Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to the city council study session for March 9th, 2026, 6 p.m. at the city council chambers, 111 East Maple Avenue. Uh the first presentation we have is on the liability insurance renewal. Madam interim city manager, I'll turn it over to you to let you talk about that.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. As our finance director, Melissa Cabrera, makes her way up. I just want to give you an overview. Um, this discussion is related to the city's uh additional liability insurance. Covers things like general liability, employment practices, and auto liability. Um, we are currently we have a self-insured retention of up to a million dollars with a policy limit of 10 million. And then there have been questions um in the past as just if this was something we wanted to continue to renew um or if we wanted to go a different route. So um I'll turn it over to Melissa to go over the finer details. Good evening, mayor, members of the council. Um so as uh Mrs. Reynolds has stated that we are here to discuss the liability insurance uh program renewal. So this is our excess program. Um, just for a little bit of history and something that we'll touch on um, as well in the presentation, we went from a $250,000 self-insured retention in the fiscal year 2425 uh, to just under a million two years ago or a million two years ago. So, this is a pretty substantial increase. And also during that time, the insurance rates went from about 803,000 to 875,000. So, a much higher SIR uh but not much savings on the actual insurance premiums. Last year, there was quite a bit of discussion about whether it made sense financially for the city to continue paying for this excess insurance. So, after tonight, after the presentation, after discussion, if it is the will of the council, uh we would request that you uh have a vote to add this to next week's agenda uh for the renewal. So, um I will turn it over now to James Charlesworth of Charlessworth Consulting and he will go through the uh proposed insurance renewal for you.

Thank you, mayor, members of the council. James Charlesworth, Charlesworth Consulting, 1828 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri. Um I appreciate this opportunity to talk about your liability insurance renewal. I will be brief because uh there's pretty good news to talk about quickly. Our firm has been your risk management consultant since 2019. Uh I took over for my brother Bob who has retired. Uh I run the company and then Sarah Ve is my uh consultant that works daytoday uh with the city. Oops. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. Uh basically liability program is is about three or four fold. general liabilities, bodily injury, property damage, premises and operations, your typical slip and falls, things of that nature. Uh we do have uh some caps on we have sovereign immunity u but we also have some caps on our liability a little over $500,000 per person about $3.5 million per occurrence. So that is our exposure. Uh again, we do have um some sovereign immunity, but uh there are claims that can slip past that. Employment practices, we all know what that's all about. Mostly wrongful discharge, failure to promote, wrongful termination, things of that nature. Uh these are often in federal jurisdictions and therefore not subject to the tort caps or uh immunity. Law enforcement liability again volley injury and property damage arising out of law enforcement's function. Um most of these again are in federal court uh civil rights 14th amendment uh section 1983 type claims. U so u they do have the right to sue and there is no cap on liability that can be made um or alleged on our law enforcement officers. Public official liability this is typically

filed in federal court. Again, um the thing about uh the public official is that there has to be a demand for money in order for there to be liability insurance coverage. Therefore, things like injunctive relief, regulatory taking, things of those type of claims generally are not covered by that policy. And then lastly, the auto liability. We all know what auto liability is. Uh no different than your personal auto liability. Again, we have some protection under our sovereign immunity. There are some exceptions as well. Uh we always talk about the employees use of their own vehicles. It's always important to recognize if they are using their own vehicle and the scope of duties for the city, their personal auto coverage is always primary uh with the cities being excess. So as N noted, our current coverage for liabilities of $10 million for all coverages combined. We have a million dollar self-insured retention uh and it covers all the lines of coverage which I just uh reviewed. Again, historically our last year we changed insurers from states risk retention group to Obsidian uh states had dropped their limits to $5 million. Uh they offered a renewal last year. It went from $8 3540,000 to almost $1.4 million. uh in premium and the Obsidian program offered us the full 10 million uh for $875,000. And I'm happy to report that the renewal is unchanged. Same limit, same retention, same cost. Uh and in today's market, that's a that's a win. Not included in the packet are details about the cyber liability, which also renews April 1. Uh this really isn't part of the package. It's a separate line coverage. Um, we do have the renewal in hand. Uh, and I can confirm that there are very favorable terms and

conditions. That information is available upon request, but for obvious reasons, we don't like to disclose that in a public public meeting. Goals going forward, we're going to talk a little bit about self-funding. I know that was a topic here earlier. Um, and then how we would manage that and of course continue to work on our risk management program and our ways of mitigating risk. Uh, one of the reasons we started talking about self-funded is because we saw this exponential increase in premiums and we didn't know when it was going to stop. We also saw the exponential increase in our retentions and we didn't know when that was going to stop. Now that the market is stabilized, uh, we are recommending a renewal uh, at the current terms and conditions. Um, I want to publicly thank Lockton, our insurance broker. They've done a fantastic job and of course Sarah who does most of the day-to-day work. So with that, I will take any questions.

Any questions? Mr. Mayor, please proceed. James, can you just explain just a little bit because we were talking last year about self-funding depending on how the insurance industry was going to ever flow? Can you just explain just a little bit what that means and what that would look like for independence?

Well, it's a great question and there's there's a difference between self-funding and non non-insurance. Uh, in a way, you are self-funded. a $100,000 self-insured retention or a million- dollar self-insured retention is basically you're you're already self-funded. Uh you've just got some sort of cap on top of it. And I would never recommend to any of my clients that they go without that that upper protection because you can go 20 years without a problem and then you have one bad day and and we could be looking at a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Um so uh so in a way you are self-insured. If you want to increase the retention over the years, we always say take whatever delta between your budget amount and what the actual insurance cost is and put it in a reserve fund to where we get a comfort level that we can absorb one of those big losses. But I would I would argue that you are already self-insured to a significant amount.

How are you looking nationally as we're looking as the the whole conglomerate of insurance municipalities? What's the gloom or doom of that?

Yeah, it's been difficult. There's very, as you probably well know, the one of the challenges is there's very few insurance companies that want to ensure municipalities because you're very tricky risk. Um, I mean, you're ultimately five, six, eight, 10 business units under one coverage document, which is challenging. So, but the good news is that uh the market has softened. It's not soft, but it's stabilized. And what typ typically happens when it stabilizes, more insurance companies start to get involved and hopefully that'll drive down some some cost. Uh I can't predict the future, but uh I I would anticipate us being on a much better trajectory over the next few years than we are right now.

Thank you. Anyone else other further questions? Please proceed.

