Clone of Police Commission Minutes
MINUTES OF THE POLICE COMMISSION MEETING
Rochester Police Commission
Rochester, NH 03867
Lucien G. Levesque, Chairman
Bruce E. Lindsay, Commissioner
Derek J. Peters, Commissioner
MINUTES OF THE POLICE COMMISSION MEETING
The Rochester Police Commission held their regular monthly meeting at City Hall, Council Chambers on Wednesday, March 4, 2015. Present at this meeting was Comm. Lindsay, Comm. Peters, Chief Allen, Dep. Chief Dumas, Capt. Toussaint, Attorney Grossman, Chaplain Lachapelle and Secretary Warburton as well as members of the public and the Department.
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 P.M.
A. Pledge. All participated in the Pledge of Allegiance.
B. Prayer. Chaplain Lachapelle led the opening prayer.
C. Roll Call. The clerk called the roll marking Comm. Lindsay, and Comm. Peters present.
Comm. Levesque was excused.
2. PUBLIC COMMENT:
There was no public comment.
3. ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES:
A. February 4, 2015 regular meeting
Comm. Peters MOVED to accept the minutes of the February 4, 2015 regular meeting as presented. SECOND by Comm. Lindsay and PASSED unanimously.
4. OLD AND UNFINISHED BUSINESS:
There was no old business for discussion.
5. NEW BUSINESS:
A. Awards and Recognitions
1. Lifesaving Award – Off. Justin Seckendorf. Chief Allen said he is honored to present this award. It’s one we have given quite often in recent months due in large part to the heroin epidemic we are seeing across the country. This award is given when an officer saves or attempts to save a life. It is not often in their careers officers are put in situations when they have to take actions like this. When they do they have to act decisively and quickly, which Justin did in this case.
A little bit of background on Justin, he has been with the Department for just about 7 years. He is one of our motorcycle officers and he does a wonderful job with the Department. Justin is an avid hockey player and is one of the department members heading out to the World Police and Fire Hockey games in Fairfax Virginia in June. He is also involved in the community with Howie’s Field of Dreams at Roger Allen Park. He is a Veteran serving four years with the Marines and receiving an honorable discharge. He is well respected among his peers. He has been recognized by community members for his compassion in handling calls from assaults to burglaries. He was also nominated for Officer of the Year 2013.
The incident he is getting this recognition for was a call for an individual having difficulty breathing. On scene another person was attempting to perform CPR, the subject went unresponsive and Off. Seckendorf then began CPR. EMS arrived and administered Narcan and got this individual breathing again. This contributed to saving his life.
Officer Seckendorf was presented with the lifesaving bar. Comm. Peters presented the award.
B. Community Outreach Overview
1. Project Good Morning Program. Chief Allen said we are really proud of this program. It’s designed to assist the elderly who have limited contact with family, neighbors or friends. The communications center reaches out to them on a daily basis to ensure they are okay. It gives peace of mind to them and to their families. Michelle Bowley who is one of our lead dispatchers will make this presentation on the program.
Michelle said the program gives participants an emotional connection with our community, a daily contact or lifeline they may not have and the Department becomes a trusted resource when they may need other types of assistance. Project Good Morning was started in the mid-1990s under Specialist Eileen Douglass. The program is designed for people who live alone and do not have regular daily contact with family or friends. They must reside in the City of Rochester. Participants complete an application; call to check in daily; advise of changes in their routine, such as a planned absence away from the home; and we conduct welfare checks as necessary.
The program allows us to have the personal connection so we do know their routines; for example where they go to dinner or other resources to reach out to see if they are out in the community.
Michelle said that she has face to face contact. One of the activities in her family at the holidays is to make hand crafts and home baked goods and deliver them. She said our children come and interact and chat with the participants. Many are pleased and surprised, but it makes them feel like part of the family.
Comm. Peters asked if we work with Cornerstone or the Homemakers to market the program. Ms. Bowley is aware one of the participants attends the Homemakers day out program. Michelle said we market the program to new members by word of mouth, through hospitals, and doctor’s offices. Some residents choose not to participate due to fearing a loss of independence. Our current roster is ten. We added four new this year.
