Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright.

Thank you. I would like to call this public safety committee meeting to order on oh, we can hear us all over the place. 04:56PM on Wednesday, January 21. To my right, Alderman Smith Brown, are you here?

Present.

Thank

you. And to my left, Alderman Conti. Present. And I am here. Thank you very much. Do I have a motion to approve today's agenda?

I move to approve the agenda.

Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Next up on our agenda is election of chair pursuant to city code section two point one six point one two zero. Are there any nominations?

I move to nominate aldwoman Carmel O'Neill as our chair, public safety.

Is there a second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Great. Thank you so much. Welcome to everybody that's come. Welcome to two thousand twenty six. Thank you very much. We have three updates, this afternoon, starting with Annapolis Fire Department. If you would like to come forward, introduce your crew, and we'll be getting rolling.

Good afternoon. Doug Romali, fire chief. With me is deputy chief, Nathan Powell.

Thank you. Welcome.

You can go

to the next presentation.

You can get started anytime you would like. Thank you.

So

the chair had asked us to answer three questions for this meeting today, so we'll give you a little brief. But basically, we'll go over our goals for the next five years, how you as the Public Safety Committee can assist us as we move forward, and how to communicate between us and yourselves and what the best manner to do that is. So with us, this is our new mission statement for the Annapolis Fire Department. We've just updated that this year, but we exist to serve the citizens and residents of Annapolis by delivering prompt and professional emergency services, fire protection, and public safety services to safeguard the life property and the environment. Just so you know, we are ISO class one fire department which means that a third party insurance organization came in and has evaluated our department.

We are only one of three class one departments in the state of Maryland and one of only three eighty eight across The United States. And there's over 30,000 fire departments. So we are in that high percentage of Class I fire departments across the nation and the city should be proud of that. We operate with a $27,000,000 budget. It's basically broken down into this year's budget was that we do have about 2,000,000 in overtime and that's just to get us to our daily staffing every day with staffing concerns.

We operate for just under $2,000,000 in a regular operating budget and in this year's budget, there was a 785,000 that was put in the fire department budget which is basically facilities. It should have been with facilities maintenance and that's going to replace boilers and two fire stations. The 766 or 776,000 comes right off the top of our budget and that goes to fleet services to maintain the fire department fleet. And then 52,000 is just an independent contractor. This is the only contractual position we have.

It's our medical director. It's basically the best bang for our buck for only paying $52,000 for a medical director. But for us to operate as an emergency medical services, we have to operate under state law. We have to have a medical director and that medical director is Doctor. Heller. So 93% of our entire budget is all salaries and benefits for our personnel. So it's very high percentage of it is just that. We operate with 144 full time people, 137 of those are uniform positions, seven civilians. And as I talked about, we have the one contract position, which is the Medical Director. These are the core services that we provide throughout.

As you can see them and it's in your slide program, it's important to note that about 75% of all emergency responses in the city of Annapolis are by our crews is for emergency medical services. So that's medical calls. We take people sick and injured people to the hospital every day. We do have special operations, which makes us so great is the people that work for us. They wear multiple hats and that gets us the best bang for our buck for the department here in the state of Annapolis because they wear so many hats.

But they're hazmat technicians, they're rope rescue technicians. We have investigators that are cross trained police and fire. They're bomb technicians. They have explosive detection canines. We have code enforcement people that go in and do the code enforcement of all buildings for fire safety.

We also operate public education, go out here and educate the public on the needs there. One of our biggest programs is the Your Life Matters programs, which is the hands only CPR and the NARCAN administration. We have bike medics for special events. We the bikes were 25 years old. When we looked at electric in the electric fleet, the first electric vehicles that we got were the bikes.

I can tell you that the bike medics, when we told them we were going to get them electric bikes, weren't real happy at the time. They thought people would laugh at them and they wanted to pedal. But I can tell you that these bikes are state of the art. They can get to people in crowds very quickly, and they've been very good to us. We also have tactical medics that are assigned to the police department SWAT team. And all these are collateral duties. And then just one of the other programs we have is the Youth Fire Center Program, Intervention Program that's out there. This is our daily staffing every day. You have to have 25 firefighters working within a twenty four hour shift every day, plus one investigator. So there's 26 people working every day.

We operate out of four fire stations, the Forest Drive Station, which is also the headquarters building, Eastport Fire Station, Taylor Avenue Fire Station and the Annapolis Neck Fire Station on the Annapolis Neck Peninsula is a county fire station that is staffed with both county and city personnel there. It's important to note that over 60% of the calls that's run out of that station are located in the city of Annapolis itself. We average over 13,000 calls a year. As I was telling you earlier, 75% of those are EMS calls. What's important to note out of this is while we say we respond to 13,000 incidents, you have to double that for the amount of equipment we have on calls.

So some of those calls will have multiple units from multiple stations there. So we have between 26,030 responses of our personnel or units every year, but it's on those 13,000 calls that we respond to. So to get into your questions and how you can help us, our strategic plan, which has just been completed at the end of the year, you as the counsel will actually get a presentation on this in Monday night's council meeting. So we'll be able to go through it, explain the entire process to you, how it worked, how we communicate it with the public. There were some surveys that went out, but we'll be able to explain that and give you that whole layout during that session.

So I don't want to go into it here. But basically, within that, we established the mission, the values and the mission statements for the department. And it's a five year plan and that's where the five goals come from. And that's where the new goals have been established. So this year in the budget book, you'll see that our goals and our performance measures are all different.

But basically, it was done through this planning process. We achieved them and we have the measurements here that will be there. But here are the five goals. Generally, the first goal is that it's the operations of the department. It's to develop a skilled and diverse workforce, which with ongoing training, leadership growth, effective recruitment, and ensuring the excellence to the community and community safety.

So with this, we will be evaluating our staffing levels, what we respond with every day now, how those staffing metals meet the national standards, where we're lacking and where we need to improve that. But that all falls in that first goal there. So the goal one is that the major development or major goal of the department, which is those emergency services and the services that we provide every year. The second goal is just to get into the capital improvement budget, working with facilities and our logistics people just to enhance our equipment, the facilities themselves, our personal protective gear, technology, technology is ever changing as you're aware and to stay within that and be efficient with the budget as it moves forward. So we'll be able to look at the facilities.

There are major improvements that are already out there in the current capital improvement budget with some changes to the stations, the long awaited restroom facility upgrades at the Eastport Station and the Forest Drive Station at some of the council members that have been here for a while, have heard about for years and years, is actually going to start at the end of this month or the February. So we met with facilities maintenance today and the engineer, and they have guaranteed us that, that project is moving forward. So we're very happy to see that move forward. But with this five year plan, we'll continue to look at what you'll see in the upcoming budget, some of the upgrades to the stations, which includes the engine bay floors continuing with our safety programs, which goes into the next one and any other facilities upgrades that are needed there. The third one is to enhance the health and safety and wellness of our people.

That's the most important to us is the safety of our personnel and their well-being. We've had a shift in the fire service where we've gone from cardiac related issues with the number one killers firefighters and paramedics throughout The United States to now it's cancer. And cancer initiatives that we've been moving forward over the last few years, we're going to continue to enhance that, enhance our health and wellness of our personnel. Chief Powell here was instrumental in helping move along our mental health program in the department, which also has peer support. We continue to move that forward.

