Police Commission Minutes 04/04/2007

Present at this meeting was, Comm. Flanagan, Comm. Stenhouse, Chief Dubois, Capt. Callaghan, Capt. Dumas, Attorney Grossman, and Secretary Warburton. Also present were members of the public and the media.

A. Accreditation Update. Chief Dubois advised that we had our mock review. Teams from all over the state, as well as from Maine came to provide a cross-border critique of how we are doing. Our policy manual is in good shape. There were some minor recommendations to improve some policies in the way they were worded. Our Department is not where we need to be to prove to outside agencies that we are in compliance with our own policy manual. There was nothing to say that we weren’t, we just can’t prove we are. That’s important to do from an accreditation standard. We still feel comfortable and confident that the critiques put us in position for an actual review in August.

At the last commission meeting there was some discussion on how committed we are as a city to go down this road. It was summed up with seeing how the mock goes. The command staff is ready to move forward. If we do go with the official process there is some monetary expense to the city to do that. For the August review, we would be looking to spend roughly $5,000.00 (five thousand) dollars to make that happen, which would cover us realistically for the next couple of years while we prepare for the full accreditation, which has an estimated cost of $17,000. (Seventeen thousand) dollars for the first review for full accreditation, then we would plan on roughly $7,500.00 (seven thousand five hundred) dollars per year to maintain this into the future. Accreditation is reviewed every three years for compliance and growth in the process and that’s what the continued costs are related to.

There has been a bit of debate between the staff and the commission that we need to settle before we move much further. Howe committed to this process as a City are we? We have taken a command officer and tasked him with this process for several months. This is a valuable resource and important to the process. We don’t want to continue to do that if the Commission, as an elected group feels the process is not worth going any further.

Chairman Flanagan said that he reviewed the minutes from the last meeting and Comm. Dumont commented that he wanted to see the results of the mock. I am of the opinion that I would not want to vote on this tonight without a full delegation. I want Paul’s input. I don’t have a problem with it. I think any time a Police Department can better itself, the better.

Chief Dubois said if the commission wants to look at the process further there is a good opportunity for us to do that. There is a national review process going on just over the border in Canada later this year. It could better inform you of the process and better prepare us to move forward if we do. I suggest our accreditation manager attend the entire seminar, as well as a commission representative and myself attend for better understanding and education of the process. I’m just not sure where you are as a group at this time.

Chief Dubois said it was suggested by other Chief’s that with such a big decision, it takes the decision-makers into the process to see it first hand. We will be dealing with that issue in the next budget year. If we decide to continue the process, I recommend going.

Comm. Stenhouse commented that $17,000.00 (seventeen thousand) dollars is a lot of money. No one is saying that it isn’t. But our budget is 5,500,000.00, thus $17,000 is much less in the overall scope. This levels things out a bit.

Comm. Flanagan said this has been the goal as long as he has been on the Commission that we go for this. I was for it then and I’m for it now with the full understanding of what it will cost, if we have the money and we are able to do it. I said I would uphold my commitment to those on the Commission before, even before [David] was Chief to see it through.

Chief Dubois advised he had no issues with waiting for a full vote of the Commission. We have brought this as far as we can without some type of commitment and a decision. We will continue as we were and come back next month.

B. FY 08 Budget Update: Schedule of Meetings. Chief Dubois advised this was for information only. The budget goes to the City Council in a couple of weeks. We are preparing for a brief 10 - 15 minute presentation to the Council on May 8, of the highlights of the budget, similar to what we recently did at the public safety committee meeting.

Chief Dubois said that as we come to the end of the year, we will be looking at a good solid survey results from in and out of the Department. The RUN Project by Capt. Dumas, we would like to see that completed. The work in the lobby to make it a better environment should be drastically improved by then. We continue to fine-tune the gains of our volunteers. We have made substantial progress and want to make sure it continues to grow. We need to have some guidelines and monitoring in place as there is some fairly technical work being done and some contact by civilians. We want to make sure we are working to a standard that our workers compensation and insurance providers are comfortable with.

1. Internal Survey. Comm. Stenhouse noted that he was disappointed in the results of the survey, in that only 13 of 74 surveys were returned. If folks can’t participate maybe their concerns aren’t so valid. There was certainly a lack of interest for an anonymous survey to not even have them filled out.