Um what would be let's assume that just for discussion purposes that we decided we did want to look at some point down the road going more with a higher retention or something to that effect just to reduce costs and things. What would be in from your perspective some logical uh benchmarks relative to doing that between now and whatever day that might be? Well, and what would be like a typical next step of of um you know increasing our our retention or whatever? Well, the next step would be to get options from our insurance broker at higher retentions and then for us to take a look backwards 5 10 years and then do some projections of what the next five or 10 years would look like and just see how that would have worked. If if the next five years are like the last five years, how we would have fared. Uh the the problem or the challenge I would anticipate is that you're $875,000. We could ask for a $2.5 million self-insured retention and we may save $200,000 or maybe a hundred,0001 150. And so the question becomes, are we really gaining we're taking on an extra $1.5 million of exposure to save a hundred $200,000. Is that good business? That's your decision, not mine. But that would be our next steps.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Now, obviously, if we would have stayed with states and their renewal could have been 1.6 $1.8 8 million this year. That's a different conversation. Maybe maybe we save a million dollars. Well, now we usually look at about a two and a half year window. If if we can save enough money to fund that difference over two and a half years, it's usually considered a fairly decent uh a decent option, but there's just not enough premium right now. That makes sense. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else have further questions? Please proceed.

Thank you. So, it's uh spring storm tornado season. It almost makes you think about uh damage and replacement costs. So, if we had a big tornado here, a Joplin style tornado, do we have replacement capability if we knock down major building? Yes, that's not part of this renewal. Our property renews in July, July 1st. Got it. Uh but it is replacement cost coverage on a blanket base. Well, it's um don't hold me to this because I haven't looked at it in a in a minute, but I think uh they pay up to 115% of what we list the insurance coverage for. So, if we have it listed for a million, they'll pay up to $1.15 million.

Fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else? Other further questions? Anyone else? All right. Very good. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, mayor. Next up, oh, actually one, sorry to interrupt. Um, we would to get this on for an April 1st renewal have to have this added to the 316 agenda. Um, which would require a vote of the council. The agenda for the 16th is already posted and this is not an item on that currently. Okay. So, uh, we have a motion to add this to the next council agenda. I'll make that motion. Second.

Thank you. We've got a motion in a second to add this item to the next council agenda. Any discussion? Seeing none, madam city clerk, please call the role. Council member Fierce, yes. Council member Perkins, yes. Council member Stewart, yes. Council member Mccandas, yes. Council member Wy, yes. Council member Vot, yes. Mayor Roland, yes. And the liability insurance renewal has been approved to be put on the agenda for next Monday. Seven in favor, zero opposed. Thank you. That brings us to the next item, Independence Police Department's pursuit policy. Interim Madam Interim City Manager, the floor is yours.

Okay. Um, as you all know, policies are often or need to be reviewed with some kind of frequency and they are often reviewed by circumstance. Um, in this instance, our police pursuit policy has um been both time and circumstance have caused a review of this. There's been an internal committee that has met um for the last couple months to look at options, look at what other jurisdictions are doing and Chief Brinkley is here to go over the findings and recommendations and some uh just statistics about some of our surrounding municipalities for comparison. So, Chief, go ahead and come on up.

Chief Brinkley, the floor is yours.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Uh it has been quite a while since I've done a council presentation. So bear with me, but I am eager to have this one. So um let me go through my presentation. So we are definitely going to review the police policy review. Uh this presentation will cover remember slide to the next one. Recommendations from the 2025 police department assessment performed by the company legal liability and risk management institute. I'll refer that to LLRMI in the rest of the presentation. I will go over some of the key points uh of our current policy. Uh we'll cover some of the technology equipment and also training needs that we have and then review some of the police data from 2023 to 2025 comparing um that to police agencies in our specific area and then I will present my pursuit policy recommended changes next. Okay. Okay. In 2025, the city of uh Independence contracted with LLRMI to conduct a comprehensive uh risk assessment of the IPD operations. They reviewed hundreds of our documents, reports, logs, videos, procedures, and the scope of their uh review really had to do with use of force, several different things, use of force, training, vehicle pursuit, citizen complaints, search warrants, and the like. However, for this specific presentation, I'll be focusing on solely on the feedback and recommendations from LR RMI reference our police pursuits. I state that information because we put out a press release talking about the different variations of things they're going to look at, but this is just for the police pursuit portions. So, their recommendation uh said IPD has a comprehensive policy, but application and supervisor supervisory review requires improvements. Um they also said that we should re-evaluate pursuit policy due to recent incidents uh injuries, deaths and also citizen concerns. And last but not least,

pursuits decisions must weigh the risk of pursuits versus public safety benefits of apprehending our suspects. Next one. In um in the LLMI assessment, they noted a 2023 DOJ study. Now the study involved the office of community or policing which is the cop's office the national highway safety chapter commission uh administration and also the police executive research forum which is actually Perf. This study um basically reviewed data regarding pursuits crashes facilities pursuit policies from organizations both at the local county and state in 20 27 different states. The study recommends police uh agencies should only pursue for violent crimes or when occupants present a clear and immediate danger to others or the public. They also suggest that police agencies should consider alternatives to pursuits such as using uh remote GPS tracking devices, drones, and also aviation units. And I would echo that we already use those three things uh in limited ability, but we'll look to increase that capacity. And then lastly, they suggested agencies uh should routinely review pursuits um to ensure that they are complying with organizational policies and also procedures. I got a lot of notes on my as as I'm working through it. These recommendations from L RMI are the basics for some of the changes that we will make in our pursuit policy. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't uh note that the DOJ study uh recommendation advises that pursuit policy should account for exceptional circumstances. They specifically listed as those circumstances DUIs and also reckless drivers. These are where police officer intervention is warranted to protect the public from drivers who possess an immediate hazard or threat to the public. These exceptions, however,

should be rare and not the norm of everyday process and procedures. You'll see when I go over some of the police data, some agencies actually do uh pursue for minor violations and some don't. In those agencies that typically don't, they do uh routinely make exceptions for them circumstances that are exceptional. Um that mean we may be stopping for a traffic violation, but they may have alleged or we may believe they committed a violent felony. So, we would be authorized to make that stop in those exceptional circumstances, but those should be rare more so than just the norm. I'm juggling my notes and everything else, so I apologize if I'm switching. So, we're going to run through some of the um some of the basics uh in this section that's cover the parameters that determine when we will pursue vehicles and what our decisions to terminate will be. Our pursuit policy uh provides our officer with guidelines in determining under what circumstances we will pursue fian vehicles. Uh we really attempt to balance the risk of our officers, the general public, but also the suspect versus our duty to apprehend violent criminals. Risk versus reward is what we're trying to do at all times. And that's pretty consistent with national standards as well too. So when initiating pursuits, an officer must consider the reasons for the pursuit. Is it a felony, misdemeanor, traffic offense, whatever you have, and then evaluate the urgency or need to apprehend the suspect now as opposed to later, especially we've already identified who this person may be in that vehicle. Consider uh the risk factors such as weather, road conditions, speed, traffic congestions, and also the location. Is it in a commercial district or in a residential? It makes a big difference, especially at 5:00 in the morning or 5:00 pm through rush hour traffic. And lastly, while our officers operate unmarked vehicles and also police motorcycles, they may initiate those traffic stops, but they should hand it over as soon as possible to a marked unit. That's how our pursuit policy reads right now, and that's why I