Comm. Peters asked if there were instances of emergencies we were able to help in? Ms. Bowley replied we have had several instances where participants have fallen and didn’t have a medical pendant and because we check on them we were able to direct medical care to them.
Comm. Lindsay thanked Michelle for her presentation noting that a whole new group of people may be calling.
Chief Allen said he also thanks Michelle. The interaction with her family is something she does all on her own. That is not part of the program requirements. It illustrates her compassion and quality of individual that Michelle is, working for the city, going above and beyond and that is worth noting tonight. She does an outstanding job overseeing this program. Specialist Douglass (Ret.) would be proud this program is still ongoing.
C. Policy Update
1. Policy 41.2.6 Missing Juveniles; First Reading. Chief Allen said this policy update is part of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He attended a seminar in Virginia earlier this year. It provided training on how to better investigate and respond to cases of missing or abducted children. I brought this model policy back and we have adopted a lot of those standards and investigative protocols into the policy.
The other thing we have done in addition to updating the policy is that all officers and dispatchers have taken an online training program for the most recent and relevant standards. What that does for us is to standardize our uniform response and positions us to be fully prepared to respond to these types of calls for service when and if they come in. One of the things that would happen after adoption of this policy is we will submit the Department for recognition through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for the missing person’s readiness project. This certifies that we are missing person ready. We have been working on this for a while and it has taken some time to get the training done and policy tweaked. We feel we are in the best position we can possibly be in and ready to respond to an incident such as this and handle it in the most efficient way.
Chief Allen said I am asking the Commission to move right into adoption of this policy because it’s important to get this in place as soon as we can. Once adopted, I want to start the training on the policy itself and proceed with filing for that recognition.
Comm. Lindsay MOVED to place Policy Standard 41.2.6 Missing Juveniles into a first reading, and to waive the second reading and MOVE for adoption. SECOND by Comm. Peters and PASSED unanimously.
D. Monthly Reports
1. Operations. Capt. Toussaint said the support side of the house has been busy, receiving 32 cases forwarded from patrol. That’s an average month and the reason I mention it is that are having an emphasis in proactive activity. The crimes against persons unit conducted six compliance checks on registered sex offenders to make sure they are living where they say they are and that their paperwork is in order. As a result of those checks one warrant will be drafted for non compliance. This would not have been discovered without the proactive work.
Detective’s Bourque and Mundy conducted a presentation to the 8th grade middle school students on the dangers of sexting and child pornography. This came about as a result of inappropriate items on some of the students phones. The most important message to get out is that once that image is out there, it’s out there forever. The presentation was well received by the students and staff.
We analyzed 10 phones with the cellebrite software this period. There are so many crimes that have a cell or smart phone element to them. We were able to help other Departments as well.
The Communications center still has one opening. We are deep in the background process to fill it. The two newest dispatchers are progressing very well, and we anticipate one of the dispatchers to be released to solo this month.
Facebook is up over 10,000 likes. We are averaging 100,000 hits per month. We have had a slight downturn in posted activity as Officer Hayes has been out on injury.
We had 200 participants at the February 7, 2015 Teen Night. The next session is this Saturday.
Prosecutor Plaia started this month. He has made suggestions to improve the work flow in the office. The biggest benefit has been that it has freed up two officers to put back to patrol. They are both on the midnight shift which has been running light. The extra manpower has been noticed and it is helping.
On the patrol side three of the six wards met all with light attendance. It is usually when there is a big issue that we get the most participation. The K9 unit had four call outs; two for tracks and two for drugs.
Comp stat for the month we’ve been impressed with the self initiated activity. There were over 1300 traffic stops, almost double the amount last year at this time. We made twice as many arrests from traffic stops. We are looking beyond the traffic ticket and getting good real time information from these stops. This information is impacting what we are doing.
Comm. Peters noted that Det. Frechette has been working on a grant for the Family Justice Center.
Chief Allen said he is assisting the program by writing a new grant in conjunction with the County. The current grant is ending. The executive direction resigned a few months back and we have yet to replace her. At my direction, Det. Frechette has taken an interim executive role in addition to his other duties with the Department. We want the program to succeed and one of the things that has to happen is the grant needs to be completed. We are working with the County to meet those deadlines.
