Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you. And my name is Nicole Coates, and I am the village's public safety liaison, committee liaison. And I'll go ahead and get us started with a call to order and start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And with that, until we appoint a chair and vice chair, I'll start with the roll call. So we have Ron Herman.

Present.

Emery Payne.

Present.

Robert Chenoweth.

Present.

Eric Forte.

Present.

Joseph Rosenberger.

Present.

Kevin Kimberly. Present. Matthew Ladd.

Present.

Okay.

With that, I'll turn it over to the committee. And typically, those items would be run through the chair of the committee. But since we don't have that settled just yet, we're on to our next agenda item of selection of the chair and vice chair. So with that, I will turn it to the committee to work through that. If you'd like to start with introductions, since this is our first meeting as a committee and new members here, we can do that and move forward that way. I'll turn it to you.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Ron Herman. I was previously vice chair of this committee. I've been chair in the past. I've been on planning, zoning, and adjustment for four years, and I've been on this probably about six or seven years. I'm happy to be chair or vice chair if everybody's interested in that. I mean, I'm a practicing attorney. I've been doing this for 27 years. I do criminal work, and I'm familiar with this. And I introduced the texting while driving essay, which now has been going on for years. I think I have some ideas for some additional moving up on that and getting exposure for this committee, which I think is a good committee. So happy to work with you in whatever capacity and look forward to the year.

I guess I'll go next. My name is Robert Chenoweth. I am, this is my, I've appointed my second term on the Public Safety Committee. Wellington resident, just retired after 25 years with the Broward Sheriff's Office. I'm happy to serve in any capacity as I can. I need a vice chair. I'll be happy to take that.

Hi, I'm Emery Payne. I just retired in February from Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office after 37 years. However, I just got hired as city manager for the city of Bellevue, so I'm in my second week.

Congratulations.

My name is Matthew Ladd. I've lived in Wellington for about six years now. I currently work in the surgical field. I was a prior police officer in the Army and then in the civilian sector.

We'll go next. Kevin Kimberly, 30 years Palm Beach County Fire Rescue. Lived here in the village for 15, 16 years now. Happy to be on the board.

How are you? My name is Joe Rosenberger. I've been living here in Wellington for 13 years. Came down from New York City. When I was up there, I did 20 years in the police department, retired as a sergeant after 12 and a half years in that rank. 20 years with the department, four and a half years prior to that with New York City EMS. Left that division with... a year and a half in their special operations focusing in hazardous materials. Graduated from John Jay College with a degree in criminal justice. Came down here, and I run a security school where I teach security.

And my name is Eric Forty. I've been in Wellington for 11 years now. And I don't have much background to say in regards to public safety, but I'm very involved at Temple Beth Torah on the board there and looking forward to learning more about what the committee does and what I can bring to it.

We want to do some introductions here and

Good afternoon. It's nice to see some familiar faces returning back to the committee this year and also the new faces. So welcome. My name is Amanda Vomero. For those of you that don't know me, and I am the district chief with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue that serves the village of Wellington amongst a few other municipalities. But today it's Wellington and I've been in my position for the past three years. And as we were discussing earlier, I finished 25 years with Palm Beach County last January. So, um, I'm looking forward to working with each one of you. I did not prepare a presentation for today other than the response times and some updates because I want to hear from you and I want to know what you all would like, you know, throughout the year at our quarterly meetings, what presentations you would like to see or information specifically you would like. And if we've already done those, that's okay. We can do them again because we do have new faces. Whatever you need, I'm happy to hear what your thoughts are and to provide whatever information that you would ask.

My name is Barry Stats. I'm the executive officer for District 8, which is the village of Wellington. I'm with PBSO going on 23 years. break down what an executive officer is. I'm the administrative lieutenant and I report directly to Captain Adazio. I also don't have any presentations today. I'll just go over some brief issues that we're dealing with here in the village and then I look forward to meeting all of you individually and working closely with you.

And I'm Nicole Coates. I'm the staff liaison for the Public Safety Committee. I've been with the Village for 25 years this June, and I oversee emergency management operations. I liaison with public safety and the agencies involved in public safety here. I also deal with risk management, and I'm happy to serve and collaborate If there's anything you need as a committee, we do operate under the Sunshine Laws. So if there's an agenda item that you're interested in or a topic you're interested in discussing, you can absolutely discuss it here. But say that opportunity passed and it's in between meetings because we meet quarterly, feel free to reach out to me and I can put something on an agenda for you to be discussed. It's kind of our process. With that, we have Gloria Kelly, which you've probably seen a lot of email correspondence from. Gloria works in HR, but she does support the public safety committee she has for years and helps with meeting minutes and email correspondence as well, too. So you'll see her as a familiar name. With that, we can turn it over back to the committee on the selection of a chair and vice chair. We had a nomination, Ron.

Motion for chair. Like I said, I put myself up for a motion for chair.

