City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. Too heat. Wow. Wow. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

I'm tired. Good morning everyone. Just give us a moment to get situated. Thank you all so much for being here. Good morning everyone. Today we are here once again at the start of uh the summer months to discuss the community and problem solving strategies our city will be implementing to keep residents safe, engage with the children and families throughout our neighborhoods and disrupt pathways to violence. And I'm joined here with our full team including city manager Sher Long, interim chief Adam Henny, Cincy Rec Assistant Director Tiffany Stewart, Cincy Parks Director Jason Baron, Iris Rolley, city consultant to the collaborative, council members uh President uh Prom, Mr. Johnson, Scotty Johnson, Council Member Anna Albby, Council Member Evan Nolan, Council Member Mark Jeff, Council Member Mika Owens. It bears repeating at every opportunity that public safety is the core responsibility we have as city leaders. Nothing else works. The positive impacts we're investing in across our communities, all of it, none of it works unless families can feel safe in our community. That is why you have seen us double down on our investments in police visibility and partnerships with the state and county and technology through our drone program and real time data center. And importantly, it's why our

administration across departments continues to take a comprehensive and community focused view of violence prevention. In a moment, city manager Long will kick off the positive, proactive programming our administration is implementing this summer. But first, I want to re-emphasize that we as a city are prepared. It is a sad but real historical pattern that the summer months bring new challenges when it comes to violence. But that is exactly why we are out on our front foot with a coordinated set of strategies. It is why our council and I remain fully committed to ensuring the resources are there for our police, our administration, and the critical community work being done throughout our departments. We have talented and hardworking city employees, officers and partners out there every day helping to disrupt violence and promoting thriving neighborhoods. It is our job to empower them, invest in the interventions that are working, and listen to what the data and community members are telling us. That is exactly what we will keep doing. With that, it's my pleasure to welcome city manager Sherong. Thank you, mayor, and good morning. Summer is just around the corner and we are excited to share the many ways that the city is activating to make a make it a a fun, safe, and meaningful season for everyone, especially our young people. Everything we're discussing today is a collaboration. I want to lead with that because it couldn't happen without the hard work of all of our departments, whether it's Wreck, Parks, CPD, the mayor's office, the city manager's office, and everyone else who rolls up their sleeves to get get it done. We also have great external partners at the table and many of which are in this room and I'm very thankful for that. So, I just want to acknowledge everyone who

has already put in the work to make this summer a success before it even begins. In 2026, I'm thrilled to announce we are expanding the popular events and programming in both parks and wreck to serve more people and build our communities. The Wreck and Night series, which activates Cincinnati rec centers on Saturday nights with fun, safe events for teens, is expanding to four locations this this year after serving thousands of kids last summer. Reckon night programming will now be available at Evston, Wind Hills, Lincoln, and Hirs Rec Centers. Kids and teenagers can enjoy basketball, swimming, DJs, video games, and so much more, all for free Saturday nights from June to August. And of course, we are always proud to announce that all 24 city pools will once again be open this summer. Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Cincinnati Parks is gearing up to serve more than 20,000 young people and families through the summer. Parks is also bringing the fund to the riverfront every weekend with teen skate night at Sawyer Point every Friday and open skate on Saturday and Sunday nights from June through August. Not only that, but Parks is hosting free family-friendly programming at spaces across the city. Movie nights, back to school carnivals, live music, and so much more. All of this program is designed to unlock the vibrancy of Cincinnati in the summer, our neighborhoods, our green spaces, our communities, and our traditions. There's something for everyone. Whether you're a parent planning your kids summer break, a retiree looking to get outside, or someone who just moved in town wondering what is Cincinnati all about. These events also give young people a positive exciting option for the summer nights. I will remind everyone that our citywide curfew, including the special curfew district, is in effect every weekend all

year long, including the summer. If you're under the age of 18, you need to be accompanied by an adult or start heading home at nighttime. In the Urban Corps, the curfew begins at 9:00 p.m. and citywide, it's 11:00 p.m. Our CPD officers and community partners are ready to help families and teens understand the curfew. There are signs throughout the urban corps reminding folks of the curfew rules and will be helping kids make their way home as the restricted hours begin. Of course, we have a robust nonCPD protocol designed to reconnect curfew violators with their families and make sure they get access to helpful resources if they need them. There's more to talk about with more detail to go into, which is why we've joined we're joined by parks, wreck, and CPD leadership. My message today is that we're going to have a great summer in Cincinnati thanks in part to the incredible work of the city departments and the programming they've created. So, now I'll turn it over to Wreck. Thank you.