read that and gave you guys the update on it. Supervisor responsibility. Patrol supervisors are required to monitor pursuits and determine if they shall continue or be terminated. When deciding on whether or not to continue a pursuit, they must determine if the immediate need to apprehend the suspect once again outweighs the risk to the safety of our officers, the public, and also the suspect. Supervisors are responsible for evaluating the actions of the officers and to determine if they complied with the policy requirements. Pursuits may be terminated under a couple different conditions, uh, such as speed, reckless driving, or if the suspect is driving the wrong way down a roadway. Additionally, if they identify the suspect is known, and I'll I'll reiterate this again, pursuing officer should consider whether or not to safely apprehend that person now or wait till later. Termination uh continued here. And then lastly, pursuit should be terminated. The vehicle is being operated by the juvenile. and the reason is further pursuit is a misdemeanor or nonviolent felony. Terminated vehicles contains an infant or a young passenger. Anytime you have a young person, inexperienced driver, if it's a minor offense, risk versus reward, should we continue that pursuit and risk life and death for officers or the public based on a traffic violation at the time?

All right. So these are some termination or pursuit termination options that we currently have and currently use. We currently use several different methods to present prevent uh pursuits. One thing we want to do is try to get the uh the offender before they get in the car and get away. We have it in our policy. We can pin vehicles in. If it's stationary, someone stole something or made a retail theft into a business, they come outside. If we know who that person is or know they're going to go back to their vehicle, it may be advantageous for us to actually pin that vehicle in. The other thing uh we use quite a bit is actually uh stop sticks. Uh those stop sticks officers get out there and actually deflate the tires and disable the vehicle. And I'm going to give you some examples. And then this next slide. So number one, the stop sticks. That's one on the right hand side. We use them all the time. Officer has to actually grab the stop stick, throw it across the lane of traffic where the suspect vehicle is aiming. Uh hopefully they ride over the stop sticks and it actually deflates their tires. I would say personally is one of the most dangerous things our officers can do. You got to get out on foot and it's not uncommon for one of our suspects, you're talking about criminals, violent felons, and all that good stuff to aim actually try to go around the stop sticks or aim those vehicles at our officers. And that's why it's for me it's one of those dangerous situations. The other thing that's outlined in the DOJ study is to try to use technology. Star Chase basically is a GPS tracking system. We have used this previously uh before my time here, but I believe it was eliminated maybe for budget constraints or budget reasons a couple years ago. You'll see us actually we're finishing up a budget packet right now to make sure we submit all our budget requirements. That's one of the things that's going to go in the budget request coming up in a couple weeks to make sure we get that in in there and get it funded. We want to make sure we give our our officers the tools to to use to do their job as safely as possible.

Mr. May, please proceed. Could you clarify what the star chase does and what advantage it provides to the police officer?

Yes, ma'am. So, this is what it looks like. So, what it does is actually mounted on typically on the front of the vehicle, GPS tracking device in that little round unit that I showed on the preceding slide. Oops. And what you do is that that uh that dart or that black that black bulb there, it's got a GPS uh tracker in there. uh that device once you position yourself behind the suspect vehicle, you can deploy or project that and actually attaches to the suspect vehicle. At that time, you've got the GPS coordinates and you can do a couple different things. If it's a low-level misdemeanor offense, you could pull back and get some distance. You could slow your speed a little bit. And if it's a stolen vehicle, really the owner really wants just to recover their vehicle. If it's a violent felon criminal, we're going to continue to pursue, especially if we know if it's a violent criminal. Uh, but it's all about the technology and able to give us a a force option is the best way I can describe it. Can I answer your question, Councilman? But definitely going in our budget packet for this year. Now, when I talked about stopsticks and that being one of the most dangerous things we could do, we don't have these, but this is one of the options in the marketplace right now. It's like a stop stick, but it's actually attached to the vehicle. The only problem is you've got to get so close to the suspect vehicle, but on occasion, it could be effective and could be used. That's another option for us. This is not something we're actually putting in the budget package, but this is something we'll continue to evaluate to see if it's something we can use or do a um uh a T& as well too. So, this is up there as one of the options. I put it up there because we'll continue to look at items like this. This is one of the things that probably from the day one when I got to the police department, everybody everybody's been asking me, hey, can we do tactile vehicle um intervention? Basically, pit maneuver. You position a police department vehicle behind the suspect, you can maneuver, you can throw them off their path and actually disable the vehicle, at least disrupt the pursuit. This is the one one of the things I'd like to enact as soon

as possible. As soon as we finish changing the policy right now, our policy prohibits us from using this type of maneuver. Now, some of the concerns that the officers have or at least administration has is we don't want all all our cars to be torn up. Um, we have a limit a limit amount. I'm gonna go off off script a little bit. We have a limited amount of vehicles in stock right now. Uh we're working to make sure that up in the next budget season. I definitely don't want to disable as many cars doing some of these maneuvers, but I'm being told the uh highway patrol uses this, has done it successfully, and also Kansas City Police Department uses as well, too. So, two things. We have uh I think several of our SWAT officers who are already trained in this maneuver, these tactics. I believe we have the equipment already on uh the SWAT vehicles. and I'd like to actually start doing as a pilot pro program or project. Basically, in those instances, we can use this maneuver to quickly terminate and resolve a pursuit. I'd like to use this type of uh so we have the equipment ready available. But in the future, we may uh ask for funding from the city manager's office to provide more bumpers, more vehicles to do this. So, it's just another option that we're looking for. But definitely, this is one of those things we will do. Uh the grappler is another piece or tool or option that we want to look at. We do not have these. I think it's only one other agency in the area that has a grappler. This is one of the ones you really got to get right behind the vehicle. That arm extends out or you have it there. Those nylon bushings or nylon cords here, you slide it under the rear wheel of the vehicle and it wraps around the rear wheel and basically you can control that vehicle to stop the pursuit. Um there's a few agencies that use it, only one locally, but like to do more research and see if it's something that we want to do. But all this is about trying to find those different options that we can use to give our officers the advantage. And the other thing is something we use all the time. We've got phenomenal pol uh partnership with