Chief Dubois said we have to move past that and focus on what we can do. We hold monthly meetings and folks can bring up just about anything. These meetings have been well attended as of late with good interaction from those in attendance.

Comm. Stenhouse commented that might accomplish the same thing. The lack of participation could mean people are generally happy. A 17% return of police employees, this isn’t the city; it’s the police department.

2. SOP 68. Has this been reviewed by any of the Frisbie Hospital administrators or other mental health agencies working with us in conjunction with the SOP, i.e., chronic mental illness versus temporarily emotionally disturbed persons?

Chief Dubois said that a lot of what is there is a continuation of a previous policy. We didn’t put any of the operating procedures back on the agenda. We will have the new accreditation manager look at everything before it comes back to the Commission.

A. Civilian Service Award: John M Cook. Chief Dubois introduced the award, noting that John Cook was a former police officer with the Rochester Police Department. He now works court security at the Rochester District Court. During the course of his day he had occasion to administer the Heimlich maneuver to a person choking on some hard candy, which ultimately saved this persons life.

B. Review of City Adopted Job Descriptions: Discussion. Chief Dubois stated that we have job descriptions that are accepted by the Police Commission in one form and City Hall has job descriptions of their own. They had asked for our review of their job descriptions, which raised a flag. We need to work this out before we sign off on this.

Comm. Stenhouse commented that he has not had an opportunity to look at the differing documents. I would take some issue using theirs, not as to format; function of the job and supervision, but the meat and potatoes of the duties of the position is the Commission’s discretion.

1. Patrol Division: Capt. Scott Dumas advised that the volunteer and RUN programs had an update in the quarterly report. Our monthly report also contains the weekly mission statement that fine-tunes where and what we focus on in the city.

A recurring theme has been the thefts from motor vehicles. We have had some publicity, some negative, about the warning flyers. We changed our focus and our efforts through a variety of means, not just the flyers, which saw those numbers, drop from 33 in January, to 7 in February, but also a slight rise to 12 in March. Nine of those were from unlocked vehicles. We are working with the school art department to create posters about this issue. This will be a graded project

The drug and alcohol coalition met on Saturday from 9 - 12. We had attendance of 25 - 30 citizens. We had hoped for a larger response. Deb Houle continues to work with the citywide group on this effort.

The Attorney General’s presence at our Internet safety presentation at the middle school was well received. We continue to work on education and intervention being the focus with parents.

Two recruits graduated from the police academy this reporting period. They are attending the ICS training portion of the academy now, to be followed by training with an FTO. We hope to have them out on the street by the end of summer.

Capt. Callaghan noted that it was one of our goals to increase the training and professionalism of all our employees. The tactical dispatch is a mode where trained specialists can be called to a 3-alarm and above fire or to a swat team call out. They work out of the command vehicle entering calls and notes of importance that are critical to a fire scene or crisis police situations. It alleviates those calls being fielded into the center. We are focused on a major incident and can’t stop what we are doing out there. It takes this out of the center where all the other calls in the city are still coming in while a major incident is happening elsewhere in the city.

Chief Dubois said this is being incorporated into drills done with the Fire Department. We initially did it to support the Police operations, but are finding it more and more beneficial to the fire operations, particularly for large fire operations. This is actually being looked at as a model for other agencies. We are on the cutting edge here, and our specialists developed it.

1. Cruisers at Outside Details. Chief Dubois asked to discuss this issue. He asked the Commission to give him some leeway and more discretion on how cruisers are used at outside details. He understands the concerns of officers on busy roads being safe. We have for quite some time done that task without a cruiser, most of the time. At the direction of the Commission we have been using cruisers on these roads for about a week now. That direction is going to impact the fleet and put us in a position of impacting the operation without some leeway to monitor this.

For example presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Barrack Obama recently came to town. During that event four cruisers were out on work details while three were patrolling the street. Dubois said it was a struggle just to get one officer to the Obama event and officers were switching in and out of cars to get the job done.

Chief Dubois said that 90% of the details don’t include cruisers, and until recently there haven’t been that many complaints. The Department assesses details on a case by case basis by the type of work, the area of the city and what other type of equipment or vendor vehicles will be on site as to whether a cruiser will be detailed. Usually the department will send a cruiser to a detail in high-traffic areas. Sometimes officers do take their personal vehicles to work details.

