Code Enforcement - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon everybody. I'm showing 05:05. We're just a few minutes running late for public safety but we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna call to order the Public Safety Council Committee for the City Of Jonesboro. And first of all on the agenda we have roll call. If you'll just denote your attendance by pressing the button in front of you.

Okay

showing we do have five and that does give us a quorum which is moving us into our next item on the agenda, our approval of minutes.

Move to adopt unless any changes are noted. Second.

Okay, I have a motion second on the approval of minutes from the previous meeting on Tuesday, 01/20/2026. If you agree with those minutes as presented, if you will denote your vote on the device in front of you. That item does pass. Thank you everybody. Bringing us to the next item on the agenda being new businesses and we have a ordinance to be introduced today.

That ordinance being ordinance ordinance two six double o six. An ordinance by the city of Jonesboro to place various traffic signs at designated locations as determined by the traffic control committee. Now, therefore, it be ordained by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas to make the following change as recommended by the traffic control committee. Establish no parking on either side of South Madison Street from Jefferson Avenue to Washington Avenue.

Move forward to full council. Council. Second.

I have a motion and a second to forward this ordinance on to full council. Do I have any questions or comments from anybody on the committee? Any from the staff in attendance and any from the public attendance. Okay. Seeing none, I will entertain a vote on the ordinance as presented.

Okay and that item does pass. Thank you everybody. Bringing up our next item on the agenda being resolutions to be introduced and this particular resolution being resolution 26,016 and I'm gonna read this one in its entirety just because there is a list of items that's on here so I wanna make sure that everybody gets to hear it in its entirety. Resolution 26,016, a resolution to purchase fire department safety and rescue equipment and amend the FY 2026 budget. Whereas during the budgeting process, a need was identified to conduct a detailed inventory of fire department rescue equipment to address needs prioritized in the long range Jonesboro Fire Department need and whereas several items that would serve as force multipliers were identified as a priority need for the department and whereas the city administration and the Jonesboro Fire Department leadership request to amend the Jonesboro Fire Department fixed asset budget by a total of $177,769.44.

Cost estimate plus 10% to account for taxes, shipping, and miscellaneous expenses and allocate funding to purchase the following equipment. Two max fire seeker bundles, total estimate, $12,698 10 fire pro 300 camera and hardware total estimate $13,340 10 TFT jumbo intake valves total estimate $28,000.07 Pantheon PCT 50 extraction combination tools, total estimate $105,000 14 PBPA 2,387 batteries, total estimate 11,591.167 Patheon tool charging equipment units total estimate seven and ten point nine two dollars and seven Patheon tool mounting equipment units total estimate at $6,429.36 Whereas the above equipment will allow for more reliable and adaptable emergency rescue equipment operation for each fire station and now there be ordained and the resolved by the city council of the the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas. The section one of the FY 2026 Jonesboro Fire Department fixed asset budget is amended by a $177,769.44 to purchase the listed above emergency response equipment. Section two, fire department administration is authorized to proceed with the purchase of additional equipment in accordance with the city of Jonesboro purchasing guidelines and section three, the mayor Harold Copenhaber and the city clerk April Leggett are hereby authorized by the city council of the city of Jonesboro to execute all documents necessary to effectuate the above purchases pursuant to the city purchasing guidelines as stated above.

Alright

and I will entertain a motion to forward the council.

So moved in the motion of any debate. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Do I have any questions or any comments from anybody on the committee?

Just one question Mr. Chairman.

Yes

sir. Just curious, are we replacing items?

Think Chief Hamrick's got our answer here.

Yes sir, we'll be upgrading many of these, the MaxFiresSeq and the FirePro 3,000 are thermal imaging devices. Ones we currently have are way outdated. It's much better product. And likewise, with the extrication combi tool, we're running gas powered units currently that are fifteen to twenty years old. These are all battery operated much more efficient and faster. So yes, they're all upgrades. Anybody

else have any questions for Chief? Good deal. Thank you Chief. Okay, if there's any questions or any comments from any of the staff and if there's any questions or comments from the public in attendance. Okay seeing none I will entertain a vote on this item.

That item does pass. Thank you everybody. That brings us to our next item on the agenda being number five pending items and I know of none. And then our next item on the agenda being other business and I show that we've got a little bit of time between now and city council. So I was gonna see Chief Elliott if you wanted to come up and kinda go over the annual report and all the statistics from 2025 please.

Absolutely. Good evening, mister chair and council members. As you know, from recent stories and the news media, we posted our 2025 crime stats and as you've noticed, the numbers are down again this year. The past few years, well, last year or I'm sorry, 2024 was a peak year on major crimes against persons. Numbers are down since then.

Taking a historical look at our crimes against persons going back nineteen years. We've seen these numbers from 2007 till present have only risen anywhere from 80 to 120 cases a year. So these numbers have been, what I say, fairly consistent over the past nineteen years, again, between eighty and one hundred and twenty range, give or take, during this time frame, we've seen the population of Jonesboro grow to over 15,000 people. We look at against the crimes against property section, again, that number is down, has trended down for the past couple of years. Our peak year was 2020.

Peak year before that was 2007. In 2007, those numbers dang near matched 2020s. So crimes against property during the early 2007, 'eight, 'nine, 'ten, 'eleven, 'twelve were higher than it has been in the past four or five years. So overall, when we look at crime in Jonesboro, historically, we've seen higher numbers years ago compared to what we have in the latter few years. Now, we're not saying that Jonesboro is perfect.

Jonesboro is crime free. Free. That's not our take on it. But people take numbers and we keep getting labeled that Jonesboro is crime ridden, comparing us to Memphis, Chicago, things like that. When you look at the violent crime numbers, the fact that in spite of this kind of population growth, the numbers have only changed anywhere from 80 to 120 in that category a period of time per year, I think it's pretty good for what's being said about the people in Jonesboro community that we live in.