Okay. I'll second that. Second. So we have a second. All in favor? Aye.

Opposed? Okay. Thank you, everybody. Motion passed. Oh, no, thank you. Motion for vice chair.

Nominate myself. Robert Chenoweth.

Second. Can I second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Congratulations. Congratulations. So then I guess we move to approval of agenda. Do we have a motion to approve the agenda?

I make the motion that we approve agenda.

Okay.

Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Agenda passes.

Do we do approval in minutes since everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes? Motion to approve in minutes?

Make a motion to approve the minutes.

Second.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Approval of minutes. Old business? Old business, right? Okay. So, I mean, old business, thank you, everyone. I mean, you know, to Nicole's point, to Ms. Cote's point, I mean, you know, for the new people that are here, I think it's important, and as we've heard all three staff say so far, You know, you're all here. Everyone wants to take their time here. I mean, whatever you want to see and make this committee, you could send them the emails. I think that's important, you know, to get things forward to maybe move to council or something. So that would just be, it's not really old business, but something to consider as we move forward. Any other old business?

No, and the committee is designed as an advisory committee as well. So there might be times like, for example, the speed camera program. We would bring that to this committee for input and feedback before we implement. So that's information and projects we would likely bring to you all as well. So it's what you'd like to see, and there are things that we would bring to you as well.

All right, so new business, motion to move the agenda?

Second.

Yeah, I think we're good with now that lieutenants here, we were going to rearrange in case we needed to, but I think we're good as is so we can move on to new business.

Okay. So A is Palm Beach County Fire Rescue?

Yes, thank you. Last month we participated in an active threat drill here at the Village of Wellington in partnership with PBSO, and it went very, very well. I don't know if you gave any feedback or that's part of your update, but we had some really good takeaways from that, and we are looking at additional gate accesses and things like that to Village Park. and so that was it was a great drill and just kudos to nicole for all the work that she did putting that together and organizing all of that and as i said previously i do serve four municipalities and wellington is very forward thinking and wanting to be proactive and prepared rather than reactionary and Unfortunately, with these active threats and active shooter events and things like this, we hate to say it, but it is not a matter of if but when. And so to be prepared and to have a village that is training their staff on stop the bleed and. you know, these types of events and having emergency plans in place is just really amazing. And so I wanted to tell Nicole, great job. Very, very cool that you guys did that. And it was a good experience. We, ourselves at Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, we just had a full hurricane drill on January, excuse me, June 1st. And it was, EOC was full activation and we ran through all of our command positions and everything that we would be doing And that went very well. So we are prepared Should there be a hurricane this season? We are everybody knows what's expected and what they're to be doing. So that went very well And then I will give you the quarterly response time report as well From March 11th to June 9th. There was a total of 1738 emergency responses to the village Our average dispatch handling time was 47 seconds. The average turnout time is 44 seconds. The average travel time was 5 minutes and 12 seconds. And the overall average response time was 6 minutes and 44 seconds. So our goal is 7 minutes and 30 seconds. And so we're doing really good as far as that goes. And then if you all have any questions for me or any ideas or suggestions of demonstrations or discussions that you would like to have throughout the year, please feel free to let me know. Or like the chair said, send Nicole an email and she will filter that to us and we'll get prepared and get that on an agenda for one of the upcoming meetings. Any questions?

Any questions on that end? No? Two of the things that I liked in the past, I mean you guys all seem like you have a lot of experience in this type of area, but two of the things that I thought were great was one was you brought the dummy in here and you did the full, you know, as if somebody's having a heart attack with the oxygen and the compressions and you did the full

We did a full cardiac arrest, and then we have a whole blood program, as you're aware, where we replace whole blood for patients that were in traumatic injuries and had a significant amount of blood loss. So we did that demonstration in coordination with this full CPR demonstration of cardiac arrest. I can arrange for that to be done again as well for those new members if they're interested in seeing that.

If anyone thinks that's interesting to see again. You've seen it before. Also, the truck outside, right? I mean, you bring the truck outside and able to kind of do some things with that, right?

We've also, that presentation on the ion batteries, lithium batteries and how to properly dispose of those because they are quite a problem and you can't, you really shouldn't just throw them away. They can be, you know, so we did that presentation with them in coordination with Solid Waste Authority. So that was a good, very informative presentation as well. We've done electric vehicle fires. What else did we have? We've presented to the Equestrian Preserve Committee on large animal rescue twice and how we set up that rigging and how we extricate animals and help large animals that are stuck maybe in a canal or in the mud or had a traumatic incident and can't get up on their own. But whatever you would think you'd call 911 for, we mitigate so we can present on it. So whatever you think of, I'm happy to put something together. Thank you.

Pompano County Sheriff's Office report.