Thank you all for being here this morning. This summer, CRC is expanding access to safe, engaging opportunities for youth and families across the entire city. Our focus here is simple. Safe spaces, youth development, and expanded access. From wreck at night to jobs, camps, pools, and events, we are investing in a stronger summer in Cincinnati. We know evenings are a high-risisk time for youth. So, we're providing structured and positive programming during those hours through our recite program, which you've heard a little bit about it with the city manager. I'll discuss a little bit more later in our other slides. But we're not just keeping youth busy. We're building skills, providing income, and creating pathways to success through our youth to work program. By having strong summer programs, we're strengthening neighborhoods and helping reduce violence by building those connections. Our reckoning night offers safe, supervised weekend spaces for teens 12 to 17. The program will run every Saturday starting June 6 through August the 8th from 5:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. In 2025, our attendance our attendance surpassed our expect our expectations with over 2300 attendees. Due to this success, we have excited to expand to four sites. The teens can expect activities like sports, swimming, esports, music, and more. Safety is a priority, so we will have on-site officers and transportation support. We also are happy to announce that all city pools will be open again this year along with spray grounds for families. The opening dates and aquatic program offerings can be found on our cincere.org website. Summer camps also kick off June 6th, June 9th, and this has been a major for us with 1 million invested in day camps, specialty camps, and field trips. These

programs ensure families have safe, affordable options all summer long. Employment is also a key violence prevention strategy for us. Our youth to work program will be employing 250 young people this summer, giving them structure while be while being engaged in supervised jobs. These jobs build leadership, job readiness, and financial independence. We're also creating a teen outdoor concert highlighting local talent this summer, which also can be found on our website. This summer represents a major investment in our youth and neighborhoods. We had 650,000 for wreck at night, 2 million for pools, 1 million for camps, and 250 youth jobs throughout the city. These efforts will serve thousands of youth and families across Cincinnati. Our goal, safer summer nights, stronger communities, and expanded opportunity for neighborhoods. And I'll turn it over to Jason from Parks.

Thank you, Tiffany. That was great. Um, it appears like we don't have slides anymore, so I'm going to wing it. Um, my name is Jason Baron with parks. Um, and I'm sure that Molly, as she efforts to get this up and running, we'll also make sure that the slide deck is shared with everybody. Um, I was going to make a joke that the city manager said it best and I was going to say it with slides, but that is a lie now. So, um, I'm just stalling. Um, but parks is happy to be part of summer and censy and happy part of giving positive activities for kids throughout. Parks generally are kind of passive spaces where folks come and they enjoy them in the way they want to. But we've met the city manager's challenge to have active and engaging programming specifically for teens. Um the centerpiece of that is our um teen skate nights that are Friday night at Sawyer Point all summer long. Um we're expanding that to even more um weeks this year, but last year we did 13 weeks and in those 13 weeks we had over 1500 attendees. So that's over 100 kids per week that are have positive engaging activities um at the park. We also had 52 hours of free programming. 70% of the kids that attended ski teen skate night were within a 10 mile um 10 miles of Sawyer Point. And 46% of the teens served um were from family families with household incomes under $50,000. So really impressive um ability to connect. And it's important also to note that all of that programming is free. Skate rentals are free. All you got to do is like show your ID um and kind of sign in and all the all the skating activities are free. It's got DJs, art making, um, of course, free skating, dancing. It's just fantastic. And it's all made possible by our partnership with Skate Downtown Cincinnati and Morgan and Eddie Rego who've kept dedicated countless hours to making this happen. Um, there's a slide that's going to mention all of the various programming that we do throughout the parks. Um, right here. Um, perfect timing. Um, I stalled just enough. Um, rapid run fun days. Um, the 11th, 18th, 20. You can see all this. Kennedy Heights. We've got events, fun music and art Wednesdays.

