City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. My name is Ben Weber. I'm the boss City Council for District 6 and the chair of the committee on ways and means. Today is 05/07/2026, and the exact time is 10:13AM. I have a few preliminaries to get through here. So the hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at, boston.gov/citycounciltv and broadcast on Xfinity channel eight, RCN channel 82, and Fios channel nine sixty four. We strongly encourage residents to engage in this hearing process. We'll be having budget hearings starting in April and running through June. You can participate in these hearings in several ways.

First, you can attend one of our hearings and give public testimony. You can do so by showing up in person in the hearing chamber, sign up on the sign in sheet that's near the entrance, and and you'll be called on to testify. You can also sign up to testify via Zoom. The full hearing schedule is on our website at boston.gov/councilbudget. You can testify by Zoom by either filling out an online form on our council budget review website or by emailing the committee at ccc.

Wmboston dot gov or by emailing karishma chohan at karishma.chouhan@boston.gov, and you'll be sent a zoom link, for this hearing. You can also, come to our public testimony listening session. We'll have our fourth of four of these Thursday night on May 26 at 6PM here in the chamber. When you're called on to testify, you'll have two minutes. Please state your name and residence and if you have any affiliation with an organization, name the organization and please watch the clock for when your two minutes are up.

In lieu of testifying at a hearing, you can also submit written testimony to the committee at ccc.wmboston.gov. Lastly, you can submit a two minute video of your testimony through the form on our website. For more information on the City Council budget process and how to testify, please visit the City Council's website at boston.gov/councilbudget. In person testimony will be taken after the first round of questions from my council colleagues. Again, you'll have two minutes to testify.

And if haven't signed up, please do so here in the chamber or, again, email our legislative budget analysis director, Karishma, at karishma.chouhan@boston.gov for the Zoom link, and your name will be added to the list. We are having two hearings today, on docket numbers 0733 to 0740 and 0749 to 0750 on the Boston, with the police police to department specifically this morning get regarding to the mental health and substance abuse of response, community policing, firearms, homicides, and the crime lab. I encourage my colleagues to stick to these topics during questioning this morning. This afternoon's 02:00 hearing will cover over time the detail system, officer mental health and diversity and recruiting. You know, it could be some of the questions could be that you have could be deferred to this afternoon.

Again so, again, if you're we have questions about police over time, the detail system, Officer Mental Health and Diversity and Recruiting, That will be covered in this afternoon's hearing. These matters were response were sponsored by mayor Michelle Wu and referred to the committee on 04/08/2026. I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival: Councillor Murphy, Councillor Culpepper, Councillor Braden. We've received a letter of absence from Councillor Mejia. We generally waive opening statements from the councillors at our budget hearings, and we will stick to that this morning.

I'm going to introduce the panel. We're joined this morning by Police Commissioner Michael Cox Chief of Staff Nicole Taub Chief of Bureau of Administration and Technology, Lisa O'Brien Superintendent of the Bureau of Field Services, John Brown Superintendent of Bureau of Investigative Services, Paul McLaughlin, and superintendent of Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis, Lanita Kulane. Right? Okay. So, with that said, I'm going to oh, we've been joined by counselor John Fitzgerald.

Yep. There's another John Fitzgerald who's who's here, my constituent. So from the police department. So we have two John Fitzgeralds in the room. So, again, thank you panel for for for coming in this morning and I'm gonna the floor is now yours.

Good morning, council president Breeden, committee chair Weber, and the city councilors. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the ways to meet today regarding the FY twenty seven operating budget for the Boston Police Department. You've already introduced my panel here with me today, but I wanna just start off by saying I appreciate that the proposed twenty seven year budget represents a significant commitment to our taxpayer dollars, for public safety in a time when not only the city, is facing financial struggles, but the state and, maybe the country as well. For those who are at home that may not understand that our budget represents 89% of it goes to personnel cost, and 11% of it goes to the operating budget of what we do, basically keeping the lights on. And so we're focused on using our resources efficiently and transparently in ways to support public safety and community trust.

A key area of focus is controlling overtime spending to improve staffing deployment, stronger supervision, and ongoing monitoring to ensure, that we're using our overtime appropriately and aligning operational needs. We are, in fact, trying to reimagine how we, look at the work that we do on a daily basis to curtail any unnecessary spending to be as efficient and effective as possible. We're making progress, but recognize that we will always have more work to do in this area. I'm here to share with counsel and residents that might be watching, what these operating budget investments mean for our city. The men and women of the Boston Police Department are committed to building trust with the community and keeping our neighborhood safe.

Every interaction between a Boston Police officer and the community member is an opportunity to build and strengthen trust. Whether it's responding to calls for service, helping people in crisis, investigating and solving crimes, or proactively engaging with young people as seniors, Officers are making difference every day. We are seeking continued success from these efforts with sustained decreases in crime and violence making us one of the safest major cities in America. And we're making progress in building and strengthening relationships with the community as evidenced by city residents taking more civil service exams and partnering with us in many different ways. We have significant challenges coming up, this year, as far as major events, particularly this summer between FIFA, the World Cup, the celebrations, our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in, Sale Boston, and the many other annual celebrations that take place throughout the year.

I can assure you that we are prepared for these challenges as we are every year. We have extensive extensive operational plans in place, significant experience in managing large scale events. Our officers and supervisors and commanders are well trained and equipped with cultural and restraint I mean, with a culture of restraint and de escalation. The critical work done by our Boston Regional Intelligence Center provides us with intelligence analyst we need to deploy resources and adjust real time to prevent and mitigate potential threats to public safety, all while protecting privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of our constituents. Boston Police Department is committed to community policing, building trust with the community, and working in partnership to prevent and reduce crime and fear crime while strengthening public safety every day of the year and in every neighborhood.

Before we get to her questions, I'd like to give a brief presentation highlighting some of the work that we've been doing in the results of those efforts. So, again, our mission really is about our officers are guided by our mission, which is again dedicated to working in partnership with the community to fight crime and reduce fear and improve quality of life in our neighborhoods. Some of the goals that we have are to prevent and reduce crime violence and fear crime. We proactively engage in all our communities and connect those in need of services. We're trying to enhance our professionalism and accountability and improve our public police service and operations in general.

And of course, we we try to take care of our employees' health and wellness in general. One of the ways in which we're meeting our mission is around efficiencies and accountability. We are on track for early January for one of the first milestones that we need to meet for a clear accreditation, which is international accreditation regarding our standards and practices and making sure that they're all best practices within our industry and that we actually do those practices. Another way that we're trying to make sure the organization meets this efficiency and accountability goal of ours is we've reorganized organization multiple times trying to align different units, putting our academy and professional development together, and some of our other units to be more efficient and effective in making sure we meet the missions that we're out to do. We're rolling out a critical decision making model citywide within the police department to deal with mental health issues, at least running across folks that we might might see that actually are armed with weapons other than firearms, that might be having a mental health crisis to make sure that we're able to deescalate in a way that keeps, that person safe and our officers safe.

Another point which we're trying to say around efficiencies and effectiveness is within the last three years, fiscal years, our overtime budget has been decreased over those three years. 13.4% decrease from 24 to 25 and a 5.9 decrease from '25 to projected for 2026, should say, 5.9% decrease if we continue along the course where we are. As far as staffing concerns, we are trying to maintain our staffing. We've increased it somewhat from 2324, and we're continuing to try to recruit and have some have success recruiting to try to maintain a staffing level, particularly within the patrol force. On crime stats, major crime statistics are violent crimes.

It's been reduced from 2024 by 6%, with a five year average reduction if you if you look at it over that period of time. If it if you go over a ten year average, it's been reduced by 14%. Property crime has been reduced at least another 2% from 2023, and then we've had a slight increase of 5% if you look at the five year average on that. But continue, that reduction goes down to 2% over the over the ten year period. It's always good to have a barometer to compare our city.

We don't really have any peer cities in New England. So we go throughout the country to look at other cities similar in size or what we call major cities. And crime statistically, as far as that goes, we are doing quite well in comparison to the other cities, averaging about 3,433 violent crimes per city residents, which is a leader within our country by far. And if you go look at homicides for the year, no no any homicide is too many, but there but in comparison to other cities, are doing quite well. Again, leading the country in that way.

Firearm statistics. We are doing well in in virtually all categories. Confirmed shots fired, we're down. Total incidents of guns fired, we're down. Shots victims who have been fatally shot from from last year, we were down by one one person.

Again, non fatal shooting victims were down like four percent. Total shooting victims were down 5% 4%, excuse me. So we are down in almost all categories regarding violent crime. Gunfire incidents. Overall incidents in gun fires in the city has declined by 2% from 2025 with a 30, in a 36 decline, 36% decline compared to our five year average.

And 2025 was the lowest year for incidents of gunfire in the city since we started keeping records in 2011. Person shots, shooting victims, have declined as we mentioned before, 4% from 2025, 34% if you look at the five year average, and 40% if you look at the ten year average of shooting victims shot in the city. Our officers continue to do really good work retrieving and and taking guns off the street with over 871 last year. 590 of those guns were crime guns, 280 were surrendered, and 54 were privately manufactured firearms, better known as ghost guns. And the last time, last slide we want to put, we are always looking for good men and women that want to contribute and serve the public.

And so for those at home that might see this slide, if you'd like to join BPD, you can text us at join BPD to (617) 752-8673 and try to connect with a recruiter. And so thank you very much for this opportunity, and we are looking forward to your questions.

Okay. Thank you very much. So, we're going to go to my colleagues here in order of arrival. We're going to go with seven minutes for the first round. And whenever you're ready, councilor Murphy.

Thank you. Thank you to the panel who's here. In 2025, the Boston police handled 493,622 calls and texts to 911. That is hundreds of thousands of times Boston residents reached out in moments of fear, crisis, danger, uncertainty, or need, trusting that someone would answer and that would come and help them. As we review the department's budget today, we should focus on whether Boston is providing the staffing, training, and resources needed to answer those calls and keep every neighborhood safe.

Some people try to weaponize the conversation around policing and public safety, but residents are not served by buzzwords, political labels, or slogans. They live on streets where they need to feel safe, in homes where they want peace, and in neighborhoods where they expect help to come when they call. The work of the BPD is not limited to enforcement. Offices and dispatches respond to emergencies, support victims, build relationships in neighborhoods, and work with partners to help residents in crisis. Accountability and community trust matter, so do staffing, training, response time, and resources.

This should not be about being pro police or anti police. It should not be about whether officers should be paid overtime for work they have already completed or whether the police department budget should be cut to fund other city departments. It should be about being pro resident, pro safety, pro accountability, pro common sense. Boston cannot be a thriving city if residents do not feel safe. We have a responsibility to support public safety in every neighborhood.

So I wanna thank the officers, the dispatchers, detectives, civilian staff, and all of the public safety partners who answer that call show up for our residents and work every day to keep Boston safe. Thank you for myself, my family. I appreciate that. So we are a city also that can and always has been able to fund both. There is, to me, this belief that if we fund one thing, we can't do something else.

And we know time and time again for decades, we've been able to support youth jobs. We've been able to support senior programming and expanding partnerships with our mental health partners. All things that are part of the conversation, which all of first responders understand that it's never just policing. It's all of the other things. It's housing. It's jobs. It's food. It's good schools. So thank you for also working so closely with all of the other city departments and nonprofits across the city. So I have one one question.

Well, two, I guess. If you could speak to, like, the public health, mental health. I know we're increasing, like, with youth build and wanting more social workers, and we've had some, you know, direct hearing conversations. We're not at a place yet where, like, every department has a a social worker at a station, knowing that we're placing them where the need is most. If you could speak to that, and if there's other partnerships that are directly trying to support that mental health support, either working alongside our offices or giving them the tools they need to do that also.

Sure. And thank you for your comments. We currently work with Youth Connect who work in quite a few of our stations throughout the city and they have a very, very strong partner as far as referrals helping young people that we come across that are in need of many different areas. Oh, yeah. And of course, we have the best clinicians that are The

public health

commissioner? The public health that we currently work and co respond to certainly a certain number of calls in general. We you know, mental health in general is something that seems to be growing, and so we could always use more resource or more partnerships, partnerships, I'll I'll say, around in that space to do that. But the fact is is that we are very active with the resources that we do have. We use them to the maximum that we can.

One thing I've been hearing that's alarming, but I think true, that there's an anticipation that there'll be more sex trafficking, sex assaults when FIFA comes into the city. And if you could speak to how we're preparing for that.

Mr. Song? Yes. You don't have to touch it.

Don't touch Yeah, the

for the panelists, just don't touch the buttons. We'll take care of it.

So to answer your question about in in anticipation of FIFA, from the investigative standpoint of the police department, we have, for several months, been working on different plans to identify significant crime areas that that tend to see increases during long term events like this, especially international events that bring a lot of people in. One of those things that we have seen mentioned through different intelligence materials and discussions we've had with other cities is in fact the prostitution, human trafficking and potential for kind of sexual related domestic violence things to go to be on the rise. Family Justice Center, Captain Thomas, Deputy Evans who's here, have have been very proactive in trying to put together a network of people to be prepared for that from a human trafficking cross training of the family justice detectives so that we're prepared to respond both to specific incidents as well as do demand reduction and things like that. Also looking at kind of public information being put out ahead of time so that we can get ahead of letting people know that we're gonna be looking at that. We're gonna pay more attention to that, and we'll be taking it very seriously.

So so there's been a lot of work that's been going on for since since last year, trying to set this up and make sure that we're prepared for that and have all the things that we need to be prepared for that. That includes outside of that our technology, our people within the technology divisions that do cellphones and computer forensics and things like that, because most of this stuff, like a lot of crime, is being done online as opposed to kind of in any traditional way.

Do you work with the hotels or like Airbnb?

Yes, Yes. We have active outreach to the hotels through our critical infrastructure, people at the Brick, as well as just the relationships that sergeant detective Mark Sullivan and his group at human trafficking king have developed across the city and over the last several years and the investigations they do. So that will continue. We will ramp that up as we get closer, but that is definitely happening.

Thank you. Thank you, chair.

Okay. Thank you. Councilor Culpepper.

Thank you, chair, and, thank you, commissioner and your leadership team for joining us this morning. I've had great relationships with the past commissioner going back to Evans and Davis and Ross. I think our relationship is probably one of the strongest. Even though we may not always agree on things, we can still talk it through. Here's my concern.

I'm concerned that we have two cities within the city. I look at Southend and I look at the community policing model and in the past I think we've had some of the strongest community policing models in B2. And then I look at the South End. And I look at what's happening in the South End with masks and casts and the focus on community policing there and getting out into the street. And then I look at B2 and look at what happened and what's happening with regard to many of the folks that were in the mass and cast catchment area moving down to Nubian Square.