And we actually have a doctor on staff that we can that we have contracted with that helps us with our programs there. But it's the mental health of our people, the physical health of our people is important to us and it's the safety. We want to make sure all our personnel go home every night to their families or after every shift. The fourth one is it says to develop a community engagement program. It really means enhance our programs.

So we're going to look at the programs we have out there now and to continue to move forward. And with statistics, we'll know which programs should be at the forefront. But as I said earlier in the program, right now, the Your Life Matters that hands only CPR and Narcan Administration is probably the biggest program we have that's getting out there to the public because we know an out of hospital cardiac arrest, your survival rate every minute decreases without early onset CPR defibrillation. So as many people as we can train to get involved, start doing compressions until we can get medical staff there is going to increase saving on people's lives. And then the fifth one is just to move back towards the international accreditation, but that's a long term plan.

There's some money involved with that, but basically having the accreditation agency come in, evaluate our programs and go back to the accreditation process. Several years back, we looked at the accreditation compared to the ISO rating. Chief Stokes at the time felt it was best to pursue the ISO rating over the accreditation because that affects the insurance rates for the businesses and residents in Annapolis, and we were able to increase that. We originally were moved up to an ISO Class II department from a Class III, and then we moved on to an ISO Class I. So it's very good.

But how you can assist us? Really dive into the strategic plan once you get it, understand where that is coming from, how that's working and what the goals are of the department. Provide us your input and your support throughout. You'll see several budget enhancements come across. You got some tough decisions throughout the city. But we hope that you can really look into that and look into the public safety needs and where we need to do there. And then to just endorse the recommendations of not only that, but your recommendations on the council of what you would like to see done. And the third one is your interaction with us, the question you had there. This is how we operate. This is the flow chart.

But obviously, the communications of our monthly meetings and any questions you have going back and forth through the committee and through the chair to me, we can answer any questions you have. Short and sweet, we wanted to keep it short and sweet and see if you had any questions.

Appreciate that. Thank you so much. That was really informative. I do have two questions. My first one is I heard a fire statistic that said that routinely we are assisting other jurisdictions more often than they're assisting us. Is that true?

So our mutual aid program or automatic aid is set up with Anne Arundel County and Naval District Washington that we send the closest units to scene. Historically, throughout the time period, we two thirds of our call incidents are in the city of Annapolis and about a third are outside. It varies. We do provide a lot of support to the county. This Annapolis corridor is one of the busiest for medical calls and busiest in Anne Arundel County.

So there's three like hot spots in the entire county. The Annapolis area, which includes the Parole, Reva Road, and Edgewater area, Glen Burnie area, and then there's a small core group out there towards the Wall Chapel and the Severn area in that way out towards Crofton. But we know that they're the hotspots, they're the busiest parts of the county, and we continue to operate with our counterparts to look at that. We constantly and through this process of the strategic plan, we're going to look at how that works. And if there's some other areas where we should be having our counterparts provide the service that maybe they are half thirty seconds closer, that type of thing.

But any priority one call, matter So any serious call, it's going to pick the closest unit no matter what, whether it's us, Navy or Anne Arundel County. So we continue to look at that. But yes, growth in the area has increased. But it's a lot of it has to do is because we have that agreement and where our stations are located. So just take, for example, we evaluate our medical units.

We evaluate the county units that surround us like the West Annapolis stations on Jennifer Road. It just that unit is as busy as our units. But because of where our Forest Drive station is located, our unit might be closer to that Reba Road area or that Route 2 area. But like I talked earlier, that Anne Arundel County Station that we're sharing resources, 65% of their calls are in the city of Annapolis. So it's all about where we're located. We're constantly looking at how we run them, these incidents and we constantly meet with our counterparts in the county to discuss options there.

All right. Thank you very much. Are there other questions?

Hey how you all doing today?

Oh we're good.

Wonderful. So thanks for all that you do. I will always say that thanks to our public safety teams for joining us. One of the questions that I know in the public that I've seen is this division amongst our fire leadership as well as our fire union. What can you share today that would alleviate any of those concerns and just show the direction that we must go in, which is unify and just protect our people who are serving and protect those that they are serving as well?

I wouldn't necessarily describe it as a division between the fire department leadership and our staff or the union. I imagine you're talking to social media posts that are out there. There was a study done by the International Association of Firefighters a year or so ago which talked about responses. We continually look at not only their study but look at the statistics that we have. That's part of the strategic plan.

And by going with the outside vendor with the strategic plan. I didn't want it to be the Doug Romali plan. I wanted it to be the City of Annapolis Fire Department's strategic plan. And that's why we ended up going with the outside vendor to assist us with the strategic plan. But in that, we're going to look at those responses.

Basically, what it boils down to and Chief Powell can join in and actually in the back, Ortlieb Battalion Chief Ortlieb, who is our Planning Chief that does a lot of our statistics, can also have some input. But what it boils down to is there's an NFPA standard. There's a national standard out there that recommends four people on suppression pieces, which means and to just so you understand when I talk about suppression piece. So we run an engine company, which is a fire engine, which is a pumper, which has water on it. They that's the one that has the hoses on it.

Then we run a truck company, which we call a truck company, which is a ladder company, which has multiple rescue resources and ladders. That's the basically the ladder trucks you see that has the driver on the front and the back. So when we talk suppression pieces, that's the equipment that we're talking about. The national standard for the NAFTA standard would be to have four people on those pieces of equipment. With because of budgetary concerns and constraints currently, we have three people on those.

We aren't necessarily violating the NFPA standard. So the NFPA standard is a consensus standard. So unless the city adopts it by code, we're not required to actually follow all the NFPA standards. And there are multiple NFPA standards out there. And if we followed every single one of them, we probably wouldn't be able to afford it. But it is a consensus standard, and it is a standard that has been put out there where they've done national studies to see what is the optimal crew. Is it a two person engine or truck company? Is it a three person engine or truck company? Is it a five person truck company? And they did this study.

And what the study came back to was that a four person crew is the most effective. There is a caveat in the NFPA seventeen ten standard that says if you send so many people to the scene and they arrive basically at the same time and they are operating under one person and you combine these units together that you meet that requirement by exception. We do that. We send multiple people to structure fires, and this is all related to structure fires. So we do it. We're meeting the exception of it. Is it where we wanna be? No. As fire chief, I'm gonna tell you, I want four person suppression crews. But we have to determine how we can do that and be fiscally responsible to do that with the staff we're using.

But there's two parts to that. As I told you earlier, 75% of what we do are EMS calls. Our EMS units are busy. There are multiple times throughout the week that all of our units are on calls. We run a peak time medic unit also.

It's not necessarily a peak time unit per se the way we would like a peak time unit to be, but the latter truck at the esports station. So that crew of three, if they are in the station and available and all our medic units are on a call and there's another medic call in the city of Annapolis, they have to get off of that fire engine and take the other medic unit out of that station to the call. That's the way our staffing is currently, and that's the only way to do it. But the only way they can do that is if they're in the building and they're available at the time. If they're on the street on on a different call or coming back from another call, they can't handle that that.

That is not optimal because once we do that, that ladder truck goes out of service. So that's part of also what you're hearing. And just the workload of our medic units, they're so busy that we do believe we need a peak time medic unit. We need a fifth medic unit in service to handle these incidents for these high volumes. I had requested it because you'll see it within the last couple of budgets, we've been talking about this peak time medic unit.

