Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Good evening. The standing committee for the public safety committee is called to order at 06:42PM. Today is April 2025. And we will start with call to order and the roll call. Alderwoman Karma O'Neill.

Present.

Alderman Gay has been detained slightly. At this time, we will have a motion to approve the agenda.

Motion to approve agenda moving.

Yes. With an amendment.

C three three twenty five to the end of our

Alright. Second. All in favor? With that with an amendment? Oh.

Oh. Yes.

All in favor. I. Next order of business is business and miscellaneous approval of the minutes.

We just moved.

We just moved that, and we will, move that down. We're on to general discussion. ID 3425, Annapolis Police Department update. And we have a plethora of, command staff here today, and we're certainly glad to see you. One, thing I want to mention before we get started, I wanna make a slight clarification, and I think there's been a slight confusion maybe in the public.

What we are doing every month is highlighting every ward, and we try to make it interesting and we try to change up. A couple of years ago, we did, Spotlight and Did You Know. So it's not necessarily an opportunity, to give the whole entire picture of what's going on in public safety. It's to give some snippets and some information, but I I'm trying to see, where we can change up a bit. And this is one of the things I, as the chair, decided to do this time is to focus on award a month.

And I kind of, look at it as akin to everybody has their own way of learning. You're either a visual learner, which means you do it by sight, or you're an auditory learner, which means you do it with with your hearing. And some people are kinesthetic learners, and they do it with their hands. So just trying to give different, opportunities to share information, so, we're trying this this year. But it's it's it hopefully will generate conversation and other questions, but it is not here to answer every question. So just wanna kinda put it out there to the public, but I'm so glad that people are watching, obviously, to make comments and critiques. So we certainly do appreciate that. So moving right along, Napa's police department and the introductions, please, chief. Thank you so much for being here.

No. Okay. There you go. Yes. Thank you for this opportunity. I'll start off, with introducing, two members of the command staff. We're very excited to have them and and if they wanna chime in and say a little bit about themselves, then feel free. But I'll start off to my right since he came first and that's Scott Thacker. He is now the chief of patrol. We're very blessed to have him.

He comes with a whole wealth of experience. He's a graduate of Towson University and went on to earn his master's degree from Johns Hopkins University. He has a lot of patrol experience. He's also in Baltimore. He was in the commander of the SWAT team.

QRT SWAT. I don't know the they use it interchangeably. But quick response, s q r t or SWAT team, same as Al Asset. Well, he was in in charge of of that for many years. He's a thirty two year veteran that's worked all over the department and retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Baltimore Police Department on January the January.

Also, have Lakisha Blue, and I had the opportunity to serve with her dad and her mom, years ago. She's a legacy in the Baltimore Police Department. She's gonna assume some of the duties that Rhonda McCoy had, primarily professional standards and the Police Accountability Act of 2021. She's gonna assume all of those duties working with the the Police Accountability Board and the Administrative Charging Committee when cases go before either body or issues go before either body. She'll take the lead and she'll also investigate all of our internal affairs.

She'll oversee that process, I should say. And she's a retired captain in internal affairs in the Baltimore police with many years. Twenty eight years, twenty seven years, I was close. Tory would have been twenty eight years this June. And she's been to various schools and and and so we're very happy to have her here. I know that they're gonna do a great job. And of course, to my immediate right is my right hand man, and that's my deputy chief Stan Branford that everybody knows, Major Branford. To captain Thacker's right, immediate right. Of course, knows her. She's the senior person up here.

That's Amy Migas. To my left, immediate left is my operations commander and that's Lamar Howard. And of course, you just got introduced to Lakisha. Did I miss anybody? Okay. Think I have everybody. Yeah. So if I can get right into it, is that okay?

Absolutely. Thank you so much, chief.

Yes, ma'am. There's a number of things that has happened and I'm gonna ask my I'm really gonna ask my people to be participatory because I'll try to get through a lot quick. But one of the things that I'm happy to report, something that's been of concern to many people in Annapolis. We've been reinstated with the with the commission on the accreditation of law enforcement agencies, commonly known or referred to as CALEA. We were reinstated on March 20 with no conditions.

That means everything has been satisfied. So, we expect to get our credentials probably mailed to us real soon. I can't make it down there to receive them this year but we'll They'll send them to us. So, I'll be happy to come down and display our certificate. I want to give a thanks to Hillel Hurley, captain Hillel Hurley for overseeing the process.

I also want to thank Kayla Ziegler who we hired as a community advocate. She worked diligently along with Melanie Williamson, officer first class Melanie Williamson. And last but certainly not least, sergeant Tanya Hernandez. Now, Melanie Williamson and Oh, let me thank one other person. We presented a certificate of appreciation to Mary Kate on Friday and I'd like to thank director Kevin Simmons for allowing her to help us with the CLIA process, Especially, she was invaluable when it came to talking about the functions of OEM and how it relates to law enforcement and the emergency operations center and how when we have natural disasters or even a man made disaster, she was very helpful in proving that we are prepared to address any type of catastrophic event.

So, thank you as well, Director Simmons for allowing Mary Kate to be a part of that. And we presented her with a certificate of appreciation. Also, we gave Hillel Hurley, acting captain Hillel Hurley, Melanie Williamson, and and and Kayla Ziegler, the distinguished service award, a commendation from the department. I gave it to them for their work and getting us back. And now our policies are reading better than ever.

I've been working with them personally on the language of our policies after Carrie reads them for legal sufficiency. So I should thank Carrie too. She's been a big part of the CLIA process. So we have to find a way. Still people I have to thank. So thank you, Carrie, for making sure that our policies are legally sufficient. And that's what it takes for all of us to get into compliance. We're doing it correctly now. The old way we did it, one person tried to do everything. Now we send it through a number of people and we have actually a CALEA unit now.

So I I don't think we'll revisit that problem anymore. So, that's the first thing that I've been happy and really excited to get down here to report that we are back into compliance. The second thing is very unfortunate but I'm I'm glad to report that we made an arrest on mister Roscoe Jerome Jones, who was responsible for the homicide and shooting on Clay Street. He was apprehended this morning at around 07:00 by the US Marshal. They were the lead along with the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police.

He was arrested in front of apartment complex without incident. As we know, he's a very dangerous individual and implicated in not only this homicide here, but in several other incidents in other jurisdictions nearby our neighbors in PG County and Washington DC. So, I'm happy to inform the committee and Neapolitan's that it's one less dangerous person that has been taken off the street. I also want to thank the men and women of the Annapolis Police Department, both detectives and uniformed officers. I told the press today that I would rate my detectives and my commander against anybody anywhere.

That's how diligently they work, not only on this case, but all cases. And our thoughts and prayers still goes out to the Sims family and the young man who was shot. I don't wanna mention his name because he's a he's a juvenile, but we're still praying for his healing and recovery. So those are the two highlights that I'm happy to report today. I'll get Captain Howard to give an overview of the crime stats and then anything that he could say to update you on some of these crimes, especially these discharges without compromising the case, I'll have him do so.

But one last thing, I did an interview right before I came down here and I think it was mister Keith Daniels from Fox forty five said, well, what are you going to do now that he's in custody? I said, we're to look at the ones that are not solved and start working on those immediately and hopefully come back with the same result as we did today with the suspect, you know, mister Jones. So having said that, if you'll go over the crime.

Chief, before you go any further, I I'd like to say something as well. You have a stellar command staff here as well as as rank and file. But you can have the best group of people around you, but if you don't have great leadership, it really is for naught. And I wanna thank you for being a wonderful leader, for this group of people. When we think about public safety, it's a huge part of our daily lives.

And as you always say, people won't live here, come here, work here unless they feel safe. And we wanna thank you as well for pulling this this all together and for, making us feel a lot safer. And each and every day, we pray for your safety and everyone's safety out there. Whenever I see an officer, no matter where it is, I say, be safe. And so I think that's extremely important.

And, also, the partnerships, the US Marshals, just one example of how we utilize we can't do it alone. We can't do it all by ourselves. We have to depend on those others out there that are doing the same work that we're doing and have the confidence in their abilities as well and their staff members as well. So thank you for pulling it all together and making sure that Annapolis is a safe place to be, and we will continue to try to move forward to make it an even safer place. But we congratulate you as well for the hard and excellent work that you've done to to keep it all moving and going. It's not an easy job.

Yes, ma'am.

It's not an easy profession, and you've been doing it a long time as well as those in your command staff as well as rank and file. But thank you so very much. Sometimes, thank yous go unnoticed, but I wanted to take this opportunity today to say that directly to you.

Thank you, ma'am. You're quite welcome. And I'll just take the opportunity to do the same thing. I'd like to thank you for your unwavering support of the Annapolis PD. Nobody in this town could ever question your passion for public safety. I know your background from your days in Baltimore as a state's attorney and you know we've had a few of our members that remember you when you were at the state's attorney's office in Baltimore. So thank you for your passion. I couldn't we couldn't ask for a better public safety chair and advocate for the Annapolis Police Department. So thank you as well, ma'am.

Thank you. Good

evening. Good evening. So we look at this slide for Ward 6. This is just a in a a a general overview, and a general snapshot of the crime that occurred in 2024, in Ward 6. So, for crimes count by Ward, Ward 6, was third, in the city, for crimes.

Crimes against people, Ward 6 was first, but there's a common denominator, to the crimes against persons report. And once we go to the next slide, I'll I'll elaborate on that. And then crimes against property, Ward 6 was ranked six. So we'll move on to the next slide. So we see here, Alderman Gay, your war was tied for last, with Wards 245, And 8 with zero homicides for 2024.

Rapes, you would first, but the theme, to the rapes in some of the other, part one crimes, the majority of those incidents were domestic. So they happened inside partner on partner violence. When you look at the aggravated assault, you had forty five. Twenty seven of those aggravated assaults were domestic. Again, partner on partner violence.

The robberies, you were tied for first with robberies in Ward 8, so you had a a third of the robberies were also domestic. For burglaries, you were first out of the eight wards. Again, a common theme. Five of those burglaries were domestic related. Eight residential no force and eight residential force.

So what we found, specifically with the burglaries, especially in the Harbor House community, we had individuals that were occupying vacant apartments. So you gotta classify it as a burglary because they forced their their way into the apartment to live. So a large number of your burglaries, again, were domestic related and, individuals, forcing entry into vacant apartments. But thefts, you were seven out of the eight wards. Again, when it comes to the thefts, your ward no different than the other, wards, porch pirates, people leaving, merchandise and valuables inside of their cars and the like.

When it comes to the motor vehicle theft, you were tied for six. Reward four, three suspects known to the victim, two unlocked recovered, five locked recovered, one locked not recovered, one unlocked not recovered. So, basically, same thing as the other wards when it comes to the thefts and the, motor vehicle thefts. People, not securing their cars or leaving a spare key inside of the car, and then when they come outside, the car is gone. So, that's basically that in a nutshell as it relates to Ward 6, and we'll go to our last slide.

So in all of 2024, you had one contact shooting, at Madison And President Street. But shots fired one, two, three, four, five, six. This year, prior to, our last couple of incidents, you had one contact shooting in 2025 Tyler Avenue, and we believe that to be self inflicted with the juvenile. And then you had the shots fired at Park And Tyler Avenue, which, the last incident, we recovered the vehicle that was involved in that incident, and we should be charging that incident relatively soon. Last night so we're still working on last night.

We're finding that, the incidents last night are connected to some incidents that we had earlier this earlier this year. It's not stemming from neighborhood violence between communities here in Annapolis per se. These incidents are stemmed, from an incident that occurred in Anne Arundel County. Social media beef, that's took a turn for the worse. So we're we're quickly, putting the pieces together.

We'll be doing some things to get us closer to where we need to be to identify the persons, that are responsible for, the number of incidents. So far, we're looking at potentially seven incidents that will be connected to this crew that we're currently, looking at as persons of interest involved in the recent discharges here in the city of Annapolis.

Olmegay, you have any additional questions or comments?

No. I think this is relatively good, obviously, considering 2019, 2020, 2020. I think one of those city's highest rate size. That might have been 17 back, but maybe 19 So, you know, the only thing I'm always worried about is we do have excessive shots fired at random, and I don't know how that's tracked because we don't use shots fired tech like that, do we?