And I'm concerned because not much is happening there in terms of community policing. And I think we've had strong community policing in Roxbury in the past, especially when violence was at its height. I know we just have a new captain. But I'm concerned that the community policing motto with regard to being on the street in Nubian Square is not as strong as where it needs to be. And how can we and what do we need to do to really make that stronger that we're dealing with on the ground issues that the businesses are complaining about.

I talked to one of the business owners yesterday and he's really upset. We're having a meeting tonight. It's called an emergency meeting at the Urban League where hopefully the captain from B two will be there. But he said he went over to the station, he walked over to the station and he told them there was a problem down by his business and they told him to call 911. I think that's the kind of concern that I have that we don't have and I think with community policing, we need policing on the street, walking up and down the street.

They need to know who is in the neighborhood. They need to know the businesses. And so tell me what we need to do to form, and I've gone to the South End meetings with Gerardi there and he's given his presentation. They know the district. I hope the b two captain, when he comes to this meeting tonight, he can give us an update on what they're doing in B 2. But we don't see the kind of on the ground movement in B 2 like we do in B 4. Right? Something is B 4. So

so some of what what what you may mentioned is that one of all, we'll be practicing community policing everywhere. The success of it always depends on partnerships that we have from everyone, from the public to our officers actually engaging them to listen to the the problems and issues. And, you know, particularly at Nubian Square, we've had success and then kind of went back a little bit and then had more success and then went back a little bit. Right now, currently, we have a new captain there and he's actually introducing himself to the entire community and, and all I've heard from the folks that we've been in touch with is that they're happy with the engagement and the level of engagement that the officers are actively doing very recently. This you know, that's the trend that I've heard.

There's no doubt about that. But this is something that we always have to do. I mean, it's this is it's always a work in progress, making sure that we're engaging the community to hear from them because problems move. They move street to street, neighborhoods, corners. It moves and the fact is that we don't know if because we don't surveil the world, we don't do that.

But we need to hear from the community about where the problems and activities are. And then we actually adjust our, you know, what we do to make sure that we're in those areas to address their needs. And so the communication always has to be ongoing for us to keep up real time with all the issues that come along the way. So, you know, we're always looking to improve. There's no doubt about that.

And what you made mention is it's if you're talking about certainly, you know, drug addiction and mental health issues, that's a worldwide problem and it happens and you might see it in all parts of our city, all parts of almost any city. And so, you know, we are doing all we can to, you know, mitigate, you know, what's out there and connect them with services. If you've been here a long time, if you look at the Mass and Cast area, it looks nowhere near like it did years ago. I mean, it is, you know, nowhere. It's like a total different thing. I I wish, you know, sometimes that you see the news media talk about that area. If they would reflect and look at the old pictures and the things that were going on there now and look today, it would look like

No. I see it. No. I see it. Every day, I ride right through there. That's my point.

So the things about success sometimes is that, you know, as you have more success, there's more expectations or more. And we should try to do more and we are trying to do more. But we're for incremental success, always involving the public, always involving that communication between what's going on.

And I agree that it moves. You have your highs and your lows. I agree. But I think part of that depends on who the captain is. With the captains, it moves. You have your highs and your lows. And I'm hearing just the opposite of what you're telling me. Let me be specific with you. Yesterday, we wanted to talk to the captain. We've been trying to talk to the captain. We called his no. Let me finish

Can I ask you this, counselors?

Let me finish. Let me finish. We called the office to talk to the captain. We keep getting this sergeant. We don't have the same let me when captain Hussein was there, I had him speed dial. Everybody just called him. I'm trying to meet this captain. I haven't met him yet. And so my point is that, hopefully, he's there tonight with this community meeting because I'm hearing just the opposite of what you're hearing. And I'm I'm not talking about me.

I'm talking about what I'm hearing from the community. And so And when you look at Nubian, you don't see the results that you see in the Massacast area. And you and look, I rolled by that big truck again that that with the lights on at the corner Of Mass And Albany. Right? I haven't seen that big thing once in Nubian Square.

Yeah. If have a response.

Yeah, so first of all, the captain who's there, and by the way all our captains work very hard in a sense that we use the same tools and techniques almost in every district. So it's not about the individual, it's the strategies we use. And that particular cabinet is very responsive. And so I have to beg to differ because I've actually gone through and talked to some of those people in the businesses and I've heard nothing but you know, it's not made up, nothing but rave reviews about the work that they're doing there. We work hard daily.

All our officers have all ranks of making sure that we meet the community and address those needs. And I'm pretty proud of the work that we're doing. We will always try to get better and we will work on that, but the fact is that I think that the one little window snipping in time or whatever you're making reference to is probably not a good enough sample to make a characterization that we're not doing a good enough job there. So give us some more time to work with that, not only in that district, but with all our offices. This is just not one place. We're a whole department. We work as a team.

Yeah. But If you have a comment, I'm fine.

Commissioner Woodside, let's take that walk through the Nubian, the two of us, and let's hear what they're saying so we can be right on the ground. We can hear the same thing. Let's take a walk through there next week.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Culpepper. We'll come back for a second round. We've been joined by Councillor Flynn, Councillor Pippen, Councillor Braden, you're up next.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good to see you. Thank you for all you do. I want to echo comments from my colleagues about how important the work is. I am particularly proud of the fact that Boston's renowned for its community policing, and I was just wondering in terms of measurable outcomes, how do we evaluate the effectiveness of our community? Like, I know the crime stats probably speak to that, but what what ways do we evaluate the effectiveness of our community policing?

Well, so that that's an excellent question, like stats. You you may mention the crime stats. When you're in a community that there's trust, people call the police.

Yes.

They tell us about stuff. We're able to actually adjust our strategies to meet the needs. They actually, you know, tell us stuff. A perfect example, I think, our tip line has, in the last few years, I don't know, tripled the amount of tips that we get from the public. And that comes from trust and then feeling as though if we tell you something, you're going to do something about it.

We Could I yeah, I don't want to interrupt you because I realize I've got a limited time with lots of colleagues here this morning, which is very good. In terms of the trust thing is really critically important. I'm just wondering in the present climate, like nationally no, and this is an additional question, just as a sort of a segue into the next. Have you felt that we're still getting a good response from our immigrant community? Are they still confident that they can call the police department and be confident in their own safety?

And so I can't say that, right, in a sense that, you know, so we are in all communities. We hear from a lot of folks, particularly, you know, people in, you know, that work in hospitals or certainly faith places where they say that their membership, you know, doesn't need to come to services as much or, you know, get services in general. You know, because we don't keep data on, you know, immigrant services, things of that nature, We're not going to have any data on

that. Yeah.

But anecdotally, we do hear from people that, you know, that there are some communities that absolutely are fearful right now in general, of government in general. And even though I think we have a long history of building ties with our immigrant communities, the atmosphere of the world has impacted us

Sadly. Some I was just looking at the budget in terms of the Bureau of Community Engagement is seeing a 6.1% decrease. Would you like to speak to that? Like, how will that impact our community policing status?

No. I'll I'll be quite honest. At some point, this community engagement will go away because we're gonna be engaging the entire police department is doing community engagement. In some places, community engagements are created for one unit to do it for an entire police department.

Yeah.

In our case, our entire police department is now trying to be at the same level as our engagement unit. So the goal is not to make engagement that unit bigger. The goal is to get rid of it, and the the the actual goal is to make sure that every level, every part of our department, both Swan and Subvenant, engage in community policing to help us be the best police department we can be. That's our goal.

Excellent. And I know I'm sure we have this problem all across the city, but for chronic chronic problem properties it's too early in the morning for tongue twisters. What are the required forms of reporting tools for officers to complete to ensure that incidents are consistently documented and tracked across the department? It may seem like a small thing, but we are also trying to hold landlords and property owners accountable for not having unruly houses. And if and we're also trying to develop some penalties for them and, you know, to try and hold them accountable over the longer term.

But if we don't have good documentation, we're sort of sunk a little.

Sure. I'm gonna let Superintendent Brown answer, but it it begins and ends with letting us know about it, reporting it. So incident reports, that's the first data point that we start to collect.

Yeah. Superintendent Roddy.

Good Good morning, Counsel Brady.

How are you? Good.

Good. So when a problem property is identified, usually it happens when the with the officers in the street, when they're responding to calls, whether it be loud parties on a weekend or whatever the situation may be. Based upon those reports, those reports will go directly to the community service office. And during meetings between captains and the community service sergeants, those problem problems will be identified. And then we will also get in touch with the city agency, of course, kind of work ISG, whatever it may take. You know, had a couple of those down in District 3 and some over 18 last So year, as you that's pretty much kind of the route that it goes. But it stays documented and they stay on top of it until we can get something done either through ISG or any of the other problem property groups we work with.

Okay, that's grand. And then I know I'm keeping an eye on the time here. In terms of the issues with folks in a mental health crisis, I know it's a particularly challenging situation. Are we learning or exploring other I know I know you are, but I know it's sort of a very sad situation where folks are in a mental health crisis and very often they end up there's a shooting and they end up dead. Know de escalating somebody who's in a mental health crisis is not the easiest thing to do.

Just how successful are we and can we learn from other police departments in other parts of the world even of how they handle that?

An excellent question. And so, you know, we have partners. We have best team clinicians. We we do a co response. We do a lot to try to mitigate, particularly when you know someone that's in a mental health crisis, to bring in other professionals to help deal with that.

But the reality is, is that we go to so many calls, you don't always know the person is in a mental health crisis. And when they have a weapon of some type, it almost doesn't matter at that point around it if they can harm others or themselves in some way. And so we work quite a bit with not only with our teams, our best team clinicians, with the co response. You're saying what can we do to learn from it? Well, we evaluate every encounter we have after the fact to see if we can do things better.

We've increased, I think, the best team clinicians that we have with us throughout the city during that time period. We've increased. Don't know the number right offhand, but I do know every station has one. We even with referrals, even with the young folks, when you heard me talk about youth connect and social workers and trying to engage the families and hopefully to reduce the likelihood that they'll ever, you know, be involved with the police again, trying to get them the help that they need. It's a very, very, very tough thing. It seems to be growing in nature like the mental health crisis, you know, throughout certainly our country

Yes.

Is growing. And the fact is our officers need to be trained in not only identifying it but, you know, what to do if they're on their own when we don't have professionals with because the fact is we just don't know. There's no crystal ball out there of knowing. You just can't look at someone from the outside and tell before you ever get there that they're in crisis and things of that nature. And even when and we I hate to say it, we've had a more incident recently where there's someone who's trained in all of the above Uh-huh. And it still was not helpful.

No. I know.

And so it's a very, very tough thing. The fact is we evaluate what we do daily. We try to keep our officers trained as much as we can. We have all these co response and other, you know, partners to help us as much as possible.

Thank you. I'll come back for more questions later. Thank you. So did you have any other comments?

I'd also just like to add that, you know, we have over 300 officers have been trained in the CIT program. Also have a CIT class starting this month, in May, and the new recruits who are in the academy now will be getting an eight hour block of the CIT training. And of course, you know, our co response with, you know, Kelly Young and Erica Green and the NEST team and everything else is what's really kind of been, driving the ball down there in the mass and cast area. So, we're continuing to work. We're also going be doing the ICAT training, which will allow officers to make, you know, better tactical decisions when they're out in the street relative to how they deal with people and the positioning of where they're standing when they're engaging in different type of incident.

So I believe with the ICAT training and the CIT training we'll be able to put a better product out there and deal with the community and people in crisis.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you very much. We've been joined by Councillors Durkin and Louis Jen. Councillor Fitzgerald, we're doing seven minutes for the first round.

Thank you, Chair. And as this is a hearing on substance use response, we'll keep it on mass and cast. That rests squarely in my district. Liz stole a little bit of my thunder, in some of those questions, but I I'd like to just sort of continue to expand on it. First, I wanna say thank you very much, to yourself, commissioner, to sergeant Gero, captain Burns, and all the members of the men and women in the police at d four have done an exceptional job, especially over this past year.

The notice the difference is noticeable. Hearing it from my constituents in the South End, they are extremely happy with the way things are going, knowing it's still plenty of work to go. And with the warm weather heating up, I know that it only makes us sort of focus even more. But still want to give my continued appreciation. We put a lot of work in on both recommendations and working with you as well.

So in that, I want to you know, one of our other recommendations is to expand the NEST team because we've seen this model continue to produce good results. We've had this conversation before, commissioner, and I just wanna think, like, you touched upon it as well with superintendent Brown, but the training of how to make I think the last time we spoke, said every officer will be a NEST officer at some point. Right?

That's the goal.

That's the goal. Right? And do we know, like, what is the timeline of that? And what is the what more of the training will it take to sort of allow that where this type of engagement that occurs at Mass and Cass specifically now can occur citywide?

So that's twofold. It's one is a culture change, and it's really a strategy. And actually empowering officers to want to understand what that is and that they can incorporate it in their toolkit, you know, everywhere, you know, and not just it's not just one set of similar to how I said the engagement unit, what I said before, a lot of places they think that those are the only people that are supposed to engage, and the fact is we need everyone to. Well, the same thing around the NEST strategy philosophy that they use, all officers could use that about how to engage and deal with some of those issues. And so we're currently, you know, trying to model that with it.

I don't know how long it will take. It might you know, we have quite a few officers. So currently we're using them as, you know, as many places as we can, but we're trying to grow the number of people. We're having them train the trainer, so to speak, of of exposing their philosophies and techniques to other ones so people both understand it and have the confidence in doing it. It's there's no tricks involved with it. It's just really just, you know, it's part of your toolkit. You can engage in this way, and then every officer can be responsible of doing that. And they do a tremendous tremendous job doing that. I'm happy you mentioned, you know, Sergeant Gero. And, you know, that work started actually in Newbian Square.

Yep.

Did such a tremendous job that we actually moved it to another place, ironically, that, you know

I wonder where he'll go next.

But back to Newbian. But we're working on it. I guess your question is when will the whole department? Don't know, but that's the goal, and we're trying as fast as we can amongst all the other trainings and things that we do.

Yes. And I will to Reverend Culpepper's point, I do want to back him up on that, the some of the issues at Nubian. In my previous job, I had to do a lot of property management in that area. Was just there the other day. And you see the drug dealings happening in plain sight. And there so there are definitely other issues there. And just wanna make sure people understand that the the recommendations that we're making for police and this it's not just for mass and cast. This is a city this is the hope that, right, we can go to the hot spot and, deploy our resources to tamp down an area. And I I do recommend that I would love to take that walk with you, reverend and commissioner, to go through Nubian as well. I think it would be helpful.

