street, and they've had really huge productions just in the last two weeks.

They were recovered almost 10,000 grams of of illegal drugs.

Uh cocaine is is very prevalent right now.

Fentanyl is something that they've that they've been working on as well too to reduce.

But between SID and our intelligence groups, just in the last two weeks, they were c recovered 12 illegal guns.

And and patrol, I'm seeing that out of patrol as well, too.

They're they're uh not only finding the guns, but they're also making associated arrests with that.

And those that's on a significant increase, if I remember correctly, it's about 28% more guns are recovered with arrest from 20 in 2026 than compared to 2025.

So the the numbers are there and a lot of uh a lot of great work that's that's being accomplished.

This is just my curiosity, but look with the cocaine and the fentanyl being prevalent, which we it's noticeable that it is.

Are these net are are we finding that these are one-off dealers or is there like a network of is it a bigger conglomerate of dealers working together, or is this spotty?

It's a it's a great question.

Something that I would not want to answer uh in this setting just because of ongoing investigation.

So happy to talk offline about that.

But it's a great it's a great question.

Okay.

You know, and the the other thing that I just want to highlight too is that there's been a big push for community engagement and being involved in PAL activities, being involved out in the out in the community with a lot of different events that are set up through our community engagement team.

And really what I find is a lot of balance.

There's a lot of proactive work that's being done to uh provide protection, but there's also a lot of work that's being done where the officers are going out and engaging where they don't have to just uh be in this protection mode, they can be in a in a in a different mode as well, too.

So I'm real proud of the work that the officers are doing to have this balanced representation.

No most fine, I saw uh by the home USDS.

So two officers by the Yeah, they they yeah, I I appreciate you saying that that the bike patrol is something that's increased drastically.

Deputy Chief Milana has worked with people internally to increase our uh the number of bikes that we have, and the officers really seem to like it.

It gives them a good opportunity to get outside of the car and the in the in the you know might snow tomorrow, but in the warmer weather today, they get they get they get out there and the community does appreciate uh seeing it, but it gives you a better human interaction because you can stop and talk to people.

It's easier to flag uh folks down if they have to report it.

And and they're a great tool for us in terms of responding to calls for calls for service.

We use them on Halloween, we use them in different and when there's Memorial Day, Labor Day, when there's different parades and festivals, we use those to to ultimately supplement when there's a lot of foot traffic that's in the in the uh community.

That big fentan uh bus that you had last week.

Was that SPD?

Yes, okay.

Yes.

There's been there's been several of them, but uh there's been a lot of great work that's come out.

I mean, just in the last nine weeks, really the pace has been very impressive.

Well, thank you.

Off the streets.

So Chief, before you um you continue.

So there is 419 sworn officers positions, right?

If I can get to that in just one second, I'll give me two two slides here and I'll get to uh get to it.

You know, I also want to recognize the civilian personnel when when a lot of people think about the police department, they think about the people in the uniform.

But we have a tremendous amount of civilian personnel, approximately 164 people that support operations within the police department, but then also do a lot of work.

Your school crossing guards, your CSOs, your your parking checkers, your technology folks, the the people that keep the computers running 24-7, 365.

So there's a lot of folks that I think uh deserve recognition uh that work in there.

There's 165 uh folks that fall into this.

And this is how they they ultimately break down in terms of the the deployment within the the department.

The total the total budget this year is approximately sixty-four million dollars.

It's a two million dollar increase from from last year.

The two major driving components of that is shot spotter is four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

That was included back into the into the budget, but then also approximately one point three million dollars for retirements.

That number has never been there, but when people retire and they have accrued uh sick time or something like that, we have to pay them out.

It's contractually negotiated, so we ultimately have to include that in the budget.

So that's those are the two major driving factors for the uh for the increase between fiscal twenty-five twenty-six and fiscal twenty-six twenty-seven.

So the 75% of the budget is represented by contractually negotiated uh salary and wages for sworn and civilian sworn in civilian folks.

To your to your question, uh, Councillor Majoke.

In fiscal year 25-26, what was what was adopted was 419 funded uh four hundred four hundred and nineteen funded sworn position.

When when I talk about the work that goes into this, this really highlights the thought that Chief Trudell put into this when when they were he was working with, and some of them are here, the folks that were in this room.

It started at 419 and and there was a a conscious decision to reduce it by three percent with that initial team to ultimately go down to four oh five to try to balance the budget.

Once we did our if you call that the first preliminary review or first review of it, it was it was ultimately dropped again down to 385.

So what we're asking for in this budget, what's proposed is for fiscal year 26-27 is 385 uh funded sworn positions.

Right now we're at 300 currently we're at 365 uh uh positions.

Again, we're we are running two academies every every year, and we're hope we are working, not hoping, we are working to increase those numbers through recruiting efforts, through retention efforts.

So there's a lot of things that's going on where ultimately we can increase our numbers as we as we go along.

But the budget that you you see counselor is for 385 funded positions.

So Chief, can I interrupt you for I'm sorry?

Do you want to go first?

Well, when you do a academy, right?

When you do a class, anybody can pull from that that class, right?

Like across lateral, they can take from that academy.

Yeah, great question.

So ultimately the the test is offered twice twice a year.

That list, the civil onadog County Civil Service will compile a list of of qualified candidates, then they'll take the test, then they'll do the PT exam.