Chief Dubois said that we did some research of area departments and they do exactly what we have been doing - evaluating details on a case by case basis, sending cruisers only if they feel they are needed.

Chief Dubois said that to be honest this is a time of year that outside details are not a priority. Chief Dubois said this could put a strain on the department's vehicle fleet and add to its "wear and tear" if we continue to assign a cruiser to every outside work detail in high traffic areas. "If we apply this concept through the busy months of construction season we're really going to be pressed for vehicles." Detail work is starting to pick up more with an intense construction season and we want to make sure we use our limited resources the best way we can and at the same time have the vehicles we need for law enforcement. Our fleet is not of adequate size or in adequate condition to sustain this type of direction over a long period of time.

Comm. Flanagan said that he could see right away we are going to disagree and will butt heads. Safety is the most important thing. When blue lights are flashing, they immediately know there’s a police officer there. If we were to ever lose an officer because of this I have a problem with that. He also mentioned that he was concerned about liability for the department if officers drive their personal vehicles to outside details. How many cruisers do we have? How many does Dover have? Did we not plan well?

Comm. Stenhouse stated he is equally concerned about the motoring public. If 90% of our jobs don’t have a police vehicle present, I don’t think we are planning very well. If you told me 60% of the jobs that may be different. There is a lot of traffic, lots of blind spots.

Chief Dubois said most details are posted for no cruiser. We’ve been doing this for months and months. If an officer shows up at a detail and says he is not comfortable without a cruiser, a commander can authorize a detail car. There is a cost to what we just implemented. You will have a quicker breakdown of the fleet we worked so hard to build up and an impact to service delivery to other responses in the City. Since this directive we have used the front line fleet. That’s the rub. You increase the amount of wear and tear and decrease the life of the vehicle.

Comm. Stenhouse commented that we have to give more flexibility. Otherwise we are not going to have a fleet in a year. He said I only hope that when the decision not to send a cruiser is made, that it’s a decision made on safety and not on the size of the department fleet.

Chief Dubois responded that I believe we were doing it safely. This has been going on this way for a long time and there have not been a whole lot of concerns. You set policy. We will move forward with whatever direction you want.

A. Appreciation and Recognition: Officers Miehle and Loignon are thanked by the Lang’s for professionalism in accident investigation. Off. MacKenzie & Fina are thanked for mutual aid assist to the probation department in Carroll County. Off. Babine is thanked by Atty. Moeller for recent assistance given to his family. Volunteer Kelly Brochu is thanked for assistance to patrol and legal bureau in notifying persons for subpoena service. SRO Off. Funk is thanked by the RMS Wolverines for discussion session on courteous treatment of persons, respect and values. Asst. Superintendent Kent Hemmingway thanks SRO Tom Blair for work with the children attending the HOPE School.

Capt. Dumas commented on the appreciation letter for volunteer Kelly Brochu. We have ten to fifteen folders each a couple of inches thick of subpoenas to be served. They are prepared a couple of months in advance. She made telephone calls to persons that had been subpoenaed to court, and her efforts allowed several subpoenas to be served in that one shift. Her efforts helped immensely and should be noted.

A. Financial Reports- March 2007. Chief Dubois stated the budget is still projected to be in the black. We have some operational lines we are watching closely. They will be off set by salary and benefit lines. We are doing a prediction every couple of weeks with staff and the finance department at city hall.

1. National Telecommunicator’s Week. Chief Dubois noted that April 8 - 14, 2007 recognizes our communications personnel. Mayor Larochelle presented a proclamation at the April 3, 2007 Council meeting. We also did a press release signed by the Fire Chief and Police Chief. We certainly appreciate the work they do.

Comm. Flanagan MOVED to enter a non-public session at 8:00 P.M. for the purpose of personnel and legal matters. SECOND by Comm. Stenhouse. The motion PASSED by roll call vote, Comm. Stenhouse-yes, Comm. Flanagan-yes. The non-public session closed at 8:23 P.M. on a MOTION by Comm. Flanagan, SECOND by Comm. Stenhouse and PASSED unanimously.

Comm. Stenhouse MOVED to award merit increases based on passing evaluations to the Officer Andrew Jackson and Officer Brenden Bentz. The Motion was SECONDED by Comm. Flanagan and PASSED 2 - 0.