That being said, switching to oh, has there been any feedback from from your staff, both on the ground and internally, about the relationship with the CRT team and Kelly Young and her CRT team? It seems to be working well, but I just wanna make sure right? Any any criticism I can bring, anything we can do better, anything I can advocate for to help that relationship grow to even get better results. Thank you, Councillor. So the NEST team, as

you know, we've expanded a little bit more. We've got a got on Sergeant Giro a couple more people over there. So they're they're up to 14 police officers now. Also, we rotate officers through the district to work with Sergeant Giro so they can get some exposure to how the NEST team operates. So guys are actually being trained kind of on the job, of course, tour

of duty.

And so they get an experience, they get the know how of how to do this different work. The relationships between the police, the NEST team, and the officers who've worked with NEST, and Kelly Young and Erica Green, is phenomenal. Great. It's been nothing but positive on all sides. I've never heard anything negative relative to that relationship. The model is really working. The command post, we started that thing, as you remember, down here downtown with the spring initiative. Then we moved it over to Mass and Cass. And we have been getting over to Nubian Square here and there but we will make more efforts to get that way and help Captain Adam Amoni get what he needs over in that Nubian Square area. We've also trained additional officers up in the bike units.

We only have about maybe eight to 10 guys in the bike unit now. We're expanding training in the districts and getting the as you remember before, we were trying to get them the uniforms and the bikes and everything, and we've kind of got that up running. So we should be fine.

No, that's great. I appreciate that, and it's good to hear that the relationship is working well. And know that we've put a lot of people onto recovery through this model, and that is the end goal. It is not to arrest them. It is not to put them in jail. It is to get them on a path to recovery. Put the NEST and CRT together. We have seen a lot of folks be on the path to recovery and that is the goal. Thank you so much for your role in that.

Yes, sir. Also, this weekend during the Boston Relief Association Awards ceremony, the CRT team all received awards. Oh, they? They did.

Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, that's great. That's great to hear. Switching a little bit down the street, South Bay, just the efforts that we're seeing there, any trends. At one point, that was a hotspot for some youth activity. And last summer, they had an amendment in the budget to sort of focus on that, that I think helped out. But have we seen anything recently, any uptick or things at South Bay are looking good?

According to Captain John Conroy over at C6, he says there has been a decline. There's constant code nineteens there, officers will respond if something happens. We were having an issue a couple weeks ago with youth coming in after school disrupting But the area and they've put some resources down there, and I let him know any additional resources you need, let me know, and we'll get them to him.

Great. My last comment would just be the walking the beat of Bowdoin, Geneva with Sergeant Golden has been very helpful over at C-eleven. So a big thank you to Captain McCarthy, Sergeant Golden at C-eleven for all the work they've done. We've seen great strides over there as well. I'll continue. Save my questions for the next round.

Thank you, Chair. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Flynn?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the police commissioner and the team for being here. I also, in my district, represent a large section of mass and casts. Just wanted to highlight that as well as Reverend Culpepper as well. I live just down the road from Andrews Square, as you know, commissioner, and that area of Andrews Square is impacted by what goes on at Mausenkaus.

I was a probation officer for eight years prior to this and spent a lot of time getting people into recovery. Commissioner, one of the issues I focused on over the last eight years, as you probably know, the crime lab. I want us to have the best crime lab in the country, like New York, Police Department. Boston Police opted for a three member board of directors who have worked at the crime lab previously with the issues we've experienced for several years now. Was it all considered? Was it considered or were there any continued concerns about a fresh perspective in new directions and culture of the crime lab?

So we were always looking for new directions that will make us more efficient and effective. I know there were some vacancies that were open for a while. I have do you wanna speak to that? No problem.

So, counsel, guess, is your question, should we be looking outside? Is that is

that your question? Well, why do we why do we create a board of directors instead of hiring strong leadership? And I know we did struggle over the last several years with leadership, including one person, it appears, that was on an extended leave of absence for a period of time. But my goal is certainly it's why screening a state of the art crime lab, but strong positive leadership, someone that's there day to day that's doing the job. I want to keep that drama out of the office so people are able to do their job efficiently, effectively.

But we haven't had that in a while with transitional managers in there.

I don't know if I agree fully with you on that, Counselor. Now, we have very strong leadership at the crime lab. It may not look traditionally the way it did before when we had a crime lab director, a latent print direct person in charge of latent prints and firearms. We now have it brought all together. But the leadership under sergeant detective Jefferson, under Kevin Murad, and under Rachel Lamery, Rachel Camper, has been very strong.

Yes, there were some transitional time periods there, but we continue to look for people for the open spots that we have that are going to contribute to that. And whether that's from internal or from outside remains to be seen. But the idea is we all agree. The crime lab plays a a significant role in everything we do, especially in the investigations division, the investigation bureau, that everything we do rely on the crime lab, from the quality of the work they do, the integrity that they show, the leadership that they show. So I would I would push back just a little bit to say that, you know, we're looking for the same type of leadership you are.

Wherever we find that, it's going to be the best person that we can get for that job. And dealing with the kind of the issues of the why screening and things like that, those are also a priority for us as well. But we have challenges there when it comes you know, paying for what we want to get, the budget issues and things like that.

I do want to add to that we're nationally accredited our primary I know. I know. In reviews. And I think their last review was almost exceptional. So I'd say the leadership is fairly strong, and I go a little further and say the leadership starts at the top. I think I'm, like, part of the leadership at the police department. And so we work pretty hard. The crime lab is I had has an outstanding reputation. And and so I I don't know where who you would get any other information from.

Commissioner Rob Commissioner

Rob Councillor Flynn, sorry.

Just I'm

pausing your time. Just for anyone, silence your phones. I hear some beeping for text messages. So I apologize. I pause your time. Continue.

Yeah. Commissioner, there was challenges at the crime lab for a number of years. I've focused on this issue, trying to get positive leadership at the crime lab. There were there was a person there that was on an extended leave of absence, maybe for two years. When you have someone that's on a leave of absence for two years, there is really at times no accountability.

Sometimes there was a manager filling in. Commissioner, I come from when I served twenty four years in the Navy, it's about leadership, it's about responsibility. When no one's responsible at the crime lab, things can get caught in the system of pass. My main goal is to provide the best leadership we can to test the use the most advanced technology, why screening, of course. But we did have challenges there, and I have worked with state officials as well on this issue, but I just can't I I have to acknowledge that we had problems.

It's not it wasn't it wasn't perfect. But let me let me go on let me go on and and continue. Commissioner, how many police officers do we currently have on on Boston that are active? And how many do we need?

Lisa's gonna give you the exact number coming up here. How many do we need? You know, that's a loaded question there in a sense. I would say this.

Well, it's not really a loaded question. My concern, commissioner, is when police officers are working sixteen hours a day consistently. It's hurting their families. It's hurting the officer. It's hurting the communities.

I don't want to I don't want to see an officer be working fifteen hours a day, make a mistake, and then be before internal affairs, knowing that we put that officer in that situation because we we made him work fifteen, sixteen hours a day. The first conversation you and I had, commissioner, we became commissioner, Police officers are working twenty hours or eighteen hours a day. And that's what I wanna make sure is we don't set up police officers for failure. And I think you want the same the same thing, commissioner. But I do have a problem when an officer is working sixteen hours a day and thinking that police officer is gonna be on top of hers his or her game for an ex for that period period of time.

Lisa will give you the answer. But, yes, when I first came, there certainly were some issues about us, you know, forcing over time a lot more than we did. We reduced that quite a bit. And the fact is those days of triple shifts and things of that nature don't exist anymore right now. You wanna answer one question about the

Good morning, counselor.

Good morning.

As of May 4, we have 2,102 officers with a 132 recruits in the academy right now. So for a total of uniform total, it would be 2,234. But obviously, with the understanding that the recruits will not graduate until this fall.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, I'm out of time, but do I have the ability to ask one more question? Sure. I

paused you in the middle

of the comments. Commissioner, are you concerned at all over the next six months or over the next year that we're going to see a lot of retirements from police officers, including police officers that may not have reached their mandatory retirement age? And are we prepared for that?

So retirements are something we deal with almost every year, particularly as, you know, people age out and get within that range of retirement time. And so that's why we spend so much time and effort on recruitment, making sure that we're bringing people in. And the mayor's been good in the sense that we've the last few years we've brought that we've had at least two recruit classes each year. That's been able to maintain the number that we've had, if not increased it. So, we were gonna have to continue that. There's no doubt about that because, you know, as people become eligible for retirement, you know, they've earned that. And so that's their right if they choose to to leave us early.

My my goal is I think we need to hire consistently 300 police officers every year for the next at least the next ten years, and also for elected officials to support police officers that are currently on the job so that they know that city officials do have their back. We have to support police officers, we have to support police officers' families as well. Mr. Chair, thank you for giving me an

Okay, extra thank you very much. Councillor Pippen? You're up. Joined by Councilor Santana.

Thank you, mister chair. And good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for the work that you all do. I always say this. I'm very grateful for the work that the Boston Police Department does in my district and across the city. And I do not envy your work. It's a it's hard work. And I also wanna give a shout out to a gentleman with a gold tie in the back. I know him as detect detective John Fitzgerald.

He's my my first favorite John Fitzgerald, second to this counselor. But Distant second. Distant second. But when I got to the job, I was I was able to tour with the b three station along with captain Flynn, and just really grateful for the warm embracing that you all had over there at b three. And I also wanna give a shout out to the officers at e eighteen and e five for the work that they do.

And that leads me to my first set of questions, which is the support for the community service officers. They're the officers that I I see every day. I'm in a meeting with them almost every night, or I see them at the Archdale hot dog nights. I see them in a at a walk in Cleary Square, or in they were I was just with the community service officers at the Loop in Mattapan, and we're trying to help with resident concerns. And what I see is that they're always out in the community, and they actually do a lot.

I wanted to quite a bit, actually. I wanted to know what are there any funding support for them? Or do what flexibility do they have in order to be able to support community efforts like hot dog nights, like little leagues, like community walk the beat efforts?

Outside of you know, I mean, they don't really have budgets city budgets for that, but we have a police foundation that actually raises money to actually for us to do those additional things in the community that, you know, I'm happy you mentioned that. And so, you know, that's one of the sources where we actually are able to do stuff in the community. We want to get whether it's Hood who donates money to our, you know, our ice cream truck that people might have seen in the neighborhood, or the foundation who gives us additional funds to be able to support the ice cream truck and other things within the city that helped us build trust, particularly with the young community. So those community service officers, I agree, they work really hard, they're in all our communities, They do tremendous work day in and day out of connecting us to the communities, community meetings, our community comm stat meetings that we have. You know, they support every district captain in a big way.

Yeah. Yeah. What I've noticed is that the officers that are the ones at those meetings, they're the ones the the residents really feel comfortable going out to them. I've seen them do mentoring with young adults. I've seen them, visit schools. I've seen them go to just different parts of my district. So I always like to mention them to support them. I think that's the type of policing that I wanna see across the city. I know that you mentioned already that every officer event eventually is going to embody that. I think that's the nature of the Boston Police Department that we have that advantage compared to other places, that it's definitely more community policing oriented.

I wanna pivot over a little bit towards the mental health support for for officers. The reason why I said I don't envy your job is because I know it takes a lot of the mental toll. And I and and I've learned from some of the police officers that I represent in my district that it takes a toll on their families. It takes a toll on if it's either the long shifts that they're working or just what they've run through throughout the day. I wanna know what type of support there is for if a police officer needs some sort of mental health assistance, if they need to take a day off that is caused because of a case that they're working on. I just wanna know what is the overall wraparound services that a police officer is able to get?

So, well, thank you. So we have a peer support for all our officers in in in general, and they have access to mental health services, as well as, you know, the service services that they have access to through their obviously, their own insurance. We more recently, or in the last year, have an app that helps with some of their mental health issues that might have with just resources and tools that helps them deal with some of those things coming from, I don't know, from financial to meditation to all the things that could increase their wellness. And then from time to time we have physician that comes in and gives them screenings and just overall access to mental health check ins when, you know, certainly if they want it, but we generally try to open it up as much as possible for all officers. We'd like to be able to do it more in a larger way, but again, that is something where funding is necessary for that.

Thank you. Yeah, that's a big topic for me. I'm big on mental health. I like to speak very publicly about it in my personal life and here in the chamber as well. I just think it leads to a healthier life in general. So, glad to hear that the

yes, sir. And I should mention also, contractually, even within the last contract, they now have thirty minutes a day that actually can, you know, work out or and or, you know, meditate or yoga or do certain things, even within the work day to help certainly increase their wellness.

Okay. That's good. And I know that there's gyms inside each of the precincts, right? Correct. Some better than others.

Correct. Okay. But it's also included.

Alright. That's good. Another thing that I like to focus on is representation. And and what I mean by representation is just that there's people that look like you, that they speak you have similar languages, that they come from different backgrounds. I know that the police department is a pretty diverse body. But I wanted to know what do you take into consideration when you're looking at, for example, e 18? There's a large Haitian population. There's a large Latino population. How do you make sure that there's officers that represent that body at those precincts so that the residents have someone that they know that they can speak to in their language and make sure that they feel like they're welcomed?

Well, begins by the number of people that you have that are diversity department in general. So, you know, certainly diversity is something that we care about. We want people from all neighborhoods and communities in our city. We're a diverse city, so when we do that, we bring in diversity throughout our department. Once you do that, it's a whole lot easier to make sure that, you know, there are certainly people who represent all communities in each district. But if you're not able to, you know, bring in diversity, it's a lot harder to make sure people represent those communities in the district.

And the cadets that are coming in, I've noticed it is a pretty diverse body of cadets, correct? And so, the last thing I'll ask is, like, how do you make sure that you are hiring a very diverse staff, starting young with the cadets programs?

So, again, it goes by, you know, the we're trying to recruit, whether it's in the public school system. We have a really robust recruitment drive in general. Maybe Lisa can speak a little bit more about that, but particularly around the cadet program. But the fact is, is that cadets are, you know, highly diverse individuals that we bring in, and hopefully those are our future officers or at least recruit officers to go into the academy class.

We've, over the past couple of years, we've launched a very hard driven and recruitment process. More so for the recruits going in the academy, but also not forgetting the cadets because they are future officers. We're constantly going into the schools. We get invited to some of the schools to talk about how how do you become a cadet, how do you apply. And we're concentrating in those neighborhoods that we wanna make sure that we represent the city accordingly. But we have strong recruitment efforts in our HR department, and I think they've grown. And we've really done made some great strides in recruiting people that represent all communities within the city of Boston.