Once they do the PT, the physical fitness exam, then they will release the list and and there's 15 agencies that pull from the same list.

So there's one one pool of candidates, and everybody is in competition to pull from that same group of same group of people.

What we have seen over if you know if you looked at the trend line, what you have seen is that the number of applicants has drastically reduced in the last six years.

And so that's one of the efforts that DC Tom is working on is how do we increase the pool on the front end so we have more applicants, and that's really it's good for the whole county, but you know, selfishly we're looking for our own pool as well, too.

So there is a significant amount of competition with respect to those candidates.

How many do we actually lose?

Uh how many do we actually lose?

We average between 25 and 35 retirements uh a year.

No, not the retirements from the academy.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

It it depends, it depends on the on the year.

Like right now, we have right now we have nine people in the academy.

We lost one person.

Um we have two academies, they're they're overlapping right now, so I'm talking about the most recent, the most recent uh academy.

So my question is Chief is um I'm sorry, sorry.

Let me let me just do this quick.

Um my question is how many people are we pulling from the Fowler program?

Are we are are we interacting with with the kids there?

And how many do we actually end up getting from that program?

It's a great question.

Uh Chief Tom, do you mind uh answering that question at the microphone, please?

So good afternoon, Chief Tom, Deputy Chief.

Um so one of the stipulations for the civil service test is you have to be 19 years old to take it.

There's a gap between when people graduate the uh PSLA program and when they um are eligible to take it.

We do try to communicate keep in contact with Lieutenant Turrow who runs a PSLA PSLA program over there.

It's hard to quantify how many people uh we get directly from that program.

Um but we are in constant contact with them.

The cadet program is an avenue where we can keep people engaged in the police department.

Umward to bridge that gap.

I guess that's that's my question is do we stay engaged with those kids that may not be qualified yet?

Is there a a way we stay engaged with them so that when they are eligible at 19 that we can try to get them?

A lot of it is community engagement.

Um public outreach.

We have our Syracuse PAL program as well.

So we are still trying to keep engaged with them.

If they show interest, um we try to keep them engaged.

We also run um free fitness classes on a weekly basis to try to keep people uh in shape and prepared to pass the agility test when they're able to take the written test, and then we'll also host study sessions to be advertised on social media.

So when they are of age, take the test.

We prepare them to take the written test.

Thank you.

So it's zero percent basically.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, the uh the the issue in terms of quantifying it is that you lose that one year between PSLA and then be they become 19.

So it's what actually is causing the transition.

Is it PSLA or is it the PT test or is it the or the uh PT sessions or the study sessions in terms of what is it?

Now we could go back and we certainly can go back and take a look at the our most recent academy, how many of those people actually went to PSLA at Fowler?

But but I want to be careful with the numbers, you know, kind of put an asterisk next to it, just in terms of what is the what is the catalyst?

Was it PSLA or was it one of these other programs that's ultimately being run?

But we can we can take a look at it and get those numbers to you.

Thank you.

Fall in is there a cost that that that is designated?

Is there a line item specifically for that through the department, or is it one of the things?

It falls under our recruiting budget.

What do you put toward that a year at all?

Or the for specifically that uh PSLA and I don't have we don't have something dedicated for that.

It's just through our uh recruitment and outreach.

Okay.

Another thing I want to point out about the PSLA program is it's not solely for law enforcement, it's our first responders.

So when we do go and speak with them, there are people that don't want to be police that are in the program.

They want to be probation or they want to work in custody um or they want to go to a federal agency and they're not interested in working for a local law enforcement.

So the systemic issue is we don't have a lot of people that are interested in becoming police officers.

And that's what we're trying to do is educate people on the opportunity of working in the community that you grew up in and serving you know the city of Syracuse.

It's a struggle.

It is uh it's an absolute struggle.

Yeah, thank you.

The I don't I think it was on the diagrams that you showed us.

It will all of that was zeroed out.

So what does the cadet you get a cadets were zeroed?

Yeah, the the cadet program costs about a half a million dollars to fund.

And we don't we don't have that half million dollars built in built into the budget.

Okay so the the it is not currently the cadet program is not currently in this in this uh budget cycle for for the cost that it was.

I think it was 450,000, if if my memory uh serves me correctly.

But it's it was it was originally, and please correct me if I'm wrong, uh Chief Tom.

It was originally grant funded.

And then once the grant ran out, then it became PD funded.

But ultimately, it's another half million dollars in the uh that we would have to add to the budget.

So when you say that um I mean, I'm just it's the cadet program.

So the funding that you guys do, what do you do separate from the schools?

What's where's where's the inner inner connection?

Yeah, so when uh when we transition for like anybody that we find, not just PSLA at Fowler, that's why we have all these support programs that are up and running with the PT sessions or the recruitment that goes on or the contacts that that ultimately happened.

But in terms of the cadet program, that was originally grant funded, but we we would be asking for another half million dollars to fund that program.

But um I'm asking what what's being cut?

Like is it a position being cut?

Is it um a position?

Positions for the for the cadets?

Yes.

Yes, it's an actual cadet position that we were paying for.

Um, there's also one SPO that we were using to run the program.

Okay so that got cut.

But to answer your original question, we have about $55,000 in the recruitment overall budget.

$25,000 for overtime to handle what DC Tom mentioned as far as the study sessions and the physical fitness, and then another the rest of the money is in our recruitment line for any supplies or anything else that we need to for advertising that sort of thing.