So this is my second time attending one of these meetings and just wanted to go over a few things about our district and District 8 and the things that we have to offer the village. Right now we're not designated the village is not designated a high or a violent crime area. So we're dealing with other issues such issues are traffic crashes. A hot topic right now is the e-bikes and motos which we're currently in partnership with the village of trying to designate an ordinance to combat that issue that we're having. With that being said, it's the end of the school year. We just started a new operation called Endless Summer. So typically, when school's out and summer starts, there's an influx or a surplus of youth that are out in the streets and not knowing what to do if they're not in summer school or in activities. They tend to do things a little extra curricular on the negative side. So we have to prepare for that. So we have here at the village, we have a street team. a street crimes unit. So we have one sergeant with four deputies. They're actually agents, so they go above and beyond the actual duties of a deputy who's just responding to calls for service. So they're more proactive in nature. With that, we also have a community policing team. So that has one sergeant, And I think currently we have five deputies in that unit. They work closely with the village and have a strong partnership in combating other issues, socioeconomic issues, youth, and so forth like that. They also do a really good job with the events that are thrown throughout the village. And that's something special here in Wellington because The community really, you know, has a strong desire to meet up and have these events practically every week, right? Thursday nights at the amphitheater for food trucks. And then practically, you can name an event that's going on and Wellington's going to mirror that and have that. They just have that unique quality about celebrating with each other and we take part in that with our community policing unit whether it's traffic or patrolling safety issues and again working with the youth and we have programs in community policing also with the Police Athletic League We have a basketball team now. They just ended their first season. They did not win the championship. I think Pahokee won it, right? Mr. Payne? I think Pahokee won that one. But they've been around a little bit longer. So we're trying to catch up on that. Statistically speaking, like I said, really not a violent crime area. But do we get some violent crimes here? Yes, we do. And like I said, we have our street crimes unit working throughout the night, longer hours into the evening, usually when these types of activities happen. And just going off the top of my head, stolen vehicles can be an issue throughout the year, usually in season. It's a little bit... The stats are a little bit higher in season when there's more of an influx of people from out of state living down here. Vehicle burglaries, I can tell you right now, those are pretty much crimes of opportunity. And we try to educate the community by locking their doors without leaving the keys in the car and making it too easy for those vehicles to be stolen. So I think we had five in the past month, five vehicle burglaries. And that really is pretty small when you're speaking of a town of 60,000 plus. So like I said, statistically speaking, crime-wise, the village is doing very well. So I'm open to any questions if you have any.

So I have a question. Probably a few.

Of course.

So I didn't say that I reside in Wellington for over 30 years. There was no Wellington Mall. It was a lot. The Kaboskas was just a shot. And I reside in Olympia. E-bikes... have become very popular now. Are there any new legislation? How are you guys going to address the e-bikes? And not just the e-bikes, it's these little motorbikes. E-motos. Yeah. And they're not registered, but yet they're on the streets. Are there any changes coming for those?

Absolutely. Prior to the ordinances coming out, see, we're only as good law enforcement as the state statute and ordinance allows us to be. So we rely on the state, the legislator, to go ahead and write these laws so we can enforce them. And on a local level, we're working with the village to enhance or create an ordinance for us to combat this as well. So just going to back it up a bit. Before this ordinance was even being talked about, District 8 we we had an operation called moto madness that we've been running for about a year and a half and We started out in the beginning as an educational operation going out and educating the youth and their parents on the not only the dangers but the illegal legal activities that are usually surrounded by the e-bikes e-motos and like I want to call you Captain Payne. Call me whatever you want to call me. Mr. Payne. That, you know, they are unregistered, some of the e-motos. So if it's a dirt bike, if it's considered a, if it's over a certain amount of cc's, so basically if it has an engine or the battery powers over a certain designation, it cannot be driven on the roadway. It's unregistered motor vehicle. And in our moto madness, we had that issue going on. And for those people that were riding illegally on the road with unregistered, they were getting a criminal citation, if not a trip to the county jail. And we confiscated the bikes. I think over the past year and a half, we've confiscated about 15. OK, so we are dealing with that on a different level through our operations, through our street crimes unit and our community policing unit. E-bikes, on the other hand, we're having issues on the pathways and the sidewalks because once they're on those they're not the roadways, but those are designated for pedestrians, but you can ride bicycles on them as well. When they're on the sidewalks, legally, we have to treat them as a pedestrian violation. On the roadway, it's a vehicle violation, and for the former law enforcement officers here, you know, there's different criterias, and with that, different penalties. So... which brings me into the ordinance, what we're trying to create to give us the power to issue fines and so forth like that, and also limit their accessibility of the micro abilities on such paths?