Okay. And we have at least about, I think, 25 anticipated cadets going in September. And of the breakdown of about 28 cadets that we have now, we have like 21 males to seven females. 18 speak a second language. Wow.

Yeah. And so and they range in age from 19 to 23. So a lot of the classes that we've been bringing in have been highly, highly diverse, both the cadet program and the recruits that go into the academy. They're usually they're almost always from our city in that way too. So that's why I say it's important to, you know, go throughout our city and our department should represent what our city looks like, and that's what we're doing. And we've been fairly successful.

Thank you. Can add one thing

on the

on the

assignments and diversity? You mentioned District 18. So from the the BIS perspective, as we're filling spots in detective bureau, particular the lieutenant detective, the commander position in E-eighteen. We first of all obviously have to pick from a pool of applicants. We pick looking for the qualities we want, the leadership, the skill sets that we believe are important for that position.

But in the last round, we I think we appointed, I think, five new lieutenant detectives around the city. District 18 in particular, when we came when it came time for our decision making on that, Lieutenant Daniel Poussey, who was who was a Creole Haitian speaking lieutenant, first and foremost, a fantastic leader, has a great skill set, great abilities, but also had that the connection to District 18 through the Haitian community. And so that was an easy fix for us. We lost Lieutenant Detective Beth Leary, who made captain, great lieutenant, but we were able to put somebody in there who fit right into the fabric of that community. So we try to take that into consideration when we're making those assignments within the pool of people that we're picking from.

Also,

last night we had the community comp stat at High 18 part. At the Pride Building, which is an amazing building, and Lieutenant Pucci did a fantastic job. Really good kind of feedback from the community that last night, and the diversity of the officers who were there, you know, kind of reflected that.

Yeah. I really appreciate the proactiveness in this particular subject. So thank you. I know my time

is up. Thank you, Okay. Mr.

Yeah, just a reminder of my colleagues, recruiting and diversity is on the agenda for this afternoon. No, no, I think it's good to get all good questions. So next up is councilor Durkin, then councilor Louie Jen, and councilor Santana.

Thank you so much, and thank you so much to the commissioner for being here. It's always great to be in your presence. You know, you represent the best police department in the country, so it's always an honor to really get to serve alongside you and see the work that you're doing in our communities. I have some questions about just things that have, you know, come to my attention and things that, like, over the past few years we worked on, just sort of curious about your thoughts. The first one is how do you feel like the implementation of the encampment ordinance has gone, and do do you think feel like it has been successful? What you know, what are what are the main takeaways? That was one of my first votes on something police related. So

No. I am and and thank you. City Council, you know, put out the ordinance, and and we were able to, you know, let people notify the people that it exists. And for the most part, there's been a high level of compliance since then. And it was the first step in us being able to address some of the concerns they had done in mass and casts in general. And so I think it's been highly, highly successful. I mean, since that ordinance has been there, you don't see the tents and tarps all throughout the city, particularly in the Massacast area as once, you know, once we saw before. It's kind of like a thing of the past in some ways.

Yeah, it's really I think the issues that my district has are really mostly on state owned property at this point. So and I know that's a partnership, you know, and there's a lot of work that's being done. And it really comes down to contracts too. A lot of the things that need to be removed are, like, hazardous materials and, you know, things that require a certain level of

But it was a really good tool to be get for our particularly for our officers and some of the other partners that we have to begin the conversation with people that maybe even connecting the services or, you know, rehab and the things that they need because the fact is now that it's a law saying that what they're doing is is is actually in violation of the law. So it was quite helpful, and I think it's very successful.

Thank you. And I I'm curious also one another thing that the past few years we've talked about is the surveillance ordinance, which I think is a really important is really important thing that's been implemented, but I don't think it's based on our last conversation about the surveillance ordinance. I don't feel like it has been fully implemented given that, you know, we did receive notification after a surveillance technology was implemented. And I'm just curious, and I know we had a talk, you know, and I know we have our folks from the brick here. I'm just curious, how you feel about making sure that we're fully implementing that ordinance and that the city council has the authority to, you know, given in the ordinance to approve or deny the use of surveillance technology?

Do we feel comfortable moving forward, you know, in a way that gives us the opportunity to, to weigh in prior to, you know, as per the ordinance?

So I I know we we have it's coming up too, and we were going to certainly, meet that. And I'm sorry. What portion of that question you need me to answer again about?

Oh, so I guess, given that we had not received notification the last time a surveillance the last time our surveillance technology and I know there were certain circumstances, exigent circumstances that were that that at least at least that the, police department said there was exigent circumstances. My curiosity is that if if you feel that you, at this point, can fully implement the ordinance and make sure that the city council has the authority, you know, because we given by the ordinance, that that we are able to vote to approve or deny surveillance technology before it's implemented.

And so, I mean, that issue all slain, certainly around the ordinance and, you know, what you vote for or against. We just need to make sure that we meet our requirements around that. And if we didn't do it in the past, I apologize for it. But we're going to make sure that we meet the deadlines and things that are required for that. Outside of that, I don't see, you know, challenges around it.

I think sometimes there might be just a little misinterpretation of prior, like what we were, you know, required to do before that, you know, during exigent circumstances, things of that nature. But I think the more we talk and speak about, you know, anything requiring, you know, in that ordinance, the the more I think it'll think everyone will will will have some value in in in appreciating the ordinance and and understanding that we're trying to be as transparent as possible what we're doing and how we're doing it.

And just my take is anything that involves social media or a contract, I feel like you have the time to get approval from the city council given that this is just my take is that, you know, contracts take time to implement. So so I I know that we had a long hearing on that and that we've talked through that issue, but I just my advocacy is that the city council vote to approve or deny surveillance technology, and that because I do think it's a it's a transparency issue. And just making sure that the all the work that's gone into to that work through the city council is is, you know, represented through the work that the city and the police department does.

I understand your question. Yes.

Thank you. And I noticed that there are some external funds that we've gotten in previous years that are not that we are not obtaining this year, specifically the COAP program, the cold case project, COPS hiring program, and then I noticed that the DMH jail diversion program has gone from $140,000 to $50,000 I was just curious if you could sort of go through those quick quickly and just are those because we haven't applied for funding, or are they all different cases?

I believe the COPS did they go away? They do go away. Yeah. That it went away. It doesn't exist, but go ahead.

The the COPS grants came around right around COVID, but they weren't a a grant that continuously renews, so they do go away after a per period of time. So they are gone and we have finished them, but I want to point out that we've fully expended those grants, so we take advantage. On behalf of our research and development unit, are constantly researching new grant programs that would be applicable to the programs and services that we provide. So they're continuously looking at new grants, but we do have several grants that continuously renew year on year, such as the JAG grant, such as some of the DNA grants that we currently have. So they do renew every year, but we are constantly looking for new grants and opportunities.

Yeah. And I just really briefly, if the chair will oblige, I I really love our captains in my district, and I haven't get gotten the chance to meet the our new captain, Ramon, and so I would love to have the opportunity to be introduced to him. But the captains that I work with every day, they're so transparent and, like, so collaborative with our office. You know, specifically a one, captain. I love love working with him.

So thank you for, thank you for placing these amazing captains in my district, and, it's amazing it's an amazing opportunity for us to work together, to ensure safety and transparency and, and a lot of collaboration with our district. So thank you, commissioner, and thank you all for being here.

Okay. Thank you very much. Councilor Louie Jen.

Thank you, mister chair, and thank you to the members of the Boston Police Department for all the work that you do, starting with you, Commissioner Cox, on behalf of the residents of this city. It is noted, and I am grateful that there are open lines of communications when things are going well, when there are questions about things, to get better every day as a city. So I wanted to just note that. And I also also agree for the constituents who are here. You know, last week, sat down Friday, I sat down for a meeting with a few residents in Roxbury, and it turned into a walk around Nubian Square.

And there were some officers out, and there's, like, a new machine that is being used to try to help deter some activity. So I just wanna thank the residents from Nubian Square, and I also wanna thank I know councilor Culpepper continues to work on this issue. And there's, you know, a lot more attention that we need to give to places like Nubian Square to ensure that people are able to have a good quality of life. I don't believe that the entire tea of it is a police response. It's a police response mixed with, like, how do we are we helping people get jobs?

How are we helping people get opportunity? But I do think that there is an important police role in in that area. A lot of my questions are focused on overtime as sort of the biggest one of the biggest cost drivers here. So first question is what specific provisions in the collective bargaining agreements have the largest impact on costs? That that includes staffing rules, shift coverage, callbacks, court time, and code stacking. And which of these provisions does the department believe should be revisited in future negotiations to help us bring down costs of the city?

Yes. The first one.

I was nervous that you would respond that way. So, I mean, one of the biggest ones that we've identified are the code stacking that happens with overtime. I don't know if there are other.

Code stacking. Stacking. So some of those issues are really about us being we need to be more vigilant in making sure that, you know, we're aware of codes and things of that nature when officers fill out overtime. So that's a supervision thing and that's something that we are addressing actively right now. So I can't say, you know, contractually there are issues around it. We are trying to be, I'm saying, reimagine how we deploy our troops almost all the time now.

Mhmm.

Like events we don't just traditionally do what we normally do. We're looking at how can we do it more efficiently, more effectively. We're both making sure we address the public safety need, but also reducing or almost eliminating the need for any overtime whatsoever. So we're bringing people from other parts of the city. We're we are using all our resources to deal with the problems.

So we're we're split up in districts, but we're trying to make it so our whole department addresses a crime problem or an issue in general, so it's not dependent on one area and then the need for additional overtime in general. So we're doing multiple things to try to address it. Contractually, and I don't want to speak to it because some of that is bargain, but and I can't think off of the top of my head how many, you know, minimum manning is something that you when we get to a certain number, but even that is being revisited about what that means and how

The minimum staffing.

Yes, Around that to make sure that we're in we're having a more efficient effective impact on it. So when I say like traditionally how we did things is not really how we're looking at to do it going forward where if, you know, if X happens we do Y when it comes to like overtime in particular. So now it's about, you know, do we need to do that? Is that currently, going to impact crime in the way that we think it is? You know, how can we do it with on duty personnel? How can we do this in different ways? And so that's actively something we're doing right now, and it's having it's been having an impact. Definitely it's been having an impact.

Thank you. Matt's question is about community events and what does it look like to to staff at community events, whether it be open streets or small parades, block parties, protests? How do you make the decision on staffing for those issues? For example, I remember the open streets, there were there's, like, a police officer every block in JP and thinking whether that was something that, you know, was revisited and and what you learned from staffing, those sorts of events.

Yeah. And so remember that reimagining, that's what we're trying to do, and I think open streets is a good example. I think the first year we had a lot of police on every, you know, corner to make sure that, you know, the streets are blocked off, no one's coming through trying to ram people with vehicles, things of that nature. The next year we reduced police quite a bit and then asked other partners in the city, whether it's DPW and other people, to help with blocking trucks or things of that nature. Now we have more barriers in general.

We've been, purchased more barriers to do, to be in the place where people work prior to that. So we're still having the public safety concerns addressed, but maybe less officers to have to do that work by using, you know, technology or equipment to do it. And so we're doing that all the time and we're reevaluating. We're not just doing the same plan. We're looking each and every time about how can we provide good public safety without maybe as many numbers where we're having to order additional people and always using people that are on duty. We have a lot of people who work every day of the week in different places and bringing those in to address this.

Thank you. I'm gonna go back to a question about overtime spending. When we are negotiating those contracts, does BPD provide the finance cabinet and labor negotiations with a written estimate of how proposed contract terms will affect overtime? Did we do that this past year?

I don't know if we require it, but it's something that I think is calculated. I

mean, the one portion of overtime that is contractual is the court overtime, which is the four hour roll up. But I think we've made great strides to keep that down. I mean, 2022 to today, we're down 43% in court over time. And I think that's measures that they've taken in the different courts to make sure officers are getting called. They're not sitting there waiting or if they're even needed. But that is the one contractual agreement that they look at when they're doing contracts. But that's that is in the contract, the four hour minimum for court overtime.

Since you mentioned that extended extended tours are the largest category of overtime, accounting for 40%, and it's just that some of the demand is driven by, like, low acuity calls. And so sick assist, mental health crises, and quality of life complaints. So I know you talked about it earlier, but what are we doing to ensure that in some of those instances, there are more there can be more of a non police response so that those low acuity calls that then lead into increased overtime are handled by other entities that are capable that are capable of handling those calls?

And so so if you dial 911 and you call us, we we respond. The fact is, you know, we also have best team clinicians. We have other folks that might come. If we're not needed, we're not gonna stay and be there. Right? So the officers aren't just going to stay and hang around. But the reality is, you know, the the system that we work in when they call 911, they're calling for police. And so we have to get there and investigate to see what's going on. If our services are needed, then we try to leave as soon as possible. If they are, then we have to follow-up on that.

I can't speak to other agencies, you know, far as our agencies being created to handle those, then not within our department, that for sure. But the fact is we're willing to partner with almost anybody and everybody to not only address public safety issues, but also issues that are out there in the city. We have a lot of work in general. We don't need any additional work. Partners that can take offload some of those things, we will.

Thank you. Yeah, Just remind my colleagues that overtime specifically is on the agenda for this afternoon. I mean, I think everyone here can answer questions about that, but we'll be able to follow-up on overtime this afternoon. If you have any more questions, thanks to the panel for being prepared and being ready to answer questions. So, Councilor Santana,

you're up. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning to you all, super commissioner, superintendents, and chiefs. Thank you for being with us this morning and also this late later this afternoon.

I first wanna just start off by saying just, you know, as the chair of public safety and criminal justice in the Boston City Council, we really appreciate how there's been an open line of communication, not just with you, commissioner, but with your entire staff and your professionalism. It's not an easy job or career, and I think as one of my counselors previously said, I I I definitely do not envy the the roles that you all play in our city. I actually had a few questions that I think actually the last few colleagues have actually brought up. So I'm, you know, I did have questions about staffing levels at different events. The surveillance technology that Councillor Durkin brought up, think, you know, as the chair, that there have been colleagues have come to me and said, hey, there's been I think there's been two instances over the last year and a half where there has been technologies that have been that you have used without the approval of the Boston City Council.

I think you after there there was a hearing when you all came and and spoke about that. But I think the the surveillance report or the the the ordinance itself states that you get approval before it's actually insulated. So as the chair of the committee, I'm gonna continue to make sure that that there's open line communication and then that's the case moving forward. With that, I don't know if someone touched on this, like, unsolved cases in the city. I know you have investigators.