Kansas City Police Department. Um we use their uh helicopter all the time. Uh if we need it, it's there. it's available in those instances where we lose a pursuit a person a fleeing vehicle or we're trying to maintain and keep up with them. We can use the air we can use um Ken City's helicopter to do that. And this is one of my wish items. I'll be honest with you. I'm going shamelessly plug this because hey, that's what I was supposed to do as chief. Blue Springs uh actually has a uh this is one of those uh Blue Springs actually has this what it is a drone program. I think they were one of the first ones in this area that did it. I think they spent over like $4 million. What I love about it is Blue Springs is actually trying to do a real-time policing. This could do two things. So, if you have an improgress crime, they can release their drones. The drones can get to the scene within two to three minutes. So, now you've got a call being dispatched to our officers. They're in route. The drones are there. You got video capabilities. You can see license plates. You can see maybe suspects, people involved, people not involved. You can see real-time conditions. So when the officers get there, they have way more update information. Technology can do that for us. Caveat, we can use this for a variety of different things. The other thing is pursuits. What about those things that those times we need to pursue someone maybe for a low-level event or even a violent felon? We can deploy those drones to follow that vehicle to actually eventually um apprehend them. Uh and then I think it can use for other departments as well too especially for our critical infrastructure. If we have an alarm or alert or something happening in the utilities, water, uh electric, uh we can deploy the drones to actually instantly respond to those areas. So we are looking some uh grant opportunities if anything is available. Um, anything we can do to kind of leverage our funding source to actually um, implement something like this, I am 100% on board with doing something like this, but I

know it takes time to kind of find a funding source. Mr. Please proceed. Can I ask about the drones? My my understanding is they don't have the range or the speed to be able to do a pursuit and maybe I I am thinking about old technology that may be I think the altitude at the height you can't it's like trying to outrun a helicopter you can't outrun a helicopter um they're using drones in the Middle East with the wars I know those are are armored and actually they but the height kind of over over supersedes the speed that need to keep track with okay thank you

Mr. Mayor please proceed. Thank you, Chief. With the drones that we have, is that a technology that's in house already or is that something that's more specialized than what we have? I believe this a little more specialized to be honest with you. And I think these can be deployed remotely as well, too. I believe we use drones already for special events and other things from Tactico, but these are a different phenomenon. That's where Blue Springs is one of the first ones in Missouri to actually deploy this type of technology.

So, good good questions. All right, this is going to be the meat and tats of this presentation. Um here I'm going to go over some of the pursuit data and also some of the um comparison agency information. So if I I'm going to reply back or actually refer back to the DOJ study a couple different times when they looked at all this pursuit data 27 different um uh states and different agencies. They identified there's about four categories where pursuits fall into throughout the nation. discretionary um and officers have discretion to determine whether or not to engage or continue to pursuit. I would liken almost that our department is probably in that discretionary. However, they're guided by the four corners of our policy of what they can and what they can do, but they have ultimate flexibility to do that decision- making. The second one is permitted or supervised uh supervisor review. Pursuits are subject to supervisor approval and review. A lot of agencies are going to that where I call it out, but I've got to get it approved by the supervisor. So, that's it takes a little bit of discretion out the officer's uh arms. And then more more agents are going to a restricted policy. Officers may engage in pursuits only in very specific situations such as when a suspects have committed a violent felon. Kind of heard me say that verbiage before early when I started this presentation. Um, you'll see I've got a couple different sides. It gives comparison to the cities in our area. A lot of the cities have already gone to that type style in our area, more restrictive policy. And then there's the dreaded prohibited where you can't pursue for any reason at all. Very, very few, very few that I know have have gone completely prohibitive where we don't do any pursuits. So, those are just a couple different classifications, but it tells you what everybody's doing around the nation. So this is a chart uh a very busy chart but it looks at about 14 different um cities within our immediate area. And what this chart or table tells

us is what types of crimes um other agency per pursue for. Do they pursue for everything violent crimes nonviolent felonies DUIs misdemeanor or traffic offenses? That's a lot. So there's no one here prohibited. So if you see pursue, everybody pursues. Um about 57% pursue for nonviolent offenses. About half and half pursue for DUIs, misdemeanors, and traffic offenses. So when I talk about lesser nonviolent offenses, half pursue and half restrict those pursuits. That's the meat and potatoes of this chart. On the right hand side, it just shows you the technology that they use. When I talk about Grappler, TVI, and Starchase, everybody use stopsticks. You can see the green all the way down. You can see immersion more agencies using Star Chase. I think Starchase is up about 31% of the agents use Star Chase. And then the Grappler is only one of the agencies use the Grappler right now. That's why we wouldn't jump into it right now. We want to go and see how is it effective, is it being used, is it a good fit for our city. And then TVI, that's one of the ones I said I'm really committed to starting as soon as I can. And as soon as we adjust the policy, I'd like to get that going. But you've got uh maybe 30 or 40% of the agencies actually using TVI and um that would be us and probably Kansas City, uh Missouri.

Please proceed. Why wasn't Jackson County a part of this data?

Um I'm not sure. We took some counties. Uh it may make more sense in the next slide that I give you. You probably seen it. Uh, but I kind of whittleled this thing down to just the immediate area to be honest with you. I think it makes more sense. And I try to stay within as close approximation to the population. Although we added Blue Springs because that's one of our neighboring cities and it made sense to add Blue Springs. But if you look at Kansas City, Kansas, I know that's in another state, but it's close in proximity as far as population to us is about 150,000 population. Uh, Kansas City, Missouri, that's our big brother, big sister. That's our metropolitan area. I would argue that Kansas City, Missouri is probably more close in the types and severity of crime and things we deal with more so than any other agency on that list. That's why even though they're larger than we are, I think it's more applicable to look at Kansas City, Missouri to be honest with you. And then there's Lee Summit at about 108,000 population and there we are at 121. What this chart is telling me and it's not about all all about the numbers. Some of it by risk versus reward, but we far outcry the number of pursuits if you compare that to our sister cities. The difference between us and the other cities that's listed here, they don't typically routinely pursue for misdemeanor or nonviolent crimes. Keep in mind, um, I emailed every chief on this list to give me numbers for their pursuits for the last three years, and they do have some traffic pursuits, but in those pursuits, they have to articulate those exceptional circumstances why this traffic events rises to a level that we need to continue to pursue that vehicle. So that has really reduced the number of pursuits they have just for the small minor traffic related instances. Um and if I look at our data, we probably have about 65 to 70% of all our traffic stops are I'm sorry, all our pursuits are traffic related. So that

that accounts for a lot of our pursuits to be honest with you. Um let me see. I think I have another slide. Try not to get ahead. I will. And any questions on that slide? Mr. Mayor, please proceed. I had a question about that. So, those are just actual pursuits where the officer goes after them. Correct. For a lot of different reasons. Well, right. Is there any data like Lee Summit, you know, they only say they had, you know, eight pursuits. How many people actually just failed to stop for them? Is there any data on that?