Ezard Charles Park, we have a CSO concert, boxing event, a talent show, and Ezfest, of course. Season Good Square has a back to school carnival. Stanbury Park has um Park Friday fundays. Mount Echo West River West has events. Also point all throughout August. So, there's stuff happening all throughout the community all summer long. On the next slide, um like Wreck, we also do um a summer camp program. It's eight weeks of summer camp programming at our six nature centers. Um we still have openings for our trailside summer camps in Burn Woods, at Labu Woods up in College Hill, Stanberry Park the week of June 8th, and Mount AR the week of June 27th, 27th all have openings. Parks also has scholarships available for those in need. Um and we've increased our scholarships given out this year by over 40% which is really exciting. But we also have unlimited scholarships to go. We haven't turned anybody away that needs a scholarship. So, if anybody's interested in attending a, this is my big push. If anybody's interested in attending summer camp in a Cincinnati park, Google Cincinnati Park summer camps and you can get registered quickly and easily, and that's all thanks to our great partners is the Cincinnati Parks Foundation. Every time we say we need more funding to make sure folks have access to summer camps, they say, "How much do you need?" And they always fill that need. So, I believe that's everything. We also have um some youth work um workforce development. We have um kids through part of CRC's program. We have two youth employees that are at each one of our summer camps help making all that programming and all that camp um activity work all summer long. So with that, thank you very much. And now it's my pleasure to introduce interim chief Adam Henny.

Good morning everyone. Good. If you recall when I first took over, we had a 90-day vision on how we wanted to move with the police department. And it was based on four pillars. As you can see here, we had uh visibility, investigations, technology, and collaboration with the partners. So, as we move forward in our summer plan, we felt that these initiatives were very successful. We made some tweaks to them, some changes, and this is what we are going to be doing moving on to ensure that we provide the best services we can uh throughout the summer. So, first off, I'd like to talk about the visibility uh as one of our first pillars. As you can see, one of the things that we've continued to move forward in is our bike visibility. As we've been talking to a lot of the community, the two things that they have told me the most is they want to see more police officers and they want to see more traffic enforcement. So, this is tackling that first request. Uh, our officers are still on bikes in many of the other districts, but this unit is primarily focused on downtown and over the Rine. uh covers most of all of the prime time, seven days a week, but also this unit is obviously very mobile and we're able to utilize them in different events, different neighborhoods throughout the city and we're able to deploy them very quickly. Uh this does not take away from our walking patrols in the specific districts. I know this next slide coming up, I'm going to show you some successes here. Uh even I myself, we are going above and beyond getting behind away from our desks, getting outside of our cars, and getting out in those neighborhoods and reconnecting with the community. And I think this is not only a big priority for the citizens

themselves, but for us to to build those bridges again, build those connections, build that trust, and also in effect reduce crime. Our youth camps and our programming, I think that falls under visibility also. These officers that are engaged in these activities are saints. These officers have been social workers before becoming police officers. These officers are connected with these young people. This is something that they are very dedicated to. And this is above and beyond all these other initiatives that parks has said, that Ruck has said, that city manager has said, such as our city camp and our explorers program. um beyond city camp. To me, this is crucial. I was in this unit for four years and I can see the positive effects it has when officers are engaged with young people in their lives. And we're going to continue that above and beyond other city programs throughout the summer. And then finally, with visibility, you may not see that, you know, and you've read about this continuously, how CDRT and SWAT were always out there. But unfortunately, there's been trends in this nation of additional gun violence, mass shootings, and I felt it was important for us to finally put together a full-time SWAT team that is not really visible, per se, but they're there. And I want you all to know that they're there. They're there right now without getting too much into the tactics. And I know how our officers back when we had that tragedy in Fifth Third, those officers acted so heroically. And I am so proud to wear the same uniform that they wear. But these SWAT officers, as you know, are specifically trained. They have the equipment. They have the resources. And I could not see a world anymore that