Thank you.

Counselor rightly.

What happened to the person that was in that position?

Have they been reassigned something different or it was uh actually retired officer Vicky Barada did an awesome pro uh job with the program.

She does wherever she goes, she does great work.

She's since been moved to our crime analysis center and is working uh on some gun crime stuff for us.

But great asset to the police department.

We just moved, we have lots of needs.

We just move that individual to those areas.

Right.

Counselor Airwright, you had a question.

With the diminishing number of with the diminishing number of people who are interested in joining the police academy, police academies, I imagine, are becoming a little more expensive to run.

And either we could reduce the amount of effort we put into it, or we could double down and create something that's more regional where we bring in more recruits from a broader area.

Is there any thought about expanding the police academy?

Yeah, so we we run a regional academy right now, so we will have other agencies that will come in to ultimately try to help offset that.

It's something that we we're gonna look at in fiscal year 26-27 to see what that offset is.

But you're 100% right.

Like if you have 10 recruits and you have one instructor, then your your price ratio per capita goes down.

If you have a one-to-one ratio, it's much more expensive.

But that's something that that uh Chief Tom will be looking at in fiscal year 26, 27.

So you guys raise our random.

Yes.

You guys raise the age too, right?

H limits.

Civil civil service did there's a series of slow things that are happening at the state uh at the state level.

The raising the age was was uh one thing that they just did.

So it's now up to 43 years old, and it's changing the way that ultimately we have to look at recruiting.

So recruiting somebody who's 42 that is trying to leave a profession and has a family is different than recruiting somebody that's 22.

So we're adapting to our marketing strategy with respect to who are we recruiting and how are we actually pushing this information out to make sure we're hitting the right pockets and the right populations within that.

And we we're really trying to get a very broad band of that age population, but then it's you know, you look at it very precisely throughout and try to make sure that you're you're you're casting as wide of a net as possible to increase the numbers.

So I have a dollar.

So you said the 1.3 million dollar retirement is inside the police budget this year.

So was it in special objects last year?

Where was that retirement the police retirement money in previous budgets?

Yeah, we had to pull it from other areas.

We had to um where our vacancies were, or we had to not do something in order to pay for those retirements.

Now it's a designated line within the budget.

So we would have had to we would have had to pull it from anywhere else in that budget that that we could um underspend or um not spend in order to pay for those retirements.

Now it's specifically called out.

So uh this might be a budget question.

So inside special objects, the employer retirement line, police retirement is not inside that line, correct?

Has it was it in the past?

It is.

It is it is in there.

It is in the okay.

You come over the mic so things yeah, I just want to make sure you don't look too thrilled.

Sorry, sorry.

No, that's okay.

So the retirement comes out of the special objects, but also out of the salary line, which is the 101.

Okay.

So it comes out of both places.

Okay, okay.

But it's just a line item now for you instead of being spread out throughout the budget.

When somebody retires, they have bonus, they have sick time.

That's the thing that was coming out of our budget that wasn't specifically called out in a nine line item that is now called out in the line item.

The other retirements are in the special objects.

Okay.

Is it the vault pay in included in that?

So the uh the vault pay that's on there, that's that's kind of a misnomer.

That's actually DC contract pay.

Um it is still in there, and that's still a viable expense.

Yeah, yesterday.

And if we actually paid it out, that would reduce the vault.

They may still have vault pay.

Uh that vault pay really should be DC contract pay, um, because it's not vault pay for us.

Fire may still have it, but that's not that for us.

Okay.

Chief, I have a question.

Looking at position details, do we have a detail for the parks department where an officer is assigned maybe to park there?

And does that work with the dog control unit?

Uh everything is intertwined.

So all the police operations.

So we have the we have uh the the dog control officers, then we have the animal cruelty officers.

But but everything is intertwined in terms of if something happens, there's a series of notifications that ultimately will happen.

We do have money in the in the budget in the overtime budget, specifically.

You know, the book the over the overtime budget is just one pot.

Right.

Internally, we budget for different a bunch of different uh bunch of different things, and I'll I can jump to that right now if you want to get to that.

Yeah, because I want to know like patrolling the parks too.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Here it is right here.

So of the of the budget, you for overtime, you have uh approximately nine million dollars, just over uh uh just over nine million dollars, almost ten million dollars in overtime.

But of that overtime, 4.2 of it is reimbursed.

So that's your grants.

That's your the money that is coming in from reimbursements from Syracuse University when we work traffic control.

So 4.2 of that whole pot of money is actually reimbursed to the police department.

Of the $5.6 million dollars that's not that's not reimbursed, the top 70% falls into these categories.

So these categories represent there's 29 of them.

These categories represent 79% of that five point that 5.6 million dollars.

The number one thing that's driving the cost is ultimately the patrol minimum staffing to have enough cops to respond to calls uh to calls for service.

Can you pull up how much is the parks and pools?

Okay, yeah.

Pools is just over is 75.

72.5.

72.5, thank you.

So there is uh a police officer usually stationed by the pools at all times, in case of an emergency or the parks.

Generally speaking, speaking, or are they just traveling in the area, like say shower?

Are they gonna be a block away or are they gonna be inside for a certain amount of time just overseeing it?

They can do their other work.

It'll ultimately no, so this is dedicated just to pools.