I actually I do have that. I don't have that one right in front of me. Uh, a lot of them they just don't pursue for. So, one of these agencies had like 16,700. They just don't pursue for minor violations that that they deem as not non nonviolent. Okay. Thank you.

I can only ask I'm here. I'm trying to get information as much as I can from the u our partner organizations. It won't be as robust as what I can pull because we control our data. But these are actually actual pursuits ones they cut the lights and siren on actually pursued. Now some of those are terminated but they still market it as an actual pursuit. You'll see that when I get to our um I keep hitting this dang thing. That's where you'll see in our data. I can tell you how many we pursued, how many we terminated, and I can tell you the crimes or the charges involved in all those pursuits in the graph that you see. Uh we only had I say only, but any one death is is one too many, but two fatalities for 2023. Uh three fatalities in 2025. You can see the injuries uh in both 2022 had three, the next year six, 2024 five and then seven the next. But when I look at this information is still vast majority of traffic related offenses. Now I did pull information all the way from 2018 to 2022. What I did see as far as trends and we control our data so I can tell you trends. Uh we normally average about 250 to 300 pursuits 2018 to 2022. You see it bumped up about 335 in 2002 and then you see almost doubled in 2023 24 and 25. Now I don't have a correlation to tell you exactly what the reason for that is. Um it could be guidance and direction from leadership have changed and we've just pursued more. It could be an increase in crime although I know 100% it's not an increase in crime because I pulled the crime stats before I came here and we've had some significant reductions in the last couple years. So, I know those two things are not correlated. Um, I think it's a lack of consistent supervising about what areas we pursue and which ones we don't. And that's not a bad thing, but we don't know until we look at information like this. But that's the data that we have.

Mr. Mayor, please proceed.

Okay. You said 65% of pursuits are traffic related. Does that mean do they begin with traffic violations? typically unless I have uh additional information to go with it. So, I'll tell you the line item that says total felony charges. That's the question I ask. So, there's a couple things that it could be originated through a felony offense that occurred or it could be because they fled recklessly evaded and then the charge was enhanced and that's why we see the increase. I think that's the case for 2025 because we had a precipitous increase in 2025. I don't believe that may be the case for the preceding years, but that's the nuance trying to track is the specific cause for each one of those. When you have a policy that's more restrictive and you know you can't pursue for the minor stuff, well, that's not the case. Uh but that's the it was a good question.

Okay. Thank you. Please proceed. Thank you. Um this may be coming, but you have civilian injuries. Do you have police injuries? Uh yes, we've had police sens uh not just in our pursuits, but just driving to be honest with you. Um I don't have the specific numbers right now, but I can tell you we have 13 14 people on light duty right now. Now, all of those are not related to police collisions, but I know we've had a couple couple that are related, quite a few that are related.

And for the total felony charges, do we know like are those people who had warrants ahead of time? Some of those I would imagine have felony warrants out for their arrest, but you you indicated some of them the felony is from the actual pursuit. Either they hit somebody or they or it could be they had a controlled substance in their in their vehicle when they stopped them. They could have uh they could be armed. Okay.

Uh they could have stolen vehicles uh not stolen vehicle but uh stolen firearm felony possession of firearm. The felonies could be for a variety of different reasons. Okay. But we did have felony charges on all those all those all those line items. I I guess the intention of the DOJ when they talk about uh violent crimes is we always want to pursue for those areas where we know this is a bad criminal. But if it's just a traffic stop and you have no additional information, the the rightfully so the officers were arguing that we get a lot of great stuff anyway. But the problem is I don't know that at the time. So, I'm pursuing for what I know at the time to be honest with you. And that's a from a management standpoint, that's a hard thing to balance and trying to navigate that with the officers because they're right. We get a lot of great stuff. You don't know what control substance or drugs they have in the car until you actually stop them. Uh, and 97% of all the traffic stops, they stop at comply. The vast majority, they stop and comply. Now, we have a lot of traffic stops, a lot of pursuits, but it's a small percentage of what we do every day. Bless you. It's a small percentage of what we do every day in our life as far as responding for crimes, crimes for service, doing great proactive policing, uh, which they do a phenomenal job, but just getting out there, understanding our crime trends, where we need to be, what's happening in our commercial districts. They do this every single day. Every single day. So, this is, you know, it's difficult for me to kind of make some recommendations about pursuits, but I've got to balance that risk versus reward, too, as the administrator or the director for the department.

And my understanding is that our Jackson County prosecutor has done a better job of charging for aggravated fleeing. That's now a felony. Correct. Correct. That is correct. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. Um, one of our sergeants, a couple of sergeants that's in the building right now, uh, he does I I point him out because he does a phenomenal job to make sure that we don't arbitrarily enhance that if they didn't intentionally try to run us over or try to um, assault us with their vehicle. Um, I say that because there's always that balance. We want to make sure we're doing the right thing by everyone, even as a criminal. We're not going to just jack the charge up. But you're right, Mr. Mayor,

please proceed. Chief, just to play devil's advocate with it just a little bit, with with our crime statistics the way it's at, do you think having a pursuit policy the way that we do with with some tweaks gets the word out to those individuals who may want to u be unsavory here, kind of get out there that we will pursue, we will go at you.

Um, I totally agree with you. I don't buy into all of it. Um, man, I had some more information. And there's a couple different uh studies I think one out of rural North Virginia both the city and also the county had tested that theory as far as when we restricted their policy and they both did it the municipality and also the county they did not see a precipitous increase in the crime rate based on that. I would say word of mouth travels to be honest with you and I do think we have a reputation for pursuing but we still had to balance that risk versus reward though. Okay. Thank you Mr. Mr. Mayor, please proceed. Um, chief to to on on that note on slide 22.

22. Yeah. I think it would be interesting to know how long the policy uh of these municipalities has been this way. The regional pursuit matrix. Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. And you're talking about the large one, the small one. That one. Okay. So, I would like to know how long this has been their policy and and if they've been revised and if so, what happened when they were revised? I think that would be a good thing to know.

