Community Services and Youth Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to welcome you to the Safety, Wellness, and Youth Committee of the Riverside City Council for our regular committee meeting. All members are currently present. And we'll begin with public comment. Play the recording, please.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star nine. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Okay, we have no speakers here in the chambers. Just waiting to see if there are any callers online. We have no callers online, so we will move to our discussion calendar. I'm going to switch around. We'll start with item three, which is the update on fees related to tow companies. I'll ask my colleagues if they have any comments or questions. Otherwise, looking at the report, I'll just, for myself, and I had reached out to Councilmember Condor, just have him double-check on this. Looking at the report, the direction from the committee was... We were hoping to see the actual tow fees being discussed today. We did not see the actual tow fees as part of this. So we would like to go ahead and basically continue this item to our next meeting. We want to make sure that we're discussing the fees that are being charged on the towing, not just the the other fees that were included in today's report. We want to be talking about all tow fees and we had made mention of the fact that we were going to be looking at CHP fees and I thought we had been very specific about it but something must have got lost in the translation from when we had expressed what we wanted to see here today. So I'm going to make a motion that we just go ahead and continue this item to our next scheduled meeting of this committee. Council Member Condor?

Yeah, Chair, thank you very much. I will agree with everything you said. We had bad looked at the... you know, possibly using an average statewide of the CHP fees. So I agree. I'll make the second to that motion to bring it back and work again and get this done right the first time.

Thank you, sir. Council Member Robillard, do you have any? Okay. So before I open it up for public comments to the continuance of the item, we have none here in the chambers. And we have no callers online for this item. So we're going to be continuing this to the next regularly scheduled Safety, Wellness, and Youth Committee meeting, which will be next month. So thank you guys for coming to present, but we're going to go back, and as Council Member Conner said, we're going to get this done right the first time. So thank you guys. Now we'll go back to Item 2, which is on our discussion calendar, and you can open up public comment for that as well.

public comment is now open for this item available in both english and spanish call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language to request to speak press star 9 you can also join via zoom the meeting id for both languages can be found on the agenda

So item number two, which is the Riverside Police Department Military Equipment Annual Review for Approval, Acquisition, Deployment, and Reporting Requirements of Specialized Law Enforcement Equipment classified under California Government Code as military equipment in accordance with Assembly Bill 481. Sir, the floor is yours.

On behalf of our Chief, Larry Gonzales, I would like to thank the Safety, Wellness, and Youth Committee for their time. My name is Dawson Smith. I'm the Lieutenant for Special Operations Division with the PD. As discussed, the highlights this year would be that there are no changes to Lexie Pole Policy 705. There are listed, there are only minimal changes to our inventory, mostly relating to our unmanned aircraft. as we continue to build that resource for the city. Also, in addition, there were rifles purchased on behalf of Special Operations as well. Outside of that, everything listed in attachment A and attachment B are accounted for.

Did you want to go through the PowerPoint presentation? I could, sir, yes, sir. And I think the clicker's right there with you.

All right, thank you. Sorry, I was kind of wanting to make sure I was going off of you guys.

Let's see if I can move forward.

There you go. All right, thank you. Assembly Bill 481 was signed by the governor in September of 2021 and then also effective on January 1st of 2022. Classification for military equipment requires city council oversight whether equipment was ever used by the military or not. It requires a military equipment use policy adopted by the city council. An annual review and approval of the policy is required at a public meeting.

Thank you.