Yes. On certain multimodal pathways, we're going to mimic those are eligible, like the golf carts. And there are areas where golf carts are not allowed. And that goes back to the enforcement standpoint. And then we're also looking at possibly an age restriction. like we do on the golf carts. The state law currently does not specify. It says a municipality can determine that as long as they have a valid government ID. So it really doesn't say an age. But like golf carts, it will say you have to have a learner's permit. So therefore, naturally, you have to be 15 or older to get a learner's permit. So it kind of gets us in more of an age area. We are looking at that. That's going to be something that's going to council probably at the end of this month. And that's a determination they will have to look at. But we have some recommendations as to an age restriction.

All right. So just enlighten me. Lieutenant, I'm not going to beat you up. This isn't CompStat. Relax. All right. Easy does it, boss. All right. One step below. And it's not CompStat. All right. But riddle me this. First, why do we need village ordinance when you have state DMV? Right. You've got state traffic law, which is enforceable. Right. Village ordinance. can be more stringent, but not less than, correct?

So, yeah, there could be some flexibility with the village, but we also have the county has an ordinance as well.

Right, but so the village can be more stringent than, but it cannot be less than.

Than the state statute or the county, correct.

If you look at the e-bike or the motorbike and you were to, and your officers could articulate it, that it were to be a motorcycle in its form and it's on the sidewalk, then it's impeding pedestrian traffic. And if it's impeding pedestrian traffic and it's causing fear and alarm, then there is proactive enforcement that can be taken. Yes?

Correct.

Yeah, the motorcycles cannot be... It's all how the officer sees what's going on and is or isn't able to articulate it. And that would basically determine his or her enforcement activities. right? Same thing with the golf carts. The golf carts could be construed, especially currently, because you now have electric motor vehicles, right? And some of these golf carts out here, well, they're the fanciest things I've ever seen in my life, okay? And they move super fast. They are actually According to Florida's vehicle traffic law, consider them on a vehicle, regardless of the age of the operator, in which case they should be licensed, registered, and insured. And if they were to strike somebody, now you're causing serious physical injury and or death, in which case, if they are operating on the sidewalk, they should be plated. and the operator should have insurance on the vehicle. In which case, that's cause for proactive enforcement in and of itself, just to check to see if the vehicle is insured to pay upon.

If it's license-plated and registered, that's considered a low-speed vehicle, and that's not allowed on our multimodal pathways, only golf carts.

But it would be caused to random safety checks, right, which Lieutenant knows could be every third vehicle, every fourth vehicle. It's random. It's not – what's the word I'm looking for? Help me out here.

Okay.

Yeah, but you can do stuff like that. It's just proactive enforcement, but it can also have a very educational side to it where you don't have to have the summonsing part. You can just inform the individual, hey, you need to have these things in effect as a warning, okay, and then follow up on it. But, you know, you might want to start that way.

Are you talking about the golf carts or the motos? Yeah.

Your choice. Yeah.

Yeah, and we do. Public outreach. Yeah, we absolutely do. Like I said, in the moto madness, the first stage was an educational part, and we warned people because, quite frankly, it's a new product, a lot of these e-bikes and e-motos, and nobody really knew exactly what they could or couldn't do. But mom and dad were going out and buying them for Christmas for little Johnny. Yeah. And then we're finding out how dangerous they are because the speeds they can get up to. And then they realize that their children aren't abiding by the laws that maybe their parents set down as well. So we as a community, as a state, we go to our legislator and we – We voice our concerns and then they start enacting laws and statutes that we can enforce as law enforcement. The county also has ordinances that they enact. And then upon that, municipalities can piggyback on those ordinances or tighten them up a little bit more as long as they're not infringing on people's rights and so forth. The e-motos are illegal anywhere. You can only ride them on private property. So if we see them anywhere, sidewalks, dirt, easements, roadways, we're stopping them and we're taking it, period. Yeah, no warnings. Come in Olympia. I'm sorry? Come in Olympia. Yes, we will go in Olympia for sure.

Are they allowed to do that within their community as long as they don't leave the community or anywhere? They're not allowed? It's anywhere. Okay. Good to know because I have the problem in my neighborhood too.

I'm sure. And I have a second question. Sure. And I hope it don't take as long. And I don't want to pick on the elderly because I'm one. But I know that your car burglaries are down. However, most of the newer cars have key fobs. And we forget that we left the key fob in the car. Luckily, I parked mine in the garage because I looked for my key, and it's like, it's in the car.

Somewhere.

So have we done any type of education to our elderly population to remind them not to leave the key?

I've only been here for four months, but I know I've seen the street signs flashing, you know, burglaries and so forth like that. I'll have Ms. Coates answer that question, though.

Yeah, we've done some outreach like the 9 p.m. routine and done some outreach. We need to do more of that. It's continual. And I think it even is beyond the senior population. A lot of people leave their key fobs in the car, unfortunately. And that's, I think, a lot of the stolen vehicles have that common denominator, most of them. And if we can just, you know. keep our keys out of the cars, we'd probably prevent a lot of vehicle burglaries here in the village. But we'll look into that. And we also do have senior lunches, a lot of senior activities. We could probably do a presentation there. I think that's a great idea to continue to promote.