Originally, it was looked at as a five day a week unit, forty hours a week, probably whatever those hours we decided there. But after looking at the statistics, and we got some pretty good statistics on it, we looked at the peak time hours, the hotspots from that original plan for this peak time unit. And looking at the growth and what we're getting in the city, it needs to be a seven day a week unit, probably twelve hours a day. But eventually, it'll have to be a twenty four hour unit. We've seen a lot of housing increases in the city.

Some of that is tied to what you can build in the city for single family homes is tied to the school capacity. Because the schools in the area are at capacity, we're seeing a lot more 55 and over communities. Basically, the statistics are showing us though the 55 and over communities are starting to utilize our medical resources more. And we have several coming in. We have one coming in another one coming in on Edgewood Road, and we have the Providence the Villages of Providence Point coming in at Forest and Spa there.

So those communities are being added. We're seeing other development there. So we know this additional medic unit will have to be a twenty four hour unit at some point. But we got to get it started, and we think that this peak time unit is the way to go at the current call volume. But there's two different things that you're seeing out there, and they're being combined together, and we really need to weigh that out and look at it.

And that's the four person crews and the peak time medic unit and how we can have this done. And even the local, the firefighters themselves know that the city can't afford to do this, especially do it overnight. So I think they're just looking for some sort of phase in to see how we can start doing it because we haven't really grown our minimum staffing. Our minimum staffing increased six years ago, went from 23 people to 25 people. That allowed us to do the peak time that medic unit with the truck company, but the truck company wasn't staffed fully at that point.

So we were able to put the truck in service. A part of that was and this was during COVID and those that time period, you know, they knew that they would have to get off that truck and get on that medic unit. It's just not operating as you know, as efficient as we would like it to be because of the way we're doing it and we think we need a crew for that medic unit. So I hope that answered the questions. If not, we can go more, but I know you have some other left you want get into. Do

you have a question?

All right. Yeah, thank you for that. The last thing, if you can share with the people who are listening maybe. If there's a fire up the street or there's something going on, I just saw ambulance coming on down my street and I'm concerned, how could I know within the next hour or two, three hours what happened if that's public information for people to look up online, is there an app, excuse me, an app that they can download of some sorts? Any information you can share with the people who may wonder how they can get that?

So we have, over the last year, I've detailed a captain from the fire marshal's office into our basically to be our lead PIO to get information out there. And I believe that information is getting out there better than it ever has before. Sure, we still need to make improvements. But there are False Point is a program. It's a free program out there that you can sign up for.

And that'll basically let you know if there's an incident in the area around you. It doesn't give you a lot of information about it, but it'll tell you if it's a medical call or a fire. So that app is out there. And in our Facebook, our Twitter pages, we constantly improve that every day, and we're getting better at getting that information out there in real time that we can get out there. Obviously, we've only got so many people working and we've got to handle the But what I can tell you is that no incident within the city or Ann Arbor County or the United States Naval Academy, whether our units are busy or not, there's not an incident where somebody calls 911 and nobody's going to show up.

That's why we have mutual aid programs. That's why we have automatic aid programs. And we're going to continue to get the closest people there as quick as possible. It just happens that a lot of times there are multiple calls going on, and we have to bring resources from farther out.

Great, I appreciate that. I would like to acknowledge Frank Thorpe from Ward 8. Do you have any questions, Frank?

No, thank you. I just appreciate being here to listen. Thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate you guys coming.

If I could just add one last thing. My deputy chief operations here, Chief Powell, will be retiring February 1. So this is probably his last public safety meeting. But I wanted to publicly thank him for the service he's given to the city of Annapolis for his twenty eight years of service. He's been the Deputy Chief of Operations here for the last two years, and I appreciate it. But I thought it's important to let you know that he is retiring.

Thank you. We appreciate your service.

Pension system.

Alright. Next up, ID 1726, Office of Emergency Management.

Good afternoon. My mic is now on. So I took a little bit of a different approach. This is the first time in a long time that OEM is appearing before this committee with a fully staffed OEM team of seven. Has been many, many years since I've had a fully staffed team.

So and that matters because it reflects our readiness, our stability, our commitment to working closely with this committee, and fire and police and the community, keep the community safe. So you talked about long term and short goals short term goals. What I'm about to share is not captured from our our formal performance measures. What I'm gonna talk about is my goals to catch up to where we need to be because, again, I lost 50% of my staff. At one point, we were only three deep, and we lost a lot of ground.

So what I'm gonna talk about today is how I'm catching up to where we need to be. So first of all, I wanna talk about one of my goals to kinda catch up is our planning priorities. Before I walk through those planning priorities, I want to provide some context. OEM has two emergency management planners and one senior emergency management planner responsible for maintaining more than 50 plans, more than 50 plans for the city. And this reality shapes how we prioritize our work and why we focus on the areas of greatest risk and impact.

So plan number one is emergency operations plan. That's the granddaddy of all our plans. That has the most plans in it. You've probably seen the binders, a big black binder and it has about 30 to 40 plans in it. This serves as a foundation for all of our emergency planning efforts.

The EOP provides overarching guidance for coordinating and managing emergencies of all types. Because of its scope and its importance, it will be a multi phase effort to taking about a year to complete. So this is a kind of a long range goal. The last time we kind of was in and looking at that plan was five years ago and you need to update it every every five years. So Audrowoman O'Neill, do you have possession of that plan for the council being the public safety chair?

I know you've seen that plan around here somewhere, right? So we gotta make sure that you have access as public safety chair. You have access to that plan and share it and and teach folks how to use it. The second one is a continuity of operations plan. And that plan is more of a short term to a mid range goal plan, making sure the government can continue to perform its most essential functions during during and after an emergency.

Whether the emergency is a natural disaster or power outage, cyber incident, or other disruption, the coup plan ensures that critical services remain available to the public under difficult conditions. So during COVID, city departments exercise their coup plans in order to make sure the most essential services was available to the public. And finally, for the new administration, this is important. We need to get our continuity of government plan together and that's a short term goal and it's updating a continuity of government plan with the focus on maintaining essential leadership and governance during major disruptions. In an emergency, it's critical that decision making authority is clear.

Leadership remains intact and core governmental functions continue without interruptions. This update ensures that we have defined lines of succession. And I know you recently worked on something in the council with succession that's part of a continuity of government. That we have clear roles and practical procedures so the government can act quickly, lawfully, and effectively when normal operations is disrupted. So not only does that entail people, it also entails buildings.

So continuity of government plan is not about just leadership and succession. It's also about infrastructure. That means building continuity by identifying and maintaining a minutes we're of

couple

to the current to plan, we would have council meetings of to at Pitt Moyer. And if those two were down, you always want succession in three deep. Right? So if those two were down, you would have the meetings at 2644 Riva Road at Anne Arundel County Public School Administration headquarters. We have a we have a MOU with them that if we can't have council meetings here, we can't have them at Pip Moyer, then that's the place that we go.

So continuity of government is is is important. So our goal number two is exercise and and training priorities. We have one one planner who leads our exercise training and outreach efforts, but it's very much a team function. Every member of OEM is cross trained to support this work, which helps ensure continuity across the organization. So training that we have is EM related training as emergency management has a nexus to every city function.