No. No. No. No. We tried it.

But So, yeah, that's just generally my only concern is we do have a lot of, just random shootings, and then, you know, obviously, people get paranoid at that. Cars are hit. Houses are hit. But I I think just in in twenty four and twenty five responses from APD in my opinion and my award have been fantastic. Yes,

sir. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Question. And correct me if I'm wrong. Seems like the past couple, maybe two or three years, seems like that we've had a spike the first three months of the of the year. Am I correct or not?

Yeah. Yeah. After the holidays, you know your

answer.

And and generally speaking, madam chair, you know, once the weather turns, it's warmer, you got more people standing outside. Mhmm. What we're experiencing here in Annapolis is is is is no different than any other jurisdiction in the state.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, a lot of individuals, they take that time to come down to Annapolis and to other jurisdictions, to, exercise their demons, so to speak, when you have more people out. But, again, with the chief stance, we're very serious about removing folks who mean this community harm. And we're gonna use every strategy, every resource that we have utilizing our federal partners to get people somewhere to go for a very long time. Once we're able to figure out exactly what's what, and we we I'll I'll just say it now. You know, those folks that are involved, with this gun play, just pack a toothbrush, because we're coming.

We're coming.

Question. What's, the police department's policy or procedure, if there is one, I guess there is, with officers getting out of their cars, on a frequent basis, infrequent basis, a certain percentage of the time? Question that was posed to me the other day.

Yeah. We were actually working on that and I shared with my command staff literally late last week. I think it was Thursday or Friday. I said that we as a part of our crime plan, I want to show foot patrol. We can mandate officers again. It's part of the duties. It's part of police science. And I'm careful how I choose my words. This is research that was done fifty something years ago, the Kansas City project. And they basically said that police presence, and a lot of people try to misquote that study, police presence, when they saturate an area doesn't necessarily equate to lower crime.

But I'm of the mindset that when police get out on foot and walk the neighborhoods, it has so many benefits. But it gives the impression to citizens that they're not occupying the territory. See, we gotta be very careful post George Floyd because the public's demanding and Annapolis is no different. They want crime to be suppressed. They wanna do it in a very constitutional way.

So what we try to do and and just to backtrack and I'll tie it into these remarks. We do see an uptick the last three years since I've been here post holiday, post Christmas violence. You can always depend on mid January to have these kind of discharges and then it stops and then it picks back up again in the spring when the weather gets consistently warm. Why that phenomenon occurs? I really don't have an answer, but you're right. We've had a few shootings. But now what we have to do is we have to find a way strategically. I said it to our new chief of patrol that we have to get the officers more involved in foot patrols for a small portion of their their tour duty. You know, give me fifteen, twenty minutes a day to actually walk. It's a good exercise, number one.

Number two, it gives the appearance that we do care enough to be seen sitting and and and not to to get into the car. So, to answer your question, it's a part of our deployment. We can definitely hold officers accountable to walk foot, You know, there's nothing in local 400 that I'm aware of that says that they can't walk foot. They can walk foot and they should walk foot and and and be visible for a period of time. It's a trend now.

Everybody across the country is demanding. Most chiefs will tell you all across this country that people want officers to get out of the cars now and get back to the old maintenance. It's called the maintenance order model whereby you show the community that you care and you put officers out there so that the community can approach them and and and get to know them. And that helps when we need information. It helps to establish relationships. We can mentor young kid. It's good for recruitment. I can go on and on and on, the benefits, and so we're working on that now.

Great. Because I'm hearing out there that people do want you out and about and talking to him them and and really engaging a little bit more. So that's what I'm hearing.

Yes, ma'am. And we just had this conversation. I'm it bothers me and I have nothing to say in response to it other than that we should be doing that. And I think my officers are doing it. I I really do. So if my officers are listening to this broadcast, this is not an indictment against them. I'm not accusing them of not doing it. But we have to capture that a little better. That's what I said to my command staff that if we're walking foot, we have to capture it. And we have to show the community that we're doing it.

And do it strategically. I like foot, one of my favorite spots that I think we should be walking foot is up at Bywater Mutual Homes. I think that because it's one of those communities where it's basically one way in and one way out, you get the court that sits in the back. You have the Boys and Girls Club there. And so it's set up for that model to be very prosperous. I like it on Clay Street, you know. A lot go went on on Clay Street because we would ride through there. And you miss things when you ride through, you know. Officers, me and my deputy chief laugh all the time because we remember the days and you in Baltimore, madam chair, the days when officers would routinely say in court, they watched a hand to hand by. That's hard to capture.

You have almost have to have camera, a Canon like lens to capture that, you know. What the officers are saying is that they know the players involved. They know who deals drugs and they know the mannerisms that go along with it. But to actually say they saw somebody, you know, a gelatin or or a glassine bag, that's hard to capture. I don't care how good you are. What they do and they and and they they they have this routine write up. Well, I wanna get away from all that nonsense. How you know who's the drug dealers and who's likely to carry drugs is through the power of observation. Knowing what the characteristics of a person who carries a handgun or who's dealing fentanyl to our children, but you gotta get out the car to do it. And and and and so we're gonna really make that.

I'm a hammer that point home as the chief of police that I really expect more foot patrol. I think the officers are doing it and I think most men and women don't mind doing it. They just want a reason and we need to give them some background. And I'm I'm confident that I'm I'm putting them on the spot that Captain, Baca can can make that point.

And I think that hearing it from you means a lot, whether it's within your ranks or even out in the in the community. If they know that the chief says so, then then it's so.

It's a value. Yes, ma'am. And I think they're doing I think they're doing it more than we're capturing. And so we'll just regroup and make sure that we capture it. And I want the officers to know that I appreciate the good job that they do. I know I walk foot. I'm a former foot officer. I walked foot for almost ten years and I loved it. I hated it at first and then I asked to go back because you couldn't beat the exercise. Some of the best shape that I've been in in my life and I got to know a lot of people and it didn't hurt me in my career at all. And so, think that if we do it the correct way and do it strategically, we're gonna have some officers who wanna request to walk foot as an assignment and we can revisit that too.

And I think once now that the weather's getting warmer, people wanna sit outside and they wanna feel safe sitting outside and they're gonna see the officers more now than they were when it's bad weather or cold weather. So now they they feel comfortable sitting out and having the officer drive by and get out and just say, how you doing or wave or whatever.

I think

it's a perfect time right now to reemphasize that.

Yes, ma'am. And I mean, I was told Stan, most of the year they get to do it and it's not harsh. I mean, the the most of the year is not winter. You know what I mean? We got that small window when we have a winter and our winters haven't been as severe as I've seen them in my lifetime. But after the couple of weeks, by the end of this month, we'll have weather consistently above 50 degrees, probably in the sixties. And that's not bad weather for the winter. And that'll go all the to October, almost to November, all the way to baseball season. And and so they'll have a most of the year to be able to get out there comfortably and do it.

Alright. Thank you. Wartsie? You have a question?

No. I just Oh, yeah. So there's a question. Do Are you all geo tracked? How do you know if an officer is walking if you if you don't see them?

Well, we do it a couple of ways. I think the primary way we do it is that we we look at body worn camera footage. Some of it's randomized and we captured officers on foot that away and and, you know, we ask our supervisor to document it. Did I miss anything?

They call our radio when they go out

on foot.

Oh, they call our radio too. Yeah. They have to call our radio when they're going on foot. That's just a safety measure too. So we all know what they're doing in case they do encounter a threat while they're out on foot. The units will know that they're out on foot in what area they're in. Thank you. Mhmm.

And they have the bikes. I see the I I generally see the same guys on the bike. I I think you do you have to sign up to do the bike? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I see the same crew. And

We wanna put the segues out. They have some nice segues that we

put out.

I would not put those out. Keep those downtown.

Don't don't bring those towards six. What

we what we did not have in your slides is we prioritize the number of calls that officers respond to and one of the things that at the top of the list is this self initiated foot patrol. Whenever they go on foot patrol, they always call dispatch and let dispatch know that they're on foot patrol. That's

for a

couple of reasons. The main reason is so someone know where they are. It's a safety reason for one and to get out and connect with the community. But if we did a overall for the city, you will see those calls for service. We just don't have it for Ward 6 or broken down, at this time, but they do self initiate that. And what what the chief spoke to last week was doing a better job capturing that and he's gonna require that not only do they call out, but also activate their body worn camera.

And I want the officers to know the ones who are listening. We trust you and we know that you're doing it. We just want to be able to tell the story and justify it to our citizens. We are accountable to show that we're walking foot, you know. And I think people are more secure when you can demonstrate that you're doing this. One thing to tell them or mandate is another thing to demonstrate. So thank you. When we had our meeting about foot last week, I said, let's use the body worn cameras to capture that.

And, actually, I'm sorry. One other thing that I incorrectly stated as well is and I think we also are tracking it on the city's page. The new maps by Bay Ridge Gardens is no longer in Ward 6, and so those statistics, yeah, should not be tracked in Ward 6. They're not listed here. I just mentioned it at the beginning. The shooting that happened last night is actually now in Ward 7. And so, I just I just wanted to clarify that. My apologies.

Okay.

K. Thank you. Alderman O'Neill.

I was just going to say before you started talking about it that thank you, after our listening session two weeks ago when the public was sort of demanding that, I've been on Clay Street, and in that area four or five times since then, and every single time I've seen foot traffic, Calling Captain McGuess earlier. I appreciate it, and the residents are noticing. I had two residents when I was there last night come up to me and say, we did see the officers out walking around, and we appreciate that, and they want that.

Good.

They wanna know you. You they want you to know them, the residents, and we just need to keep it up. So thank you. I appreciate it.

Yes, ma'am. And we're gonna make that a part. There's some things once we're ready we're ready to promote the crime plan, said I wanna see it on my desk because I want to add some community things to it. And, really, every day is a crime plan and we really should have eight of them to be honest with you because not all wards experience the same problems. A crime plan should capture and be tailored to the issues and that requires us to pay close attention to the data.

You know, when I was in Baltimore, the commissioner would say we have a crime plan and they did. But a lot of times my frustration was we had one crime plan and with 500,000 people and all areas didn't experience the same type of issues and so you have to tailor it. We're gonna have one plan to deal with the continued proliferation of handguns, the juveniles who use them, and trigger pullers, and then the the adults. And but we're also gonna I'm doing the task my command is to understand what are the problems. And what we can't do, and I I say this all the time, what we can't do is tell the community what they want.

The community has to tell us. Quality is what the customer says it is, not what we say it is. Some people, I like pens, expensive pens. Some people say, I don't even want a pen to write with. I don't I I can buy a 10¢ pen as long as it's I can sign the back of my paycheck. I don't need a bougie pen that that that people wanna talk about. Right? It's like a car. Some people say, four wheels and the transmission. I'll get to point a to point b. I don't have to have a Cadillac or Mercedes. So quality is what the customer says it is. When people in the community, if they don't feel safe, they don't feel safe. And we shouldn't tell them that they feel safe if they don't. What can we do to help you feel safe?

And then have a dialogue. So we gotta get back to that. And I think that as phenomenal of the job that we're doing, I think it would only enhance it, you know, maybe tenfold if we actually did that more often than ask the community what do they want.

And and the crime plan is gonna be ever evolving.

That's correct.

It's it's not stagnant. It's not stationary. It's gonna be different depending on what's what's hot and what's not, I

guess. That's correct.

It is is the best way of putting it. And so it it will be an opportunity for people to see and to weigh in and and determine what their what they see, like you say, what they see is safe. And so I don't know when the crime plan will be unveiled.

It's coming soon. And I should say on this, I told my staff or I told Stan, I said, deputy, if the crime plan is for the summer, we're not gonna tell people. I'm not gonna go on TV and say, wait till July. July's coming while it's the bombardment of Fort McHenry rockets everywhere on Clay Street. And then we gotta wait because the plan is the summer plan and it's still March. No. We're gonna adjust the plan. If we have to implement that plan early, we implement it early. If it addresses the needs now, then the summer plan becomes the the spring plan. And and and the whole name of the game is to stabilize any threats.