Okay.

That overtime uh money that we have allocated, is just dedicated to pools.

Now it depends on staffing if we have enough uh enough people that have assigned.

If we're gonna position them as you first started, like at a specific pool at Kirk Park or Thornton or something like that, or do we have to have rovers, but they're not answering 911 calls unless they ultimately are getting called to a pool.

But sometimes they will have to bounce between two or three different pools throughout the area.

So if departments are caused use, and we've had some problem with teenage whatever causing some mischief, then you will assign someone to cover that area for a certain amount of time, which you requests.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Tell me what the garage manager and garage supervisor, what do they do?

Yeah, Chief uh Milana, do you mind talking about the garage manager and garage supervisor, please?

Jim Milana, Deputy Chief Syracuse, please.

We actually don't have the garage manager filled at this moment.

That was John Payne, who recently retired.

The garage supervisor is Dan Glisten.

So collectively, the responsibilities are all the administrative functions of the garage, uh, registering the vehicles, procuring vehicles, putting the lights and sirens in, getting them fixed, all the administrative work, and then the supervisory responsibilities with the garage employees, all of the human resources related type things, um, then overseeing the day-to-day operations.

Thank you.

I wanted to ask about the like robot dog.

But I don't know what to ask.

I guess I just want to know about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, it I I think it's been an incredible tool.

I mean, it gets some giggles sometimes, but I've seen it out on actual tactical operations.

And and um it's it really is uh a great tool.

So I'll I'll bring up Chief Mets, who's ultimately oversees the SWAT the SWAT team, so he can talk about the advantages of it.

While he's coming up, I I think there's a great PR component of it as well, that it really, you know, there's a lot of community engagement surrounding this robot.

It maybe I didn't I didn't anticipate it, but there is a lot of collateral benefits.

But the robot though, just a quick question while you're standing there.

So if it's designed to get a bomb and the bomb goes off, will it blow it up?

Depending on how fast it runs out.

It's not made to withstand an explosion.

But the idea behind whether it's drones, whether it's the robot dog is to send somebody that's a non-human or not an animal, an actual canine into a structure, avoid something like that.

So if there is something like an explosive device or a bad guy there waiting, waiting to either ambush or attack law enforcement that they either see the drone and or the robot dog first, allows us to put eyes on that that suspicious package and or um subject in there without actually using our own eyes to go do it.

So it is an incredibly valuable safety tool on both of those technologies have not only saved um lives as far as officers on the street, but a considerable amount of money spent on overtime on call-outs.

Just drone and robot dog usage has probably shaved our call-out time if by half, if not more, and there's tens of thousands of dollars over the past two and a half, three years where that technology's really been implemented, and we've saved a tremendous amount of money.

So it's not only the human factor to it, but it's also an operational cost saving using those tools.

So we can't can't say enough how how valuable they are.

How many do we have?

Is one the robot dog?

Yeah.

Just one.

Okay.

And um spot.

Spot.

That's original.

So like when people see them like walking around by their self, like how how far away is a real officer?

Like uh without a one bad guy set, do we?

I mean, I guess I mean I can operate like if if we were if we were in this room, we could use the the equipment for it and we could operate it in terms of the hallways back through here.

And I mean, there isn't a level of connectivity goes through that I won't tell you like exact exact distance, but we can do it from a safe distance with it, whether it's in a structure or whether else it is it's pretty remarkable what it can do.

So I guess I'm saying, like, if it's an armory square walking around, is there a cop like two blocks over, or is this like from the center?

No, no, no, we'll be within the area for it.

So, yes.

You couldn't you couldn't operate it from 1153 down in Armory Square.

So I saw this online in some way in the Asian countries where there was a robot that can actually do a foot chase.

Do we have right now?

That's why we'll say our officers are in shape.

So people are scared of real dogs.

We want a robot dog to change my goodness.

We we still use humans for that foot chase of operations.

And I guess they have the sniff capability.

That robot dog does not have a sniff capability, so we still rely on our our explosive dogs for detection purposes for suspicious packages.

So it's really just to go through and to provide uh optics into whatever environment we're going through.

So I did offer my dog up last week for a job.

He's he's still looking for a job.

So six months, he's he's fresh.

You know, he needs some training and stuff.

Purple, thank you.

Thank you.

I got too training for what's been what I think that if anybody actually get a chance to see the robot dog, it was phenomenal.

Yeah.

I sat there and I watched it when we thought we had a bomb across the street, and I watched the robot dog walk up from down on whatever street that is to the tree.

So it was phenomenal.

They and you know, the operators do a great job with that stuff as well, too.

That's a lot of technology to start to have in your hands and to use it safely, like the uh the operators do a great job with that.

How are we with um I mean it's sort of off topic?

I don't see on a budget line.

But uh 911.

What is what is our deal?

What in our relationship with them?

Yeah, cell phone payments or anything that we pay today.

Do we do anything connected to 911?

Yeah.

So last year we had a program where we would assign a commander up there to divert calls.

And it was it was really very beneficial.

They were clearing about 12 calls for every four hours, and they were able to get either uh the calls handled by themselves or divert them to some pl to someplace else.

Right now we have two uh workers that ultimately SPD pays for that's through the county, not through County 911, but through the county that helps us with our friendly faces program, and that's part of our diversionary response program.