a major city like Cincinnati did not have a team like this in place that could quickly and effectively respond. hopefully it never happens again, but to another critical incident and stop that threat as quickly as possible. Continuing on with the visibility, this is something that I'm extremely proud with of our officers starting from the very beginning of the year. As you can see here from year to date, the count of walking patrols that we've had. Now, this is not just downtown and this is not just in Over the Rine. I want you to know is citywide in all of our neighborhoods. The count of walking patrols of officers getting out of their cars, going out there and getting on the radio and saying, "I am walking," is up 138%. The total time of officers being out there walking, we are up 148%. And then just an astronomical number where I am just extremely proud of our officers uh buying into this initiative, working hard, being out there, being visible. Just in the month of April compared to April of last year, the amount of walking patrols have increased 446%. Next slide, please. Investigations and enforcement. I spoke to you before about how traffic was the number two concern of the citizens that were giving us feedback. As you all know, we do what we call traffic blitzes from time to time where we use our citywide traffic unit. Uh we collaborate with Ohio State Patrol. We'll go out from time to time and do enforcement and uh try to make some positive changes out on our interstates. our direction through our patrol bureau commander, Colonel Hammer. Uh we have changed some tactics and we're getting

more uh decentralized in our abilities to do enforcement. We are providing additional resources that the city manager has given us to be able to pay for overtime to reallocate officers in specific areas. And when I say traffic enforcement in specific areas, I don't want you to think that we're just going out there and we're just starting to write tickets. Through our CAPS team, we are able to identify the top level areas in each district where we have the most amount of crashes and or pedestrian violations and that is where we are specifically making those enforcement efforts. So, please know that our vice rotation, these numbers may not seem very significant, but it is. Prior to us making these changes, we had four full-time police officers that were involved in what we call vice enforcement. As we all know uh throughout the I don't know the last six months or two a year our concerns our challenges have been in a lot of those areas where we have liquor uh premises and those four officers I'll just be blunt with all of you were very overworked and we were trying very hard to keep up with that. We have now doubled the amount of officers that are in that unit. And I'm very excited to tell you that because as we all know uh every officer uh counts significantly and wherever we make those deployments and for us to double that unit and be able to focus on these liquor establishments, I'm very optimistic on the results of that going into the summer. The curfew centers, I know there's been a lot of talk about our curfew centers. I know the city manager has spoken to you about uh the deployments of that and what the curfew is. I just want you to know quickly about what our opinion as Cincinnati police is as it relates to curfew and

curfew enforcement. We're going to have a lot of young people more than ever taking advantage of these city initiatives that we just talked about today, which means there's going to be more and more young people out in public. It is not the goal of the police department to start citing and or arresting young people because they just attended something, have some difficulties in getting back home, and now they're 10 minutes past their curfew. Curfew is a last resort in our enforcement efforts. Our primary goal as the Cincinnati Police is we want these young people to go out. We want these young people to enjoy these programs and these activities and we want them to get home safely. And whatever we can do as an agency to make that happen, that is what we're going to do. Now, don't get me wrong. If these young people want to take advantage of this, if they want to cause violence, if they want to cause disorder, we are going to hold them accountable for that. And we are going to hold them accountable for their curfew. And then finally with our investigations and our enforcement, I know you are aware of our pivot program, our placebased initiative, violent offender territory territories. Uh Colonel Hammer, once again, uh this is kind of like a steroid shot, kind of a refresh here. Sometimes when we do long-term investigations in areas, sometimes things can get a little stale. And even though our best efforts are put forward, there's times that we need to re-evaluate the areas that we're working, our partnerships, what our officers are doing, and we continue on to do that. And this is something that we are going to kind of rejuvenate. We've already put several more officers in this area. And I know Colonel Hammer, this is one of his priorities in his bureau, moving us forward.