So we need we need to make sure that each city department knows their their emergency support function, planning and planning and zoning is is damage assessment, and rec and parks is sheltering. So everybody has a emergency support function. We need to make sure that that they're good with that, and each department knows their role and can operate effectively as a part of a coordinated response. EOC training, emergency operation centers, specialized training that prepares city department staff assigned to the red team and blue team to operate effectively within the environment. Alderman Thorpe, you participated in the last exercise, and you got a taste of red team, blue team, and the training that we do there.

Call center training. This is a vital operation during emergencies. We ensure the call center volunteers are trained effectively to receive triage and root calls for service and request. So this takes the heat off the 911 system. If we have an emergency like coming up this weekend, we think we're gonna have a big one and all. It's heading in that direction. So we wanna activate the call center so people are not flooding the 911 center. So they can take critical but cause it but don't rise to the level of an emergency. So that's important. So we just put an all call out for new call call takers in the call center.

We lost a lot of them with the change in administration. So we're trying to build that back. And corrective actions, basically, that's after actions, after we have an exercise, after we have a critical response to an incident, emergency, disaster, or crisis. We always wanna critique it, and we always wanna look at critical actions and corrective actions because we wanna know if we do good and we wanna stick to that. And then if we don't do well, then we wanna improve.

So, we wanna make sure that happens. So how can you help me? So funding for emergency management has dropped drastically due to due to the position that the federal government has taken within the Department of Homeland Security, OEM has received no Homeland Security of FEMA preparedness grant funding in fiscal twenty twenty five. So we were we were doing pretty good, and OEM is the lowest funding funded department in the city. So we were doing pretty good in f y twenty three.

We had June of funding that came in, and we do a lot with that funding. It just doesn't land in OEM. It it helps my partners behind me and other departments in the city. So in f y twenty four, we have $583,735. Again, you know, we spend that on overtime, we spend that on equipment, we spend that on training and all.

And then FY '25, nothing. We got nothing. And that note, this marks the first time in approximately fifteen years that the city of Annapolis has not received funding support. So here's what happens. So we were initially the seven jurisdictions in Central Baltimore region was given about a million dollars.

We were earmarked for about a million dollars that we never saw. So we even got together. Annapolis' share was gonna be 1,000,000 about $1,000,000, a little over that. So we even planned out how this how this money would be allocated. So 300,000 would go to planners in my shop.

Three of my employee of my staff members are grant funded. So we had a dedicated operations vehicle for OEM that was 65,000. New bomb squad robot for the fire department, that was 213,000. Sustainment upgrades for the city mobile command unit, which is getting kinda old, but that was 40,000. Sustainment for the bomb squad, 60,000.

Bomb squad material container was 200,000. Law enforcement personal protective equipment, 80,000. A k nine dog for the for the fire department, 9,000. Special events and protective barrier systems. We had a 100,000 for that, and that would be right now, we use heavy vehicles, dump trucks, and all.

What we wanted to do is is purchase protective barrier systems to do that work during special events. Hazmat response equipment for for the fire department, 21,000 and tech rescue, we had 10,000. So we were earmarked to receive this this funds. They sent us a letter that we would and who knew, it's in litigation and more than likely we might not see it. The probability is we probably won't see it at all.

So again, how you can support me is that we need to think about how we invest in the Office of Emergency Management. It has been a good deal for many, many years. A lot of equipment you see in the police department, a lot of equipment you see in the fire department has been funded through homeland security grants, state homeland security, and other grants. We were pretty good with that. Even with the city dock project, the 33,000,000 came out of my shop.

We haven't received it yet. We're optimistic about it. But, yeah, all that comes out of my shop. So, for the past fifteen years, that's been great. Like right now, things are drying up. So we have to think about how we wanna invest in the Office of Emergency Management going forward. So that's all I have, really. So how you can help me again is information sharing and echoing emergency management updates. You're gonna see a lot of a lot of this this weekend with this snow event that's coming on. Attend events and training like you all have.

Keep that up. Encourage constituents to participate in critical EM campaigns that focus on whole community preparedness and support our initiatives, our program, and our legislation. So I'll I'll take any questions that you have.

Thank you. I have two questions for you.

Yes, ma'am.

The call center training, is that open to people like council men? You didn't. You didn't?

I have I actually saw one of the council members up on on Adaios take a mock call, and he did pretty good. Two of them, actually. Two of y'all did it. Y'all did pretty good. So, yes, that's open to the council. You take the training with with right now, we have an open call for people who are interested. The training is gonna be in mid February. We'd love to have council members come in that because after all, a lot of it is your constituents calling us. Right. So that's great.

My second question is not having that $1,000,000 funding, are we looking at altering the budget? How are we continuing for the rest of this fiscal year?

So we're we're good. We're good until about the fall. Okay. If we receive nothing else, we're good till about the fall. But beyond that, we have to figure some things out.

Okay. Good. Are there other questions?

Hello. Thanks always. I have a couple of questions as well. Sure. Maybe a few, we'll see. So the first one, primarily it was actually something similar to the call center. Now we're doing it out of the kindness and the love of our heart, our, you know, idea, excuse me, of representing the people. But for someone who's maybe younger, who's interested in doing the calls and they ask, well, do I get paid for it? What do you say to them? Is this a volunteer role? Well,

we have never taken someone who is not in Annapolis City government. So that's an avenue we have to explore and all because I I was approached by someone who who was interested in volunteering in in OEM, and we had a discussion about taking somebody out from outside of the of the government. I'm I'm open to it. I'm open to it. As a matter of fact, our CERT folks who does does our special events and manages our parades and all parade marshals, a lot of them wanna be involved in our call center. So we're gonna we're gonna make that happen.

Okay, thanks for that. And the next question is, had mentioned about the apps earlier because I do know that you promoted one of the apps for OEM or there was just an app that people can go to and get updates on what's going on. Do you mind just sharing something briefly about that for if anyone does want to access it?

So so the prepare me app is is a good thing to have. We were one of the first in Maryland to to do the app. I think that the app is in it has to be about twelve years old now. So we encourage all Annapolis residents. If you work in Annapolis, don't live in Annapolis, we encourage you to download the Prepare Me Annapolis app. And it it helps keep you prepared. You can get directives directly from us through the app. And and you will see that with the upcoming snow event that we're gonna have this weekend, this app is gonna be blowing up, giving you information for you to follow and for the for you to be safe and and for you to be prepared.

Alright. Thank you. The last question I had is if you are an elderly person and you're concerned about this upcoming weekend and you live in a public housing community, what would you encourage them to do if they are wondering how do I get my driveway snow plowed? Maybe that's public or so heavy, but how do I get my driveway snowplowed? Do I call you all and do you all support in that? But this is just

So so today we concentrated on our vulnerable population. So our homeless population, we we started preparing them for this weekend. We talked to HACA, Melissa Maddox Evans and found out, you know, what do you need for for all of your folks. We we did our special assistance roster which is a roster that we keep with people, mostly seniors and people with functional needs. And we call them. If it's an event coming up, we call them. Hey, Mr. Smith, this is OEM. How are you doing? Know, we got a snowstorm coming up this this weekend.

What can we do for you? Do you have everything to eat? And all, mister Smith will say, hey, look. I won't be here. I'm at my daughter's. And we'll take note of that that mister Smith is not there. She's with her daughter. So we just make sure everyone is prepared and we took the whole day today to deal with every part of our vulnerable populations that we could to get them prepared for for this coming weekend.

Fantastic.