Um, I'll try to get the information. Uh, I was looking for today to try to get a 10 year or 15 year average for a crime rate. I was looking for Kansas City Police Department, right? Because I know they changed theirs probably within the last decade or so. specifically looking to see if the crime trends have changed over that period. That's probably been the easiest way for for me to do it and look at the crime rate. Uh but definitely we'll we'll try to it's not an easy it's not an easy way to get this. I spent hours on FBI website data mining trying to get more pursuit stuff. Uh the only way I'll probably get it is actually trying to contact that specific agency and see what the uh I've done everything I can to kind of grab as much I can uh that's available online. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, please proceed. Sorry, Chief, we're peppering you with questions here. Just out of curiosity. So, do we are these all selfinitiated on the independent side? Do we join in with maybe Sugar Creek or Jackson County or any of the other mun municipalities? Kansas City on this slide. Well, on on any of our

Yeah, I think we partner and they help us all the time. I think Kansas City helps us all the time. Uh all these cities, if we're crossing jurisdictions, I think we help each other all the time. Now, when it goes past the state line, we typically, if I'm wrong, we hand it off to Kansas if it's going there. Uh, and that's pretty typical uh on both sides of that line. When it passes into that jurisdiction, typically we'll hand it off to them. Uh, and same thing going between the cities as well, too. But we we have assistance back and forth. But if we're actually in the pursuit, we initiate it, it'll be on our on our board is or pursuit that we that we initiated. Does it frequently go back to our way where we are an addition to Kansas City MO or or a Blue Springs a Blue Springs that we bounce in and help them. Is are

that we bounce in and help them. Is are those statistics reflected in there? those statistics reflected in there? I'm getting a lot of nos on the heads I'm getting a lot of nos on the heads behind me because it was probably behind me because it was probably initiated in their jurisdiction. So, initiated in their jurisdiction. So, they they took the stat for that. they they took the stat for that. Gotcha. Gotcha. It would be an officer assist or It would be an officer assist or something like that, but it wouldn't something like that, but it wouldn't account on our on our tally for account on our on our tally for pursuits. pursuits. So, we don't have 500 pursuits because So, we don't have 500 pursuits because we help everybody else out. we help everybody else out. are an addition to Kansas City MO or or Anybody else other questions or you still got more presentation to go? I only got I only have two or three more slides.

Okay. Okay. Um recommended policy changes. I'm going to grab my notes because I really need my notes here. So, uh option number one, I was asked to present two different options. Option number one is keep doing what we're doing. Um and what that means is uh don't pursue actually continue to pursue for traffic violations, misdemeanor, DUI offenses, and also non uh violent felony offenses. Um I would also say continue to pursue for traffic and all those things. I think we could do very effective in doing that and that's my honest opinion. The deliminating factor is it's going to take time to change culture and organization and actually get in line to be consistently upholding the process. It's not going to happen overnight if that's my aim and that is my aim. Uh it's going to take time to do that. Uh for that reason I would recommend I I actually already recommended to the city manager that we go with a more restrictive policy. Uh, and that's the one um that allows only for dangerous felonies or when occupants present a clear and immediate danger to others. Now, you remember I hearken it back to this a couple different times. other agencies that list Blue Bruce Springs, Blue Springs, Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas, um, and Lee Summit, they have this policy, but when there's an exception to the rule, they just have to articulate that we will be putting other parameters on the policy, whether it's option one or option two, asking our supervisor to take greater aware and um, command and control of these pursuits. So they have to just approve that I've got a pursuit traffic violation. However, they were coming out of the drug house or hey they were coming out of the cook trip with a m hood on on their head. What are those circumstances? There was a reckless driving. I believe they're under the

influence. They're driving erratically all over the all over the highway. Well, that's a danger and threat to our traveling population as that happened. I just need us to articulate that. It gets back to that's got to be those rare instances other than pursuing every traffic violation. So, our guys do a phenomenal job working. I say that they are hungry. They love the police work. I don't want to take that out of them. I kind of want to rain down the reigns a little bit and continue to work on our hotspots, our high crime areas, all the information we know we need to be, which they already do now. So, it's not limiting what they do. It's providing all of us a little more safety and actually refining it. It does tie back to national best practices as far as the J uh DOJ study and also it's consistent with those other three or four agencies that I listed all those have a more restrictive policy

and go ahead. So last slide, uh, regardless of the option, we need to provide more supervision. Uh, we are going to implement the TBIS. Um, we need to review, I will review all of the police pursuits that involve injuries or also death. And then we're going to do an early warning system. I call it quality controls check. At least five pursuits will be reviewed every single month at random just to go back and make sure we're following policies, but also I want to make sure our supervisors are following policies. Are they reviewing those pursuits and making honest assessments? We need to talk to our supervisor, make sure we're consistent. What did you see? What was the justification for the pursuit? So, it's almost managing our officers, but also have them follow with our with our supervisors. I don't think it's going to take a long time to change the behavior and change the accountability. we've got a consistent message from the leadership team of the police department to make sure that those things happen and that's we're trying to force that and make that happen and then just have an annual review. So that's the end of my presentation. Um I gave you my recommendation for all the reasons all the reasons I made it.

Please proceed. So there's a supervisor on every call, correct? Uh dispatch typically uh calls out the pursuit uh direction of travel and they get a supervisor on the line to make sure they answer up. Now, sometimes there's a delay, sometimes another delay. Um, yes. So, how quickly is that supervisor notified when a pursuit begins?

Uh, dispatch calls it out immediately. Now, it depends on what the supervisor is. Is he or she in the office doing paperwork? Are they on the road? Um, someone should answer up. I'll tell you, some other cities, what they've done is ring that down a little bit. is when they call that pursuit out, if no one answers within five minutes or so, that's an automatic termination of pursuit because we need that supervisor oversight and review to make that critical decision. It's not taking the onus away from the officer, but we need to manage that process a little bit better. Normally, it doesn't take very long. Okay. Anyone else have their further questions? Mr. Mayor, please proceed. It's

not really a question, just more of a comment. So I I have a couple of fears with restricting the policy. Um number one is I am concerned that word will get out to the bad guys and we'll get more and more come in and they'll commit crimes and then we know that they know independents won't pursue them if it's just traffic violation. And the other fear is if an officer just has a traffic violation on somebody and they don't pursue them then you know god forbid they just kidnapped a child or something. Um, I don't know. It's just a couple of thoughts that I had. You know, they found out later, you know, they did something really bad. So, thank you.

Anyone else have the further questions? Please proceed. Um, some of these are just so I learn. Is I would make the assumption that the longer the pursuit goes on, the more reckless the person becomes. um and that the odds of an injury either to our police officer or to a civilian or to the fleeing person increase. Is that fair or that isn't a fair assessment?