And so we're constantly doing the SWOT analysis and, you know, the the strengths, the weaknesses in our plan, the opportunities, and threats. And so we're constantly reevaluating. That's how we're gonna start doing them. So when we say a crime plan is coming, that may be subject to change at the last minute because if we get some trigger pullers in here who are engaging in retaliatory violence that we didn't anticipate it when the draft of the plan was made, then my command staff has to go back and say, what are we gonna do to mitigate or eradicate this violence that we're seeing? So I promise you, madam chair, all my honor, it's coming out soon.

I'd like to see and we talked about this earlier, months ago, kind of a more aggressive PR campaign when it comes to the soft stuff, such and even I'm not that that category is not for domestic violence. That is not one of the soft things. But thefts from autos, shopliftings, and that sort. Just a continuous barrage of messages going out to people reminding them to lock their car doors, take your valuables out. I mean, we can do it need to do it over and over and over and over again because we all tend to do something when it's hot, and then when it kinda, you know, stops, then we stop doing it.

But there needs to be I believe now I'm not I've never won a badge and error covered carried a gun. But in order to kinda keep reminding people, especially when we start seeing spikes, that we need to get the word out more aggressively on those soft type type of crimes that that can be, for lack of a better, irritating. But, also, as far as the domestic violence, we don't have to get into that discussion today. I don't know what kind of mitigation we can do for that. I don't know what we can come up with a plan for that because Alderman Gay's ward seems to be, the biggest ward, that comes to those kinds of violence.

And and as we all know, oftentimes, that can lead to deadly results. And we don't want that to happen. And so we want to stop that before it even, gets started or continues.

Yes, ma'am. And because that was actually let me sorry to cut you off. That was actually supposed to happen a year and

a half

ago, and that's one of the things. Obviously, Rhonda, had issues and, you know, god oh, God is protecting and, you know, covering her family after what they went through. But we the domestic violence thing really we need to get a cap on. Mhmm. Because, obviously, it is something that happens every single day.

It's behind the doors. And then we were supposed to host this event, actually, this past, December. I think it was December 10. But then the, public media team came to us and they said, you probably shouldn't host a in person domestic violence event because victims are not gonna wanna come to this event and, you know, talk about traumas or anything like that. So we stopped. We still have the money sitting there. We need to figure out what to do with it or get some sort of plan, even a pamphlet, something. You're getting, you know, involved in domestic violence. Say something. And one of the things that's even more concerning is that it's starting younger now.

You have, like, 17 year olds beating up their girlfriend. It's insane. And so that does need to happen. And and to your original point, which was my my second part, is communications. They've gotten so much better.

My thing I think the one thing that I I'm slightly still frustrated with on the communications side and particularly with my ward. Deputy, Branford does a very, very good job of communicating with us. We know things twenty four seven, all hours in the night, right away. Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm not, to respond to it. And I want that does the communications team, do they work twenty four seven?

So if there's a incident that happens overnight, who would be or is there a process in place based off of the, team in that that's, you know, working at night to say, alright. So and so is out. You know, who else is gonna do the alert or the Facebook post or whatever just to say, hey. A shooting just happened. Be alert. You know, all of those things. Because I I honestly think that is the biggest complaint I get from the public is is just that they don't feel informed. Other than that, you know, I think it's good. You all like, even the shooting that just took place in the Alder Woman's War that was two weeks ago, you already arrested the person. Same similar things happened in my war.

So I think the police work is good. It's not communicated like you said.

Yeah. Well, we're gonna start a couple of things. The new PIO, he's we're gonna do a podcast and I'm gonna be involved in that and we're gonna talk about things. We're gonna solicit topics from the community and then whatever those topics are as long as they're law enforcement related we'll address them. We'll do our very best.

And I'm gonna come to everybody. I may come to, know, Kerry Berger to say, what does this case law means, you know. The seminal ones I know, everybody knows Terry versus Ohio or or or, you know, some of the more seminal cases, Miranda versus Arizona, all that stuff. But then, we have a lot of case law I noticed that's very complex to deal with cyber stuff and all kinds of complicated stuff. And what you said, Alderman Gay, is true.

We're getting offenders younger and younger. We even have juveniles who are involved in intimate partner violence. And that's a whole set of regulations that if that we have to be guided by with the judiciary as it relates to how we can handle juvenile offenders or delinquent acts that would ordinarily be a crime if they were adults. And it's a whole different dynamic. Law enforcement has changed so much in the last five years that what we say to the public, I'm careful because I always tell my command staff, I don't want to come off like we're giving excuses.

But we do have to do things different. I know my deputy chief came to me a couple years ago and said, you know what we need to do chief, we need to be more deliberate in our enforcement instead of jumping out of cars five at a time like was done in the old days and it was done in Annapolis like that. And and and and occupy the community. Let's do an intelligence based deployment. Let's follow the numbers.

Let's follow the intelligence and the information and then get warrants and do it that way. And then that way when we have to jump out the car, we're doing it not because we're profiling anybody or we're stereotyping anybody. We're doing it with a warrant in our hand from a judicial officer saying that we ought to take this person in. And so we that that helps us and you just have to find a way to we're still working and evolving

Can I

with that approach?

Who's in charge of the tech department for AB? Is it you have an internal technological team?

Yeah. Can't pronounce his name. Habib. Habib. Yeah. Habib. What's I can't pronounce his last name. Mhmm.

In the police plans, how far do they go with experimental technology as it relates to crime prevention? I know one of the things the alderman has been a huge advocate for is the drones, And that's like I see. Prehistoric technology at this point because drones came out so far ago. Now there's all this other stuff. I'd like to see the drone thing come to fruition.

I know there was some law stuff going on there. I see them using them often even in the city now. Artificial intelligence, you just mentioned. I know, six years ago, the council was very, opposed to the program, from University of Maryland.

Your predictive predictive policing.

That was predictive policing with a racial bias. And I'm wondering if now and that was I'm not saying that that they openly admitted that on the on the panel when they were here. And so I'm, wondering now where the technology stands that would help us. Again, because like you were saying in the in the messages and stuff this morning, it's like, a lot of the times it's like, you know, you know, how are we supposed to like,

how did how are

you gonna know that 7AM two weeks ago, somebody was just gonna be pissed off and start firing at at a children's bus stop? You know? So I'm wondering if there is a way that we can get ahead of stuff like that utilizing that utilizing technology, in the department because, obviously, we'll never have the manpower, but there are other ways to circumvent that. And so I I don't know. I'm just thinking of

Well, I'm not gonna

this this is the

crime plan that you got coming and the tech communications plan and all of this stuff. I I just maybe technology could play a role in it.

Well, you know, I'm from the doctor Edwin Sutherland School of Criminology. I've been all my adult life. I've been a fan of the writings of doctor Edwin Sullivan. And he says two things that you can't Police can never mitigate crime if the social issues that perpetuate crime doesn't change. And so a lot of times, even with predictive policing, we look at underserved communities and all the ingredients, if you will, for lack of a better term, that would cause social unrest are there.

Hopeless poverty, drug addiction, broken families. And, of course, we know the history of America. Many people of color have been left out of the mainstream and all that goes along with that. You can't treat people the way many African Americans have historically been treated in cities and schools are not relevant. Education's not relevant.

Hopeless poverty. Abject poverty. All those sociological issues that are all crammed into one area. Why would you have peace? And so, predictive policing is gonna predict where there's poverty, there's gonna be anti social behavior because poverty is the force multiplier for a lot of other undesirable behaviors.

And I know I'm getting academic now and I'm not this is not a criticism of anybody other than the fact that, as I always say, we all in this. And elected officials along with law enforcement, you know, has to work together and come up with ways to intervene. We do the very best we can with the reentry program and trying to get these people jobs, payable jobs, you know, because, you know, doctor Sutherland taught me that. I never met him of course. But he taught me that when I was in graduate school that why would you?

He makes the very basic approach when you have neighborhoods. Whether you're talking about Baltimore, we're talking about pockets here in Annapolis or anywhere else. We have everything going against the neighborhood, the community, everything. Broken families, children don't know their parents, their parents are young and still children raising children and all those things. People are not gonna be peaceful because the legislature says that those those behaviors are against the law.

When people are hopeless, they're gonna do hopeless things. And then that makes our job tougher because when we are charged with the responsibility for mitigating that. And when you mitigate something you just You don't eradicate it. You just lessen the probability that's gonna happen. That's at the core of community policing is to problem solve.

And we gotta find a way to engage in meaningful dialogue and meaningful collaboration to approach those. And like I always say jokingly, yeah, I would like to send everybody to Yale and graduate on Phi Beta Kappa. But we know that's that's not gonna happen. But we gotta give people more hope than they have and and teach them that picking up a gun doesn't solve anything. All it does is make it worse. So we're gonna when we talk about the campaign, that's the community part I'm talking about. I wanna go back out to the community. The community love my speaking engagements. If I can't make it out, then we have the podcast that we're gonna do. And I'll be vocal and I'll invite my command staff to take part in those podcasts too.

It's our way of communicating to the citizens to give them some some hope and work with them in any kind of way we we want. And it seems like Reverend Wainwright is very, very anxious to roll his sleeve up at First Baptist and to work with us to come up with some. And this this is my prayer that that will spread in other houses of worship. Because it goes back to my original statement and Sutherland taught me that where there's a lack of faith, family, and education, you're gonna have your your punitive social agencies like police, courts, and corrections. We gotta find a way to put family, faith, and education at the forefront of these communities.

And so when we come in, it'll be that's the mitigation part. That'll be more rare than common for us to have to come in and manage those things.

Thank you, chief. One thing I wanna say about the listening session, it was one of those sessions where it wasn't it was all the police fault. It was more what I what an overarching theme I heard was what can we as a community do? What can we as nonprofits do? What can we as family members do to make the situations better?

And that's what I found refreshing at at at the listening session. So thank you for that. The other thing about domestic violence cases, I handle lower level physical child abuse, but companion domestic violence cases in Baltimore. And you you never know at any point what you're walking into, and that's my all that's always my fear when it comes to that, whether it's the persons who are involved on the side of of being injured as well as the officers involved in responding to those cases. Those are one of the worst types of cases to respond to to to, get that.

And and I I I can kind of feel now that I think captain Thacker wants to say something. I'm kind of getting these vibes. Captain Thacker, would you like to speak? I'll get miss Bluth next time.

Good evening. Thank you. Yeah. I could probably talk a lot. I've heard a lot of the questions that you've had.

When it comes to domestic violence, there there are domestic violence plans that you can generate pamphlets. I I would generate as my time as a district commander in the city, a monthly newsletter. And in the back of that monthly newsletter for two straight years, I incorporated a domestic violence plan. And the intent was that if I had a an address, a known address where we were going to frequently, I would saturate that immediate block in the surrounding area with my newsletter with the intent that neighbors who also knew what was going on would be armed with information that they could potentially provide to that that victim. So that was a that was a an end around that I was trying to provide information to the community to be able to help that individual maybe escape that that situation that they were in.

This is a complicated subset problem. I think Lamar hit that we when we look at crime numbers in general, we kinda carve domestics out. It is a it is a violent crime. There's real victimhood there, and we need to do everything we can to try to empower those individuals to know that there's others out there that want to help them. When you talk about technology and embracing technology, the your your head would almost spin as fast as technology has improved.

The AI platforms that are out there right now that would help law enforcement, I mean, they they are in their infancy stage. There are police reporting systems that are out there that are integrating AI into them, which would help expedite officers field work in time, so that that would free them up to get back in service to be able to patrol the community and potentially walk foot. So it's a it's a time saver in a way. What we're wrestling with in modern day law enforcement is like the human intent of the investigator or the police officer themselves to be able to generate that information and put that into a legal document, a police report. So there's this there are these ethics that kinda get inserted into the equation there about how far do we go with AI.

But as far as drones in Baltimore, I never thought that we would see a drone program in Baltimore coming out of the and I'll just use the abbreviated term they use, spy plane fiasco. And how that was implemented, I I was a big believer in drones. They serve a purpose, their public safety concern. Boston post Boston Marathon bombing, they were putting tethered drones up to make sure the race course was safe. It gives you an elevated platform to be able to observe areas.