I mean, I've met many of them who do incredible work. But being community, know, I think I hear a lot from residents of who have experienced and their families have experienced many different difficulties, and a lot of these cases have been unresolved. So can you just speak to about unresolved cases? What residents can residents and families can expect moving forward? And if there's a timeline, if, know, after a year or after six months or after two years a case is not resolved, you know, what happens after that?

No, I appreciate that. And so one of the good things is that each year, certainly historically, we've had less and less homicides across the city. So the fact is because we're having less and less homicides, hopefully, there'll be less fewer and fewer, you know, older cases that are sitting out there than unsolved. So that population pool of cases is getting smaller and smaller across the board. As far as families, you know, we do all we can to communicate with them and we will try to do a better job at least keeping them updated.

I'll have certain superintendent Guatham talk a little bit about about what homicide does with the families, but we do have liaisons with them and we do quite a bit with some of the families, including more recently, in having a website where we listed all of the older cases out there, both honoring the people deceased that were there and also looking for information from the public or people who might have information regarding those to maybe reinvest restart those investigations again if we would happen to get any new information regarding those cases. Superintendent Kwabba.

Yes. So as far as the cold cases, when a speaking specifically about homicides, when a case is assigned to a squad, that squad maintains that case. And especially as that squad remains intact, they will keep that case. So one of the things that we've probably had the benefit of over the last couple of years with numbers being down and active cases is that our squads have had the opportunity to increasingly go back to cases that they had in the last several years and to reinvigorate the cases, get back into them, look for potential leads, look for things that might have been loose ends that weren't run down and that can be run down now. So there is that act the active squads that still have the cases that are that are actively going back and looking at those cases, sometimes based on their own, you know, initiative to do it, sometimes based on a phone call or some tip that comes in that says, hey, you should look at this person for that case in 2021, for instance, and they go back and they start doing that.

So they're doing that. At some point, that case goes into the cold case squad. You can imagine that with manpower being what it is, there's a lot of cold cases over the years going back. The commissioner mentioned the website back to 1965 that features the cases, every unsolved homicide within that time period. There's a lot of them.

So what they try to do is they try to go in and they triage cases, looking for things that have the best solvability factors, looking for opportunities for cases that have potential for DNA evidence, that now using the latest technology, the forensic genealogy, they've had quite a bit of success in going back to cases even as far back as the '70s. So there's an active effort on the cold case squad. You know, again, everyone's hindered by manpower issues. We're doing everything we can on it. But trying to find those cases that they can that have some, you know, so to speak, meat on the bone, go back, use use new technology, go back down to the crime lab, try to see what they can come up with for DNA potentially, and then move the case forward identifying witnesses, seeing if they're still around, what their recollection is and things.

So the cold case is very, very active. They're constantly working these cases. But I think it's important to point out, and especially given given the kind of the numbers that we're seeing now with four homicides for this year, we had 31 last year, 24 the year before. We're encouraging. We're pushing our squads to say, go back into your file cabinet, pull some of these ones out, especially ones that may have been very close but needed a little something somewhere or another, and get back on those cases and start looking at them at them again.

And to make sure they're maintaining that contact with the families as best of it. It's it's a very challenging thing. And having, you know, having worked in homicide for seventeen years, I know I still have contact with families that go back twenty years ago. But, you know, it's it can be a difficult thing to maintain those those, relationships, sometimes because some of the families have already, you know, they've moved on from it, not the sense that they moved on from their their loved one, but they've moved on in the sense they don't wanna hear from you all the time. They they'll say, look, unless you're gonna unless you solve the case, don't call me.

Right? So so find trying to find that that fine line between making sure you maintain that contact, making sure you're talking to them, keeping them updated, and and and them not really wanting to be to hear from you every time just to say we don't have anything on the case. So it's a it's a very difficult thing. We use our victim witness officers, who do a great job of dealing with families, current and cold case, people, maintaining those relationships, running our, annual homicide event that that reaches back to all those people and tries to bring them back, so that they can be part of the event, do it running events throughout the year, working with our partners in the Peace Institute and places like that so that we can maintain these things. It's a challenge.

There's a lot of them. But I think we're trying constantly, and this is across the board, to really make sure that we're maintaining that relationship with the victims, the victims' families, and really kind of again, there's always a lot of work to do on it. But that's our position on trying to move forward in these.

Awesome. Thank you, superintendent. And I have attended the homicide event. And I think it's a I really appreciate that event. My time is up, so again, thank you all for being here and for the work that you do. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay. Yeah, just to follow-up on Councillor Santana's question. There was external funds for a cold case project that it was about 150 a year for the last two years and then it's down to 0, I think, for this year. So is that did that program wrap up? We do you know what I'm talking about?

I know what you're talking about but I'm not sure about the

What's the impact?

We still have funding and the grant still exists. Actually just did the federal financial report as of March 31.

It says zero here. Yeah, just in the budget book. I can look into that for Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'm gonna give myself seven minutes. Oh, sorry. Before I go, I have received the letter of absence from, Counselor Mejia. Includes questions.

I did, in prior hearings, read out questions from, Gigi Coletta Zapata, Counselor Coletta Zapata, who's I don't know if she's given birth yet, but I said that was sort of I was giving her a special dispensation, for not being here, and I gave her the full seven minutes. I am not doing the same for Counselor Meehir or anyone else unless you are about to give birth or on maternity leave or on paternity leave. We're not discriminating based on sex here, but just normally. We have questions and I will be submitting Councilor Mahia's questions to BPD to have answered promptly and get her answers to those questions. But for anyone else, all my other colleagues, please come to the hearings and use your time.

And I won't be reading your questions. Okay. So in terms of personnel services, so from last fiscal year, $427,000,000 it's going up to $431,000,000 in this proposed budget. Can you just is that to account for raises or they're adding personnel? What goes

into The primary increase that's been reflected in budget for fiscal year twenty seven is due to the collective bargaining agreements that we resolved in fiscal year twenty four and '25.

Okay. So we're talking about increases in wages, like

two Yes. The

Okay. And so, just dovetailing with that, you know, I guess, you know, we see vacancies and, you know, I think as Councillor Flynn has highlighted and you know, there's issues with recruitment, people retiring every year. It's kind of it is hard to keep up. But just so the the number of vacancies, you know, has has come down. I think I have for FY '23 was about five zero five and then five fourteen and '20 four down to four forty two and '20 five then down to three twenty five for FY '26.

And correct me if I'm wrong. And then the projected vacancies increase next year, but we're also adding position. So my question is, like if we're expecting more vacancies, why are we adding positions? Should we be working on filling the vacant? Like, and that's how does that work? And is it you know, because we're we're talking about two different kinds of positions. I guess my question is, where where are the vacancies? And maybe you don't have to give me like a specific breakdown, but are they civilian positions? Are they sworn officer positions? Where are the vacancies?

And then how does it make sense that we would be adding positions while also expecting an increase in vacancies for fiscal year 'twenty seven?

So I'm going to let Lisa answer some of these, but I would say this is that if it's a new position, it's probably making sure that it's meeting a need that we have of some sort versus a vacancy for something that's not a priority, right? And so you're always trying to attract people to fill the jobs, but if they don't fill them, you have to try to prioritize what you're doing. Example is like nine eleven. I mean, those positions are a priority, so trying to fill those vacancies takes precedence over other vacancies in general. And you have to also understand capacity.

You know, like HR, we only have so many people to look at so many applications to vet and do certain things. So we don't have the ability to fill all positions at the same time all the time. So you have to prioritize and go through that process to fill those positions around it. And the sworn vacancies, I mean, you'll see those in the recruit classes that we have and go through. And just because, you know, we have 150 people might go into the academy, it doesn't mean 150 are going to come out of the academy.

So we assume that we're trying to, you know, fill 150 positions. And through attrition, it might end up being 120, so that's 30 that we'll hold and try to bring around the next time for the next class to try to fill it. So during those gaps, it might be creating some of the some of what you're making mention to. Lisa, if you could speak

to this.

And on that, we might also have some vacancies as a result of attrition retirements, and they obviously wouldn't be replaced or refilled during the course of the year until we actually have a new class, especially when we're talking about sworn. As of now, we have roughly 153 sworn vacancies, and we have 94 civilian vacancies

right now. Okay.

And then, yeah, what's your projection for next year in terms of retirements and

Right now, probably a couple of years ago, our average for retirements was roughly 131 retirees per year. That has since gone down because, if I'm not mistaken, three years ago, we had three top heavy classes in the 1980s, came to fruition and as a result of retirement. But now we're seeing roughly anywhere between ninety five and one hundred retirements per year on the sworn side. This is not counting civilian. Okay.

Our vacancies also are dependent on the atmosphere in the world. I'll be quite honest with, you know. So that's why you always hear about the emphasizing wellness both for the officers and also the importance of acknowledging the good work that they do.

Okay. And then in terms of, I guess, this year and for the World Cup, are we anticipating spending money on new technologies? We had a we've had discussions here about surveillance technology. So is if is that going to be are you going to be coming to the city councils or exigent circumstances? Do you what are you projecting in terms of use of surveillance technology during the World Cup?

I don't believe that. I'll say this about new technology in general. There's technology all around us when we talk about efficiency and effectiveness that every place in the world uses that we currently don't use, right? When you talk about AI and things of that nature, which is not what this one's about. We don't currently use it, but it's certainly something that we should consider doing to address some of the efficiency issues that we might have and even just to do the work faster. That's not for this hearing today.

Yeah, yeah.

But I'm just saying, no, we have bought, I believe, some equipment, but I don't know if it was bought or grant for

The the equipment that we've purchased so far for to prepare for FIFA and Sale Boston Yeah. Has been primarily been the meridian barriers, which are those yellow barriers that you see around. That has been our biggest purchase, and that's just about it. Mean, most I think that cost is probably going to be around personnel or what we'll have funding for through grants.

Okay. And then in terms of we're talking about mass and casts. I think there's a longer conversation I have this afternoon about overtime in mass and casts, which is because of the way it's coded essentially as a special event. I think it's the largest chunk of overtime. We'll talk about that this afternoon.

But in terms of responding to try to help these people on the road to recovery, I think to paraphrase Counselor Fitzgerald, and not to criminalize addiction and work with people with mental health experts. What are we doing and how is it reflected in the budget that we have sort of we're treating this as the kind of crisis that it is where we're using mental health experts, addiction experts, not necessarily like patrol officers to kind of address the situation.

And so I would say this, that the, you know, the we are referring people and trying to get people as much help as we can when come across them. That wouldn't be reflected in our budget, you know, around that. Maybe public health could speak to more of some of those issues. But the reality is even in the mass and cast area, would say our overtime expenditures have gone down again.

As to last year, our overtime expenses surrounding masks and cast is down 22.2% compared to this time last year as of May 4.

As I said before, we reevaluate almost everything that we do to be more efficient and effective where there's no loss on effectiveness, but yet we're being more efficient. And you'll see it, you know, incrementally each year, hopefully, as we continue on because we're not stagnant. We're always looking to try to learn from something and actually address the issue. And then what you'll see is something better, hopefully, within the next week, day, month, year.

Okay. We can talk talk about that this afternoon. So I'm gonna go to public testimony. We've done a first round. We're gonna go to public testimony. We've got a few people signed up. I'm gonna, I think it's like five or six. And we'll hear from each of them. You each have two minutes. And then we'll go to a second round of questions from my colleagues. We've got, Gregory Maynard, Kate Crawford, Antonia, Edwards, and, I think, Ajah Jackson, Joseph Rowland, and Clifton Braithwaite. So, if you could line up, you can be at one of either of these two mics. Mister Maynard.

Thank you so much, chair. My name is Gregory Maynard, I am the cofounder and executive director of the Boston Policy Institute. I'm gonna make a prediction that I know will come true. The Boston Police Department will overspend its f y twenty seven overtime budget of $55,000,000 by tens of millions of dollars. The certainty that the FY twenty seven budget for police overtime is grossly inaccurate makes having a concrete discussion about BPD's budget and the rest of the city's budget more difficult.

That is because under Mayor Wu, deficit spending on police overtime has averaged 1% of the city's total budget. Here are the numbers. In FY twenty three, the first budget passed under Mayor Wu, Boston overspent its police overtime budget by $33,800,000 or 77%. In FY24 by $68,500,000 or 154%. In FY25, dollars 41,800,000 or 77%.

And in FY26, it appears on track to overspend by $48,700,000 or about 90%. City Hall has gotten away with extremely inaccurate budgets because there is a belief that the city will collect more revenue than it formally budgets. That was true in FY '23, '24 and '25, but it was not true in FY '26. And as a result, Boston is now facing its first deficit since the great recession. This is a problem in a vacuum.

The issues driving police over time, overspending have never been adequately explained and raise serious questions about mismanagement at BPD. However, this isn't a problem in a vacuum. Boston is facing a deficit in FY '26 due in large part to police overtime and painful cuts are being made in a historically tight FY '27 budget. This is not an unsolvable problem. From FY '17 to FY '20, Mayor Marty Walsh kept police overtime in check only overspending 11% to 23%.

The ACLU of Massachusetts has produced extensive analysis about police overtime and raised important and still mostly unanswered questions about the role collective bargaining, scheduling and minimum staffing requirements play. At the end of the day, offering this grossly inaccurate line item for police overtime is a choice that the Wu administration, including folks on this panel, are making. The Wu administration can make a different choice. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you. Kate Crawford, then Antonia, Ajaxson, Joseph Rallon, Clifton Braithwaite.

Good afternoon. It's now afternoon by a couple minutes, everyone. My name is Kate Crawford. I am here representing the ACLU of Massachusetts. I just wanna say a couple things.

Number one, commissioner, your team has been very responsive, you know, when we've raised issues around things with respect to the compliance with the surveillance technology oversight ordinance, although responsive but not necessarily on time. So I'm hopeful that this year the council and the public can see the annual surveillance reports, you know, soon, sooner than next fall. I also wanted to raise an issue about data quality that the department shares. There I'm very appreciative that the city that the department has published arrest data on the the analytics website. I wanna offer a couple of thoughts about how that information could be more valuable to the public.

Number one is it hasn't been updated in in a while. And number two, so we need newer data. And number two is that there's no precise location information pertaining to those arrest data and that makes the analysis really difficult and not as valuable as it would be if we had more accurate location information. There may be certain types of cases, child sexual abuse, types of arrests, things of that nature where we wouldn't want precise geolocation data for arrests. But I think for most things, it's important that the public have access to that information.