Thank you.

Noted.

I have a question. Last Friday, the mall takeover, teen takeover, was that a non-event in the end?

It was not a non-event, but we turned it into a non-event. Basically, on TikTok and other social medias, there's these flash mobs that are going out as teen takeovers. We've seen them on the news nationwide. Just getting out of hand and dangerous and sometimes erupting into violence. I think in Clearwater last week there were shots fired. Somebody was shot. We are as an agency, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, we are taking a forward approach on this and we're not taking any of these lightly. I could tell you the way we handled this one in partnership with the village and with the mall and mall security, we nipped it in the bud. With that being said, we had over 20 deputies there, I believe there was 15 security guards on duty there. It's not a posted no trespassing zone. So we need the representative from that company, which is the security guards, to give that warning that they're unwanted. And once they're unwanted, then we can go over and issue a trespass warning. So we escorted out 60 individuals that day, youth individuals that were unparented. personal choice of the Wellington to allow youth in without parents. That's their decision on that because we tried to establish that rule. They said no. We said okay. It was just an option. We had one person arrested for wearing a mask in public and there was no violence and no takeover but We've had other issues with these TikTok over the past couple of days, and we've been handling them even better than we did the first. And the second one was at Urban Air. They basically said, if you don't come with an adult, you're not coming in. So there was zero issues there. So if we can build these partnerships with the village and the local businesses to be more proactive and a little bit more harsh on the approach, I think together we can pretty much keep this as not an issue for us in the village. Thanks. Yep.

Any other questions? Thank you. Staff report?

Okay. We are now on to the selection of the top cop and top firefighter for 2026. And this is kind of tough when this, I think, is one of the hardest agenda items to approve because The safety here in the village of Wellington is because of Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. They are the best of the best of the best. And we know that. And so to narrow down a one person from each agency is incredibly challenging. And I applaud you in advance for doing this. This is a longstanding history and tradition of the Public Safety Committee. So, I thank you in advance for these selections. And once you do make your selections for each agency as we go through that, we will then present the winner with a plaque at our council meeting in September. And we've kind of traditionally picked September because it's around September 11th. So, we're looking at either September 8th, if we were to keep that, or if that doesn't work depending on scheduling, we could do the 22nd. I know these are tentative dates for September right now because they might change based on other county agencies and their approval of the budget. So that's where there may be a little flux. But we'll send you an invite to that meeting because we would love for you to be there. And with that, I will go ahead and we'll look at the first item. I believe it's nominees for...

I think there's one, two, three, five, four.

The Sheriff's Office, I think, was first on the agenda. Yeah. So with that, if there's any kind of, and I stand out doesn't seem to be fitting because they all are, but if there's any one that you kind of looked at that you would like to nominate, we're open to throw those names out there. If there's any comments you have before that, happy to hear those as well.

I have a bunch of questions, but I don't quite know if the lieutenant's going to be comfortable answering them, because I think it's going to be more the squad boss or the platoon commanders that wrote the recommendations.

They're direct supervisors.

Yes, sir. Because last year, the village of Wellington had two murders, correct, according to your comp stat? multiple assaults, and so on and so forth. Okay. Now, oh, boy. Unlike the rest of the days, this happens to be my area of expertise because I've written them and I've reviewed them and I've approved them. Okay. So just bear with me a second. All right. Maybe you guys will just indulge me for a moment, please. All right. Every one of these guys definitely deserves recognition. No doubt about it. All right? But I have some questions. Let's take the detective.

Okay?

Sure.

Which name are you referring to when you say?

Detective. Excuse me if I don't.

This is Lieutenant's second Public Safety Committee meeting with the Village of Wellington. This is new to him as well.

I'm not beating it up. This is my first. So he's got me beat by one.

So you're making just questions on Detective Barbuccio? Yeah.

And I'm not beating up the detective at all. I'm really not. But And again, I come from a major city. So if I'm taking that criteria and applying it here, I apologize. But from my knowledge, skills, ability, and what have you, this rises to the ability of excellent police work. I don't see where this is so outstanding that OK, you had two murders last year. Right. How does this become more significant than one of those two, right? This was the theft of an automobile. I can answer that question. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm reading what the – maybe I'm missing something here.

I think you are missing something, so I'll fill you in. So we here at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, we have different units and specialty units. For the district, the village, like I said, we have a detective's bureau. Mm-hmm. That's property crimes. We have a street crime unit. We have a community policing unit, and we have road patrol. All of our violent crimes are internal. They're housed through headquarters. So any shooting, stabbing, ag assault, and so forth like that is handled by our violent crimes unit. Those deputies, those detectives do not work for the village directly. So this... Detective is a property crime detective.

Right, and he's over here.