So if the snow is in the driveway, do I call is it the public housing community responsibility? Do you

have any So I do believe that. So we also call the Naval Academy. So I don't know if had this when you were there. But a lot of times the the mids will volunteer to do driveways. So we called the Naval Academy, connected them with us.

So if you're gonna do this this year, we're the point of contact and then we can connect Ahmed with Mrs. Smith so he can go out, he or she can go out and do the driveway. So we're looking at that. And we also were playing with the idea on next door to kind of get them talking and co intermingling with each other to support the seniors and people with disabilities in their area. So they might get a cadre of folks that'll go out and shovel snow, etcetera. Etcetera.

Great. Other questions? Alright. Are there any other questions? Frank?

Director Simmons, I've been doing this for fifty two days now and I just want you to know that I tell people that I sleep well at night because of you and your colleagues. My question is about this snowstorm coming up. And building on Keanu's question, we're about probably, to your point, about twenty four hours from panic. And information, the information flow, And I think I recognize that the city of Annapolis, the residents are not used to a snowstorm like we're about to get. So I'm starting to get asked about are they are we gonna enforce snow emergency routes? What are the rules of snow emergency routes? What are the

rules

about about snow? And so building on your question, I guess I guess my my request is whatever information you can flow to the city council that we can use all of our tools to get the information out to inform people. I don't wanna make false claims to the residents. I just wanna make sure they're informed. And also, I think that builds their confidence in what you and your colleagues are doing.

So any amount of information that you can pass to us that and and I I have a much respect for the residents, but I also know that they're not gonna think about a double digit snowstorm until now, tomorrow. And so whatever we can do to inform them would be very helpful from you.

So we put out our first correspondence about the snowstorm today about 03:00, we were confident enough that we could talk a little bit because before now, things were is it gonna be double digits? Is it gonna be a nothing burger here? When is it gonna when is it gonna come? What's the duration of it? Here's what we think is going to happen, and we're still playing with the forecast. 90% chance Annapolis receives. More than. Six inches of snow and a 55% chance Annapolis receives. 12 inches. 55% of snow.

So. We have a meeting with the meteorologist tomorrow at 01:30. That'll be myself, my colleagues behind me, all the departments who've been planning all week, by the way. You know, we have a thousand tons of salt. We have a whole lot of brining fluid, and we'll be brining on on Saturday night, and we have enough salt.

So we've been getting our our vehicles, our our plows, and all the snow paths so so the residents can actually follow along where the plows are, where they've been. That's up and running and and all. So we've been planning and doing things all week. And as I stated earlier today, our mission was to make sure the vulnerable populations were taken care of. So information will be coming be a lot more fluid now.

Now that things have tightened up, you know, we started out as like this, now we're we're tightening it up. And then tomorrow at 01:30, we'll be forty eight hours out. And we we're gonna be able to put out information with a lot of confidence about what's going to happen. So the three scenarios are are that we'll get, I don't know, five, six inches. The other scenario is we're going to get significant snow and on the back end we're going to get some winter remix, which is gonna cause the fluffy snow to get wet.

And then we're gonna have low temperatures in the teens, which is gonna cause another problem. Again, I'm saying scenarios, I'm saying this is not gonna happen. Happen. And the other scenario is snowmageddon. So we're narrowing it down.

Again, 90% chance that Annapolis receives more than six inches of snow at all. And the thing that worries me more so than the snow is that polar vortex behind it and all because we're looking at Tuesday being zero degrees. Also Annapolis with has a cadre of about 25 homeless folks. We gotta make sure that they're sheltered, not only overnight like we do, they have to be sheltered in the daytime. So we're making arrangements to make all that stuff happen.

So this is going to be a dangerous time, especially because of the temperatures. So we all need to work together, we all need to share information. We all need to check on our neighbor, especially our seniors, especially our people with special needs. And we all need to kind of pull together and we can get through this one just like we got through 2016. So

Thank you. I appreciate your time tonight and all that you brought to us. Thank you so much.

Thank thank you all.

On another note, did you happen to bring me some demographic sheets? Thank you. While he's doing that, we're gonna go to ID 1526, Annapolis police police department update. Welcome. While she's queuing that up, do you want to make introductions, chief?

I'm sorry. I'll start with to my right is the deputy chief of police, Stan Branford. To his right is the patrol commander, Guy Thacker. To his right is the administrative commander, Amy Captain Amy Migas. And to her right is professional standards manager director and that's Lakisha Blue.

To my immediate left is operations commander in charge of detectives and community outreach and that's captain Lamar Howard. I don't think I missed anybody. While she's getting ready, we're still working on our goals and objectives for 2026, which will be born out of our strategic plan. We're in the five year cycle. We had an anapolitan resident, Bob Watkins, worked with us five years ago on our strategic plan and he did a phenomenal job.

We were able to extrapolate our goals and objectives from that. And so, you know, people put together strategic plans. And if you're not careful in your organizational structure, your goals and objectives can be diametrically opposed to your strategic plan. And something's a matter because you're moving in two different directions and nobody can move in two different directions in in a organization. So in short order, madam chair, we'll make sure that the full public safety committee gets a copy of our goals and objectives when they're finished.

And one of the main reasons why we haven't had our goals and objectives complete by today is because all of my time personally has been working with the CALIA, my CALIA people. We were up for our two year remote web based review and I'm excited to to report that today we got our report. We did outstanding. We had 47 standards that we had to prove to CALEA, commissioner on accreditation for law Enforcement Agencies, for those of you who may not know what the acronym stands for. And out of those 49 standards, we've completed all 49.

We had a glitch with two standards and it wasn't that they were correct, it was a matter of wording problems. So we corrected them and we're in full compliance for our two year remote web based assessment. We received a letter from CALEA praising the efforts of officer Melanie Williamson, Kayla Ziegler who lives in Germantown and she's from Annapolis, and then sergeant Tanya Hernandez who is the supervisor. So I know that a couple of a year and a half ago or so, there was a bone of contention that that we were out of compliance with CALEA. We've been in compliance now for almost a year since last March.

But, the clear standards and the direction we're moving in has been phenomenal. So, I just want to give kudos to the men and women of the Annapolis Police Department. In particular, the people who I just named. I'll move forward to talk about our goals and objectives even when we get them. Our strategic plan is not gonna change radically from what it's been in the past.

The reason why it's not gonna change radically from what it was in the past is because those are the things, number one, that the community expects from us. And number two, they've been very successful in mitigating the level of violence in the city of Annapolis. We're not violence free, but the levels that we've seen are far less than most jurisdictions in Maryland. And I'm confident to say that publicly. You're gonna find very few jurisdictions, if any, whose crime rate is lower than ours.

And so I would like to call your attention. Four core areas of my administration as chief of police is number one, community engagement and outreach. And that consists of the police athletic league. It consists of, the police athletic league. It consists of all of our initiative.

The police foundation, we work with so many The second part of it is I'm sorry. I'm I'm just struggling to try to memorialize this operations and public safety and that there you go. Okay. Example, the John r Elliott hero campaign and the Live Water Foundation swimming partnership. Those are the some of the things that the PAL program and community outreach unit is engaged upon.

And you told me to you told me to get this out, and I didn't do it. Operations and public safety, enhanced patrol strategies. Our captain Thacker presented me with goals for patrol, and and we'll touch on that. And then when I get to that, he can weigh in if we have the time. And the second part is the regional task force.

And that's Haida, high intensity drug trafficking area. That's the ATF. These are federal partnerships. The the alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives. And the the third most important one or the or no no the importance of no particular order, but the third one I should say is the US Marshals Service to give you some example.