The probability because of the length of the pursuit for that reason I would say because there's more there's more potential to increase the speed, drive across lanes of traffic. That's why you still want to weigh what you're pursuing for. So, it doesn't mean necessarily that will be more violent because it's a longer pursuit, but do you want to pursue for 40 minutes for a traffic violation absent any additional information? Now, if I know that's a a person with a a felony warrant, I may want to do that, but we got to have the information. We got to make be able to make some informed decisions. I don't want anybody to get away. But if I'm from a supervisor, my perspective, I'm thinking those things as I'm either continuing that pursuit or discontinuing that suit because I want to know that so I can make a decision.

Um, tell me what sorts of things a supervisor will terminate the pursuit for. Uh some of those things I listed in the um road conditions, speed, uh is it snow on the roadway? Is it 3:00 in the morning and no one else is on there? Uh if they're going 130 miles uh down uh 70 and um there's no one out there, that's a little more latitude. If that's in a residential district, you may want to terminate that a a little bit quicker. Um sometimes we don't violate policy. We had one recently that went all the way to Kansas. And I think, you know, it's a good this is a good example. And I'm not saying everyone violate policy, but it went from here all the way to Kansas. It was a long pursuit. I got on the radio, I heard it. It was going going. It was just for a traffic violation. But those one of the ones that ended up I think they stopped. He threw a gun out. Uh got back in, tried to flee. I think he got to Kansas. Anyway, we we we got him. Didn't want to get out the car. You don't always know every fact as soon as you do the pursuit, but if all I've got is a traffic violation, I don't want to pursue someone 40 minutes for that unless they're going to speed limit and they just fell in the stop. Now, we'll continue to follow them for that for those reasons. Uh sometimes we won't have all the information. Uh we're going to make the best based on the research, the data, nationwide trends. That's why I'm trying to bring in a little bit of data, not just regionally, but what are those best practices as we're talking to agencies throughout the United States, not just our region. That's why I had that matrix on there. That's why I went back to the DOJ study. I don't want to make a decision that's blind. You've got to make the best decision we can based on practices, based on even injuries and fatalities in other cities because it does happen when you increase the length and also the speed in some of these pursuits. So, one of the um discussion points in this big fat report that we had the

privilege of reading um was talking about afteraction um evaluations, making sure that you had an independent team look at it to say, okay, you know, was this a good use of resources? Could we have terminated it sooner? Where were our decision points? Um, do you think that option one with those reviews and then a report back to the council is an intermediate step or you think we should move immediately to option two?

Um, I think um all these steps we would do either option one or option two because I think I think they're needed to be honest with you. Um I think that review that early intermission warning the quality control I said I think all those steps are are are um are warranted mostly because inconsistency over time. So I do want to go back and make sure we review those and take a sample size to make sure that everybody's within policy and procedure. So I would do it for option one or option two. Okay. Thank you very much Mr. Mayor.

Please proceed. So, you've talked a lot about technology. Um, and I It's budget season, so I assume some of these things you're going to ask for. Yes, ma'am. All of them. Some of them. Not all of them. Some of them, like the star chase, we'll ask for We already have stopsticks. Um, there's a couple more things on the agenda, but we'll have it in our budget brackets packet. So, can you talk about how that will also help?

I'm hoping like the TVI and I said I want to do that. We have the equipment, we have the officers trained for it. I just need to change the policy. Um, it won't be the end- all beall, but we can use that hopefully to terminate pursuits a lot quicker by by doing that. Uh, when we use the stop sticks, it takes a little while to get out ahead of that that traffic, but also to deploy those, it helps a lot. Uh, the drones are the same thing. It wouldn't terminate any quicker, but we could pull back in some of those minor situations where we really don't need to be right behind each other. As a totality, each one have advantages and disadvantage.

Um, Chief, I'm I'm interested in the TVI um idea and that's the pit maneuver. Yes. Right. Okay. I'm old school. Make sure I'm understanding the right. So technologies or I mean understanding. So um with that we don't we already have what we need. We don't need new um you know guards on the front of the vehicles or anything of that nature to help.

I think there's a headlight guard or additional thing but the actual bumper there is already functional. It could work and uh I'm getting confirmation from one of the deputy chiefs and I think what we're going to add is minimal but basically we should be ready to go right now. We just make sure that the last training they had is up to date and we can actually allow them to do that. So we'll make sure. Yeah. So that training is the the piece that needs to happen. Um correct order to really implement that because um and that looked like it was fairly reasonable. $150 a person. That's not

Yeah, I believe only because we have the vehicles that's sturdy enough, but also we have the bumpers. I think we just upgraded our bumpers for some of the cars. Um I just got to make sure when's the last time they went to KC um Kansas City Police Department to have the training. Do we need a refresher? Um but as soon as we get that done, that's one of the things we'll implement right. Okay. All right. Thank you, Chief. So what's what is the risk if we do greater oversight with option one? Keeping it that way. Um, I just think it take a little bit longer to rein in what we're trying to minimize as some of the pursuits for minor violations.

Longer as in timewise. Um, so if we if we have did this three years ago, we wouldn't be here now. And I'm not saying we've done anything bad. I think sometimes some pursuits are allowed to go longer than other pursuits depending on the supervisor that you have. I think there's an in order number of pursuits. some of this because of the minor violations. So, I'm just saying under those conditions, we would have had those changes already. Um, I don't I don't know if it's the difference in different chiefs at the seat because when we got to 2023, our pursuits went up quite a bit,

but we had a different chief at that time. So, what's the focus? What's the priorities? What's direction from the chief at that time? Do we have more strict or uh more restricting police chief that says, "Hey, we're not going to pursue for everything." I don't know all those conditions, but something drastically happened right around 2023 because it just don't go up that. I know 100% our crime rate did not go up in 2023 because I looked at the numbers. So, it's got to be leadership direction more so than anything else. So, to change that behavior, it's not going to happen. Restricting a policy is a quicker adapt and you know what you have. I have some exceptions to kind of deal with some of the exceptional circumstances, but the change is a little bit quicker. That's all. Now, if you're asking me from my expertise as being a chief elsewhere for a number of years, that would be my recommendation. So if we do greater oversight option one is there a sixmonth 8month nine month uh understanding the policy putting the pra the policy into practice for your supervisory sergeants to make those decisions is or is there more training or

no I think the policy committee that's that's policy committee could you guys stand up

they've been working on um what does it look like, what's the policies, what's the practice. They've already have outlined when we change it. Uh they've done roll call discussions about the policy, the options like two weeks ago just advising everybody changes are coming, but we'll get back out there and actually do a refresher as far as the policy, the oversight review. I mean, it's something that we can start pretty quickly. Just adapting to the change is what it is. But we don't have to go outside and get a trainer or do something elaborate. It's more just shoring up what we what we do and being consistent in our direction.