Yeah, so that's why he's not going to handle the murders, the stabbings, and the shootings, and so forth like that. So, yes. Does this compare to solving a murder? Probably not in most people's eyes. But we don't handle those. Those issues go to the violent crime unit. Okay. Yeah. And so... Like I said when I started earlier off with my presentation or my background and so forth, I said the village is not a violent crime. It's not known for violent crime, although we have had some violent crime here. Those get handled by those specialty units. So our deputies will respond to those. They'll take the initial report. Property crimes will never see that. Our detectives won't see that at all. That goes directly to a call out and then a violent crime sergeant will get their call. They'll assign one of their detectives to come out. So that's why we're not doing the high violent crime type crimes.

So now on Detective Barparuso's write-up, on his recommendation, it mentions the detectives, the detectives, the detectives. Right. What, in fact, did Detective Barparuso do? What was his investigative contribution to this investigation?

I mean, I think it's pretty apparent, you know, that he handled, he went above and beyond and did the investigation. I mean, if you want me to, I can read it word for word.

I'm looking at it. It says detectives obtained consent, you know, to search. Was that him or was that his team?

Nope. If it says Detective Barbuccio, then it was strictly him.

It's detectives. So was that him or his team?

Well, which part? So you're saying detectives obtained, yeah, so... Paragraph 562. Let's see. Additional residential burglaries. So as the investigation progressed, the suspect was linked to multiple... Yeah. So the burglaries... If we have a rash of burglaries, and at the beginning of those burglaries, we don't know that they're connected, obviously, until we find some motives and so forth and get some suspect information. So other detectives were probably, by the way he worded this, were on multiple burglary investigations, and then through his due diligence, he was able to connect them all to a suspect.

You see where I'm kind of getting at?

It's like... Yeah, no, you can ask the questions. That's fine.

It's kind of like, it would have, had it been worded the way you just presented it, well, he took all the parts of the, all the pieces of the puzzle and then connected it, drawing from them the following conclusions. Right. Okay. But if this one's doing that and that one's doing this, well, then what did you do?

Maybe it wasn't articulated to that level. Yeah.

All right.

So I think when the supervisor or whoever writes this, they write them as if we know. But in a sense, this probably should put more in. Absolutely. And I tell you, because if I had to make a selection right now, I'm going to tell you that I'm going to select Jordan Camarillo. Because I am probably... subjective to JAM deputies. Because a lot of crimes not being committed because of the work that he does with our juveniles. Because we know that a lot of crimes are being committed by our youth. And this guy, a JAM deputy, Does a lot and I'm sure it's not in this write-up But I know what they do and it don't talk about how many crimes they prevented just by interacting and Being proactive with the juveniles, you know, and I agree with you.

I think that that's the common thread I think the supervisors that are writing this up on behalf of the officers have the most Well intent right, but I think that You know, when we write up things for ourselves and when we write up things for our officers, we're always taught less is more. Don't put it in because you know it's going to come up when it goes to trial. Don't embellish. But sometimes you've got to put some substance there, especially if you want to, you know, I'm not saying embellish, don't lie, but you've got to put in who did what. Right?

I mean, to that point, when I was reading it in preparation of this meeting, I mean, you mentioned Kamilari. I mean, I put a star next to Fink. I mean, so if those are the two we want to talk about or additional ones, I thought that there was some information in there just about the specific, you know, sections that Deputy Fink has been involved in. And it was the second paragraph kind of really talked about violent crime, threats. There's a lot of different agencies and parts of that agency that are mentioned. So to your point, I mean, as far as being specific, oh, you're involved in this special unit and this special unit and this special unit. So that's kind of why I put a star next to Fink in preparing for today.

I mean, I'm not just singling him out. I looked at each one of the officers, and some of them, it just seemed like, OK, he's doing his job, like the guy from CPOP. Oh, I'm sorry, community policing. There was another guy that was proactive, 40 car stops. All right. And he lucked up on one car stop where he did 54 grams of marijuana, some TLC, and came up with a gun. OK, good police work. He was proactive. Then there was another one who was very good at writing reports. I would hope you're very good at writing reports because if not, your case is getting thrown out. The DA is going to laugh you right out of his or her office. There was another, where is it? Someone wrote up 250 cases in two years. Well, if you do the math, it's about 10 cases a month. Okay, that would be the average detective squad caseload.

That was Camilleri, and that was he assisted the detectives with another 250 of their cases. He did 250 or 200 supplements and so forth, reports, so on top of his other duties, but You know, like I said, this is my second time here and my first time doing a top cop. But, you know, this is something I can note. And for next year, we can just elaborate and make it a little bit more well-written so everybody can have a better understanding. So what like you mentioned, Cops were taught to less is more and so forth. There is cop jargon. And some of these sergeants may have forgotten that we're presenting this to the public. So I will definitely.

And I think also on your behalf, I think, did I mention it to you or somebody else?