And then the the third pillar is investigations and support services. And that's we're still striving to have the most cutting edge advanced technology in forensics. Of course, continuing with our in that vein to partner with our federal agencies in that area and in enforcement and then provide the best victim services and and victim advocacy that we can. And of course, the last one is professional standards. Professional standards consist of and I'm I'll I'll just paraphrase this, not read from that directly.

But one of the most important parts of our professional standards is the Police Accountability Act of twenty twenty twenty one. And that's legislation enacted by the legislature, the Maryland General Assembly that governs what under what circumstances when it comes to discipline that the police department must embark upon. And of course the history of that is an aftermath of the George Floyd in custody death back in 2020. And there was a a big push on in America to improve policing. And Annapolis was no different than most legislatures across this country to demand police reform.

And basically, the short is is two components. It's the administrative charging committee and the police accountability board. Administrative charging committee, once we investigate an incident misconduct, we forward it to them. And and I'm paraphrasing and and feel free to jump in if it's something that I missed. It gives it limits what the chief can do.

Once there's a sustained finding, the only thing that the chief of police can do, if it involves the public, not internally. Example, discurvacy, use of force, you know, those kind of things that affect the public. The only authority that the chief of police would have is to increase the punishment not lower it once it's determined by the ACC, the recommendation. We have to that that recommendation is legal and bonding. The only thing that theoretically I can do is increase it not lower it.

Did I miss anything? Okay. Those are the four core areas. What we're gonna do, we're looking at currently our policies and procedures, particularly the hot topic and the elephant is always in the room, immigration customs and enforcement aka ICE and what our role is in dealing with that very hot topic across America at this time, you know. And the short version of that is we don't enforce federal law.

The only time you will see us get involved in ICE if there's a warrant and not I'm not talking about a cause immigration warrant, but say for example, I can give you an example better than I can explain. If somebody of Hispanic descent commits a crime, a robbery, a murder, a rape, a state crime, they're they're subject to the same prosecution as any other ethnic group, you know, anybody. But what we don't do fundamentally is we don't detain them because we suspect that they have an immigration warrant. We don't target them, you know, because of their last name or the area of the city where they live in. We treat them as we would treat any other citizen.

If they come to us, for example, as victims, if they wanna report a robbery or a rape or any other serious offense, then we treat them like any other citizen. We take the report and we refer them to the proper authorities if we don't take action ourself and secure an arrest warrant if a suspect is identified. But what we don't do is we don't ask them their immigration status. We don't even run that. And so we had a conversation just yesterday, me and captain Thacker and the deputy chief.

And we looked at our policy before coming here today. And we think we have a good policy. I think the only thing that we're going to change that was reminiscent from the old policy is that our dispatcher got involved and now we don't even want our dispatchers involved. So we we we only observe when we get calls or we get information that immigration custom enforcement in the area, our officers our officers generally respond to the location. We will respond.

We activate our body worn cameras and we record the incident. If the incident gets out of hand, either the ICE agent becomes a victim of serious assault, of course, we can't stand by and watch an assault or murder, so we intervene. If they are acting inappropriately and aggressive, we have a duty to intervene and we take out guidance from the attorney general's office. We have a guidance for interactions with federal law enforcement particularly in ICE and then we are being guided by the AG's office and state law. So, you know, when I I plan on doing some public speaking about that subject.

I'm not an immigration lawyer, but as a police officer I know what I expect my officers to do and not to do. And basically, we are not out there looking for people who may be illegal aliens or, you know, we don't enforce civil ICE initiatives. We don't get involved in any of that. And once we turn them over, and this is important, once we arrest them, say theoretically a nice I mean, a person of Hispanic descent committed a robbery and we charge them under state law for that robbery. Once we take them to Jennifer Road, a booking facility, and turn them over to the, you know, the facility, then we're no longer the custodians for that purpose.

They have to go to a facility and they have to meet with the judicial officer under state law and The United States constitution. They have to get before a judge promptly. So we don't intervene, we don't call ICE and say, well, we have this guy, you may wanna come take a look at him. We don't do any of that. We just so whatever happens after that is beyond our authority.

Our our our goal is because we have Anne Arundel County has a central booking program as a part of the criminal justice process. Once we arrest them, we take them to a book of facility where they're fingerprinted, photographed, and processed through and they go to the next phase and that's to go before judicial officer, court commissioner, and it's determined whether they're gonna be held or released on bail. But we don't determine any of the nuances. Whatever they do at a correctional facility is beyond the authority of a police chief. Thirdly, before I I I keep moving on, our crime is is down significantly, and I'll have captain Howard to talk about that in a few minutes.

But I wanna address the thing I've addressed it one. The goals for the department is to focus on those four areas for 2026, and we'll be more specific in the near future. How can public safety what can the public safety committee do to assist us over the next four years? Many of you, I know you by face and I've met with you, and I've I've always feel good when we have a special relationship with our elected officials. We can't do our job without you.

So if I can sum up what I hope that we can do is continue relationships I've had with many of you. Some of you before you got elected and now that you're sitting on the public safety committee, we will try to do our very best to keep you informed and to be extremely transparent on the things that we can do without compromising the administrative administration of justice. The more you know about us, and a lot of people don't get that. I don't I don't believe in keeping information esoteric, only amongst a few people. Not everything's a secret.

This department, I said it many times at this very table, belongs belongs to the community. It doesn't belong to anybody sitting at this table. It belongs to Neapolitan. It belongs to homeowners and people who live here. Well, you don't have to be a homeowner, but well, if you live here, you're entitled to know everything that you can know about the police department.

I understand when you we have incidents that occur. Sometimes it's tough. I know my deputy chief generally responsible for notifying the council whenever we have anything that can potentially be a big media item. But the more we can educate and demystify the Annapolis Police Department, I know from my forty three years experience, the more advocacy we have from the council. And so I can't expect you all to be engaged and treat us fairly if we withhold information from you.

You know, so it's not a one-sided street. And you'll find that anything that I can disclose or sit down and explain, I'm more than willing to do. In fact, most of you know you have to shut me up so you can get on about your day because I don't mind telling you all the nuances of what So we that's the second thing. And then how do you prefer the committee to interact with the department? Believe is one of the questions sent in the email.

Just as you do, oh, some days it's formal, sometimes it's informal. Know, give me a call if you wanna meet for a cup of coffee and discuss certain things. I know that a lot of times you have to be careful how we meet because of the Open Meetings Act. And, the things that I think that the council needs to know collectively then we'll manage that and I know that the attorney here will let us know what that process is. I believe we can meet four at a time or one. It can't be a quorum. Okay.

If you're talking about public safety with all three at once, then that is a quorum and that is a Okay.

Yeah, and I get confused by that. That's why I'm looking at you. I would depend on you to let us know if we can can can meet that.

You have to turn on your mic.

And so And so if I don't know what kind of time I'm working with but what I like to Two minutes. To to you to know what our numbers are. And then I like for captain Thacker to kinda talk about his vision for patrol. I've he sent it to me and I enjoyed reading it. So if we have time, take a minute to go over the serious crime.

Cool. Good evening. As a chief identifier, I'm Howard. I'm the operations commander. Over the past this past year, twenty twenty five, our summer crime plan was was very effective.