Uh Commissioner Korn and Ann Rooney that that I work with regularly at the county have been incredible to build a new program that's the first in the state.

And it's really a diversionary response program.

I've talked about it before, it's called the fourth lever program.

But ultimately, when you call 911, the goal is to get police, fire, EMS, or human services.

And and I can't thank the county enough for buying into this concept.

It's really been a collaborative effort that's taken we're we're probably on year four, and we've made significant strides with respect to that.

At the same time, internally, we have a a special patrol officer, Kelly Cunningham, who works through uh deputy chief Milana's bureau that ultimately works on this friendly faces program and it tracks some of our highest volume users, consumers that are folks that have substance abuse or mental health issues or are unhoused, and ultimately there's a a work group that meets with these folks or meets with these service providers to make sure that there's continuity of services that's happening.

The police department can share a lot of data with respect to what we're seeing with the mental health providers or the human service providers.

Sometimes they can't reciprocate and share it with us.

We're not trying to get that information.

But if somebody is SPD is working with someone or there's been 30 phone calls over a weekend with one particular person, we've got to make notifications.

So there's been a tremendous amount of activity that that has gone on into our diversionary response program.

It it's a generational systematic change.

It's gonna take it's gonna take time, but I think we're we're closer now than we ever have before.

There's there's uh I believe out of the 12 full-time positions, the county has has hired six full-time uh positions.

So we're increasing the number of hours that people are there, and what we're seeing, and I can get you the specific numbers because we have a monthly meeting on this, is that we're div we're diverting a significant enough uh amount of calls away from the police department that is being handled by specialists that that go outside of of law enforcement, and and that's ultimately the goal when we get this, you know, in get this to completion, and it's gonna again, this is a generational change.

So with with that, when does like mandatory stays kick in?

If if you're getting, you know, 30 calls a week for one individual and they're transported to CPEP, when is there a mandatory stay for that 72 hours?

They don't just check their self out within two, three hours.

Well, it's a good it's a good question.

It's a complex complex answer, and I'll give you the best that I know as from what I've learned over working on this program.

If someone is brought up, they can be brought up to uh CPEP or another another emergency uh facility under a bunch of different laws, and each one of those laws has different parameters on them.

Some of them will be with where it's law enforcement activity where we're seeing it, some of them are from a mobile crisis team, and when they're bringing them up, some of them are from a doctor who's who can sign off on it, some of them are for them to get for folks to get medicine.

So there's a lot of different entryways into into the system.

Once it's transferred over to the hospital or healthcare system, if you will, there's a series of evaluations that are done.

And and sometimes people will be evaluated, they'll get medically evaluated and then psychiatrically evaluated, they will be evaluated and they'll say, Yeah, this person, we don't have a legal authority to hold them because it is a confinement, right?

You're you know, sometimes if they don't want to be there, it would be holding them against their will.

So they have legal hurdles they have to clear to say we have enough to confine this person to hold this person later on.

And we we've worked very very closely with St.

Joe's, Helio, uh Upstate.

There's a lot of uh participating partners that work in that.

To give you more, I would be speaking out of my you know, my knowledge base, but there's a series of evaluations that occur throughout it.

And if we think that there's someone that's part of the friendly faces program.

So if we think that someone is in a crisis but is able to manage that crisis while they're they're dealing with that first evaluation, we will make notifications to St.

Joe's and say, this is what we've seen for the last two weeks.

So that's the the beauty of that project is we provide that background to give the doctors a better opportunity to see a broader picture with respect to the landscape of what maybe the community is dealing with or what SPD is dealing with.

I think there needs to be a third component to that, which is the family.

Um so once they're gone, they're seen by whomever, but the family isn't contacted to to get the you know information as to what have you guys been dealing with in the last you know week or two when possibly someone's off their medication.

Um and that should be a part of the evaluation as well because that to for what I know, a lot of people are just released within hours and then they're back traumatizing their families.

Yeah, it's it's a great uh great point.

I I'll bring it up to you know, St.

Joe's is probably the biggest consumer in this in this area.

Helio is also a great partner, and I'll I'll bring it up with those folks.

I don't know what kind of outreach they they do.

I will say anecdotally, what I have found is that I I don't know what percentage, but but a lot of the folks that I've dealt with have separated from their family so significantly that they don't want their family to be notified.

And and that's still HIPAA-protected information.

So I can talk to them and report back to you as to you know what could be, but it's a it's a good suggestion.

I'll bring it up to our our uh providers.

Yeah, President Pandiago, you have a question.

Um, just want to bring your attention to your revenue side of things.

And you have a line police services outside agencies that it was adopted at two million, yet the predicted the projected is 700,000.

And then you're proposing again two million.

Is it safe to I mean, with that difference in the number of what you've been able to accomplish, is it safe to go back to two million?

Is it safe to go back to two million?

I mean, would that be accurate?

What uh what page do you on count?

That's uh 33.

Give me one second.

And it's line one, two, three, four.

Yeah, that's the first minute from other outside agencies, as you um, but yeah, but so my question is so we adopted two million, but we've accomplished seven hundred thousand, and then we're proposing again two million.

So there's a big difference there.

So is it safe to do that?

I mean, do you think you'll get you'll you'll be able to reach the two million dollars?

I do.

I do.

Well, looking at the histor looking at the historical numbers is where we put this information uh together.

So I mean, how are we gonna get the additional the gap?