Thank you. Anyone else? Please proceed. U Thank you, Chief, for bringing this forward and having a thoughtful discussion with us. Also in the report were just a couple of like policies they thought needed to be updated or perhaps fleshed out. and you have a committee that takes care of all of that. Okay. I just wanted to follow up on that last recommendation. Thank you very much.

Are you referring to the the entire LL RMI? Yes. Uh the goal is to finish the rest of those recommendations hopefully by time we get a new city manager inhouse. So, we're actually working on some of those. And when it says professional development, that's done. Um some of the IIA policies, we're working actively on that. This is a priority. So, we We're gonna get back to work right after this and try to knock some of those out as quick as possible. Anybody else other questions? Mr. Mayor, please proceed. So, the committee that stood up here, were they just reviewing specifically the pursuit policy committee or was this the the overall?

We'll probably retask them for some of the other policies as far as internal affairs, use of force, and there's a couple different policy adjustments we need to make. They'll be working on that as well, too. I'm sure you guys had some uh robust conversations. What was the committee's kind of wrestling back and forth? Why was there option number one? Yeah. So, I take that recommendation, but I am in at the end of the day, I am the police chief. I take as much information as I can. Correct. I add data to it. And finally, I'm responsible. The buck stops with me. Sure. So, I'll try to make that decision. So, I won't overwrite everything, but I it's a it's a it's a consultation. So, Sure. No, I respect that.

Anybody else other questions? I've got a number of questions if I can and and it may prompt other questions for other council members. So, help me understand because how a policy is drafted and the committees and who is involved in all of that. So, and I I recognize you've got a policy committee that looked at it, but could you be kind enough to help me understand, you know, how long has this been in a process? Um, who was all involved? Was the FOP involved? Were other folks involved? You know, how did how did the process come far it out and and how did we come down to option number two as the recommendation? Um, so the pol, we didn't start from scratch. We actually have a policy that we have, right?

So, it's not like we started from scratch and and redid a policy. So, we started with the bones of it. I believe the policy we have is

very succinct. I believe it's a good policy. Um, the officers that stood up was involved in that. uh they did a lot of research as far as some of the data there is what other agencies are doing. I threw in some other research based on the uh assessment that's where I got the DOJ report because they made some great recommendations as far as national trends. You put those things together. I think everybody behind me is probably under option one. Um I think from my from my experience I think option two just because we can tighten things up a little bit quicker is is is the way to go. So I could be wrong but okay. So

but I gave justification based on national practice based on risk versus rewards but also based on our neighboring cities which I have nothing to do but if you look at Bruce Springs, Kansas City, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, Lee Summit, this is not just something that I singularly made up. All these agencies have bought into those national policies. So you'll see nationwide. I looked at New York, New Jersey, Florida, uh, Perf, police executive research forum provides model policies. All these policies have the same verbiage, clear and immediate threat, danger, they're all following the national. So when I make a recommendation that based on that data, based on those decisions, I don't want to go contrary to that. But that's

the as you mentioned earlier the the the great question before all of us here is the matter of risk and reward and and obviously the risk and reward is with a pursuit policy we hope that we're in fact protecting citizens not harming citizens. That's ultimately the the point with the data that was presented tonight. I'm not being argumentative and I'm not being critical

but I would love to see this. Is there a correlation between violent crimes, a rise in violent crimes once a city changes its pursuit policy and that goes down? Because that ultimately is the question and and I would like to see data, you know, from my perspective, I' like to see data on that because that really is the riskreward question is because no one wants fatality, but also no one wants someone to suffer serious crimes in their community because we've changed the policy. And that's that's that's my question in this and I'd like to see that kind of data from these communities and within that regard is did serious did violent crime go up because of the change in the pursuit policy and the other question is too did it change and the other question is if it did go up did are there any communities in our area that in fact reverse course and came back to okay we changed the policy now we're we're going to undo it because it's really a question from a policy maker. If we're going to make a policy, we want to make a policy that sticks and that and that that doesn't get changed back and forth. And so before before I would like to vote on this and we all know that I've only got a very short time and probably I won't it won't be brought to me before I'm done.

I don't think there's any vote on Okay. All right.

Okay. But and that was my question too is do we vote on it or not? it. But those are the questions I would like to see before it was brought forward. And I recognize that you're the chief and the the city manager is the city manager and they have the the authority to make those decisions. But those are also the I would like to see that data and that information so that we have the opportunity to see what are the risk and rewards for folks because that's that's the question too. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm trying to be holistic in how we look at it. And I think that's that's that's my perspective and just total anecdotal evidence. Okay. I traveled to Las Vegas here about four weeks ago for business. I always say hello to the officers in the airport because I'm a big supporter of Blue and I walked up and said, "Thank you for your service." And I said, "Hey, all of a sudden we're have this discussion about a policy. What's your policy and how do you do it?" Because he has no idea who I am and uh any idea. And he said, "We've stopped chases." And I said, "What's the result?" And he goes, "Everybody runs." I said, "Everybody." He goes, "Even moms and in in vans with kids in the car because they know that we're not going to pursue them. And traffic tickets have declined significantly." And and I recognize those aren't violent criminals.

So there's that balancing act, that risk reward. And I recognize that you're looking at that. And so, um, that's that those are just considerations to put and I know you've thought about that. You're a professional. You've been in this business a long time. I'm not asking I'm not asking a question you haven't thought of and and considered many times before. So, anyway, anyone else? Anything else before we wrap up, give you time to ponder. All right. Well, very good, Chief. I cannot say thank you enough for the work you've put into this and appreciate your time and and your effort and your energies to get us to this point. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.

Madame interim city manager, anything to wrap us up?

Just one update. Um, again, as we've discussed at the last several meetings, several moves of departments are still in flux. Um, court will begin relocating from this room uh the next week, the week of the 16th and also the week of the 23rd, which means next Monday night is our last council meeting in this chamber. So, just want to get that out there as a reminder to everyone. Again, we'll be putting notices out, but just putting that on everybody's radar because time is ticking by quickly. Um, future meetings will be in a temporary location at the at the Independence Municipal Commons um until the chamber is construction is completed in early May. And that's all for this evening.

Mr. Mayor, please proceed. I just wanted to um let the community know that we have made an offer to a city manager and we will be able to announce that soon and just give such appreciation to the people on this dis who spent the time and hours and thoughtfulness to be able to bring that recommendation forward. We hope we'll be announcing that very soon. Thank you. Anything else? With that said, we will conclude this meeting. Thank you very much.