Yes, I saw the email about criteria.

Maybe we should sit down and maybe we should give them. a guideline or some criteria and some guidance as to what we should be looking for from them as far as criteria, what we expect from them, not just, OK, you did a great job. You came to work. You did your job. And because you've got a wonderful personality, You should be top cop.

So is that something we're going to add to new business for the following month or something? I mean, we'll vote today, obviously, on what we have. But to his point then, perhaps, I don't know if it has to be next meeting or the following meeting, but before next summer, right, when we're doing this again. Maybe we'll, if you can put on the new, maybe put on new business, one of the entries to, hey, let's kind of have a 15-minute conversation, 10-minute conversation.

Make their life easy.

About what criteria we were looking at. So then when June rolls around, we would have, like, you know, that checklist in front of us, right? Hey, did they hit this? Did they hit this? Did they hit it? That's what us as a committee. Okay, so I...

If that's what you'd like, we could do that. I can work with both agencies and draft a criteria of what rises because these are executive level heads of the organizations that ultimately these come through. These are the best of the best, but to present it in a way that you might want to see it.

So I have a question. So I have a question. So I'm going to go off a tangent here. So

Barry, you guys just had a promotional process. Correct. And there was one portion where they go and they do their assessment.

Mm-hmm.

Are they given a criteria what they need to do when they go in there?

So you mean for the scenarios? Yes. So there's really no criteria, but the Labor Department will put out some blurbs of, you know, we can't give things, you know, the answers to people and so forth, but they'll give some guidelines on what they should be studying for with the scenarios. There are guidelines now to put criteria on it. I can understand putting criteria.

So, Barry, I don't want to interrupt. Oh, sorry. But I was trying to make a point. Right. No, they don't give you a criteria. Right. Because if they did, everybody would go in and do well on. Right. So, I'm saying if we create a criteria and give it to the writer and say, hey, they are going to write this memo. Yeah. Based on the criteria. You may hear. And we're going to be sitting here checking off every criteria that everybody may. Maybe we should have a criteria. That's what I was going to suggest. That we check off. But I wouldn't necessarily say we should give it to the writer.

I concur with you on that because you all can have a criteria. on the five, six, seven nominations, and you can say, did it meet your criteria? Which one at most met our criteria? That would be your top cop. But for us, see, I have a sergeant and a detective sergeant that only has five detectives. Not all of them are going to meet your criteria. Maybe zero will. So that excludes them. And then our community policing, well, They do a lot of special events. They may not meet your criteria as well. They're not doing the lavish investigations, you know, to make the news and so forth like that. But they're out there, you know, building partnerships with the youth and the schools and preventing those crimes and our jamunitors out there. You're not seeing that that deputy, even though he did 200 cases or supplements, that potentially there was 20 youth that could have went astray and now they're in gangs, now they're committing crimes and so forth like that. So that's hard to paint that picture because it didn't happen. So to put criteria on us in a small town like this with no violent, well, I can't say no violent crime. You said two murders last year, correct? So that's not much for 74 deputies to fight over to become top cop. So that's why we pick what we pick. Hey, this is a standout deputy. This is a standout agent, a standout detective. they've been solid all year they may not that supervisor may not have articulated that that deputy has been solid throughout the year because that would probably be about 10 to 15 pages we're just doing one page now that criteria you know for you all you'll comb through these and then start picking out your points and you guys can have the criteria and collaborate and then say okay this one of 20 criteria boxes had 15 you know I want to nominate this person then you all can yay or nay it

So it seems like right now there's two names, I mean, I guess, to move it along. I mean, I like the idea of the new business.

And I can draft something for selection criteria to consider for the next meeting. Can I just add something as well?

Keep in mind, these are nominations for individuals and really they are character references because, like you said, they're solid individuals. They show up every shift. They do what they're supposed to do every shift. They're good, dependable. They do the right thing. No One person, though, acts alone on any of the calls that we run. There's always a team. So just like with the nomination for the deputies, detectives, you know, they have partners. They work as a team. They work as a group. So if we were to just go based on an extraordinary call or an event that happened throughout the year, we would have to recognize the call of the year and recognize the whole team that did that. And that does change it a bit. And I don't know that you've considered that. Maybe you want to change it to call of the year versus just top firefighter or top cop. But same boat. We have 74 firefighters that report to the Village of Wellington, four stations that cover the Village of Wellington. So that's our pool. And a lot of times when they come to one of the Wellington stations, they don't bid out. They're staying. So it's the same people, the same crews, the same personnel year after year. And some of them get multiple nominations. And so, you know, for the cream of the crop, total overall package for the employee and how they conduct themselves daily and how they represent, that's more what this nomination is. But if you wanted to entertain Call of the Year and recognize a crew for doing something extraordinary throughout the year, that's something to entertain as well.