The difference between the 700,000 and the two million.

Yes.

Yeah, I think uh I think it in years past, we have not um taken full advantage of them all, and we haven't tracked them all.

So this is the first year that we really did a comprehensive look, and that's why that overtime figure has 4.0 something million in there.

It's just our way of shoring up our budget to be more accountable to getting that money back and to identifying it as well.

So I a lot of the revenue conversation, uh page eight page eight on the budget uh the budget book.

Um there is police services outside agencies.

Is is that part of the uh civil service training or what what is that?

It under the revenue page eight.

Uh the the line is four one five nine ten.

4159.

So that's what that's the one I was asking.

That's what it's the same one.

Yes.

Yes, that's exactly what that's a six.

Yes.

The difference in the question is that's two million to two million.

You're asking that the projected for 26 is 700,000.

Okay.

Right?

Right, there's a big gap there.

And I think that's a good thing.

So I think that you're not going to provide.

And you're not getting that revenue or uh or accruing more of a line alongside and not tracking it properly.

We're definitely getting the revenue.

You're getting it.

Okay.

That's the request.

I think it's a matter of tracking it differently and more efficiently than we have in the past.

The revenue is coming in.

Some of it is outside your control, too, right?

If there's if there's four extra concerts at the dome, you'd expect that number to go up, right?

So that's accurate.

Okay, right.

Okay, absolutely.

I'm just making sure that's the right number.

I'm thinking of.

So I want to stay with that question.

So if you were saying earlier during several service, right?

That I mean there are other agencies that use Syracuse police for training purposes in terms of um academy, right?

What's that generate revenue in any way?

It it doesn't generate revenue in terms of like we don't charge a full a flat fee.

Okay.

But what we do is we use their instructors.

Okay.

Because we're using two academies at the same time, we will need uh, you know, because some things have high levels of of teacher to student ratios.

We will have to bring in outside instructors, so they will send us, and it's mutually beneficial because they can train their own people, but then they can also assist to train um uh SPD as well.

So like defensive tactics is uh is a prime example.

The number of of students to ri uh to instructors has to uh decrease.

So you need more instructors.

So we have to bring people in from the outside.

Evoc, there's a lot of of areas where you need you need more those folks.

So we we bring them in and we ask, hey, can you assist with these things?

And that's where we're getting that mutual uh benefit.

So you're saying that the cost is shared, it's spread across the quid pro call.

Yeah, I think is what the the chief is saying.

Okay.

We we we allow them to come through the academy, we don't charge them, but then they bring uh uh to help offset the cost of the training for us.

So it they are helping in different ways.

What do we give?

Is it the training facility?

The space that we give that they bring their own people in.

No, yeah, no, no, it's mostly the the personnel to train.

Can you just break down what the good sorry?

What's the community service officer?

What page you're looking at?

Um 137.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

137 community service officers.

It says there's 40 of them.

Yeah, there are CSOs, community service officers.

They work in a variety of different uh different areas.

So some of the some of the CSOs are or the folks that you see that uh work at the front desk typically are wearing a gray uh polo, but some of them will assist with parking enforcement or stop arm validation to work in in those areas as well.

So we have them that work around, they work in records, they they work in uh in a variety of technology, a variety of different different areas, very instrumental to support related uh enforcement.

Okay, but this wouldn't be like also school school officers, that wouldn't be the under the same thing.

No ma'am.

Okay.

They're not in our budget, though, right?

School officers are well, they're part of the reimbursement, right?

Do we still get seizure money?

We do.

It depends on the invet it depends on the investigation.

There's a a formula that's used at the state side and the federal side, and ultimately it depends on how much you contribute in terms of uh uh officer personnel, like your personnel, how many hours did you contribute, and then there's a formula to to uh to uh calculate what you what you generate back.

Do you think there's any revenue streams that we haven't tapped into that we should talk about it?

Yeah, I I I think uh one simple one is is the alarms.

Uh oh you saw that you're instead.

Yeah, so if you if Chief, do you mind uh bringing up the number of alarms we took?

So as he's as he's bringing that number up, what we're what we have found is that cost and there's multiple different buckets you have to look at residential properties, commercial properties, but SPD responds to approximately 5,000 alarms a year.

So it's uh different top five call producer, there's four thousand nine hundred and ninety-six burglar alarms.

And that's in the top five.

And a lot of those alarms and end up being unfounded.

And so there's a significant amount, I believe it's about approximately 44 minutes that an officer has to spend on those alarms.

44 minutes is a you know, one-tenth of their essentially of their shift that they're spending on these unfounded alarms.

And and I do think that there's an avenue to reduce the number of calls that we go to, which is advantageous for our staffing issues, but then also if if we are not having good partners that are not keeping their alarms up to date, if they are just people have been allowed to just have false alarms at their houses and their commercial properties repeatedly.

4900 is a significant amount of time that we're spending on things that are not actually crimes.

But that's something you're doing already, or there's a fee, right?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So you're already producing a fee for that.

There is a fee.

Local ordinance, best top of my head was was adopted in 2015.

It needs to be it needs to be updated with a new fee structure that's more contemporaneous to 2026.

We'll look at that.

We need to look at that.

But the but to your answer, that there's probably that's the ease, that's the low-hanging fruit uh for me off the top of my head.