Tech, next slide, please. Technology. This has been one of the biggest things that I've been hanging my hat on. I know all of you are aware of that. Uh before I get into the special events and that, I want you to understand uh the importance of this 247 crime center and just reiterate to you what they do. First off, when I came to the mayor and the city manager and told them of our ideas of this, uh this was a priority that was completed in 30 days. And I know everyone in this room understands the bureaucracies of the world to get anything done in 30 days at this scale. I was just overly impressed and very humbled that they made this a priority for us. If you do not know, right now currently, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we have officers and techs monitoring cameras throughout the whole city. We have drones that are able to fly and cover 90% of the city. Not only are we able to have drones for just special events or during the day, these drones typically now can respond and be somewhere faster than a police officer at 3:00 in the morning. Just amazing technology and amazing change in how our strategies are in policing here in Cincinnati. Continuing with our special events, and I wanted to put this on this slide because I want you all to understand how much technology affects these things. If we remember, we had some challenges during opening day. If it wasn't for the men and women that were behind these drones and cameras giving us real-time information of patterns and trends and what was going on in the city, it would have been very difficult and a very lengthy reaction from us boots on the ground, us supervisors trying to deploy

those resources and get those resources in those areas. it be as efficient as effective as we were during that day. And then finally here with our technology, our surveys, I told you that um you know, I believe I'm wholeheartedly believe that policing should be in the customer service business. You know, it's one thing for us to tell you what we think is best for your community and your neighborhoods, but I need to know what you think, and I need to make sure that I deploy our resources and our reaction based on to a point what your opinion is on that. Typically, the city has surveys that we put out once every other year. And it's not just for public service. It's for the whole gamut of the 6,000 employees that we have. One thing that the mayor and the city manager has provided us now is we now have or we will be here shortly having surveys that are going to be given out frequently and regularly to either people that we've provided services to or just the public in general. And we're going to be able to get real-time feedback um to tell us what we are doing well and what people think that we could do to improve our services. Here in the next slide, I just want to real quickly, I know I already spoke about this, but when we first put drones up, you can see that we were primarily were during the day. Uh, as we progress to 247, you can see that we have not only greatly increased in the green our weekend and our special event coverage, but just our flights from when we've started to today, we have double the amount of flights daily of what we are providing the city. Next slide. Our last slide here and our last uh pillar of our plan is our collaboration with other entities, other law

enforcement entities. One thing that was frustrating to me and I think others was is sometimes when we face challenges, we like to point fingers to other groups within the criminal justice system and saying that uh you know it's something that they're doing or not doing that's making the justice system ineffective. Well, with us, we're not doing that. We are looking internally. We want to know what we can do, what we can improve on to provide the best services and the best information to those partners. so they can do their job better. As you can see here, specifically with the courts, um we have changed our arrest reports. We've met with judges. We've met with prosecutors asking them specifically, what information are you not getting that you should be getting? And we've made changes like that. We have officers now going to your initial appearances to your room uh A's to see the judge in person to let them know before they set bail what kind of arrest this is, what kind of individual this was, uh what was the incident to help them set bail at a more equitable standard. Our joint operations with the county sheriff and the state highway patrol has been stronger than it's ever been. uh we are collectively working in partnership for different task force to go out to those specific hotspot locations and being able to work uh more efficiently with our collaboration of resources than trying to do the same job separately. And then finally, obviously with everything that we have been talking about today about ACT and talking about all the wreck at night and all of that, the police department is 110% committed to make sure that we provide as much safety and security that we can so all of the volunteers and all the young people can feel safe and enjoy these

activities and come home and repeat it the very next week. And with that, I have nothing more and I'm going to turn it back over to the city manager. Thank you for giving me those few minutes.

Thank you to all our speakers. Um, we will take a few questions. The city budget for the next school year hasn't been approved yet. Obviously, the summer has right in the middle of that. How is the city going to pay for all of this expanded programming when we're looking at 5% cuts across the general fund? Fortunately, with our commitment to performance-based budgeting, we've been able to prioritize what the needs are for the city. And so, we have made sure that our police department, in addition to those other areas that are supporting our youth, are something that we are making a um a priority to to build our budget around.

I know city council passed something to find out how many cameras were around rec centers and also assuring that they were inside parks. Where does that standing and what does our camera situation look like in the city right now? that will be a priority in the budget moving forward because they also asked us to make sure that we um presented that as administration as a priority. Um I will let chief um speak to the cameras.

So yes, initially we had a a 30-day push on getting uh the majority of the cameras up and running that we purchase currently had. Um, there was some technology issues that we didn't foresee that we are continuing to working on. I think we are in the, and correct me wrong, Dr. Desmond, I think we're in the 90s some percent range of our cameras up and running. Uh, we are currently working with city administration to come up with some more efficient avenues in uh, making sure that these cameras stay up and repaired. But now that we've had that number increased, it makes it a much more manageable for our team to notify us when a camera is not operating and getting that camera fixed as quickly as possible.