Then the final thing I wanna say is about this overtime question, and I I'll have more to say about this later this afternoon. But, counselor Fitzgerald, you mentioned that there's been, that the police have responded to, concerns in your community around the homeless population. And we've seen that reflected in the arrest data that arrests for things like drug possession and trespassing have skyrocketed in recent years in the Mass And Cast area and in the sort of spillover area where people moved after the the tent ban went into effect. I would just offer that, first of all, that's been really costly for the city in terms of overtime spending. And number two, that the cost is not necessarily borne out in a way that benefits the public.

Obviously, people suffering from mental health and addiction problems who are homeless, they don't need to be arrested. You know, they need homes. They need health care. They need mental health care and drug treatment. And so I would just ask that, you know, as the city thinks about the budget, we think about the money that we're spending very carefully with respect to, you know, whether we're spending money giving it to the police department to spend on overtime to arrest people who are in crisis or whether we're using the money for other purposes. Thank you.

Thank you. Antonia.

Yes. Good morning everybody. I just want to say thank you for allowing me to have the opportunity to present myself here today. Commissioner Cox, my name is Antonia Edwards. I am legacy resident. My family's been in the city of Austin since 1940. I've lived in Roxbury for the last fifty years. I have never in my life seen it look this bad, and I've lived through the crack epidemic. I feel as though you guys celebrate the fact of mass and cast being cleaned up and I kudos. I give that to you.

But what was the plan as far as the spillover in my community? Roxbury has been historically known to be stereotypical, the dump, the ghetto. And this was a setup for us. My mother can't even walk outside on the sidewalks where there's defecation, there's urine. I just spent the day with the seniors yesterday who live in the Cath Catherine Hottoway Building. They are tough terrified and petrified to come out of their building. So when I sat and heard you say that you heard overwhelming glowful reports about Nubian Square, I don't know who you talk to. There's not a business or a person in Roxbury that's happy with the conditions. You guys have set us up for serious dysfunction and lack of quality of life. And I wanna work with you.

I want you like I took other people on a tour to come see what we deal with on a daily basis. Mass and cast was commercial. This is business and residential. And I can't even go in and out of my house and saying without facing the mass and cast addicting people. I I'm not quite sure what the plan is for them. However, why are they being dumped in my community and why are you not taking the same effort that you did for mass and cast to help me clean up my community. And I need you to go in the day and night. I had a tour one of the city council's person she seemed like a day. At night, it's like the thriller movie for Michael Jackson. And they're dubbed the demolishing property like the citizens bank.

They're defecating on the sidewalks. They are commandeering our backyard. I have a video that I can show you where there was a lady who actually was butt naked, shot up in her groin, and masturbated in front of my 78 year old mother. I live across from the police station. I call the police station all the time. They've come and got the people, drugs in their hands, and didn't either arrest them or did anything to them. What I'm more upset about the fact is during the crack epidemic, everybody went to jail even if you were in this close proximity. These people are standing there all day long blocking passage for people to come in and out of Nubian Square. We have kids coming out of school. We have people that wanna do business in Rocksbury that can't without being you know, comming during the sidewalks having to say, excuse me, excuse me, can you move whatever.

And this causes a serious public health safety thing. We don't know what their demeanor is. We don't know if they're gonna get erratic with us because we're asking to walk on the sidewalk. So I would really like it if you would work me and work with mister Menard, come to my community, come to a tour with me both day and night cause I want you to see the thriller movie and I think that you will see a whole other perception. I don't know who you're talking to.

I don't know who gave you that information but they lied to you. We have pictures of people day and night pass out on the sidewalk leaning, overdosing and there's not one business in the Nubian Square that start that's thriving at this point because of these issues and we already are behind. We have went like a desert anyway. So the business is there aren't thriving because nobody wants to come to Newby And Square but also this element is deterring it as well too. So my name is Anthony Edwards. You can call me. I'll make myself available to you. I I wanna make sure people who are making these decisions really see what they're talking about because I I think you guys have a whole other perception of what's going on and I wouldn't lie to you. I'm really disappointed to live in Roxbury. Embarrassed. That's about you. Thank you.

Thank you. Miss Jackson.

Good afternoon madam president and counselors. My name is Asia Jackson and I'm here today as a long time Roxbury resident as well and someone who's been in this field and worked with these people for over fifteen years and respectfully what was described in the chamber today does not reflect what many of us are living outside of these doors. Because Mousen Cass does not disappear, the crisis was displaced. And now neighbors like Nubian Square are carrying it. Come walk through the area, come see the needles, come see the open drug use, come see the people in crisis, come see the mothers holding their children at the bus stops closer because they don't feel safe.

Come talk to the small businesses and residents who no longer feel safe in their community. And while residents are crying out for help, we are hearing conversations about cuts. Cuts to youth programming, prevention, outreach, and the very organizations like mine that are trying to stop violence before police ever have to respond. I speak with young people and their guardians every single day and what they tell me is heartbreaking. They do not feel safe, not on the trains, not walking through Nubian Square, not in the parks, not even in some of their own neighborhoods.

And youth violence especially gun violence and youth deaths has increased in ways our communities have no longer accepted. We can no longer feel normalized so when residents say conditions are not improving we are not speaking from politics. We are speaking from lived reality. And now Boston is preparing for FIFA and for tourism cameras and millions of visitors while residents feel abandoned. Public safety is not enforcement after harm happens.

Public safety is prevention. It is youth jobs. It is mental health support, violence prevention workers, clean safe parks, substance use recovery, real estate investment. Black and brown communities should not be over policed during global events. Investment this year is very prevalent. Commissioner Cox, we do not need performative safety. We need real accountability, real investment, and real care for people living in this life every single day. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Joseph Rowland? Sorry. Okay. Skip you, mister Braithwaite.

Good afternoon, everybody, counsel and our prestigious Boston police. My name is Clifton Braithwaite and today I'm here as a statesman. I've gotten a lot of calls from our seniors, parents, fathers, single parents. How are we gonna stop this runaway situation in our community? Mothers, fathers, grandparents are getting 52 a's.

I think that's what they call it when they're trying to discipline their family and their kids to bring them in the right direction. Without putting any families out there, I'm speaking on behalf of them. Right now there's a house somewhere off Blue Hill Ave, I'll talk to you guys later, that is harboring runaways. There's a group of girls and guys that are running away and hiding out at this house. The mother and her uncle found where their daughter was.

The police came, didn't issue any arrest warrants but there's grown men around our young ladies and young men in our community. And it's gotten so bad that personally had to go with some of my security team to certain homes. How are we gonna stop this pedophilia going on in our community? How do we make sure everyone deserves a second chance? I'm not being hard on anybody but the reality is just now at Northeastern, there was a young man that did something at Northeastern and is a level two sex offender and nobody knew where he was at.

How can we help you without destroying someone's past because they might have changed? But the bottom line, I care about our children and our parents. Parents are going to jail for discipline their children and children are getting to walk in and out of their home like they're the adult. I like to be able to sit down with you guys, bring some parents and some grandparents around and see how we can fix this. If we wanna stop crime, we don't have the old days where we have football coaches and people in our community to talk to us. I came from that era. That's why I'm into the things that I'm into. I found a way to use my anger into fighting in the right way. Our children out here are lost. Our parents have no voice.

How can we help those families that the kids are a little way with right now? We've all been there. We've all grown. We've all done this. But these homes that are harboring these kids and these older men are harboring these young men and women. How do we stop that in our community? Because I knew if that was in Brookline, Cambridge, anywhere else, we would be protecting these young people and the parents. They're asking for help, especially the senior parents. They are asking for help. And I just wanted to put that on the record. So whenever you all ready to speak, I'll get those parents together. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. So it's about 12:15 now. We're gonna try to because we're coming back at two. Give central staff an hour. Trying to wrap up this morning's hearing at one just for my colleagues. So we're gonna go for a second, maybe third round, depending on how this goes. We'll do five minutes. Councillor Culpepper, I think, you know, starting with you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Cox, I don't want to make it seem as if this hasn't been worked on. The Madison Cass response came as a result of many different components of the community coming together, especially with the nest team and CRT, counselors Fitzgerald and counselors Flynn, we met with the community, the police, all winter to get to the point where we are now in the South End. We need to do the same thing in Nubian Square.

We don't have a Kelly Young in Nubian Square, but we need Kelly Young to train someone. We don't have a nest team right now in Nubian Square. But we need that training that you taught, training the trainer, or the trainer training the trainee in Nubian Square. The same thing we did. And I'm telling you, we met hour after hour after hour until we got to the point where there was that $4,000,000 investment by the state.

We need to do the same thing in Nubian Square. And the things that I was saying earlier, you heard the community come in and say the exact same thing that I was saying earlier because I wasn't trying to sugarcoat it. I've got videos of folks that sent me videos of what's going on in Nubian Square. And I think we have to be we have to accept what's actually happening in order to really change what's going on there. And I don't wanna sugarcoat this, but we've got a lot of work to do.

That's why we're starting these emergency meetings. We did the same thing in the South End. We met time and time again, and Councilor Luzione is right that we have work to do there. And one of my questions is, with regard to the NEST team and coming into Newbury Square and doing some training there, how does that really happen? I know it was kind of it just happened in the South End because we worked over and over and came together. We even met on our own. How do we do the same thing in terms of the training that went in to create the nest ten in New Bean Square?

Part of the strategy, because that's the strategy more so than anything else, It started in New Bean Square. Some of the things you make mention of, it's like it's the reality is sometimes these issues move, right? And so it might be good today and then tomorrow, you know, it could, you know, move to a different area. Some people could come from other areas in nature. And so the reality is that we worked in Nubian Square.

It was a little bit better certainly in that area. Some of the individuals we had, we moved to more mass and gas, particularly the South End, and started to grow and address some of the issues. It's been fairly successful. Now we just need to make sure we concentrate back on Nubian Square again, which is absolutely what we're trying

to do. And let me

clarify my question.

How do we do that? How do we do that?

I should say this. It's just not this is a, you know, drug addiction, homelessness, this is not a one area issue. It's it's all throughout our cities, all throughout our country. And so having the capacity to be in all places and get all at once and all the time, it's that's a challenging, challenging thing. We need input from the public, certainly. We need them to call us and let us know about where these things exist. And then when officers actually show up, then they need to know and have all the tools and equipped to deal with the issue when they do show up around that. And that's what we're trying to make happen because it is challenging. Right? We're not trying this is not something you can arrest your way out of.

We've shown that that's not the case. It's a combination of both getting people, rehabilitation, getting, mental health stuff addressed, getting other partners involved in this. And it's a fairly complicated issue, but the reality is that we're always going to be there to make sure we address it and we're going to try to do the best we can. And but it's on our radar. So it's not as though we're not aware.

No. I understand. I understand being on your radar is good, but I think you have to be more intentional about it. And I'm talking about there's a plan in the South End of how they approached it with NEST and CRT. It's not just an ad hoc of being on the way. There's actually a

I I know. I know

When things Hold on. Hold on. Let me finish,

mister I was part of the plan.

Because my time has got sixteen seconds.

Part of the plan. We might even have invented the plan.

Let's talk after. Let's let's kick this because I only got ten seconds. But I do hope that we do take that tour, the two of us. Right? We can walk through New Bend Square because I want you to hear what they were saying.

And I hope it's not on May 22 because you know that's a day that we expect you to come back here on May 22. So I hope don't take May 22 off the table for that tour. Let's do the tour because I think it's important that Nubian Square sees you walk through that with the District seven Council. I think it will make a statement to them about how much you're invested in Nubian Square and how this change happens because we do need to recreate the nest team and the CR team that is doing the same kind of work that they're doing with the masks and casts. And so I work with your scheduler, we'll get a date to walk through there.

But let's take May 22 off the table because I expect us to be right back here on May 22. Thank you, mister chair.

Okay. Thank you. Councilor Culpepper, Councilor Fitzgerald. Thank you, chair. And actually very happy that I get to follow the reverend and some of the comments there. Rev there there is a plan for Nubian Square, and there it's the coordinated plan. That's why it's so important. In this budget process coming up, the amendment that I'm asking for is to increase the coordinated response team. That's Kelly Young and her team. This is not just a self end specific issue.

This is in this is to create, along in partnership with NEST and the Boston Police, a citywide plan where we can go to the hotspots with the CRT team and NEST to provide deflection and diversion along with lived experience folks that can put the get them back on the road to recovery and allow the goal of that plan when you say that plan is for the South End, I want you to know that plan is for the city of Boston. Right now, we are attacking the heart of the issue in Massingas. I do agree there has been some spread. I've seen it up in other parts of my district, Edward Everett Square, council Flynn is in Andrew Square, even as far up as Upham's. We've had, some some new residents coming in, with some of that as those issues have spread.

And so while we've sort of spread it out, I think that by increasing this coordinated response team that we have a plan that can then go and and and help these folks individually get the help they need. I did wanna talk about also just as reference, because I did in in testimony, Kate, you said that we had a, the overtime, the spend that we're the time we're spending. But I do wanna make sure I did hear overtime spending at Mass and Cass is down 20 something percent.

That's correct.

Right? So Yes. I I think we're I I think, hopefully, we're seeing that hopefully, that that trend will continue where we take care of the overtime issue by focusing on this larger citywide strategy that, yes, you guys have been involved in and could not do without. But, Regat, just wanted to make sure I want hopefully, that continues and happy to work with everyone to make sure that we're doing this both public safety and public health perspective together as one. One of the things that really helped that is the CIT.

And I know now with this is kinda switching gears to staffing levels. Some folks the CIT is being kinda moved about. That was another sort of group of folks just like the CRT team. The CIT team could say, hey. We've got a a particular issue bubbling up, and you could deploy a number of folks there through CIT.

However, with staffing levels, my understanding is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that you would lose CIT as a group to cover other staffing and even other precincts. Like, if if CELT was down, c eleven would have to send CIT members over there. And then the van that would drive around with CIT with maybe three, four, five is down to just the the the driver or even the van not going out at all. Is it am I correct in that? In in that the that's how CIT very effective, but right now limited in their effectiveness due to staffing levels? Would we would would we say that that is agreed upon, or is that is there a different issue?

So it it how it was formed? Yes. When it was a a group of folks that designed the state together, but again CIT again is more of a philosophy than a strategy. That can again be broken out in every district where everyone does it, so it increases our capacity quite a bit. But certainly when we introduced it, as they began to get other calls from other areas, it was watered down a little bit. But the fact is I think it was highly effective, particularly in some of the areas you mentioned, John.