But that's one of the things that Chief Trudell and I are working on with the rest of the budget team is what are some of the solutions that ultimately we can come back that are reasonable solutions to say this should be updated.

This is an area where maybe we can consolidate something.

This is something that ultimately we think is that we would present uh in terms of the local ordinance uh.

Let me ask you something.

Going back to the uh the alarms, so you you bill people and they send a check.

I mean, how do you do that?

There's a f there's a fee for registration, but if you have let's say that you're a business and you have 50 false alarms, there is no penalty for all of those false alarms.

So let's say that you're for lack of better terms, you're just being you're being lazy with respect to keeping your alarm system up to date.

SPD is still going to all those alarms.

And and I think that there needs to be a little bit of a burden shifting over to the consumer of the of the police services that ultimately says after the third false alarm, either you pay a high higher fee or false alarm, not true, not an alarm where something's founded, either you pay a higher fee or we don't go there anymore.

Because it's there's gotta be a give and a take here, and and that it's all give at this point by the police department, and that takes away from city services general generally speaking for for SPD.

So that is taken care of in the one-year fee and whenever their year comes around.

I believe it's $30.

When fire goes to respond to the alarms for um commercial, they charge them per visit, right?

Um so I wonder if you're the footprint I'm advocating for is not this is not uh a new footprint for to your point about public safety features, but it's not new across you know the the agency I worked at before I got to SPD, you got charged after the third one, and if it was a fault if it's a faulty alarm, the the fees back then I believe were 250 dollars, and that was 20 years ago.

You just can't keep asking us to show up and check these false alarms and not have them ultimately be a consequence to be a good partner in this.

Right?

Several of them is wonderful, there's a bunch of things.

Yeah, ADT is a bit a major one, but there's literally dozens.

Okay.

Hey Chief, I have a two quick well, the first one, if I'm a quick one, but um Chief slash Clark.

But um with the mental health in the community, right?

And I know we briefly discussed about it in hospital.

I see a lot of the officers spending a lot of time, de-escalating mental health issues, whether I was in a hospital and I watch um I was visiting someone in hospital in upstate, and I watch officers come and then they have to sit there until someone else can like, you know, mental health person that works with you know those the community to come deal with the situation.

And I heard the the hospital said that person had that officers have brought them there four times in a day, right?

And then I watch house they're just coming into the community over and over and over to the same situations.

Like, what do you, you know, do you have anything that can that you know you're thinking about with that?

Because a lot of times they don't need police, they just they need something, but it's not police, right?

And you guys are spending a lot of time on the same over and over and over and over.

And I heard the social workers at the hospital actually say that like this was the fourth time officers been here with this same person.

Yeah, you had something on the end of that and say it's also you gotta go to the here, not another it would be great if we had a bigger table where we could all sit with the microphones and then see the screen.

Um, could we could I also jump on the end of the counselor's question about uh domestic violence uh interventions and things that doesn't necessarily need an officer with a gun?

Yes.

So I both of them go in is in in terms of the vision of the police department.

There is a time that the police have to get involved.

And the way that I view it is that we are the caboose of the train.

All of these other services have to get involved before we've it's essentially an exhaustion that this is now why the police have to get involved.

I cannot thank the county enough for their partnership with respect to this area because what we're doing, there is no blueprint for to the the thought of being able to call one number and ultimately be able to direct dispatch, and and what I mean by direct dispatch, two o'clock in the morning, because the police officers work in the field 95% of their their day.

And so we need collateral partners that are also working in the field 95% of their day.

But that means holidays, that means weekends, that means overnights.

And to your point, I I have the same professional frustration where we want to do things like reduce gun crime, improve our response time, do more community engagement activities, but we're being pulled into into areas where we ultimately that's just the way the profession has gone for the last 40 or 50 years.

And and we're now undoing those things.

But when I say generational, that's because 50, 60 years, this is the way that the pattern has been has been going.

It it relates to what uh what you asked about, counselor is how do we leverage these folks?

And we've got great partners in Ontario County.

I just met with with Vera House, who's a great partner to the police department, and we we just had the same conversation.

And where that goes, I think we have the right people in place right now to start to make these to make make these changes.

It's ultimately how are we going to fund them, and then how are we going to find people willing to work at two o'clock in the morning?

Because if if the only people who pick up the phone are police fire and EMS at 2 a.m., we're gonna be in the same position that we're in over and over and over again.

But what I am seeing is a significant transition, but this is changing a 50 or 60 year dynamic.

It's going to take, it's not gonna take 50 or 60 years to fix, but it's gonna take several years to ultimately fix.

That's why diversionary response is so is so critical.

It's not just diverting substance abuse or like uh Chief Milana just had a meeting with John Tamino and uh for from higher ground and in my father's kitchen.

This is something that every time we find an opportunity, we're trying to leverage that opportunity to get out of the business of things that we don't think we should be in the business of.

Chief, what is your estimated response time?

It on a priority one, it's four uh four point eight minutes on a on a priority two uh two call.

Man, I had the I had these off the top of my head, but give me a second here.

Well, I think can you also put in drone drone first responders with that?

Yeah, I'll get to that in just one second.

So it's 4.8 minutes for priority one call.

These are your in-progress calls, major events, shootings, stabbings, things of that nature.

So prior, you know, major major events.

Priority two is 36.4 minutes, and priority three of 56.4 minutes.

Priority twos would be something that was significant that just happened.