Will you try to have some like centers or some of these different events? I know you have like those portable cameras like that as well. Without giving a list of we have hundreds and hundreds of cameras throughout the city and I know that there is cameras at some rec centers. The specific ones I do not know, ma'am. Chief Penny, uh, what role collaboration will be really important to the summer safety plan? Could you give us some more specifics on what the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, their role that they'll play in OTR downtown this summer? We know the sheriff said that they want to collaborate with you guys.

Yes. So, the sheriff has been very uh forward in explaining that they are a support role and I know there's been some talk that they were actively just patrolling in different areas. Now, first off, understand that they are the county law enforcement agency and we are in Hamilton County. But between the sheriff and me, we have had a very strong working relationship. Uh they want to support us in our actions that we are doing and that is exactly what they're doing. If there's uh a neighborhood or somewhere that we want to be and we can use their support or we can use highway support, they are more than cooperative with us and that's what we've been doing. was criticized by city leaders for how she handled last year's uh summer plan. How are you handling things different this year and did you kind of support what was on the table last summer?

I'm not going to ask any questions about Chief Thei. City manager in the performance reviewp

can you ask your question again please? How are you going to be more incidents happen as compared to last summer as council members push for more transparency from your office in their review. Um for me um I think when we were talking about uh transparency in my review um it was my goal to make sure that we are giving council the information so they're not caught flatfooted when hearing from you all versus them hearing from us. um sometimes you guys get ahead of us um in in situations and so it is my goal to make sure that through email through FYI and we are continuously communicating with council which we have already been doing um and we will continue to stay in contact with them to see other ways that we can be nimble in that.

I think that question was more about transparency with the media and with the public not with council. Those were kind of two separate things in the performance review. So can you address that? Um, I think that probably I will leave council to say their expectations to be quite honest because I mean I from what I've seen we've made huge steps in making sure that we've made the media um make a council aware and given them talking points in which the administration so that they're not caught flatfooted when you all reach out to them for questions. Um, if there's a different level of that expectation, I don't think that that specifically um has been something that we've talked about. just want to weigh in on on that specific question. Um, last summer we were doing very regular press conferences with all of you. Um, press conferences. At one point that was every other week. At another point it was weekly. I met with all of you um uh in my office and walked through all of the data, all of the strategies. Uh, I specifically and very transparently told you where we were deploying officers, uh, how our strategies were changing. Uh, and I always allowed all of our members of the press to ask me all the questions that you wanted for as long as you wanted. Uh, so from a transparency perspective with the media, I believe city hall, particularly last year, uh, was very transparent. So much so that the press started criticizing us for doing too many press conferences. Thank you.

Chief, can you talk a little bit about the challenges with staffing? I know that's been an ongoing issue for I don't know, five years. Um, and how that plays into these detail roles and places that want to bring you guys in to help out and be collaborative, but uh maybe there aren't enough officers details. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Sure. The point to make is, and you are right on it, this isn't a problem that has just rose up. We've been dealing with this for a very long time. And us and the other assistant chiefs, we have been able to navigate those challenges like the other 50 other challenges in policing that we have to deal with. What I can tell you is that we are aware of that. We have to prioritize what services we believe should be at the forefront and then we utilize our resources the best we can to provide those resources to the community.

Are you able to talk about the parking lot safety plans? I know that was an issue after FC games and I know that's been an ongoing issue around stolen guns whether it was in a parking lot or not, but what does that look like this summer? Yes. So that is a multiaceted multi-EP department uh initiative that the city manager is working on. Uh we are just one uh piece of that. I can tell you that that is still actively uh being evaluated and being planned and I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to provide all of you our final um plan that we're going to be rolling out here in the future. Is there an easier part of the December plan at all? Just because I know they have the summer ambassadors program and different things like that. I really just

3CDC is a partner. They manage a lot of our assets in the city and so we are always um in communication with them as far as the needs. Regarding the uh summer initiative, where will community care monitors be stationed and what will they be doing? Will they be in government square again? I will let um Iris Rley answer that question.