Yes, so CIT is definitely big in Jamaica Plain and some of the other different districts. But in order to kind of supplement NEST, we use CIT as well. And it's great because the CIT members now get exposure to the NEST theory. That way we can keep expanding this whole NEST thing into all of the different districts. So the CIT teams do have definitely shrunk since we first started it, maybe two years ago now.

And but with that being said, they're still involved with NEST, so they're still involved in those communities and still doing those things we need to do, mass and CAST, Nubian. I know we've had a number of interactions and incidents in Nubian Square during the last kind of period that NEST keeps track of, well over 200 interactions there. So we're going to keep it going. Kelly Young and Erica and all the CRT teams, they go to Nubian as well. They're not just they don't just stay at Mass and Cass. And while we do have that emergency command post right there at Mass and Mass and cast as kind of an anchor, it does get moved around the city.

Yeah. And I guess just in my remaining time, I do wanna there's sort of this messaging out there that Nubian is is taking a hit because of mass incast. But I I I've I've managed a lot of property over my years working for the city in Nubian Square. There are problems that have persisted throughout that continue to be that. So I I just want to make sure when folks who are upset, some of the folks testifying saying, hey, the mass incast is here, and now you don't care about us, that is not I I wanna make sure I understand and through the strategy we're trying to implement, that is not forgotten.

Some of those problems were long existing prior to the spreading out of of, taking down the tents. But I I do I fully admit that there is an uptick in the usage in those areas. We have not forgot about them. I know police have not forgotten about them, And this plan is to, again, address the citywide strategy. And so hopefully, no matter where there is an issue, we'll be able to deploy this. We've seen it work, and hopefully we continue to see those positive results and tweak it along the way as we must. Thank you all for your time, panel. I very much appreciate your coordination and collaboration with myself and my office, along with everybody here on this council. So appreciate your time.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Fitzsaur. Just a minor clarification, or just in terms of the mass and CAS reduction, that's in the number of hours. I think it's 20% in the number of hours projected toward the end by the end of this year because as opposed to last fiscal year. It's not most likely because wages go up. The amount spent, I'm assuming, isn't down 21%. But it so that number is going down. It still may be the largest amount of over pool of overtime. We're working on that. But we can talk about that this afternoon in terms of like No. Okay. Yeah.

I just want to clarify that the 22% decrease that we're reflecting right now is as of May 4, forty three weeks into the fiscal year compared to forty three weeks into fiscal year So it's it's it so I am projecting that it's going to be even down further for fiscal year end. We always look at powers because of collective bargaining agreements because, you know, if if we're reporting hours at a low rate three years ago, they never get true up by code. They get true up obviously by by a general ledger entry to bring us up to the actual reflective overtime. But the codes don't get trued up based on the collective bargaining agreement. That's why we always compare hours.

Can I just so we came out to 22% decrease based on the I think it was 160,000 hours in FY '25 and FY '24? And then I think with the data we have been provided and I'm not sure when the data went up to was 100,000. And we just projected that pro rata to the end of this year and we got a 22% reduction. So that was I don't know if we're expecting more than a 22% reduction. Mean that would but just the way we did the math we came out at 22%, assuming like a smooth amount of hours going for the rest of this year.

But this is also a discussion for this afternoon. So commissioner, if you had something

to say.

With the

fee for and a few other things coming up between now and then.

Well also, I mean I was thinking that number might not stay at 22% just because I mean we know mass and CASC there's a people come out when the weather gets nice and warmer and the amount of hours might go up. I think we can all just agree that the numbers are down from the last two years. That's obviously, through there's an intentional effort to do that. So, and maybe it's a sign that, you know, tactics are having an impact there. Okay. So does that do it? Are we all on the same page, I think, Okay. On Thank you very much. Councilor Flynn, you're up next.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner, I work with Councillor Worrell on establishing a firearms trafficking report that is required every year. I know 10% of firearms recovered by the Boston Police are ghost guns, privately manufactured firearms. What are we doing to prevent ghost guns from getting onto our streets? But are we identifying specific areas of the city where they're made, or how are we coordinating that, So

Paul could probably speak to some of this, but we work actively with ATF and we do pretty major investigations, finding out the people who are both making those and bringing them here in general and making sure we both take them off the street and the people who are making them and selling them.

Paul? Okay.

So I would say that when we get information about a particular location or a particular person that might be involved in either getting the parts and putting them together or the resale or distribution of those guns. We work closely with our TFOs, our task force officers at the ATF and the ATF to kind of investigate those. I don't remember the exact location, but sometime in the last month or so, there was a significant operation done where they recovered numerous different parts, uppers and lowers of designed to be put together as privately manufactured or ghost guns. So when we get that information, we're finding them, we're arresting people with them, but when we get information about someone that might be actively involved in that, having it sent to their house, putting them together, and then selling them, we're working closely with the people that we have assigned to the ATF with our detectives to try to proactively go after those individuals.

Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Superintendent. Superintendent, thank you for years. You know, you've been very responsive when I had questions about any type of issues. So I just want to say thank you to being responsive to me on public safety related issues. Chair, I was going to ask a staffing level question. I know it's for later this afternoon, but do you think it might be appropriate for me to ask?

Honestly, I think it's if you're not prepared and you need some time this afternoon, to the panel, but I think, you know, feel free. I haven't cut anyone off.

I'm just sort of flagging it

for people.

I just didn't want to ask something that was not appropriate. I didn't want to catch anyone off. God. But, Commissioner, I was just looking at the staffing level on detectives. On detectives from 2023 to 02/2026. 2023, we had 02/1972. To 2026, 02/1937. Significant reduction, thirty five. What are we doing to get that number up, so we can get more detectives on the streets investigating crime?

If you're asking, are we going to promote more detectives, we probably will fairly soon.

We gonna get are we gonna get it up to the 272 that we had recently, a couple years ago?

We're going to evaluate as we add more to it to make sure, again, we're being as effective as possible. Because remember, in order to promote detectives, you're taking from the patrol force. And so we'll always have to be cognizant every time that we pull from one force to go to the next to make sure that we're meeting the needs of the pool that we're taking from.

Okay.

But yes, we're considering it.

Yes. Okay. I guess sergeants as well, commissioner, 2025, 02/1991. Today, 02/1978. What do you think about that?

I get it.

Same thing?

It's the same.

Okay.

Because to make sergeants, you pull in from both patrolmen and maybe detectives. And we just did a promotion ceremony. 19 sergeants have left a week ago. 19 sergeants. 19 sergeants just a week ago.

Okay. The okay. Thank you. I just wanna make sure we have the numbers that are necessary so we can do the job effectively. I'm not part of the defund the police movement like other people are. I wanna see more police on the street. I support police, But I want to make sure that we have enough police, and that's advocating for more police in the budget. And that's what I want to see as we go forward, consistently hiring more police every year in the budget. 300 police officers, Mr. Chair, every year consistently. We have 100 police officers retiring every year. We need more police on the streets, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Finn. It looks like we'll have time for a third round if anyone wants to come back or stick around. Counselor Louis Jen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to apologize. I didn't realize the breakdown before, so I did ask a lot of overtime questions during my first panel. And so I think I am not sure if I'll have any for the second panel. But I have questions about that I think are on topic about community policing and about BRIC. So the first one is about it seems like there's a reduction in funding for the community engagement team, and we know that community policing and community engagement is a big part of community policing from 4,630,000 to 4,350,000. What accounts for that decrease? And on the flip side, there is an overall increase in the police budget. What accounts for that increase?

I think the overall increased budget had to do with salaries from the

From the collective bargaining.

From the

collective bargaining agreement.

That's the primary increase for our budget one department, so we can keep track of it accordingly. So they didn't actually lose money, it's just that we moved the best clinician over

to another department. Okay. Thank you. A question about BRIC. It receives $4,180,000 in city operating dollars. I see you there, Director Walsh, listening attentively. Is all that funding for the for the BRIC? And how many positions is the operating budget support? And what are those positions? And how many do external fund how much external support? Just to clarify I'm sorry. So we're talking

about the Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis?

Yep.

Yeah. Okay. So that because what proportion is the brick

of Yeah.

Okay. I I just I I think I heard brick twice, but just

want to

Yeah, I think I got that. Hopefully that was clear.

Yes. Yes. So for the funding breakdown, the City of Boston budget funds 33 and this is on the professional staff staffing side 33 positions within the BRIC. Grant funded positions, 16

The operating budget supports 33 positions.

33

positions, correct. Grant funded 16.5. Two we currently have two vacant positions. The UASI grant, funds thirteen, one vacant position. The COPS grant, two, one vacant position. SSYI grant, funds a half position because we get some funding from one of the other grants. EOPs has a brick line item, 9.5%, that's that other that 0.5% from position. We currently have four vacant positions there.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Cox, with respect to our ability to live up to what we state in the trust act, we are no longer when someone is arrested, they are no they are no longer being held in Boston Police Department custody. In some cases In in a Boston Police Department facility.

In some cases, yes.

In some cases, they are? Yes. In other cases, they're not.

Do we we don't see them all. Females Female. Female. Females go to district four. Yes.

So Oh, okay. And for others go to Suffolk County? Correct. I'm asking particularly about because of the Emmanuel DeMas case. We don't control what happens even though they are arrested and put into a facility because of an arrest by the BPD. If they are put in Suffolk County, we don't necessarily control or know what is going to happen at Suffolk County because we don't know their level of interaction with federal authorities. Is that correct?

So what we do know is that we take them there, we book them there, and until we're done with the booking, was when the person's identified for who they are, right, then they take possession of them. And at that point, it ceased our involvement ceases whether they, you know, whether they take them to court or they get released from there. We're we're no longer involved in that process.

But they are placed in custody in, like, for example, Suffolk County or Nashville Street because Street because of an arrest by BPD?

Right. They're in custody once we arrest people with handcuffs on them. So whether they're that station or they're, but they're in custody. You know, the sheriff's officer are suitable like that is their role to actually handle prisoners. They have medical staff. They have monitoring. They have

Yeah. I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you

That is what they do for a living. And so when even in ourselves it's just a holding spot until we can get them to either the court or really to court or they get released. And so, you know, it was thought and then still is thought that that's the best location for people to do it. The people in the business are having medical attention there. Better they're better at it than we are. And so we contracted with them to take our prisons so we don't have to do that.

I'm wondering, you know, a question about whether is if if that ends up undermining our trust act because we don't, you know, we don't have a trust act agreement, right, with the sheriff's department. Right? And they don't have two eighty seven g agreements, but we also are not clear about what they are and aren't doing.

So I can only speak for our agency. I can't speak for them. Yeah.

I think that's part of the problem.

But I have heard them say that they that they honor the trust act. But I don't, you know, that's their agency. I can't speak to them.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yeah. Just we'll stick around till one. So but I'm going to give myself a couple minutes. So just a follow-up on that question about the BRIC. So the Bureau of Intelligence Analysis has a $4,100,000 budget. Does all of that go to the BRIC? I don't know. Maybe did you answer? Did you get that answer, Councillor Lujan? I know it part of your question. Just

I'm sorry. Can you ask

that question?

The Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis has a $4,100,000 operating budget. Does all of that go to the BRIC?

Yes.

Okay. And then can you so I think you listed something around 40 employees. It could be more, it could be less. But then are there federal employees at the BRIC also?

We do have there are we have partnered agencies that are actively working in the BRIC, yes, operating out of

the But in terms of like if I just went there, if I was at headquarters or, you know, in that office, there'd be somebody from the federal government there also?

Yes. We do.

Okay. And it how many, like, each day? Or

We have we have four people from outside agencies, the Boston Fire Department, EMS, Boston EMS, the FBI, and DHS. Okay. So that's That actively two sit in

And two federal employees. Correct. Okay. Okay.

And counsel, we also included another. They've gotten bigger in a sense that Dignitary Protection Unit is now totally located in the

brick. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. In terms of you know, we we talked a little bit about diversity. I know we're talking about recruiting and diversity later, but we talked about the cadet program. I guess one one thing I I think councilor Flynn, you know, talking about his his sort of push for us to, you know, have more full staffing on the Boston Police Department.

I guess, commissioner, like, is there a pool of 300 qualified people that were just turning down every year? Know, because my sense was when we were here two years ago and things have moved since then, that just people weren't applying to be police officers, you know, following George Floyd. But so I I just what's the what's the status of that now?

What Lisa can speak to? I I would say this. We always need a large pool of people who are interested because even when you people are interested, we have to screen them to make sure that they're suited for the job, and then there's a bunch of things along that process that can reduce that.

Yeah, I see we've done recruiting and there's more people taking the exam. So I'm just asking like, you know, are there are we just leaving people on the sidelines? Because, you know two and years ago, the answer was no. We need more people to apply. Is that is it any different now? What what's going

what what does it look like?

I mean, I I think we've made significant strides in our recruitment efforts to get people to more and more people to register and take the civil service exam. But I would like to point out that the last three, four years, we fully, fully have gone through the list both on the residential side and both on the non residential side. And what happens through the course of the recruitment process is that you might get flooded with a lot of people that have interest when they come in to pick up their card or sign for their card. They don't come back for orientation. Come back for orientation, they don't come back with their completed packets.

And then, you know, we do have round tables where they do extensive background checks, and some might fall fall that way. And then they go through a medical, a a pretty strict medical process, and some of them might, you know, drop out of the process from that. At the end of the day, we also have the MPTC physical requirements, and we do have a significant decline with working with these candidates to get them in our gym, with our trainer, to get them but but but we have gone through the list. Even though our recruitment efforts have shown significant increases in people taking the exam, we we're going completely through the list. No one's being left aside. And

is that different, Commissioner? Are you you're gonna say, like, from not to go back too far, when you were coming up,

mean, was it yeah, I think when I came on, was tens literally tens of thousands of people who took the exam. And it's a much it's a much smaller pool, but we've done a great deal certainly in the last couple of years to increase that pool a great deal. Almost to the point where we actually are like leaving some people off at the end, you know, right before class would go in. Not a lot. There's no certainly that's not the case.

But it takes a while. Like we have a lot of we're recruiting against everybody in every industry. The time it takes to from taking the exam to getting on are six months, if not longer. And it's hard for people to even hold a spot that if they want to. They'll take jobs elsewhere. So we have a lot of challenges with recruitment, but the fact is that we're doing all we can to keep that pool large, because we need large pools to make sure we have qualified people to come onto the

job. And just to follow-up on that chair, it's privilege here to go over the buzzer. But the other side of that is recruitment. I think over time, Boston Police Department has done a decent job, you know, diversifying its ranks, you know, maybe even a very good job, you know, since the seventies. But, you know, Nicole, I don't want to go back to the Smith case, But in terms of the higher ranks, that hasn't played out over time.