Comm. Peters said that he toured the center and was impressed with what they do and provide. All the resources are right there and clients don’t have to travel around the county to get the assistance they need.
2. Administration. Dep. Chief Dumas said that he along with the Chief met with the City Manager on the FY16 Budget. We had one request from finance this month to look at the cash-funded CIP items and see if we could scale back. All Departments were asked to do this to meet the needs throughout the city. We were requesting $20,000.00 for mobile radio replacements. This started back in a couple of years ago and we are replacing them as needed. We obtained other radios from other departments and are confident that we can get through FY16, and then continue to replace.
Comm. Peters asked how many are left to replace. Dep. Chief Dumas replied that we are about ¼ way through. All 21 of them need to be replaced.
FY15 Budget the PD is looking good at finishing in the black. We did have a couple of unexpected expenses for minor cruiser accidents where the damages were less than our deductible. Dispatch is also projected to finish in the black. The big impact is the overtime cost we are projected to spend. We anticipate with the dispatch replacements (new hires) as folks get out of training it will stem that flow. All other lines look reasonable. We are focused on the positive of still being in the black.
We had two officers certified as field training officers this period. The field training officer (FTO) is the first supervisor for new employees. It teaches them the ropes. They are very valuable employees in the hiring continuum.
Officer Marvin is expected to be released to solo patrol this month. The three officers at the academy are progressing. One candidate has been working with the staff on some remedial training. This is something we’ve encountered before and we still anticipate them graduating on April 10. We have one position remaining to be filled. Backgrounds should be complete in time to get this person into the next Academy.
We had a good supervisors meeting this period. All supervisors come and discuss issues. Most were housekeeping – keeping the lines of communication open. Things are going well within the ranks. We are creating a critical incident checklist. It’s a tool for officers to have in the cruisers for high liability low frequency incident. The checklist helps the first responding officers and it acts as a transition of command.
Update on the DVR cameras. We have been going back and forth about what will be the best action plan for the future. Do we replace the cruiser cams; do we enhance them with body cams. We feel we need them both and the cameras in the cruisers have been up and down. We just received four cameras from the company that had been in use in Connecticut. We are working with the vendor. We will have this in CIP funding for FY17 but we are not certain we can wait that long. This is a liability issue. We need to get this resource back into the hands of the officers. We are exploring avenues to include grants to lessen the impact on the taxpayers.
Can we use JAG money?
The existing JAG funding is going to tablets. We are anticipating a release of additional funds in the next few months. We don’t know how much, if any, will be available to us. It’s something we can look it. The funds we have received in years past won’t touch the surface of the funding with the latest technology, which is where we need to be. We are researching other grant funding right now and keeping eyes open for other opportunities. That technology is important in the cruiser and it helps with prosecution of court cases. It increases our transparency in the organization; it enhances officer accountability and safety, so it’s an important part of our operation. We can get by with scavenging technology but we have to find a way to replace it at some point.
Comm. Peters asked how many need to be replaced.
Dep. Chief Dumas said nine, all the front line cars. Average cost is $2,500.00.
Chief Allen added that new technology is a bit more expensive. Storing the video is the big cost. The in car video started out being saved to VHS tapes and it is now saved to cd’s. But the digital cameras are going wireless and everything is being saved to the cloud. We could explore our own in house server. This will be the same with the body camera storage of video. The camera itself is not that expensive. We will have to look at options to ease the burden to the taxpayer with grant funding. Depending on how successful we are, you may end up seeing us come before you with a request to go before council.
D. Other.
1. Response Times. Chief Allen said last month the Commission asked for data on response times. We looked at calls in all three categories and compared 2013 to 2014 to measure changes.