Thank you for that question and good morning to you all. The community care monitor will community care monitors will be wherever the youth are, wherever the data uh shows us where we need to be, wherever the assistance is, that's where you will see them. So, please join us in reporting the good work that you see them and the 311 community outreach workers and any other community organization that is out there assisting us. And if you all can report anything, report that we need help in making sure children are safe this summer. You guys are discussing where you may.

So, we look at yeartoear. We look at the trends um and that's what problem solving allows you to do to look at their trends and we talk to kids and we follow them to see exactly where they're going to go. So we work closely with the police department and other agencies that have children in their miss and that are working with them. Cincinnati Rec Parks we will be working directly with Brook Lipkcom our placebased monitor monitor here in the city because we want the problem solved at the greatest extent feasible. On the topic of curfews and curfew centers, first just a clarification. It's my understanding that the curfew is in effect all week, not just on weekends. But then can you address curfew centers? Will it be the same plan as last year, the same locations, the same partners? And how much will that cost?

The curfew centers will be the curfew is a is is all summer. It is still um it is active. Um on the weekends we have um a specific um um the centers are activated in a more robust way to make sure that if there's a large contingency of kids we have place for to take them. Um also we will get you the number exactly on the costs at a later time. I don't have that right in front of me. Um but again we need to make sure if you're in the city it's past 11:00 you need to make sure that you're heading home. We have great partnerships that we will have Iris Rolley the community responders. We have the CPD that will be giving it a a generous amount of warnings for kids to make sure that you're out there. If you're an age of 18, this is not this place for you to be heading home to be with your trusted adults.

The curfew centers last year, we learned later, didn't have much utilization, which I know on one hand might seem like a success because it means kids are going home, but did that change anything about how you're doing the curfew centers this year? For me, no, it did not. At the end of the day, we need to make sure that everybody understands that there is a curfew. the curfe if is active in the city. When there was conversation about the cost of that, I really do feel that that undermined our efforts because what we did see is a drastic drop of when we did activate the curfew center of how many kids and how they were navigating our city. So, please understand that we are utilizing the curfew the same way that we have and it is active and we will be enforcing it. Last question.

Chief, u question. Tomorrow's an important day for the Department of Police memorial recognition. I wondered if you would talk a little bit about the importance of that and what it means to the department.

Well, I mean, of course, I mean, it goes without saying. I, you know, I've been on this job for almost three decades now, wearing this uniform. Council member Johnson, there's other members in here. And you think of the day-to-day sacrifices that our men and women in blue um give every day just during their routine patrol being called day after day, week after week, missing holidays, missing weekends, working nights, all of those things, not knowing that today could be the last day that you're going to say I love you to your family, to your kids, the last time you're going take that radio call and uh to have a day to have an opportunity to remember those people because just like everything else we like to forget. We'd like to move forward in our days, think about all the great things that are occurring in our city. It just gives us a minute to remember that there was those men and women that didn't do it for the money. They didn't do it for the prestige or anything like that. They did it to keep this city and this nation safe. And what more can you do but then to give your life? So please, please, any one of you, tell your friends, tell your families, if they can just give us an hour just to be on that route to say thank you, uh it would mean more than the world to all of us that serve and have served in the past.

Can I add to that real fast? Thank you. As the chief said, the the biggest thing with tomorrow is the fact that I think sometime police officers are not humanized. There are no super men and super women that put that gun and badge on every day. And for 33 years, I went to far too many funerals of police officers. And I think the reality hits unfortunately after one of our public servants is shot or killed that they are human. I can tell you there are no supermen and superw women. These are men and women that get up every single day, leave their families, and do things most people won't even dare to do. And to have one day of saying thank you versus 365 days of saying thank you is is really not a lot to ask. Uh we're not they're not invincible people. They don't walk on water. They are human. They bump their heads. They bleed. They cry. They try. So if nothing else tomorrow, there's no super people you're going to see tomorrow. You just got dedicated people that would be willing to sacrifice their life for this great amazing city. And that's what tomorrow means. Thanks a lot. Thank you.