I know there's a new list now you've given the exam to make promotions off of. Is that going I I you know, how do you see that playing out in terms of diversifying the ranks of sergeants, lieutenants, and captains? And I would just say in terms of we we're we're using alternative pathways for cadets. Can we do that for maybe, you know, I don't think we can do it. We have to give an exam or something for the promotions. But what are we doing to increase the diversity in those ranks?

So, always begins, as I made reference to, the pool. You have to have a diverse group to start off with, so you need patrol officers, which we are doing a really, you know, hopefully a much better job of getting people that are diverse into our department. And then the second half of it is about making sure people are developed and want to be supervisors and take the exam and encourage it. The last exam we had, which I'm very happy we did, we had how

many people? Approximately 800 people took the exam.

800 officers actually took the exam. That was a large group of people, and that was very good. And so, as a result, we were able to, you know, have some promotions in the pool here where we'll speak to what those numbers were. But we're doing a lot to both develop our employees and give them opportunities encourage them to both take exams and see if they want to have leadership roles within the department.

Nicole, go Yeah, sure. Thank you, Counselor. It's always nice to relive the old days. So since the certification of the new promotional list, we've made promotions at all three ranks, sergeant, lieutenant, and captain. Of the five captains promoted, 40% of them were women. Of the 12 lieutenants promoted, 25% of them were people of color. And of the 19 sergeants promoted, 3131% of those were people of color. So certainly making progress increasing diversity in the higher ranks. But to reinforce the commissioner's point, we have to continue to focus on increasing diversity in the pool of patrol officers because that is ultimately where we draw from as we elevate our officers based on the exams.

Okay. Thank you.

I mean We currently have two female captains, and I don't know if we've had on a department, you know, at the same time in, you know, in a very, very long time, if ever.

Yeah. Captain Batson, I think, is that the chief? Who are the two women captains?

Captain Beth Leary and Captain Nicole McMullen.

Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. Nicole. Okay. Thank you very I mean, those numbers I mean, I think when we did the Smith case, the numbers of lieutenants, it was in the single digits, people of color. And to be making those promotions, I know councilor Culpepper talked about captain, you know, Hussein. And, you know, to to have people in those places, they need to make their way up the up the ladder. And this is, you know, in the past, they've largely been kept out of that ladder. And so thank thank you very much for continuing to work on that.

So just quickly, last round of questions. If I could divide 11 by three, I would be in a different job, so I'm not sure. But how about three minutes each?

You, mister chair. I do wanna just from my perception, and, you know, perception is in the eye of the beholder, beg to differ with Councilor Fitzgerald with regard to the movement of folks from MassCast, Mass and Cast to Nubian because that is happening. They are moving from Mass and Cast to Nubian Square. I mean we see it and so that's one of the complaints that some of the businesses in Nubian Square had. They have now seen more folks that have come from MasterCass into Nubian Square.

I do have a few questions for commissioner Cox regarding the nesting. Because I was part of the group when they first started, we met and met and met, and it just came together kinda it's planned. Right? And there is a plan for it to go citywide. It's not citywide right now. I know it's not. So my question is for the NEST team, commissioner, what is or who makes up the NEST team that we have working in the South End today?

I'll have John Brown speak Okay. To

I've been waiting to hear from him.

No, but yes, I think you have to understand NEST is a philosophy. Sometimes these acronyms with no one out there, people seem to think that this group of people, it's really about how they go about doing it, right, and interacting with the folks. We have some people with exceptional skill set in actually addressing it, and that's probably the leader of it. And so what we're trying to do is expose that to more and more officers so they can have the confidence and the tools to do the exact same thing, so we can do it in all at all at the

same I time. Understand. I understand.

And so But but I'm trying

to get to numbers because when you have a plan, you wanna know who's implementing the plan. And I know how the plan was implemented in South End, who's implementing it. But And again Is it is it Superintendent Brown? Yes, sir. I thought so. Okay. Good to hear from you. Yes, sir. And I only have forty eight seconds left. That's you know, I'm really trying to focus on establishing Commissioner, you call it a philosophy, but there is actually a team that's that's living up to that philosophy. And It's the

Boston Police Department, sir. And the point is is that the more like community policing, the more of it do it, the more you see almost everywhere.

Right. What my question is, how do we establish that in d two? Because we don't have it you call it a philosophy, I call it and we called it a team because they're going out and they've been identified as a nest team in these meetings. They've been going out to do the work in the in the South End. We wanna establish that same nest team of philosophy in Nubian Square, Commissioner Where

it began, by the way. I know.

It may have begun there, but and I don't know what happened over time, but if if it's that if it begun then, let's let's establish it. Part of the reason for this meeting tonight is to talk about that and how to get it established or reestablish it in Nubian Square. Because I do disagree with my counselor Fitzgerald. They are moving from Mass Ave because of the work that's being done there into Nubian Square. Okay.

Rev, so as you know, NEST did start on District B 2, you know, back in the day, and then NEST was kind of the evolution was kind of NEST kind of evolved and moved over to a one when we did the spring initiative. I think we're going on maybe two years ago now. Then we moved into District 4 in order to and C 6 in order to deal with the mass and cast stuff. So but in answer to your question, we have one lieutenant, one sergeant, and 14 police officers in NEST. I think maybe two weeks ago, they had like maybe six or eight officers.

We've got them a few more officers. And, like I said, the districts the two the three different districts also participate with NEST to kind of address the different issues. And we are definitely looking at Nubian Square, because as you know Sergeant Jarrod Jarrow originally came from there. And detect Captain Mamone was also a lieutenant at b two before he became a captain. So he's well aware of the different issues that are going on down there.

Well, maybe we should bring him back. Yes. Well, look, let me thank you for your testimony. Thank you, commissioner, for your leadership team. I told you when we were on the phone, I wasn't gonna hold back when you came because I think we gotta have tough discussion in order to come out with a good positive solution. So I thank you and superintendent Brown, I'll be working with you on that new business. Come to the meeting tonight. Yes. Like the Urban League at six. I'll be there. And I would love

to If we're done here first. Sorry.

Well, yeah. Let's let's that, let's move on so we can take Thank

you, mister chair.

Central staff a a break before the afternoon. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. I I doubt that, but, okay. Councilor Flynn.

Thank you, mister chair. And just wanna say acknowledge, Reverend Culpepper's strong and positive leadership for his constituents. That's exactly what he should be doing, fighting for his neighborhood. Commissioner, I'm and I I'm glad, to know that the cooperation with the FBI or ATF as well is working effectively on trafficking of guns. I also know that the FBI has partnered with the Boston Police on human trafficking related issues and arrests.

So that cooperation with those federal partners is critical, especially as we go into this summer with many tourists expected to Boston into Boston. Commissioner, human trafficking is is an issue I I focus on a lot. I have a lot of hotels in my district. Do you have a good plan for that for this summer?

Yeah. I think Paul may mention before. We we are partnering with quite a few folks. Okay.

So so human trafficking unit going back into 2025, we started to kind of anticipate the FIFA, you know, everything that's gonna surround FIFA. We strive to look at from investigative standpoint what crimes we might see increase during those times, looked out to get intel from different cities that were that that had held, hosted this before. Certainly human trafficking is one of the issues that is often brought up as as we see prolonged events over thirty nine days in our case and and the concerns that go along with that. So the Family Justice Center, Captain Thomas, Deputy Evans, Human Trafficking Sergeant Mark Sullivan have been talking about this, putting together a plan, working with both the FBI, state police partners, our social service agencies that work within that human trafficking space, and the entire Family Justice Senate to kind of consider the response to human trafficking both in a demand reduction standpoint and response to incidents and also within the whole family justice violence against women, sexual assault and things like that. So we have we we we got ahead of this.

You know, obviously, you could always use more manpower, more, assets, but we have a plan in place that, while still developing, has has been worked on for

quite some time. Thank you, superintendent. I rep also represent the large immigrant community in my district and thank thanking Boston Police for the important work they're doing on human trafficking. And I do know a lot of immigrants are used or exploited as part of as part of human trafficking. Let me just make one last point as it relates to hiring police officers.

Certainly, it's an issue I've I've been focused on my entire career. Also, part of it is the retention of current police officers in ensuring that we provide them with the critical support they need and their families need as well. I also think elected officials need to be more respectful and helpful to police officers and their families. I think that's part of retention, knowing that if there's an issue that city council is, the mayor has their back. And I think I think Boston police officers want to know that city elected officials have their back.

And if they don't if if they don't believe we do, you know, that does impact retention. And I talk to police officers like like everybody else does almost every day, and and they want and they want us to support them and support their families as to that's why I focus a lot on the sixteen hour shift because I do think it has a negative impact on a police officer's family. Impacts someone's marriage. It impacts their their health and their family and children. Also impacts the residents of the city. Mister chair, thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. Councilor Louie Jen.

Thank you. And I'm honored to be the one to close out the wall. You probably might have questions too. But I have a question regarding attrition and attrition at the academy. What accounts for attrition that happens at the academy? And what is the what is the culture like at the academy and what have the what what changes have been made in the academy over the years?

So the attrition that we do have at the academy is either from academic failures, physical fitness failures, and where people would just outright quit. They decide in the academy this is not the job for them, they don't want to be here. And those are primary, the three fundamentally ways in which attrition happens in the academy. The culture has changed over the academy probably quite a bit and sometimes, you know, we do first of all, the training is longer. Do more things in general across the board.

The requirements are more just because there's more state requirements that we have to put out there. And the fact is that we, you know, we introduced community policing in the academy. We have a lot more de escalation simulated in the academy. We have more tools to, you know, including TASER that we didn't have before in the academy. So and and we're always looking to make sure the academy culture is fits today's needs and and and we're always gonna look to make sure we evaluate and make sure we don't have incidents where people are being hurt and or unnecessarily bounce out the academy for no reason Mhmm.

Because we're not being proactive enough to look to make sure that we're instilling the right things in the offices, but more importantly that, you know, we're not just overly, you know, driving them out for no reason because we just want to keep things the same from fifty years ago. So we're always looking to reevaluate it. We have some really good instructors here and I think we're pretty happy with the performance that we're getting.

Would you say attrition has flatlined? Like it's the same or have you seen increase? Does anybody or that's a question I could maybe submit through the chair if like Attrition from people Entering and entering the academy and leaving before

Yeah. Would

say they

graduate.

Injuries, don't know if we have that data with us. But I think injuries have gone down because some of the training that we do are a little different around that like the physical fitness standards, how we do certain things are a little different.

Have become more competitive like?

No, I mean like I think we do more I want to say like cross training fitness versus some of the other things that we used to do before in the past. I can get you more information a little later. Wasn't totally prepared for that one but the fact is, is that we do do things differently in the academy in some ways to, you know, meet today's need. You know, even the requirements to get in, what they used to measure, some of the things we don't use those measurements anymore. Thank you.

Can I

ask one more question? Sure. Hopefully so. Patricia?

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah. So just for a frame of reference, we have a class currently in the academy, and they're reporting as of this week a 14% attrition rate from the start date, which is a significant reduction in the attrition based on the classes that we've seen prior to that. So the changes that are being made are supporting, I think, getting our recruits from start to finish.

So can you give it give us an example, and this is not my other question, but of of the number of recruits, for example, in the last class, the number who started and the number who graduated. And while I this is my final question. I'm sorry, mister chair. So for example, I was out with my chief of staff this week. We saw someone who we believe was in medical crises, and we called 911 for an ambulance.

And there were two police cars that also showed up. Now is that just a matter of of protocol that police show up when it was, you know, it was a request for 91. Same thing with if there's a fire, like, the the decision to have police show up just in terms of, like, how we can make sure that we are being as nimble as possible.

Yeah. It's it's it's like a triple response in a 911 system. So if someone's having a medical emergency because we are CPR trained and so the idea is to get the fastest response

as possible.

The fact is we don't need to stay if EMS gets there before or fire, but the reality is that it's a triple response because you want to get people help from the fastest person when you get there. And so

It's always a triple response?

I believe certainly on some of those, but what happens is because we use the same system, EMS is pretty responsive and fire department's very responsive, you know, on some of those. And so they usually do get there and then we can call each other off

And tell each other, okay, stand down. We'd like so in that situation, if the EMS had because EMS did not make

it first.

It was the police. We stayed. The police made it first. Right. And then EMS.

So but we're not there. We're not the primary. Mhmm. We're just there just as someone from public, you know, safety be there until the other ones show up and you know, some officers have defibrillators in the car and as well, like I said, we are CPR trained. A lot of officers are certified in tourniquet, so you know, for bleeding things of that nature. So we are trained for some form of medical, you know, certainly attention, but not certainly all forms. Have physicians, doctors, and things of that nature. So, I think the idea is for the public to get help as fast as possible.

Thank you.

Do you want that

Yeah, just a way of example.

So, the class that's currently in the academy that started on March 30 started at a 152. They're currently at a 131. The class that started in the academy on May in May 2025 and graduated in January started at 68 and graduated 46. And a 116 recruits entered the academy in January 2025 and graduated at 97 in August 2025.

Thank you. Those are my questions for

you, mister Chuck. Just to I I wanna get everyone out of here. Give central staff an hour to get ready, and I want to start the two p. M. On time. But so contractual the non personnel line item, right, is going from $57,000,000 to $54,000,000 You know, like what contracts or, like, what does that decrease have you picked out what you're already not spending money on for the next fiscal year? Are you canceling contracts? What does that decrease mean?

One was the removal of the promotional makeup exam that was in there last year because obviously we finished the promotional exam makeup. Other requests for new items and other contractual reductions based on the actual spending, it was reduced accordingly. So like our run rates on some of the contractual agreements that we have, some of them are variable. They're not fixed contracts like Axon's fixed contract. Our RMS is a fixed contract, but any contracts we have for repairs and maintenance, any kind of service agreements, if they're not being used, they were reduced accordingly based on actual run rate.

Okay. I'm just mean, in terms of like something like ShotSpotter, I mean, you stopping anything that's being programmed? Actually,

the ShotSpotter contract goes up anywhere between 35% each year. Last year, the cost of ShotSpotter was $297,000 and where we have budgeted $316,000 which is purely contractual increases that we've seen over year on year.

Okay. Thank you very much for this morning. And we'll connect try to come back at two. And we'll get that I think that hearing will be longer. I think there'll be some public testimony that we'll try to work in again after our first round of questions depending on how many folks are here and figure that out. But, okay. So thank you very much. This morning's hearing is now adjourned.