2013 2014
Priority 1 Average Response Time 4.6 mins 4.7 mins
Priority 2 Average Response Time 5.3 mins 5.2 mins
Priority 3 Average Response Time 5.0 mins 5.2 mins
Chief Allen said that with 47 square miles to cover the differences are negligible. I think we are doing pretty well despite the fact that we had significant attrition in 2014. If you remember we had times we were down 8 officers in patrol when factoring in vacancies, academy training, field training and injuries. We were struggling with patrol. To maintain those response times under those conditions I am really proud of our people out there being as efficient as they possibly can with the resources we have available. I am expecting those times to get better in 2015 because we are just about at full staff. We have one position to fill but absent significant attrition and the fact we put three additional officers on the street, we should see more impacts there.
Comm. Lindsay inquired how response times work. I see folks and they say it took an hour and half for us to get to a call.
Chief Allen said there will always be outliers. We didn’t break it down by every single call we respond to. There are times, which is why we prioritize, the volume of service demands we get there is no other way to do it as there are not enough people to immediately respond to every call. On our evening shift, the busiest shift officers can respond to simultaneous incidents, such as a domestic, an accident with injury, a burglary and that ties officers up for hours on those types of serious calls. The key is communicating with people and letting them know we might not get to you today so we don’t set false expectation about immediate responses. We wish we could respond immediately to every call, but we don’t and we can’t.
Comm. Peters said that priority one and two are where they should be, but priority 3 is not accurate, as sometimes it’s the next day when an officer gets out there to avoid waking you up at 1:00 A.M.
Dep. Chief Dumas said that at the get go we can set the expectation. If it’s a past tense report we can let them know we might not get to them today, and we could set an appointment for the next day.
Comm. Peters concurred that setting the expectation is key. He also suggested pushing more on line reporting. If we hear that it took a day to get back, it won’t matter if the expectation has been set. Comm. Peters said that you are almost fully staffed, with three more boots on the ground.
Chief Allen said a day or more is not the norm. If you look at the percentages of priority three calls it’s not a large percentage that people are waiting more than an hour.
Capt. Toussaint said that the dispatch board used to be full of calls waiting to be assigned. With more bodies on the street, there is less for each officer to handle and more proactive time for each. It’s already being noticed.
Comm. Lindsay said you are addressing the questions we often get asked.
B. Fairpoint. Comm. Lindsay said he had hear we had more downtime recently with Fairpoint, that folks had trouble getting into the police lines over the weekend.
Chief Allen said he had not heard that, but can check into it. If someone had an issue calling in please have them reach out and contact me and I can look into it.
6. CORRESPONDENCE:
Correspondence for the month included: Paul Fennessy of Bank of America recognizes the Department for the quick response and apprehension of a robbery suspect. Individually recognized were; Capt. Boudreau, Lt. Thomas, Det. Rousseau, Sergeant Emerson, Off. MacKenzie, Det. Mangum, Det. Flathers and Det. Mundy. Det. Mundy and Det. Bourque are thanked by Middle School Principal Valerie McKenney for a presentation to the 8th grade on internet safety and personal responsibilities while using the internet.
Comm. Lindsay commented on the letter from Bank of America and them being pleased with our quick response and apprehension of robbery suspect. There is a lot of goodness that comes out of our police department. Folks can speak negative but he sees the complete opposite.
7. INFORMATION:
No additional discussion.
8. NON-PUBLIC SESSION: (Pursuant to: RSA 91-A:3)
Commissioner Peters MOVED to enter a nonpublic session at 8:12 P.M. pursuant to RSA 91-A: 3, paragraph II, section A (personnel) and section E (legal.) SECOND by Comm. Lindsay. The motion PASSED by roll call vote 2 – 0 with Comm. Peters and Comm. Lindsay voting in the affirmative. The non-public session closed at 8:32 P.M. on a MOTION by Comm. Peters, SECOND by Comm. Lindsay and PASSED unanimously.
9. MISCELLANEOUS:
Comm. Peters MOVED to award merit increases on the respective anniversary dates to Off. James Murphy (3.9%) Off. Scott Loignon (3.95%) and Off. Andrew Jackson (3.2%). Comm. Lindsay SECONDED the motion and it PASSED unanimously.
10. ADJOURNMENT:
Comm. Lindsay MOVED to adjourn. SECOND by Comm. Peters at 8:35 P.M.
Respectfully Submitted
Rebecca J. Warburton
Secretary