So sometimes numbers come across and people take numbers and do what you want to with them. Can A lot of times they'll fashion them and what benefits them at the time. But these are the numbers that when we generate a report, they go in at the end of the month, it's automatically uploaded to the FBI through. These are not numbers that we control. Once a case gets in the system and it's identified with a particular category, then that's what's submitted to each month.

Each month, we submit monthly reports. You get those monthly reports every month. You can see where those trends are. If you collected all reports at the end of the year, you would come up with the totals that you see on the ten year crime stats. Our crime reports are out there for the public every day.

So again, when you're looking at crimes of of the violent nature, these are out there. We're not hiding any information. All this information is public accessible. So, for those that want to sit home and criticize and talk about things, then they're obviously not doing their due diligence in gathering the facts. So I think it's important that we present the information and if you don't believe what we're saying, then it's information that certainly that's going to go back and research yourselves and come up with those numbers.

Thank you, Chief. Does anybody on the committee have anything for Chief Elliott?

Just real quick, what do you attribute numbers are trending now. What do you attribute that to?

Good question. There's no one particular thing you can attribute this to. You're dealing with human nature. You're dealing with people. And the fact that crime across the country has historically gone down this past year, so even our bigger cities have seen a decrease in crime. I'll call in our area, I would say it's everybody working together is the main thing. If you see something, say something. We say that all the time, but the good thing is it works here in Jonesboro. When things happen, we do get those calls. We are getting those tips now that we may not have gotten just a few years ago.

I think people are taking ownership in the community, taking part of the community, getting involved in the community, giving us information, giving us good intel on what's going on. That makes us more efficient in what we do day in and day out. The real time crime center, our cameras and license plate reader technology certainly has helped on the solvability of crime here in Jonesboro. Bad things happen. A lot of that we cannot stop.

Again, we're dealing with human nature. But the probability of making an arrest on that is certainly increased with our latest and greatest technology. So between technology, people working together with the police department, and I would hope that maybe just human behavior across the board has gotten a little bit better, people being a little bit more responsible. But again, the numbers here are down, but they're also down across country in a lot of areas. So it's not just one thing. It's a combination of multiple things.

Are you still seeing 2020, maybe 2021, you saw an increase in the population having feelings towards the police that were not very favorable. Are you still seeing that? Are you still having trouble with that? Or has that come down as well?

With what now?

So basically remember 2020, 2021, law enforcement was not seen as very favorably. Do you still have that issue when you go on a call or y'all still being faced with

Not locally. Typically anything that happens in law enforcement world nationally will have a residual effect on us what we do day in and day out. So we always look at what's going on on the national level. We address it in staff level, make sure that there's things that maybe could be done different than what some other agencies doing. Not I'm going be critical of another agency as I stand here, but you always look at those lessons learned out there.

And there's ways of doing things better, then you want to take those lessons and do better. Engaging in the community is a key important fact. So we always stress since I've been chief to have that positive community engagement. We do know that bad things happen from time to time in our community and community should be aware of that. If it does happen on our end, we certainly will deal with it, have it investigated and then I'll certainly deal with it after the fact.

But again, just having that positive relationship with the community is important. We still foster So that's always going to be a work in progress. But the end result is I don't quite have the drama that they do up in other parts of the country right now. So it's just handling business a little bit different than other parts of the country do.

Chief, speaking of that monthly report that we get on that, I noticed on the one we received today, I think that the camera systems that we have had another success story that I haven't necessarily seen out there. Do you want share that with us?

It did. Just a few weeks ago, we had a young lady. She was upset with her parents, and she got up and left her house at 01:27 in the morning. It was about 10 degrees or less. And she took off walking and she was on the East side of town. And fortunately, one of our camera systems, we were able to pick her up and with AI technology in this particular system, it identified a pedestrian. We identified her. And subsequently, we're able to track her movements through Jonesboro from pretty much Prospect Road to Main and at Walgreens. So it took several hours. She was at Walgreens for several hours by the time we finally caught up with her.

But through this camera technology, we were able to track this young lady and get her back to her parents. Basically, was upset with the parents. They took her cell phone away from her. So she had no way of calling. We had no way of tracking her through the cell phone. So she was on her own in 10 degree weather or less. So she was quite hazardous to her own health. And so we had all hands on deck trying to run go through data and put the pieces of the puzzle together to get her back to her family. So that's just one of many happy success stories that we have through the system. We try to relate a success story on our monthly reports and they're attached to this.

There's many every week but we'll take a highlight and kind of note it on the bottom of these reports now just so you can see what's going on with the technology. The technology we have is we're constantly looking to upgrade. As you're aware of that the city received a $3,500,000 grant here recently from the federal government. We can do more upgrades with our technology. So between it and building of a new real time crime center dispatch center, I think what we're doing will just be bigger and better as we move forward, be more efficient in what we're doing because I can never get enough boots on the ground to do what we need to do in the world of policing at this point.

We just have to be smarter at what we do and we depend on a lot of technology to get it done.

That's great. Thank you, Chief.

Anybody else? Thanks, sir.

Great. Thank you once again, chief for coming up and speaking about that. I know, gosh, we see a lot of numbers up here. And it's always good to hear those stories of the decisions that we've made and the leadership that we have in the police department and also the fire department and those lives that get saved every day because of the people that work in those areas. Thank you. Thank you both once again for coming up today. Next item on the agenda, we have public comments for the Public Safety Division. This is an opportunity for anybody in the public that wants to come up and address the Public Safety Commission. Okay, seeing none, that moves us on to our final item and that is adjournment.

So move. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Alright, we do stand adjourned. Thank you everybody very much.