So I think there's two names that have been said. I mean, if anybody else, I guess just to move it along, I'm not trying to cut anyone off.

Lembo. I'm sorry? Lembo.

Okay. Lembo.

Yeah.

I'm going to butcher his name, so you're going to have to help me out here, Lieutenant, please.

Maniscalco?

Germusca? Germusca?

Okay. Germusca?

Yes.

Okay.

All right. So we have Germusca, Fink, and Camilleri as names, I think, that have been said out loud. Is there any else? So do you want to talk about it? At least we narrowed it down to those three. Do you want to talk about it and vote on those?

Sure. So the reason I'm going with this particular gentleman is because his stuff was proactive. Unlike being in the course of his duties, being that this is a slow community, all right, compared to every place else that you might be, all right, rather than sitting there and cooping or doing nothing. And for those of you that don't know what a, you know what cooping is, but the rest of you that don't, he's grabbing a cup of coffee, grabbing a newspaper, and going finding a shady spot under a palm tree, okay? And he's not answering, he's not doing anything unless the radio calls him. This particular officer took the initiative and was proactive to go out and do vehicle enforcement. And based on his being proactive, he then produced enforcement activity, which then led to what his supervisor documented here.

Okay. So that's for Gromuska. I've already spoken on the reasons I picked Fink. I have nothing else to add unless anybody else does. And then Camilleri was mentioned. Does anyone have anything else to add on Camilleri?

So because I'm the pro-jam, Camilleri, you know – What's not in here is that he do curfew checks. He has to go to this house and make sure that this kid is home when he's supposed to be home. So he has to know who's all on probation, all these kids. And he has to go to their house. which is dangerous by itself. And then if they violate the curfew, he has to violate them. He has to go and deal with juveniles in the school. He works with DJJ, which is always difficult. But it's just a lot of the crimes that are not being committed is because of the work he's doing with the juveniles. And that's why I'm so pro-jam, because not all districts have a jam deputy. And I know I started one because Wellington had one in Belle Glade, and their juvenile crimes was reduced significantly. Our property crime went way down. I mean, if the property detective was here to tell you, that was the best idea it was to do to create a jam deputy. I'm really pro Jam Deputy and this kid, Camilleri. He do a lot more that's not in this report. And it's because I know what Jam Deputy and what they have to do. So that's why I chose.

Anyone else have anything on Camilleri? I think we should take a vote, then, on these three and see where we're at. All right. So raise your hand, I guess, if you think Dramuska. Raise your hand for Dramuska. One vote? OK. I think mine's going to be the only one for Fink. Then raise your hand for Fink. OK. And then raise your hand for Kamilari. I think Kamilari has won as our top cop.

OK. Kamilari?

OK. So five for Kamilari.

Collection of top firefighter. I think there's two.

History.

History? Yeah. History. Oh.

All right. Let's get the names.

We have Captain Burns. We have Lieutenant, is it Hawthorne? Hawthorne. Hawthorne. And Redock? Redock. I guess I would suggest the same approach. Anyone want to be heard on Burns?

Yes, just a little historical information. Lieutenant Haythorn has been at Station 30 for many years. And he does a lot more than what also is included in his nomination. And he is a solid lieutenant. And he's been nominated a couple of times in the past but has not been selected. So just in the sharing the, you know, yeah, just in sharing the history and the knowledge of it. And we have had other people that have been selected more than once. And he's been nominated a couple of times and not been selected.

So just for historical information. That was Haythorne? Haythorne, yes.

Lieutenant Haythorne.

Anyone else on that individual? Okay. Byrne?

Hathorne. I was going to put my back that name. I'm putting it for him. Okay.

Does anyone want to say anything on Byrne's or Redock? Okay. So then I think let's take a vote. Hathorne? It's like it's, is it? Six. Six for Hathorne. Do you have unanimous or no? Did you vote? Oh, okay.

Good guy. Solid.

Now, I will tell you that. Thank you.

Not to sway your votes. I just was giving you historical knowledge.

No, but I will say that I served 32 years in the Air Force. That Army thing almost threw me.

Captain Burns.

All right. Very well. I think that's... You know, the two big high-profile things that we do is selection of this and then the texting while driving essay, which is getting out to the community. So that's good success. Public comments? Motion for public comments? Seeing none. Closing comments? Go ahead.

I had one item I forgot to mention. Our next public safety committee will meet on September 9th at 4 p.m. here in the council chambers. You'll get an email from Gloria, a calendar invite reminder.

Closing comments. I guess we'll start once over there. I'm still getting everyone's names.

Robert. No, no comments. No, sir. Emory.

OK, Emory.

Nothing. Nothing. Thanks for having me.

I think it was a good first meeting. I think we all had our opinions out. And like I think Mayor Napoleon says, even if we disagree, we don't have to be disagreeable. And we can always, obviously, talk and debate any issues. So good first meeting. And we're adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.