It's very efficient, effective. But unmanned or untethered drones, I would never have thought in Baltimore that we would get to that point, but they they are now currently using them. And they have a I mean, all you had to do was turn on ESPN on a Sunday morning and see that there were drone races in warehouses, and you saw that these things were very inexpensive, easily operable, and they provide the ability to observe certain areas. So whether it's a specialized tag team using them for tactical operations or traffic reconstruction, the use of those to do traffic reconstruction investigations versus flying a helicopter burning all that gas. There is efficiency measures that are also in place.

So but the speed to which this technology is unfolding is just so rapid that we need to embrace it and think about the avenues that would help us. Yes. This the Annapolis Police Department probably could see a lot of improvement in in those realms. I know where I came from, we were having these conversations about AI and I mean, is really. And I think we were having the same conversations about utilization of drones a few years ago, but now we're like, hey, if Amazon's gonna be delivering packages to me in my front porch, maybe having drones integrated into public safety isn't such a bad thing after all. Anyways, thank you for your time.

I I was reading your body language. I could tell you wanted to say something.

I I would just ask, I don't know if you all have that in I mean, because when we get the budget from APD, the tech stuff is typically, like, Tyler Technologies, the same, like, five groups. And, I mean, if we could find some experimental programming that speaks to the, you know, drone usage or even AI assistance or, I don't know. I I'd just be interested in running some sort of pilot program to see how that could help, you know, us in this, you know, a city so small, you know, and it seems like with the, very repetitive crimes, we'd we could find something that could help.

Well, me and the good captain, this hasn't even been a year ago. Last October or something like that. This past October we went to Hagerstown and spent Oh, you were there madam chair? Yes. That's right. Madam chair was there. We went to Hagerstown. I thought they had an excellent, well organized drone program. It wasn't that expensive. They were talking about a $150,000 I think total.

They gave opportunities to young people because young people know how to handle those joysticks with ease and it gave kids who are cadets opportunities to operate them, if my memory serves me correct. They employed young people and they ran it through their legal department and arnd out, you know. And they write me a Camp David, you know. And I asked them, I said, well, chief, what happens if you lie near Camp David? He said, they've been very amenable.

And Camp David said, if you don't give us notice, we just have to shoot it down. You know, the marines said they'll shoot it down and you have to buy another one. But but they they coordinate very well with the federal agencies around. They have a heavier federal presence than we do. We have the Naval Academy.

Naval Academy said the same thing that they'll gladly work with us. Just let them know when we're flying so it doesn't interrupt anything that that they're doing at the federal level and I think they can coexist. It's just a matter of us getting together and deciding as a city, city government that they want it. I've already gone on the record to say I think it'd be a good it's cheaper than a helicopter. Big Brother's watching anyway, everywhere.

We need Big Brother to watch from the sky now, get a bird's eye view. As the good captain just stated, there's so many benefits to Axon and Reconstruction, traffic patterns, escape routes, there's just so many things that we can use legitimately. And I think that what I took away, and I think Carrie will appreciate this, We had a provision in the policy or they had a provision, I'm sorry. They had a provision in the policy that when appropriate and and that's when I use the term appropriate, meaning when they have the time, they always were accountable to the community. You remember that madam chair.

Whenever they flew those drones up, they let the public know. And the reason for it, when it was, you know, sometimes they didn't have time to notify the public. You got a bank robbery and they're escaping you let you go back and let them know. But whenever they did something preemptively, they always held, you know, public hearings and let the public know that the drones would be up and wide.

Captain Falcon, I love your idea about the the brochure, the pamphlet, for domestic violence. Is that something we can utilize as well with with theft from auto and theft of auto and shoplifting and that sort of thing? Maybe we can do something. I know Kat McGuess has been extraordinarily busy. We talked about it a while ago, but she's had her hands full full on many, many, many, many fronts. But that's something possibly we we can, distribute prepare and distribute as well. So that'd be great. Thank you. I'm not gonna put miss Blue on the spot today unless she has something she wants to add, but that's her her choice.

No, ma'am. I have nothing that I wanna add, but I will say that I'm I'm I'm excited about the the new position here, in Annapolis. I've worked, in the public security bureau for Baltimore City for fifteen years in various different roles, to include, the ethics division, serious misconduct. And I I recently recently retired as of March 1, and I'm just excited about my new position, new role here in Annapolis.

Great. We're glad you're here. Thank you so much. Alderman O'Neil, do you have any comments, questions? Okay. Anything else from the Glen Leora Police Department?

No ma'am. I think we pretty much captured everything. I would just close by saying at some point, I have to coordinate with the counsel because we still have a report that we need to discuss. That's the University of Maryland. Yeah. Yes. Work study. The workload study. The workload study. So I'm not finished reading it yet in all honesty. I started but, know, sometimes you just get taken away from things as events happen. But I'm gonna make a concerted effort to get finished reading and have a conversation with my command staff and we wanna I I would like to see us have a greater conversation about what the study revealed.

Great. Thank you so much again.

Yes, ma'am. Thank Mhmm.

Mhmm.

Alright. Next we have ID 3525, Annapolis Fire Department. Good evening, gentlemen.

Hello.

Good evening. Good to have you here.

I see he's pulling it up. Hello. I'm Doug Romali, fire chief. To my left is deputy chief Matt Lopez, and we'll go over some updates with the fire department. But

Welcome. Thank you so much.

What I can tell you is for March, before we even start the program, that we had a 35 calls for service.

Is that high for this? I'm sorry? Is that high for this period of time?

No. It's that's about average for March. 764 of those are EMS calls. It's a majority of what we do. 70 over 70% are EMS calls. 200 and some fire calls, the rest are hazmat, rescue, and service calls, and they're very low. But we're here today to talk about Ward 6. So we'll go over some citywide statistics, which I just gave you on last month, and we'll go over Ward 6, any operational challenges we have. We'll give you an update on the new engine. It was, graciously approved in the budget two years ago by the council, and then chief Lopez will have a little update on the strategic plan that we're going through.

I'm a stop you for one second. Excuse me. The three members of our public safety team is still here, and mister Mike Dye, resident in Ward 3 is here. I don't know if he has some questions offline for you all, but he has an opportunity now.

Thank you. Thank

you, mister Dye. Not a problem. Excuse me, chief. I I appreciate your diligence.

All good. Mhmm.

So for twenty twenty four, ward six, there were 925 calls for service. So that about 11% of the city responses by our department, and it's the fifth busiest in all of all the wards. But as you can see, there was 925 last year in the in that ward. Overall statistics, 2,103 responses citywide, 265 of those were, in Ward 6. And I'm sorry.

The slide before that was 2024. This is for so far this year. We've talked about this every, with every war just because the statistics are out there. These are the early statistics. As you can see, 2024 was a very low fire loss value in the city of Annapolis.

I knock on wood every time we see that, but, we did have a good year last year. I can tell you that in this ward, last month, we had a working structure fire in Americana Drive, the Watergate Village Apartments, the Midrise Apartments, that that fire loss will obviously, make this year's a little higher than if we continue to have that trend. That was a fire in the six story building up on a roof in the penthouse. Operationally, on in this ward, we do not have a lot of challenges. The streets are a little wider than some of the downtown streets and the lower end of Eastport Streets.

It's primarily residential with some mixed use of businesses in the area, but for occupation or operational challenges, we really don't have any of getting to the calls. Majority of those are the single family, multifamily dwellings in this ward. Just to update you on the new engine for the Forest Drive station, as the last couple of meetings you saw them start from scratch where there was absolutely nothing. This is what this pumper looks like today. At the end of this month, we will go out and find and do a final inspection to make sure it meets our specifications.

I look to see it probably in service in June. This is just some more updates on it. And if you were like I said, if you remember the last couple of sessions that did not look like a fire engine at that point, this fire engine here costs over $700,000. If we ordered it today, would be a million dollars. Chief Lopez will give you a little update on the strategic plan.

Good evening. So since the last time I came before you and talked about the strategic plan, we have had a number of meetings internally. We've had some focus groups of our members getting their feelings on where we stand with the within the department on a variety of issues. We've also reached out to the PIO of the city to start the process of doing an external survey, see where the citizens and the council feel the fire department in right now where we're doing, and then go forward what we should be doing in the future and what our anticipated needs are. Our plan is to have a draft document to the chief by September which he can then present to the council towards the end

of the year. Thank you.

Certainly. Alden McGuy? This is such a stupid question, but I have to act, with the slide with the, the, via the fire truck on the previous two, two part question. One, I don't think $700,000 for a fire truck is a lot, so I'm actually pleased to hear that it was that inexpensive, considering, you know, the way they how, you know, safe it has to be for you all. My my question, though, do you ever use, like, the, fire.

Or not what is it? Us.gov or whatever? The site where they have, like, all of the old? Like, you know, they have, like, a 2,005 fire truck on there for, like, $250,000. And and I'm so I'm just curious. Have has the city ever been to a point where we've had to rely on purchasing or outsourcing second, hand vehicles as opposed to just building one from scratch?

We try not to buy used fire apparatus. The, the engine that this is replacing, you'll see on that govdeals.com or or is where they would end up going. I would agree with you, but that 2,005 fire engine is 15 years old by standards. By 20 years old, they should be placed out of service. So it's there. But now we because of the budgeting, the planning, and the council assisting us that we've been able to buy new fire apparatus for our primary units. And I I would agree with you. If, you know, a 2019 pumper, we paid 500,000. This year, it's taken us almost three years to get. It's seven hundred and twenty five thousand.

And then we order it today. It's gonna be over $1,000,000. We ordered an elect if we were gonna go electric, it would be over $2,000,000 purchase. Used to be that we could buy an aerial a ladder truck. The one that drives the front and the back for that million dollars, we we can't do that anymore.

Medic units themselves, they're running between 450 and 500,000. So we run those medic units five years frontline, two years reserve, and by that time, we've run the wheels off of them and they're really any good anymore. So it's unfortunate, though, that to keep up with the vehicle replacement plan, that you really can't do it because of the demand on the system now. Ever since prior to COVID or right around COVID, it's just the prices have gone up and the amount of time to actually have these things built, you can't stay on that plan. We basically need to put a medic unit.

We we own seven medic units. Basically, every year, we should be purchasing a medic unit, but now it's taking two years to get that medic unit so that throws this whole plan off. But we, I can tell you that our apparatus, we get the best bang for our buck and the most we can get out of them.

Also, I'm curious, because, I've seen this video actually of, the, the firefighter. This guy it was a TikTok. He was, he went to the fire station and the firefighters had the, you know, front of the, truck tilted down. They were pick like, fixing a pulley system or something. Do our firefighters work as mechanics as well, or do we send them to a, do we send them to Anne Arundel to be fixed?

No. They go to Hudson Street. They go to Fleet Maintenance. City Fleet Maintenance would do any major repairs on it. The firefighters are very handy with their hands, and they they will attempt to fix whatever they can in house. They try not to put their first line equipment out of service, but any needs, even oil changes and stuff like that, it goes to fleet maintenance on Hudson Street. And they have mechanics that specifically work on our fire apparatus, and then they have mechanics for police vehicles and then public works vehicles, but they all work together. Those mechanics all help out each other. So now it's in a centralized location. I think the fleet manager really it helps him out because they can get right on something.

I'm I'm appreciate that. I'm just I remember every time in the budget, you make it very clear that, you know, the firefighter's not just a firefighter. They are paramedic when they need to be. They are, you know, doing tire changes, whatever they need. You know? They wear multiple hats. Yeah. Keep keep that in I keep that in mind at all times, so thank you.

The term we use for that is all hazards.

All all hazards?

All hazards.

Now the only other update I have is we have four new firefighter paramedic trainees that are in Anne Arundel County's fire school. They seem to be doing well. We have one investigator. One of our investigators just started the Anne Arundel County Police Academy, so we will loss that individual for close to a year so he can get his police certification. And we have two that are out, getting their paramedic certifications, and that's over a year long process. One of them in Howard County and one at Anne Arundel Community College, and all of those, we're proud to say, are doing very well in their courses.