Even though we had some challenges as it related to some of the gun violence that we had, in particular to the four homicides, we and and and most of our homicides were due to interpersonal violence. And what I mean by interpersonal violence, you have John Doe and Glenn Burnie FaceTiming John c on Clay Street on FaceTime, and they're beefing. John b says, I'm gonna come down here. I'm gonna shoot you up on Clay Street, and he doesn't. There is no way that we could we could mitigate that unless we have that information beforehand, before the incident happens.

But post incident, most of our deployments have mitigated retaliatory violence that is normal after a the first incident. So just comparing to last year well, I'll I'll give you the last four years. So for homicides in 2022, we had one. 2023, we had nine. 2024, we had three. In 2025, we had four.

I just wanna interject one quick. In '19 in 2023, of that nine, three were from Paddington Place. Three were from Paddington Place. That was the mass shooting that we had on Paddington Place.

You you could sir. And of the the homicides that occurred in 2025, one occurred inside of a dwelling, in in inside the walls of a of a secured dwelling. The other three occurred on the streets. We had Clay Street,

we had

Robinwood, and we had Benz Drive. And the deployments that me and captain Thacker along with the chief and deputy chief, we were able to mitigate any retaliatory violence that came after those homicides. So we still have a lot of work to do. But I think overall, most citizens would say they feel safe in the city of Annapolis. If you wanna go out, take your girlfriend, your husband, your spouse, whatever, and walk and get a nice dinner, you can do that. So and that's just I know we're we're pressed for time, but I thought it would be important that I spoke about those issues as it relates to the gun violence that we experienced in 2025 in Annapolis.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

Hey. Good evening. It's captain Thacker from the patrol division. Every uniformed officer that works on the street of Annapolis essentially works under the patrol division. There's an operational squad that works underneath Lamar's seat. But everything in uniform pretty much comes underneath me. Even some of the specialties like traffic safety, crisis intervention, the honor guard, just a variety of different units. Everything in uniform. My peers and what we've been trying to work on since I've arrived here was our staffing numbers in patrol. And they were deficient.

But lately at the end of calendar year 2025 and launching into 2026, we did a hiring surge. There was some lateral officers that came over and some academy graduations. We currently have eight APD officers in field training. They will pretty much be complete of their training the February. So that's just around the corner. And they'll be placed into the patrol squads. That's fantastic news. That's also fantastic news for my peers. They provide services whether it's admin, administration, or whether it's investigations. These are all patrol support units.

It's everything that happens on the street. And as we were having meetings through the calendar year 2025, it was there were deficiencies in some of the specialties that each shop had. And I I held them off. And but we're at the point now where we will we about the February, we will finally get to a point in patrol operations, patrol division, the patrol squads where we're at full staffing. And that's a really, really good thing.

That was the single biggest goal that we were trying to accomplish in 2025. In effect we did. We hired them, but we needed to actually get them fully certified through Maryland Police Training Commission. And that will be finalized the February. And that will free up some personnel from the patrol squads to be able to move into some of these other assignments that are critical to the success of the department. So staffing was the big thing that I really wanted to highlight. And then the training and development of the patrol squads. They're going to be very young. This is a there a lot of mentorship that goes into being a police officer. We we are very lucky.

We built up a core of trainers. These are more senior officers, mid tier officers that have a lot of experience. And we ramped them up and we brought on boarded several more field training officers prior to this surge. So we'll be positioned well for 2026 with about I believe it's five more openings though.

We have seven.

We have seven. So 125 sworn personnel and we're deficient by seven for full staffing. So I know that we put out on social media a recruitment video trying to hire some younger officers who are on board and we're still in that process. And that would be the goal to kind of finish out and fully staff the entire agency with our numbers. There are some specific things when it comes to what we're trying to do for 2026 just in patrol.

And we're trying to leverage technology. This would come in the way of what is an open portal for our citizens or our police officers to enter in what we deem to be environmental deficiencies in the in the community, and that would be leveraging the other city agencies to go out and fix problems. The police officers are out there twenty four seven in the community. We see if there's a street light that's not working properly, etcetera, but we're not the ones that fix the street light. And that could be very, very important in our crime fight is getting proper lighting in certain areas.

That's just an example. Baltimore Baltimore Gas and Electric primarily would be the lead agency, but through the portal we can enter that information. There is an app that we have and this just goes to the technology piece. It's a three one one app, but it's not as extensive as far as a menu of options that the open portal is. So there's a there's two ways that we can submit work orders, but the one would be a lot better if we had an app on the phone.

So I like to get with IT and work to try to like ramp that up. And there are examples out there. Baltimore City, for example, has a very robust three one one reporting system, and I'd like to leverage that. And that that will factor into our our effort in crime reduction And then the second thing for technology is drones and drone support. We're working on that.

We're working on hiring a civilian position as a drone coordinator. We've already begun the process of getting the certifications necessary to the Federal Aviation Administration for our personnel. And there was a budgetary item and and Captain McGuiz can speak more about that about actually acquiring external drones and interior drones. And I think that that's a fantastic thing. Up until now, I I've been leveraging Anne Arundel County Police for those efforts, and they're a great partner.

But timing and sequencing, whether or not there's a drone officer working for Anne Arundel County, and typically there is, but where they're responding from, there's a time delay. And I may need that piece of equipment now to be able to conduct some kind of search. We we were out searching the waterways today for a missing person. And I it would have been great to be able to launch that and very rapidly clear an area. So there there's advantages in technology that the patrol division for Annapolis could really seize upon, and we are moving in that direction.

And as the chief of police, I wanna talk to you on this end of the second day and time about the drone program. There's a lot of information I think you should know and help us support it if you like what you hear. We would ask your support for that drone program. Very important. And by the way, getting back to ICE, I know it's a lot of things we haven't discussed. I can think of a million things like I would like to discuss. I know Tom's of interest. I'll send you a copy of of the what what we can and cannot do as it relates to federal engage in federal offices, what Annapolis PD can cannot do. The only thing that I would take out is It's out of that. Oh, it's out of that one?

Is the It's done. When we sent it to you, the deputy chief just told me it's out. But one thing I wanted out of there is police communications. And it said that PCOs will contact ICE when a detainer or a federal warrant is shown as subject detained and relay the information and provide location status. That's gonna be taken out of our policy. So we're not gonna do any of that. Other than that, everything else in here is applicable. So we'll make sure you get a copy of this if you like to add it. In PowerPoint. And in PowerPoint.

It'll be this this document here. I can't get the front page. It'll be this document here and it outlines. It's something that you could have at your disposal and it's an easy read what we can and cannot do. And of course, anybody at this table is poised to answer any questions you may have once you get this document. So we'll get this right out to you.

Thank you. We appreciate that. Mhmm. I think that we have a few questions and we do have a hard stop at fifteen because I agree and want to stick to our timeline. My first question though pertains to council meetings, police presence. And I know that we have two officers that are in council in the city hall at that time, and respectfully, we'd like to request that one of them is stationed right there by that door as opposed to outside the door.

If I can jump in. So so I've already talked to lieutenant McGriff who is in charge of of the city hall over time. And I think there was some confusion because of the training that we had at the last council meeting. And so they're fully aware they're gonna one person's gonna be up here, one person's gonna be downstairs. But I think that there was a disconnect between probably someone on my staff, I don't think it was me, but because of the training that we were doing up here not necessarily wanting the public to come in quite yet, that's why they were thinking they both had to stay downstairs. But moving forward, they know one's gonna be here, one's gonna be downstairs at metal detector.