On the 26th of April 2022, City Council called for a hearing and introduced Ordinance 7586 adding Chapter 2.70 to the RMC related to adoption of RPD military equipment policy in accordance with AB 481 and Calgov Section 7070 through 7075. May 10, 2022, the City Council adopted Ordinance 7586. City Council reviewed and approved the RPD Military Equipment Policy on the following dates, August 15, 2023, September 17, 2024, and October 28 of last year, 2025. RPD Military Equipment Policy 705 governs the use of equipment described in California Government Code 7070. This includes aerial drones, less lethal weapons systems, mobile command posts, bomb-disposable robots, search and rescue equipment. Military Equipment Policy has not changed since approved with exception to updates to the fiscal impact and the inventory. The purpose of the equipment is to preserve human life, search and rescue operations, rapid response to critical incidents, high-risk apprehensions, hostage and victim rescue, safe and effective de-escalation tactics, less lethal use of force options, reduce likelihood of injury or death to officers and or the public. RPD Military Equipment Policy 705 is a summary of equipment purpose and use can be found in Policy Attachment A, Military Equipment Inventory. Department received no complaints or concerns regarding military equipment. Department observed no violations of military equipment policy. Fiscal Year 2526, cost can be found in Policy Attachments B, Military Equipment Fiscal Impact. 26-27 cost, if any, will be funded by existing department budget. Equipment quantities can be found in policy attachment B, military equipment, and fiscal impact. RPD purchased seven additional unmanned aerial system drones and eight rifles. No other equipment is planned to purchase at this time. The following can be found in the City of Riverside website as required by AB 481. Our policy 705 Riverside Department Military Equipment Inventory Attachment A Riverside Police Department Military Equipment Fiscal Impact which would be Attachment B and then also included is the website where you can find those to include a video presentation. The recommendation for the city council is to approve the Riverside Police Department Military equipment policy for the approval acquisition deployment and reporting requirements of specialized law enforcement equipment classified under California government code as military equipment and authorize the department to send a copy of the Riverside Police Department military equipment police. Policy to the governor's office in accordance with assembly bill 41. And I'm sorry I really jumped on my notes and forgot about my clicker it's all right.

Well, I appreciate the presentation. We have no callers in chamber and no callers online, so I'll go ahead and close the public portion of the meeting, bring it back to the committee for comments and or a motion.

No comments from me, but motion to approve. And I'll make a couple comments. Lieutenant, thank you for the presentation. You know, the very few that I have that question, why do we need this type of equipment? They forget about the North Hollywood shootout back in 1997. Our police were not at a deficit. What they had didn't exist, and they could not handle that. As the bad guys keep getting more and more and more, we must keep our police department protected and upgraded with all this equipment for the life and safety of the people they are protecting. So this is necessary equipment. This is just the way of the world. Things change. Bad guys get bad stuff. We've got to make sure we have equal. So I appreciate this coming forward. I'll second Mr. Robillard's motion to approve this, and thank you guys for what you do.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

And again, thank you for your presentation. I concur with Council Member Condor's comments on this. And Council Member Robillard, who just pointed out to us when he came here that apparently I'm the youth on this commission, look up the North Hollywood shootings, and it probably happened when you were a child, if not.

I know what those are.

I also watched the movie Heat. I just wanted to make sure, you know, if you want, you can go on the Internet and find the story.

It was so bad that a former business owner here in town was actually working at one of the gun stores near that Hollywood shootout, and the police came running in there to get firearms, and those employees who handed them to save their lives, they tried to prosecute. It was just crazy. It's just crazy stuff.

Okay.

So with that, we have a motion and a second. Do we need to do a roll call vote? I concur, so it would be a unanimous vote of the committee to approve staff's recommendations. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you.

I'd like to thank the committee. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, our next item is legislative update. Do we have a legislative update today? Okay, so that brings us to item five, which is items for future safety, wellness, and youth committee consideration as requested. okay so clearly just today is council member uh robillard's uh initial uh meeting on the safety wellness and youth um we decided we did need youth um and it could be an experience but uh and and we know that the council member i i took a personal offenses that uh he he is making the situation that council member cotter and i are old Council Member McConner is old. I don't know about myself.

Well, I'm glad to see you struggle through your chairship, and I hope to go smoother next time.

So with that, it's 1-16, and that concludes the Safety, Wellness, and Youth meeting. So thank you, everybody. We will see you next month when we will be discussing toe fees.