Great. Can you go back to the second line? The one with the 400,000

Fire loss.

$4.50. What do you attribute that to?

We had a good year and did not have any major fires. One major fire will put us over a million dollar loss. I mean

So that's nothing that we can attribute or

thank you for?

I I can say that, you know, our fire safety program or aggressive firefighting, that all plays factor into it, and sometimes some of it's just pretty good luck. Mhmm.

So tell me a little bit more about about your firefighting plan. I mean, do you go out and speak to groups, schools, just envelope?

So our public education and public outreach is out of the fire marshal's office. They not only schedule programs with schools, the elderly, it depends on the program that's needed at the time. We'll go out and do some awareness for hands only CPR, Narcan, depending on what's going on in the community. So it depends on if we have a fire in the area where we have to saturate that area and wanna go out and do the smoke detector program or just make sure we're checking that. So it it all varies.

And then several times, several out of the year, they have some can programs that they know when to push those out. So some of it is by demand when people call and ask us, and some of it, we go out to the community organizations. I will say that, the alderman brought up earlier about the police department trying to get information out there more, in public safety alone with the chief police chief, myself, and the director of merchant management have gotten together. We the have a primary PIO for the police department and one for the fire department that are gonna work hand in hand. They're actually working out of the same building so that they can make sure that we continue to get this stuff out there.

And we also wanna make sure we're getting all the positive stuff out there because it's not getting out there enough. I think you probably saw some of it over the last few months just on social media. We've had a bit a higher presence. We did a lot of stuff for Black History Month. We've done some, highlighting our personnel for Women's Month, so we're gonna continue to get that those aspects out there and try to push that along.

You know, that it's something to be said for that, and I think we all can appreciate. I'll speak for myself. With a lot of these, firings or whatever you wanna call them in the federal government, we're now finding out more about what a lot of these departments in the federal government do. We knew I think we all knew they were important, but you start hearing the personal stories of what actually what people are actually doing within their departments. And I think it's been extraordinarily enlightening, and maybe, maybe not, if we'd heard some more of that early on, we would be more appreciative of of what people are doing in their own silos in some ways.

So I think, you know, I was listening, kind of a sidebar, to a gentleman who worked in a park service maybe out in the Midwest, and he was saying, you know, basically, he just picks up diapers off the ground and things like that, and that's his job. And now he's not gonna be doing it anymore. And so what will our parks look like? So it sometimes we need kind of a nudge and a push to to find out, but we need to make it more continuous as to what we're doing. That way when the budget comes around and people wonder why we're spending money on certain things, people will understand much more the reasons why we do that.

But I think we sometimes can overlook and assume that people know what we do all the time, but we can't do that anymore. I think what's going on in the federal government has taught us that we need to be more aggressive and toot their own horns a lot more as to what we're doing.

And we're watching closely what's going on with the revamping of federal government. It's affecting everybody, not only the people that have lost their jobs, but, the National Fire Academy, which is right here in Emmitsburg, Maryland, that's been shut down currently, so, that training can't get done. Some of the grants that are coming through for some of some of our smaller grants, we're just keeping an eye on, but I'm sure chief Simmons can tell you more about how some of that stuff's been frozen, and we're not sure where where that's going in the future. So we'll continue to, to watch that. But, yeah, everybody's got an integral part.

And when it comes to public safety, we're we're seeing a lot of, you know, things there. Even with the, firefighter prevention injuries, that whole group's been shut down currently. So the ones that go out in the line of duty deaths that they investigate, we have to watch to see where that's going. And some of it's just where the government's figuring out what's what and who's who's gotta be doing what. But, right now, that that pause is really scaring a lot of people.

And I think at our next public safety meeting, I wanna hear from police as well as to how they see all of that of what's going on in Washington and beyond, how that's affecting them. I don't know, and I'm gonna ask you, as far as equipment and all, I don't know how the tariffs will affect us when purchasing equipment or purchasing, pieces to to replace whatever is broken. Am I way off base or right in line?

We are waiting to see how this pans out with tariffs. As you know, you, in the last budget, appropriated the money for a fireboat, which was $1,400,000. That boat happens to be being built with a company that's got a a a manufacturer here in The United States and in Canada. The hull of our boat, would probably be built in Canada, so we're waiting to see if that affects us or not.

Wow.

That that purchase, it it's already been paid for, so I'm I'm not sure how that would that pan out, and nobody really knows at this point. But we're gonna continue to monitor and watch

it. Okay. Any questions?

Sorry. Yeah. Just cup couple quick bank points. I do, to your point, wanna see more of the, community based, things from the fire department. Captain Edwards, I know is no longer Yeah.

He ever tired, which is but I remember him vividly because of how passionate he was about showing up at every single event and doing you know, getting those kids, whether it be the CPR or whatever activity they had out there. And so, I think those things are critically important. I would love to see those come back this summer. In fact, I also seen another video. I'm always seeing videos where the fire department had, like they let the kids build these, like, wood homes and then they set them on fire.

And, you know, just show, you know, how quickly a fire and all of this stuff because just little things like that, I I'm curious. Second, I will save the overdose conversation really. I know OEM primarily manages that, but also it's I know it's difficult with the fire department because you're responding to typically an overdose. And they they they with the liberty down that the patient has, they, you know, could get up and go. And so, at some point, I'm I just whatever I can do to help or, you know, whatever I can do to push information along to the community, we'd love to have that conversation.

We appreciate that. The overdose stat stats do come out of the police department and OEM. There's several reasons for that. We are the responders to it, but some of it's for us is because we are bound by HIPAA where those other two agencies are not, so that does play factor into it. I can assure you though that we have some of the most passionate people out there besides Captain Edwards that, go out there and do it.

We have battalion chief McCray, lieutenant Williams, and lieutenant White that really go out here and and focus on some of these Your Life Matters programs and educational programs, and they have, a lot of dedication for that. So we will continue those programs. You don't you don't have to be worried about that, and the people that are running them have that same drive to to really get it out there because they wanna make a difference in the public.

K. Thank you, chief. Any questions?

I'm good. Thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you all so much. As always, be safe.

Okay.

Alright. And lastly, ID 3625, Office of Emergency Management. Update OEM. Chief Simmons and mister Gossett. Good evening, gentlemen.

Good afternoon, Public Safety Committee. Kevin Simmons, emergency manager for city of Annapolis. To my right, Brandon Gosnell is the assistant project coordinator for OD Free Annapolis. And we're here today to talk about Ward 6. And first off we're gonna talk about the food deficit and how we're working on the food deficit in Ward 6 through the Food Friday program.

Everybody knows about the Food Friday program. It provides fresh and canned fruits, vegetables, frozen meat, pasta, rice, and other non perishable goods, foods to the residents of Annapolis. Annapolis total, we distribute about 300 boxes of food per week to support 890 Annapalatans who are facing food security. One of the two of the things that I learned from the pandemic that it's a deficit in pub in health services for folks and then it was a food and security thing. So the health department is working on on the health part of this and we're working on the food and security part of this.

OEM has administrative oversight of the program. We operate out of rec and parks. The food is provided by through the Anne Arundel County Food Bank. Audit Woman O'Neil is the organizer of the program. She keeps things going and something that we're trying to do new is that we're part partnering in Robin Wood with pastor Cheryl Menendez because she has a food program as well.

Instead of us duplicating efforts, we're trying to work together. And we're trying to do this on a couple of fronts. We did it with reverend Wainwright and First Baptist for Bowman Place. So to talk a little bit more about Ward 6 there, Alderman Gay, the total number of food food boxes prepared for Ward 6 is about 81. They benefit 81 families, 310 individuals, 21 seniors, and a 149 children.

And you know something that I just found out as well? And first of all, kudos to the elder woman as well. Absolutely. As, staff, they used to I don't know if they still are pulling up in the, OCS ambulance. I have seen it come through Eastport a couple times and, you know, my mom's neighbor relies on that.

So you've done a fantastic job with that. And I also would add to this food statistics, and you all could incorporate it somewhat. Tyler Heights has been doing their food Saturday thing since COVID. I just for I know that it was still going on every Saturday at seven from seven to ten. And so, just kudos to both of these groups for long standing commitments to the community and food insecurity.

So it's funny you mentioned that because one of my goals is to get all of the food pantries in city of Annapolis and get us working

together Mhmm. And

partnering together. I think we could do more work that way than individually. So we're we're getting there. It's a slow process. So Tyler Avenue residents, a 138 individuals and 28 families. That's where most of our our own food insecurity is. And this kinda gives you an idea where all the dots are. That's where we have all the deliveries and the the pie chart shows you where we go.

I mean, Ward 6.

Right. So but in 2024, it was. And is there any questions about the food insecurity and ward sick?

Any questions?

Did I miss anything, all other woman?

You did not. Okay.

I know you would let me know if I did. So let's talk substance use disorder update award six and the end of the year report and this is for 2024. So award six substance use disorder data review compared to previous years ward six overdoses in 2024 were the lowest since we since 2015. And 2015 is the year that we started keeping data on overdoses. Right?

What do you attribute that to?

I'm a get to that. Okay. Okay. So aldermen in Ward 6, you Ward 6 was consistently the highest of them all and now ward six is the third highest behind the number one overdosing ward is ward four and the second is Ward 3. There was only one fatal overdose reported in Ward 6 whereas in 2023 you have four fatal overdoses.

Narcan uses with usage was reported to have been eighty percent of the overdose overdoses in Ward 6. So eighty percent of the of the overdoses somebody got to them with Narcan. And that's years and years and years of putting it out there, showing people how to use it, they're getting comfortable with it, they keep it around, they want it, and then when somebody's overdosing, they don't have hesitate. And we're seeing that all through the city.

And that's to the point that you all often make, that's not including because, you know, somebody could use Narcan anytime and we don't know. So there's probably so many more examples of that.

Right. And then, you know, some of this data this is data that we can verify. But sometimes folks come, they hit them with Narcan, they get up and walk away. We don't capture that. What we're telling the folks is that, you know, call the ambulance. Call the ambulance, you know, call the police and have them come so we can make sure that we document that.

You've had an aggressive campaign, I guess, is what it boils down to.

We that and some other thing.

Yeah.

But but people are getting more comfortable with it. Yes, sir.

No. And that and that's the that is accurate. And I I actually was just having this conversation with a member of the Anne Arundel County Health Department. They were talking about issues and that they were having in or in in Arundel and Brooklyn. I I legitimately brag about this all the time because I think, obviously, with OEM, the police department, NAAM, and, and the fire department, those four programs, the stats don't lie.

You just don't drop four consecutive years in a row in an, opioid overdose overdoses. We peaked once in fatals, but then it went back down. I mean, and that is a has a testament to do with, obviously, the council appropriating funding to those programs and the staff using the funding appropriately, and responding, the correct way. That's why I feel so passionately that we have to get past the Narcan and start giving more access to more things in the community, so that we can really curb this. Because this is, you know the stats.

It's getting crazy now. You got the teens doing it, various other forms of drugs, etcetera, and all of this and prep for us to make everything popular, and kids are willing to try anything. And so the messaging, it's like, I remember, I don't know if you all still do the cookouts. We used to do the they, like, they they were hosted by the city solely focused on, like, overdose prevention in the summers.

That was NAM. That was NAM.

Okay. Yeah. Maybe we bring that back because, OEM was there, fire was there, police was there, was creating the relationship with the community that we really really wanted. Can't say enough really about just the work of your staff and everybody involved in helping make this happen.

Well, it takes a community argument on this one. So, let's talk about the locations of the overdoses and, Brandon you wanna talk about this. I think the number that you see up here is not quite correct.

Is that

This one is correct? Okay. Great.

So this is just showing you where the overdoses are. The the key point I feel for this slide is at the bottom where it says about two thirds of all overdoses are along that corridor on President Street. Not necessarily on it, but within two to three blocks of that street are two thirds of of all overdoses, which is it's it's a it's a pattern that has always been for Ward 6.

Alderman Gay, look like you have a question.