Thank you. And we had that conversation with the chief of staff, myself and captain Thacker. And so we thought that was the plan going forward also.

Perfect. Appreciate that very much. So you answered my other question. Are there questions from the committee?

Hello. Hello, my people. Hello. Yes. Well, appreciate you all. I love to see the team all together. I got you. Thank you. Just, okay. So, the first question I have is if there's a concern at a public school, I know it's Anne Arundel County, but it's in Annapolis, this school. How could they if at all receive support for if there are any incidents with children walking home? Could they ask us to provide any support? How would that be for a principal who's concerned or wondering?

Oh, absolutely. Especially when it comes to children and it's it's a definite and I would hope that my command staff sitting at this table shares that same view. Anytime I don't care what we're doing, if a child needs to get some get home safely, then I think it's our obligation. It's our duty to see so. So that's that's the easy question to answer. I I don't know of any incidents since I've been chief. That's been since 2019 where that request was made and it wasn't honored. And and those requests were made alderman in the past.

So I do have a specific incident. If you remember, the bus company went on strike at one time before and Annapolis PD, Danny Smikle and and some of the community outreach, we actually provided vans to get kids back and forth to school safely. Some of the kids were taking a real long walk which was unsafe. Some of the parents complained about it and we actually made sure that we were able to pick those kids up and get them to and from school.

Okay. So could the principal just reach out? Should I

Yeah. The principal just reach out. Yes. And you know we're easy to find and we have a good relationship all the way up to the superintendent. So all they have to do is you can tell them just to reach out to one of us and we'll make sure.

Okay. Thank you for that. The next question I have is there's a huge concern surrounding homelessness as I'm sure you all are well aware of. And as we're beginning this conversation to really find a solution for it, what can we do in the interim to provide our homeowners, renters, tenants, what have you, the security that, yeah, there are some people living near my residence and I would like that to be taken care of. How can I go about it? We know that it's not illegal to sleep in the wooded areas. I know in my ward particularly this is something that I've committed to supporting my residents on and even them. I mean, there there are residents in the city or citizens.

Yeah. It's a delicate balance. And, Alderman, it can be illegal depending on where they're sleeping. You you know what I mean? Being homeless and being indigent and not having anywhere to sleep in and of itself, it's is not a crime. But, you know, you have a right not to have a homeless person sleeping on your front lawn or in your driveway or in this building. That's a that's a a true story. Or other places. But we're very careful because we're sensitive to that. I don't want ever want to the public to believe that we are punishing the homeless.

And so we're very delicate with through our community outreach how we address that. Unless they are unless they pose an immediate public threat, we like to find ways in which we can gently relocate them. And we work with OEM and I I don't know if director Simmons is still here behind me, but I know since I've been here, every time we bring things like that to his attention, he more than helps us make sure that that person, especially this time of year I mean, any time of year, but especially this time of year. So, you know, call us because sometimes we will respond if they are sleeping on public property that's a form of trespassing or if they encroach on your, you know, on your personal property, then we can enforce it and we try to just relocate them if we can.

I'll give you a real quick incident. So, don't know if you know this, Calvary Street right across the street from the post office. Right next to the Social Service building there's a guy that's living there. He's got a crate there. I mean it looked horrible. I called Captain Thacker the other day and sent Danny Smikle down to see if we can kind of mitigate that. What we learned is that that guy has been there several times. The social service department actually removed him at one point, took him across the Bay Bridge. I think he lived down there somewhere. Three days later, he was right back.

When you talk to the manager of the building, they don't want him touched. They say it's okay for him to be there. He's not bothering anybody. And we I don't know if you can chime in anymore on that. But we tried mitigating that with that gentleman.

Yeah. In that particular circumstance, he was in a portion of the building like in a cubby. It's not public sidewalk. It's not public domain. It belongs to the building. So what we would need is either the agency's manager or somebody with authority to be the reporting person so that we could take action and kind of help mitigate that problem. But they were not agreeable to do that. Therefore they said you could stay. And so then we did offer we did contact Anne Arundel County Homeless Services. They came down And our own CIT officer went out there with Corporal Smichael who's a problem solver phenom.

And he's just resource resistant. He doesn't want any help at this point. And so there he is. It's kind of this limbo world that we're kind of in where we want to try to help him the best that we can. And I think the chief highlighted and Director Simmons did too. I mean we have severe imminent weather. And for his own safety we were trying to impress upon him that perhaps he could seek shelter or refuge somewhere else. And so we would try to help that the best that we can. But there was no criminal act that we could take action upon on this in this particular case.

And that's tied to officer wellness too. There's so many things to talk about. It affects our officers emotionally when they encounter people like that because the truth is factually, not my opinion, a lot of it's tied to mental illness. A lot of people who are homeless have family support and family members who are willing to take them in, but because of whatever their psychopathy is, whatever trauma that they face to cause them to be homeless because many of them rather be out on the street. Not all, but many.

That's something that that needs to be addressed. And we just don't want to, you know, be labeled as a department that's insensitive to that population of our citizens. If that makes sense.

Yes, that does make sense. I'll just end off by saying I I look forward to being able to work together particularly off of Forest Drive and Bywater Road, the wooded area that I actually live near and many of the community, Greenbrier, Oxford Landing, Bywater, if you go further down that community, as you're entering near the Safeway, that section as you all are aware of the lady that's in the wheelchair, that's something that I'm we gotta do something about that area. As well as more than Parkway, there is an area behind some of our industrial buildings. There's a huge encampment back there. One of the of the when I went on a tour there, it was just amazing to see.

It's like a little village over there back there, maybe not now. And then over there in between the Town Court apartment complex, the lighthouse liquor is not promoting liquor or anything. You do have a space right there in the in the pathway where there's a collection of people. I actually did a little video over there once and people rolling up on me asking me for money, you know, they drinking beer over there, cook out in the corner. So that's not really legal because that's a forested area. So that's something that I think the focus for me and all of us I'm sure will be on. So let's work together to do that.

Okay. I went down to Rowell Boulevard right down the street from Lawyers Mall right by the state archives and there was a whole shanty community back there shocking as a matter of fact. It's a big problem in America.

Thank you very much and thank you. We can continue this conversation probably all night identifying them all.

I understand, ma'am. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. I do appreciate your time. And if there are further questions, please direct them to the appropriate police department staff. The one thing that I would ask when I first came on the council, I had an opportunity to spend a day at the police station. I was hoping to make it to the fire station and I never did, but I'm gonna plan that for this year.

That at that time it was set up through Sergeant Nacion, I believe. And I got to meet all of the different parts of police. And also, I would love it if our committee could singly, because we can't go together, set something up like that. So we'll I'll do some outreach to see who is the appropriate person to talk with.

Captain

Captain Miegas. Thank the building. So Alright. Because I think it's important to see kind of the inner workings of each of the public safety departments so that we can better understand, you know, everything that's going on and how we can best

I would only ask Madam Chair if you start with my office, you'll surprised be at all the information that comes in. So I don't want you to think the chief just sits back every day and just looks like a pretty boy. I want you to see that I work too. So we have to, if you don't mind, start at my office then you can go anywhere you want.

Alright, I appreciate that. Yeah. At this time, I will accept a motion to adjourn.

I will move to adjourn.

A second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Yes. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Meeting adjourned.