Um, or it could be there's a dispute that's going on, maybe not fully in progress.

Priority threes are are investigations, primarily quality of life related issues.

Then I want to ask you a question because I've seen priority threes escalate to priority ones, and then we have an issue because we had an issue up on the far north side where there was an incident with it was started out as an argument, but it ended up being a shooting.

So they sent it out as a priority three, but then it ended up being a priority one.

So how do we handle that?

Yeah, so the the road supervisors and the road command staff are constantly reviewing calls for service, and they do it throughout their shift.

So they'll go in, they'll actually log into their computers, and they will review the calls for service.

And and they are looking at things for uh just what you talked about.

Is this something that we need to put a second set of eyes on faster?

That's one way, that's one way they do it.

They also do it at three times systematically throughout throughout the day at between 5 30 and 6 30 in the morning, at between two o'clock and four o'clock, and then from eight eight o'clock to midnight.

The reason that they do that is because we have the over overlaps in those areas from the new schedule.

So as we have a swelling of officers between 2 p.m.

and 4 p.m.

And then another swell of officers between 8 30 and midnight, the the sergeants and the command staff do a great job looking at the calls for service and trying to get out all the calls, some of which are the ones that you're talking about.

That's why we've seen such a reduction in the in the uh in the call wait time just in the last four years.

I was actually on the phone as a young man was getting shot.

So we were trying to get the police up there, but we couldn't get them up there in time.

And that's the other thing too, is that I encourage people is if something you call it in and something escalates now, that ultimately update that information to 911 because then 911 will change the code from priority three to priority one.

It's quite quick.

Okay, actually, really quick.

Yep, um, which I think I know the answer for the contractual and other expenses on page one thirty six, right?

That's all contractual, or is that a mixture of contractual and contractual obligations uh proposed 1.157 million?

Is that the one you're talking about?

Contractual and other expense.

So eight.

Okay, so the five, four, zero one hundred to five four two five hundred page.

You're asking the whole page, yeah.

Like that whole because it says contractual and other expenses.

So this these whole hundreds and two hundred.

Yes, 100, 200 and 300 are all contractual operations.

You're just broken out separately.

100, 200, 300 is contractual.

Yeah, 100 is the vaulted, right?

Come here.

100 is like motor equipment operating supplies, motor equipment repair supply, police field services, contraction, other expenses.

Okay, those are not that that is under that's other expenses.

Um some of them are contractual, some of them are not like the uniforms that under CSEA that's contractual.

But which one are contractual?

So we know I'd have to go down through here.

Um so for sure the 800, the 40800 is contractual.

40800.

Yeah, for the utilities, I'm sure we have contracts for the utilities as well.

So, what about operating supplies and expenses?

Motor equipment operating supplies, that's not contractual, right?

No.

And motor equipment repair supplies.

Nope, that's not contractual.

Office supplies.

Nope.

Operating supplies.

No, equipment repair.

Um, there may be some contracts on uh to to repair our vehicles and stuff like that, but no, likely they're not uh uniforms uniform uniforms are definitely utilities, no maybe.

Yep.

Yes or no?

There might be some of them.

Okay.

Yep.

And professional services.

No.

There's well, when you're talking contractual with a union like CSEA or it's already bedded in the budget that we don't deal with.

supplies no operating supplies no equipment repair um there may be some contracts on uh to to repair our vehicles and stuff like that but no likely they're not uh uniform uniform uniforms are definitely utilities no maybe yep yes or no there might be some of them okay yep and professional services no there's well when you're talking contractual with a union like CSEA or it's already bedded in the budget that we don't deal with so there's a those are professional services outside of that we won't even and then there's what you asked the for I just want to make sure I don't know that's not the contractual you're talking about so none of that professional service no travel training no no and neither on the postage or the in the police training okay thank you yep and for neighborhood what position is it what line neighborhood wash director is that on the line yeah we do have a budget for uh Tony and his crew would just take a second to find out okay neighborhood watches down it's in uh 415 it's in five four one five hundred four one five hundred okay four five and it's 745 professional services okay all right it is one o'clock so I just got one more question um the parking checkers I see it's been seven last year seven this year is that like the normal is that low um and what's the footprint also behind the central bus station behind the hub there's always a row of cars parked but it's clearly says no parking well what but I'd never see tickets there yeah so so the oh let me answer your first question okay the the parking checkers are in the invaluable because that we get a ton of parking complaints like I woke I came to to work this morning and I got a nasty gram from a from community member saying why was this people parking down in downtown the the first two hours that they the first two hours that they work they do automated enforcement uh validation then they go out and they ultimately do the the parking enforcement but to your point there's only seven of them and so they go out into the community into different areas bank alley the rose garden downtown there's tons and tons of different areas that that Lieutenant Romain does a wonderful job deploying them to you just can't hit them all on the same time with that with that number of of uh of people yeah if I had if I had more money you you know that's that's another salary addition right to to hire another five ten folks to to get them out into the field we have the the the scanners which I think has helped us significantly in terms of in terms of the speed at which we're we're the parking checkers are are writing the tickets it's a it's purely a bandwidth issue okay so um I just want to thank you chief and deputy chief um for your hard work on the budget this year for taking time one on one to meet with us and really explain it to us because you've done a very thorough job and I appreciate that thank you all thank you thank you thank you thank you a motion to adjourn second have a great day thank you yes