You know, I have been I want the outdoor vending machine. I want 24 access to medications that offset narcotics. You know, because I think, you know, there's no point of having it in the community center that shuts down at 04:30. And then you have to have the chief of fire and his team coming at five to revive somebody and then coming back at eight to revive the same person. We've seen that happen several times, and so I want some some, after hour solution.

And I think the only way to do it without putting staff in harm's way is to have some stand alone district single distribution center. I I know people are talking about temperature. I've they got vending machines and everything. You could buy a cake at the vending machine now and it's outside. So you've seriously, in Vegas, of all places, a 180

send a man to the moon. We can certainly put a vending machine outside.

So I just wanna get around that. And then, also, I don't know the, correct me if on the drug here. Is it Suboxone? Or what's the, is it drug that they use to help, with the overdose overdoses? Suboxone? Something

Oh, buprenorphine.

Is it buprenorphine? And there's another one that they can actually get from the health center. It starts with a m or I'll have to look but the drugs as well, I'd like to make those readily available. I know the what was it? Oh, okay. No. I know the buprenorphine had to be administered by a physician and so that was off boards. Mhmm. But there's another one. I think it's called like Suboxone or something. It's like blue tablets or whatever and they use it to help with symptoms of overdoses. And if we can make those available as well I I I really just

we're getting there slowly but surely Alderman. Okay. So let's talk about some more demographics award six. Award six age ranges align with the historical trend citywide. The big overdose in ages are 20 to 25 to 34, 35 to 44, and 45 to 54.

Those are the groups that are having the most overdoses. And then African Americans represented the largest group of overdoses in Ward 6 with 14 and one was white. Anything to add on that my friend? So let's talk about fatalities, they overdose and they died. Ward 6 reported one fatal overdose which was the lowest in seven years.

City wide city wide reported the lowest number of fatal overdoses since 2018. This is this is something I struggle with because we always bring down the overdoses every year. We're successful in doing that. But it's always ten percent of them die, fatal overdoses. So I can't get below ten percent of whatever number that we we bring it down to.

Citywide African Americans represented the largest group of fatal overdoses in 2024 and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. However, in 2022 and 2023, the white population led in fatal overdoses. In the third bar chart, historically, the city saw more individuals overdosing in the '40 '5 plus range, especially African American males in 2024.

I'm a stop you, and and this is a conversation we had we've had before. And looking at the time of day, the day of the week, and you know what I'm getting ready to say, that it always coincides with

payday. Payday. And Wednesdays.

And Wednesdays, which means the state the state gets paid on Wednesdays, the county school system, I think, Wednesday or Friday, and I know the city on Friday. And those age numbers and and that age range, it and I can't get off of that because it's too, for me, too coincidental. And and it's been perpetual for a very long time. And then, you know, Social Security checks and that sort of thing when you get to that age range. Medicare, Medicaid, whatever you wanna call it. There's something there, I believe, worth exploring. I know we've had some conversations about that.

We have.

But

it So so overdose prevention team, this this is one of the things I wanna bring up with the health department and bring the health department and their their expertise in on this type of things. Not only the stats that you're talking about, but we need to look at some other things as well, you know. In your ward, especially at certain areas

Yes.

Where people are overdosing. We need to look at all of that stuff. Alrighty. Autumn and Gay. So the vending machine, Eastport had the first community based vending machine location in the city and in Anne Arundel County. About 1,800 Narcan kits from across the eight machines that they have in the county since its full launch about a couple of years ago. That's a lot of Narcan. So we started to get community feedback on that. We got positive feedback about the machines. They use them.

They look forward to them. They want them filled. When it's not filled, I hear about it and and we replenish the supply. But what I'm dealing with now is access just like you spoke of. A lot of times they can't get in the community center, especially on the weekends when it's really really needed.

So we had a meeting last week with executive director Melissa Maddox Evans to see what we can do. We're supposed to go and take a look at the laundry room and see if we can put it in the laundry room. The last picture I saw of that laundry room sent to me by miss White that didn't look like a place where I wanted to put it. But we're gonna take a look in there and hopefully they they made some repairs to that place. You know, it seems like a dangerous place to me.

But we're looking at this because what what HACA is telling us is they're gonna start a head start program in the area of the machine and we would have to find another place. So so we're we're supposed to look at the

Packet is in no position and and I'm gonna be at the meeting Wednesday to say this to them. There are no position to make demands. Okay? You have a problem that the city is helping you fix. You are refusing to provide resources to help fix this problem. And so they shouldn't be telling you that you have to move this by x date or you have to do anything. They should be fully cooperative in saying, here's a list of our full fully publicly accessible locations. Where would you like to set this up considering that we have this problem that is leading to death on our properties and we are not putting any money or resources into it. And so that will be my message to them as it relates to the vending machine.

And when they let me know about it they said, hey look, we wanna work with you. We wanna try to figure out where we can put the machine. It has to be in a climate controlled environment so it can't be outside. And and we started talking about a few locations, we came up with the laundry room. I got some pictures which make me leads me to believe that that might not be the better place. So we're we're looking at places in Ward 6, but then again, my problem now is in Ward 4. So that Ward 4 may be an option to move it there. So so we're I'm looking at a lot of different things.

We are we not in a position to and this is again why I really wanted to meet with the city assisted city manager and the finance director where the the city obviously was involved in a lawsuit. They sued opioid companies. They get a small lump sum back. It's being set aside in a fund right now, and it's supposed to be split split up between the four program. Again, this is a perfect opportunity for us to take money like that and invest in our own product.

We don't we shouldn't be wanting to get with the health department and, you know, wait eighteen years for them to, you know, run through their process. Let's find the $100,000 it takes in our budget to get our own machine, and then we partner with them for for product, or we partner with the state health department for product. But why can't we have our own infrastructure? Is is is is that's that's what I'm confused on.

So you're talking about the opioid restitution funds, and we don't get a whole lot of that like the county does. We get enough to operate our four programs at a minimum it takes a $147,000 to operate those programs. So I think we have enough to get through this budget cycle, with the opioid restitution fund.

And and so what I what I was under the impression was that before the opioid restitution funding came to the city, was in '20, like, '20

It's a couple years ago.

Yeah. The city was get I think it was I remember in one budget it was like $50,000 or something. And then it started becoming a repeat thing. It might have been 2019, but the city was giving the those four programs the opioid, money. And so now if the restitution funding is coming in, my position is why would the city stop supplying the funding to those four programs?

We can still fund those four programs and allow you to make the decision and use the money to invest in infrastructure or to invest in a new staff person or whatever. I hope what I'm basically saying is that if the funding is there and there's no policy if there are no policy, tying the hands of yourself or whomever is involved with the, opioid funding, just, like like I would say just do it.

Well, I'm not gonna turn down any any funding. That's that's number one. Number two is that I asked for enough to get the job done and as you see we're we're doing a we're doing a good job. The numbers are coming down. We're having success.

As far as as far as staff, Brandon's paid for by that by that fund and then we have a couple or at least, yeah, a couple community liaisons that are paid out of that. Tiana and Nam is paid from that. So we do we do have staff. But, you know, if the city wants to talk about a vending machine, I'll certainly have that conversation with them and all. But right now, anything other than what we get, I deal with the health department, they have a lot deeper pockets than mine and I appreciate the fact that they reached out to us and said, hey look, we have this concept of of harm reduction vending machine.

Do you have a place to put it? And we did the right thing. We went to the hacker board. We identified a place. We we went to the community. They voted to to do it. We didn't spring it on them. They voted to do it. They had a say in it. They have a say of what's in it, and, it's been a success. But right now, because of, other obligations, we have to move it. We may have to move it.

One last comment on opioids if you don't mind, madam chair.

Oh, go right ahead.

I'll move it. You. Don't move it for war's sake. Let's get the money so that we can buy. I will sponsor the amendment. I just think it would be a disaster. You move it from one place, and you you'll just the issue will start back up there. Lastly, I'm wondering if the city attorney can look into, for me, municipalities provisions of of of, sponsoring Suboxone clinics or or handing out Suboxone. It's s u b oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Thank you. Just I was only not that you didn't know. I was spelling it because I was having trouble. Yeah. Thank you.

So, to move on, talk about the Wellmobile that comes from the health department. We have it scheduled every Wednesday at Harbor House. It goes from twelve to 02:30. The majority of the hep c and HIV testing requests for that comes from Annapolis and the health department reports that they have regulars that use that. They come in asking for their bag which includes Narcan hygiene kits, feminine products, condoms, and they get their blood pressure checked religiously on that unit.

So getting back to Madam Chair, you talked about what do I attribute the decrease in overdoses for? It's the vending machines, it's the Wellmobile, it's the strong outreach that we've been doing there year after year. No other ward has the vending machine, no Ward 4 does have the the Wellmobile. So if we can take that model, pick it up, put it in another ward, put it in another ward, I think that their numbers will go down as well. Not that any ward has as grossly large numbers, but we wanna just just get this thing down.

I'm looking at at the schedule and I just asked all woman O'Neil if she want to concentrate on Ward 2 either in May or June. So she has indicated June, and I'm gonna ask for War 3 in May, since they seem to be the high volume wards. So, and I'll reiterate that to everybody else. War 3 in May and War two in June. So when looking at the charts over the past couple of months, we're we're I'm concerned. Not anymore. Kudos to you.

Kudos to them.

To them. Well, supportive.

So

So much so.

So here's another reason why the overdoses have come down so much. So look at this heat map here. So the red is locations of overdoses in the city of Annapolis and the green is outreach activity. So you can see where it's a cluster of overdoses. You can see how we attack it with outreach. So we, you know, we're always on the case, we're always monitoring, our head is on a swivel as far as overdoses and we we flood that area with outreach.

We were supposed to hire someone. The money was in the budget for fiscal year twenty five. I have not been happy about not hiring this person, to do some outreach. This has slogged along since July 1, and, I'll just say I'm not happy about it. So I don't know much more what more we can do between now and the next budget cycle, but I'm just very disturbed that the person has not been hired.

And I don't know on who's I know it's not your end, but it's between two ends.

So I wouldn't say it wasn't in my hands.

It wasn't in your hands.

Because anything in this program kinda falls on me. But one of the things I know that we reached out to you to help because we wanted somebody that could look in your ward. But as you know and we talked to you about it, it has to be that right person.

Say that again?

Has to be that right person

Exactly.

To be that community liaison Right. Because that's we're looking

at somebody who can work in all wards. We talked about

And that and that person does intelligence, works in cognito and

Right.

And and all that stuff. So so, yeah, we're still working on it. We just had a hiccup in the office of emergency management because we're trying to to keep our heads above water lately, and a lot of stuff has gone to the wayside.

We had just talked about, at at one point, just having a just a generalized person, for lack of a better term, to do outreach. And we but the discussion went deeper when we had it, but, my thing was let's get someone who's knowledgeable, not necessarily going and doing that deeper deeper groundwork.

Right. So yeah.

But I I want you to understand too that deeper groundwork helps us out because Certainly. Because it's Sure. You know, a lot of stuff, intelligence can go to the police department.

True.

And and we have people that that move right on that stuff.

Right.

So that's that's important.

Right. But from my end of it, I'll take the the general person rather have than having no one at all.

Yes, ma'am.

I guess that's a better way of putting it.

Mhmm.

Any other questions at this point?

So we'll wrap it up with the end of the year substance use disorder report, and I'll go ahead and turn it over to Brandon for this.

So we took the 2024 report. We pulled out some key successes that we had citywide. Some of these successes are focused on 2024, but majority of them are focused on since 2015 to show how we've evolved. Last year, it is great to see that it was the lowest number of total overdoses since we started keeping record in 2015. So we had eighty. In 2015, we had forty eight, and we'll get there one day. Three last four years saw a decrease in overdoses compared to the previous year. So 2024, was it higher or lower than 2023? It was lower. So, that's something that we wanna see.

We wanna see that continuing decrease. Last year's decrease of 34% was the largest ever year over year decrease, which was another, key milestone that we hit. And the second year since 2015 where the total overdose count was under 100, another one of those kind of key points of having less than 100 overdoses. We've only done it twice. Narcan use, 70%, 60 year in a row. Obviously, we want that much higher, but it's seventy percent is where we typically hover, and fatal fatal overdose is third lowest since 2015.

Questions?

So, of course, we wanna show some challenges as well. Fatal overdoses, like chief said earlier, we can never break below that ten percent. Twelve, fifteen percent, but it's never below ten percent. Meaning that if we have a 100 overdoses, we're anticipating ten. If we have 10 overdoses, we anticipate one fatal.

And that's just been the way that it has been. And again, the twenty five to thirty year old population remains that high population since 2015. It doesn't go down. And overall, since 2015, the black population, African American population is fifty four percent of overdoses in the city, and the white population is forty three percent. So last year, it was higher. I think it was sixty or 70% where, overall, it's 54%.

The county is 43% African American and 54% white.

What's reversed is, the population. So it's white is usually higher in the county, but not the percentage marks.

Oh, thank you.

But the percentage is higher white population. Oh. So another challenge that we have is that the APT said, whenever there's an overdose, their their mark is to go out and find that individual and make first contact within a couple days. Hopefully, the next day if possible. And we're under ten percent of being able to do that. It's either we do not have a good contact number, which we almost never have. We go to Facebook. We try to social media to find the individuals. And less than 10% of the time, we're able to make that first contact. And when we do make that contact, not many people are accepting treatment.

They'll say, yeah, I want treatment, and then we never hear back from them. But we do leave a whole bunch of pamphlets, we leave Narcan behind, we give them an idea that help is out there, but it's still less than 10%. And then here's one that we talked about earlier where the accounting of Narcan is something that's not just us. It's nationwide. We we don't have full accounting of all the Narcan that we put out there because we anticipate you're gonna take it, the overdose was enough to be reversed by the Narcan, and you move on.

You don't call 911. And part of our education with them is just because you recovered, call 911. You do not have to go to the hospital, but at least let the medics come out, make sure you're okay, we can track it, and you can go home. You don't have to necessarily go to the hospital. That's something that we need to correct in our literature.

And most fatal overdoses do not have any Narcan administered. So that's a key thing. One of the pamphlets that we wanna put out is if you're going to use, even if you use alone, carry your own NARCAN. So if somebody comes by and you are if you're gonna use alone, just tell somebody. I mean, that's, you know, difficult to say but, that's some of the wording and pamphlets we need to put out there.

Do you all get any feedback on your campaign when it comes to these different variables, Narcan or anything else that you utilize or

Feedback from residents or

Yeah. Feedback from residents or those who've administered it to a family member or friend or anecdotal information.

I know talking with Your Life Matters and events that we go to, it's appreciated that they're trained on it. People don't realize how easy it is to use Narcan until we show them that it's Squirt, and they're they're shocked and surprised. So we we hear back from that of of thank you. I didn't know it was that easy. And

like we talked about with the harm reduction vending machine, we we hear from the residents because it's not accessible. We can't get it on the weekends. We can't get it after hours. Can you do something different? So, you know, they want it and they wanna be prepared. And one ward, Ward 4, we have it in this some folks that that are down there watching that community have it set up where certain places in the stairwells you can find it and everybody knows where it is. Oh. So so it's a lot of it's a lot of informal stuff going on.

Underground. Yep.

With with the Narcan. And it's our job to make sure that they can get it, make sure that they can provide it to the community in their own way. I don't care how they provide it. You know, if you put it in the stairwell, everybody knows where it is. If you need more, come see me. We'll make sure that it it it it keeps flowing.

It sounds like a can somewhat to a a little free library inside. It's kinda

It Yeah.

But, you know, you know, we we are having a lot of success whatever we're doing. I don't wanna stop it because we're having a lot of success and Mhmm. And we mentioned Brooklyn. They're right next to Baltimore who's not having a lot of success at with this. So I have

one more question but I wanna give you opportunity to discuss two or three sentences on your Grant situation. Alderman Gay?

Thank you. I just would like at the next public safety or you can send it to me. I would like to see us establish some sort of long standing relationship with outpatient, facilities as well, not in Anne Arundel County if possible. I know we have, like, Crystal's house and all of that stuff, but I think we talked about this previously. One of the problems is is that, like, if I'm having issues with addiction and I live on, you know, President Street and you take me to, you know, Rowell Boulevard.

I'm just walking back over. You know? And so I would like I know they have some really good ones in Frederick and, you know, things like that where there's just open open communication. Hey. We have a patient that, you know, really is looking in looking forward to coming out today. We could just send them up there, you know. I know a lot of the times it's repeat offenders and you all have, you know, relationships with them and when they're ready they're ready. So that's all.

So we've we've experimented with that actually. That that was on our radar screen. We had one person in particular that multiple overdoses every year and we were working with Angel Trainer to try to actually go to Frederick. Frederick was the place. But a person has to be ready and that person wasn't ready. But that's the only time that we looked into doing that and all. But that's You bring up a good point.

Two or three sentences on your grant situation.

Screwed up.

That's two words.

So so the the federal grants have been put on hold. So all my grants are put on hold. These grants pay salaries, these grants buy police equipment, fire equipment, training, and all that. So it's been put on hold for review. But legally they can do that for sixty days but it's been like, I'm I'm sorry, not sixty days, thirty days, but it's been close to fifty days.

I did receive a letter from Homeland Security secretary Christy Noem, And what she's saying is that they're reviewing our grants, our meaning everybody's grants for three things. One, to see if these grants can be used to help immigrants in any way. So if it's if they take a look at your grant, meaning our grants in Annapolis and if they can be perceived to help immigrants in any way, then it's a good chance that they will be held up. The second thing they look at according to this memo is if we're a sanctuary city. So there's no real definition of a sanctuary city.

It's just what one would, in my opinion, perceive by what you do as a sanctuary city. And I know that the the general assembly just passed something talking about sensitive locations where ICE would not be able to go, schools, churches, etcetera. So could one say that where where the state is kind of a sanctuary place? I don't know. But that's not defined anywhere.

It's just that it's whatever the the the people who do the grants thing. And the third thing, and they just can discontinued one of my grants, they just terminated it. It's called the BRIC grant. The I forgot the the acronym, but it deals with resiliency and sustainability and climate change.

Oh, man.

So the big word there is climate change and they just terminated that grant. We've we received that in the past. We had an application in to receive it to do our hazard mitigation plan update, but that's since been terminated because they terminated that grant. So the big things they look at is climate change, sanctuary city, and immigrant. So most of my grants are being reviewed right now.

They just sent me something said it'd probably be about sixty more days that they're behind and all of that stuff. So hopefully in sixty days things will be back to normal. So we'll we'll wait and see. But everybody's in the same boat, not only me Right. But, you know, Baltimore and and, Howard County, Seattle, Washington, and all all of us all of us are in the same boat.

Oh, when you come back next month and the month after, I mean, we're kinda high with our numbers. If you all can come back kinda with a just kind of a general plan or maybe something other things we could do in our wards or could be done in our wards when we're looking at the numbers that we've we've had over the past, I guess, year. Just give us something that we might be able to hang our hats on or something we might be able to do to to get those numbers down. Ward 3 next month and Ward 4 in June.

Okay. And and I we'll do that. Mhmm. But I also wanna say that the numbers are even Ward 4 which is the highest is not really bad.

Right.

I mean, one overdose is bad. One fatality is bad. But if you look at the numbers, what what is Ward 4? Do you know? But it's Right. It's not very understand that. Were very high.

I understand that.

So

So just put that in your in your quiver. The other thing before we all leave, this last week, I went to a memorial service for mister Andre Atkins from over in Ward 6. I think everybody knew the work that he did and and how much of an impact he made in Ward 6, and, I was asked to speak. So, anyway, I just wanna before we close out, just take a couple of seconds, a moment of silence, for mister Andre Atkins at this point. Everyone in the room everyone in the room, we're gonna take a a few seconds regarding mister Andre Atkins.

Moment of silence. Thank you all so much. Okay. Any other questions? Office of Emergency Management or Fire or Police? Nothing else for the good of the order. Can I get a motion to adjourn?

So moved. So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye. We're adjourned. 08:46PM. Thank you all so very, very, very much.

Thank you.

And you can also reap you know, like, you can pull in millions and millions of dollars because people will come to visit because they everyone wants to go see what things were like in the past. Whether or not it involved slaves building all the buildings, whether or not it involved, you know, again, the removal of people who had lived there for a few generations. And so I said all that to say, even even us trying to describe Clay Street area, an in town as we call it, is hard. It shouldn't be hard, but one could come to this town and not even know that there's black communities. Right?

And there are other towns that are like that too, where you can go there and you you're like, oh, where's and then somebody's like, oh, Turn the corner. Go over there. Cross those train tracks and go down a hill. And then it's like a whole another town of of but that's that's the story of this city. And actually, this book, which will be talked about more, describes a little bit of that dynamic. And that's that's a very real dynamic here because we have a couple different Annapolis's.

So are you making a left turn off West Street to get the claim?

Yes. Yes. A left on West Washington Street.

Yeah. And

and so I'm not talking too much. I because it we could talk for we could have a whole panel just on the old 4th Ward. Because when she said stars went there and it was it was it was on the stop, you know, the stop. Like, if you went to Chicago, if you went to Baltimore, if you went to all these different places, it was one of the places that people stopped at. You know?

The the old 4th Ward was really the hub of the black community, but black folks lived all over the city of Annapolis. Mhmm. Downtown, cross town. They were all over Annapolis, but the 4th Ward was the hub of the black community.

Right. You need the microphone.

Hold on. Just take it

for Oh. Oh, thank you. Sorry.

Hi. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm not from Annapolis either, but I am a descendant of Maryland. My family came from Charlotte and Hall. We were blacks who came from Cambridge, Maryland and Dorchester County. Alright. And they started to celebrate for us the Quakers, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and German Lutheran. And our community is called Sharp Ledden Hall. It was founded in 1790.

Wow.

And so what I do now is I try to meet with descendants of Maryland because we are dying. We're dying off. I think that we make up less than 26% of the population compared to blacks that come from Washington DC, New York, and other places. When I say descendants, I'm talking about families who've been in Maryland for more than one hundred years. And can I see the hands of those who've been here?

Their families have been here more than one hundred years. Amen. Amen. So my question to you is, what is the oldest black settlement in Annapolis? A settlement is when people come off of a plantation where they've been manumitted.

They've been helped to get land. There's always one school and one church. And I was told in Upper Marlborough for another community that was founded in seventeen hundreds, If you wanna know where the black communities started and when they were built, find a church. As you know, in Maryland, we didn't have black reconstruction. Our we were helped through philanthropy to the Christian church.

So if you go look up what I'm saying, you can you can go find Maryland on the on the books for reconstruction. We just didn't have it in our state because we sit between the North and the South even though we're southerners. And so we didn't have what other the Deep South actually had.

Mhmm.

So my question is, how many black settlements do you have in Annapolis or what was the first black community in Annapolis, Maryland? Thank you. So

I know so I do know that when we did that right behind Asbury, there was Locker Street. And that was one of the first settlements in Maryland, black settlements in in the entire state, which and it was dug up and redeveloped. And they dug up a graveyard and took all the bones that were in the graveyard and put them in boxes in a warehouse. And we just a couple years ago, we just I was a part of that. We just had a a mock funeral to to restore some of the dignity to those who had passed.

So that's one. And it's it's kinda it's kinda by city gate. I guess they call it kinda city gate too now. So that's something. And it's Eastport? Eastport, for sure. But I'm gonna brag a little bit because I'm I happen to come from a historically African American community called Mulberry Hill. Yeah. And our sister our sister, right, is is Browns Woods. But then you also have Skidmore, Clay Hill.

This area, it's worth it's worth taking a deeper dive because this is the area for that. This is this is I mean, we have stuff all the way down like Shadyside and, I mean, it's it's it's there are a lot of settlements. To tell you the story about Mulberry Hill and Browns Woods, they were most of the the families were enslaved at Whitehall Plantation and also this plantation called Greenberry, which it is now it's called Greenberry Point, but it's where the Naval Academy golf course is now. It's a long history with that. That I'll I'll so I don't take up too much time because it goes on and on.

You also have people that are descendants of Harriet Tubman that are right here. The last thing I'll say is Banneker Douglas Museum Banneker Douglas Tubman Museum. The church that is there, Mount Moriah is right. That's a that's a church you should even just our churches. Right. You know, just our churches alone. Broadneck United Methodist Church, Asbury. I mean First Baptist. First Baptist off of Bay Ridge.

First Baptist. Right.

They just it's a it's a long list. So you're so you're so you're in a good place. If if all the women Rhonda Pendell Charles was here, she would tell you about parole as well. And and Yeah. Cecil. Yep. Yep. Cecil, Mount Olive. I mean

They have the black 30.

See? And parole with black 30.

Yep. Yep. And as well as esports, you know. And so yep. Yep. So there there's a thank you. Thank you for I got them all excited about the question. But so

Can I respond also?

Oh, absolutely. I'm not on the panel. I've been up here running my mouth.

I I was intrigued about your research in the original settlements in Annapolis and also our lineage. Now you mentioned that and Philip Brown, my grandfather, came to well, actually, his parents came to Annapolis from Calvert County. That was William H Brown and Julia Dorsey. And they arrived in Annapolis. I wanna say it was in the I wanna say it was in the eighteen seventies.

Now, in our own family history, we've tried to go back farther than that because we want to find the original land, home of the family before they left Calvary County. And then also too, there are other browns throughout the county. And we're often curious as to the possibility of relationship. But if I could meet you shortly afterwards, we can discuss a little bit of that in more detail. As I understand, there are more resources today potentially online to research our family history and lineage in history.

And most most blacks, when they came here on the slave ships, they were at the time at the tunnels in the State House until they were shipped to Dallas County. And most of the families that we as in Annapolis now came here from the southern part of Randall on the county, Calvert County, like he said. They were shipped to Calvert County to work in the tobacco fields. And and all the families that are here now, I mean, that it's just nameless. It's so many of them. Like I say, came here from Calvert County.

Yep.

Someone went to DC, but there's still families in Calvert County that that are related to the families here.

We have they but he okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I

just my name is Mary Lloyd. I just wanna mention about Adams Park Elementary School, all black school that I attended to. And I did your grandfather, mister Philip Brown,

and missus Brown. One was

the assistant principal. He was the principal. And miss Hardisty, all those teachers. I can name all the teachers at at Annspot School.

Hold the mic close.

I can name all the teachers and principals, mister Noah at Annspot School. So I don't hear nobody saying anything about Ann Sparks School, but that was my elementary school that I

went to. Was that? Where was that?

That's right over the Inn Of Clay Street.

Alright. Do y'all know that? Yeah. Did y'all know that?

Yeah. Yeah. Do

you have another are you done?

It's probably because they let mention it because they use it for kids that was underprivileged and used yes. That's probably why because it used to be for the kids down Clay Street and all around, but they use it for different activities and church and stuff now.

Mrs. Brown. She was the assistant principal.

Alright. And Bell was secretary. Okay. You got a good memory.

Yeah. I

was in so much trouble in school, in elementary school. I I try not to remember all the names. I was traumatized. My dad having to show up. Hi.

Good evening, everyone. I just wanted to say one thing interesting pertaining to education. Oh, I'm sorry. Good evening, everyone. My name is Tiana Hayes.

I'm currently staffed and employed at the city of Minneapolis mayor's office, serving as the program coordinator for the Nantes on anti dope movement. We are anti demoralizing, anti oppression, anti pain, and anti exclusion. And we provide community service oriented programs around substance use disorder awareness, education, prevention resources along with free Narcan and overdose response training. So when you guys are talking about the black educators, I just thought it was interesting because I remember all of my teachers too and all their names. And just recently, I just found my first grade teacher, and the whole time she's around the corner from me, still at Annapolis Elementary. She was hired as the first black educator there. Her name was Tracy Williams, and she's still there. She's thinking about retiring,

but I'm trying to swear not to. Wow.

Hi.

Good evening. My name is Bernadette Pulley Pruitt, and my family has been in Anne Arundel County since 1777.

Wow.

Wow. And, sister, there are many

Mhmm.

Communities within Anne Arundel County that were, like, on their own. We were together, but they were just separate, like, Shadyside, Galesville

Back to

Highland Beach was kinda, like, independent where Frederick Douglas lived. That's another thing. And my ancestors were on the plantations of Whitehall Mhmm. And Tulip Hill, which is down Galesville. So that's where they came from. My parents were also educated by mister and missus Brown at the Skidmore School. Yeah. And that was a Rosenwald School.

Mhmm.

We're working on my cousin Anne and I, we're working on a Skidmore project where we're trying to document more about Skidmore. Mhmm. We know that there's Skidmore, Brownswoods, Clay Hill. My family also comes from Arnold. You know? Then you can go up a little further up to Severna Park.

There are

a couple churches up there. So we need to get together. I'll let you know.

Oh, also, Pac Town. I gotta say that because that's where Tola's family's from. Right. It's in Severna Park.

Oh, okay.

Pac Town.

Okay. Yeah. So

The Pacs.

You ever heard of any Pacs? What?

The Pacs.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's they had a

Pac Town. And,

I mean, we just have a lot of history here. My great great grandfather started Mount Calvary. His name was Benjamin Griffin.

Okay.

Yeah. And my family also were started was a part of the group that started Asbury United Oh. Broadneck.

Oh, Broadneck? Okay.

David Johnson.

That's that's we might

be family.

Yeah. Mhmm. Absolutely.

That's what's up.

Other thing, my cousin here, cousin Jean, we are also Rideout descendants. We found that out. So the plantation where my family was enslaved, my great great grandfather, Horatio Rideout

Mhmm. Was his father.

Wow.

So we are descendants of John Rideout, the John Rideout.

Like I said, my

name gave a tour. I just gave a tour of Whitehall and our descendants.

So were you here at at the last at the last panel discussion when I when I when I spoke about it? And so a lot of that wealth and yeah.

It's pretty heavy stuff.

It's pretty heavy stuff. Thank you for that. So yeah.

And can I say something? Yeah.

We're in the

microphone. My father's side of the family was slave owners down at the plantation near the Bay Bridge.

She wasn't trying to have the mic the record that part.

When he died 20 my uncle died twenty years ago. He was 91 years old, and he was the oldest living black horse trainer in Maryland. He traveled the East Coast, down to Florida, even over to California.

Wow.

And his name is Ernest Chico Green.

See, this this that is one reason why first of all, let's clap for us for all of that y'all here. Thank you. But that's one of the reasons why a part of this part was about, okay, we have all of this amazing history. And it was almost like she was planning because it was the perfect question to ask. Right? Like, hey, is there any older communities? Like, are you kidding me? But most of it is because we do not maximize our hand in the tourism industry that's here because a lot of the history of Annapolis is black history. Right? And I know that Janice Hayes Williams I don't know if you all any of you all

know Janice Hayes Williams. My husband. Yeah. There you go.

So she she's on it. I mean, she it's it's her passion and she does a really good job at it. But anytime you have to ask that question, you know, we need to do a better job because Annapolis and Anne Arundel County should be on the map as being as having some

of the the

largest, oldest, most resilient communities of black people, like, in the in the country. You know what I mean? So because remember, I'll give a little primer again. Remember that four signers of the Declaration of Independence called Annapolis home. And in order for you to be able to be a signer of the Declaration of Independence, really for you to be in the room when they're having conversations about the formation of this republic, you had to be, number one, a what? A male. Male. You had to also

be white.

But what is the other most distinctive part? Landowner. Landowner. And right. You had to be a landowner. And there were a couple colonies back then. It wasn't The United States that it is right now. So remembering the amount of wealth and and how that wealth is passed down generationally and how that built the infrastructure of this city. So thank you all so much. Thank you so much. We need a book out of that. Wanted to say another Yeah. Get the mic.

Over here.

District. High Street is a historic district.

Many people don't know. Right. It was designated Yeah.

It is a historic district, but we don't get the same type of treatment in consideration that downtown

gets. Yeah.

Murray Hill hits.

Yes. Presidents Hill. We we I I will say that we tried earlier in on in this administration. We there were there were plans drafted up to revitalize it and to do redevelopment there. And it's like a lot of governmental things. It takes a lot of time and it takes political will, but it also takes dollars. But I will say that the lodge there was the facade. The Masonic Lodge was we invested in that and got that. But the, you know, the heart and lifeblood of the community is its economic engine also. And so it makes it really hard. Thank you so much for that.

Would tell us just a little bit more about what you did down in Utown 20 because that was just amazing when you protested. Okay?

That was about forty, almost fifty years ago. We started a rent strike at Newtown 20. Conditions were deplorable. Maintenance was deferred, and the residents just got tired of not having things, you know, repaired when they needed them. So they decided to go on a website.

Not everyone expressed it. It took a while, and and at that time, I was looking for a community action agency, and they gave me the time to go from door to door to see if I could recruit people to join in the red strike. And we did end up with at least 90% of all the red vets. And we went to we went to the president. We went to the state house of the city.

We just took residence to all those different places to let people know, at least the officials know, that that they were tired of not having repairs done at the at the community. Finally, HUD came to the community and decided that they would do some repairs. But before that, the residents took their monies and put it in the bank. And as when the manager didn't get the rent money, which took all about 70% of the people to court. And the judge decided to let the residents put the money in escrow.

And shortly after that, HUD started making repairs. He brought in a new manager and repairs were done. And after about a year, the maintenance the the residents got some of the money that they had put back in rest in escrow. And that's pretty much it. But that happened so long ago.

If if I could just, comment on that.

Mhmm.

I understand there was some, recent, settlements with, low income housing Mhmm. Developments here in Annapolis.

Mhmm.

And it just reminds me of how many years and decades the for low income and affordable housing that situation has been

Mhmm.

In Annapolis. It's the residents have suffered horribly.

Mhmm. Yeah.

I

mean, we could go he's recording it, so I don't wanna get myself in too much trouble. But I will say that there's one of the the I was ready to say black eyes. One of the blemishes on this city is our large concentration of public housing. And not just because people need a safety net and need to live in public housing, but the condition of public health of those housing. And also the fact that it has created a cycle of poverty.

And there's no trapdoor. There's no pathway. Right? And there needs to be an identifiable pathway for people to matriculate. Otherwise, what you're doing is you're making a huge assumption that certain people are predisposed to live in certain environments. And that's just Will speaking. But I believe that that is that is, in fact, the question. That is the question, right, and the answer to me.

Well, you mentioned that and we look in it look at that in the context of today. I mean, today. The resources that eventually became available that may have trickled down may be totally dried up. We we have to face that.

Yeah.

That that that risk or that possibility. And it probably will be us again helping us in order to overcome that. Yeah.

I will say, I do I do need to add this plug that we've been undergoing how many years, Julian? Of the Eastport project. Now it's like Three, I think. At least three years of a redevelopment project. And I think it's like a $400,000,000

Yeah.

Close to $400,000,000 redevelopment project. And the idea behind that for Harbor House and Eastport Terrace, the idea is to create mixed housing. So it's mixed income and create new roads and pathways and parks and because it's right on the water. Now keep in mind where a lot of our public housing is is in prime real estate. But that that's this or the urban sprawl and kind of the city planning stuff in most cities, they didn't account for the fact that it would go beyond where these public housing units are. And so they look up and they're like,

hold on.

Like, we could we could use that. And but it's our city does any does anyone know the square miles of the city of Annapolis? Anyone know how large the city of Annapolis is? Six square miles. Six. Six. And most of it is water. I don't know. There's something for the number of waterfront. When you do the miles, when you measure it based on water, it it blows out of proportion and becomes really huge.

But it's six square miles. So it's something to consider when we talk about housing and we talk about where people because when I work with people, the last thing I want is for them their only option to be to move to Glen Burnie. Right. Yeah. We want their option to be like my daughters who went to college, graduated. They can't live in Annapolis. But they live in California and Frederick and stuff. So, you know, my hope is we create pathways for that to happen. And there's another question. I know I know you've been waiting forever.

Do I have

Okay. Sorry about that.