Ad Hoc Committee on Police and Community Relations - Regular Meeting

Right. Thank you, Don. I'm gonna ask. Hello, everyone. This is the community livability and public safety committee of the Olympia City Council. Today is May 6. We're just a couple minutes after 05:30 this evening. My name is Danny Madrone. I serve as the chair, and I'm calling the meeting to order. For roll call, we are joined by committee member Ian Hwinn and committee member Kelly Green in just in time for the roll call. Amazing. I was just about to say you'll join us soon.

Present. Yes. Excellent.

So what I need for from us right now is an agenda. So if somebody could make a motion to approve the agenda.

I would move to approve the agenda.

Second.

Alright. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Excellent. Unanimous. We don't have anybody signed up for public comment, and we, need to approve minutes from 03/25/2026. So if I could get a motion to do so, please.

Alright. Move to approve those minutes.

Second.

Alright. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Great. We have one item for committee business, and the star of the show is our chief of police, Shelby Parker, who's gonna be sharing a public safety update for the Olympia Police Department. So, Shelby, if you are ready, we are all here and ready to listen.

Very good. Let me work on sharing my screen.

It is showing up with your notes and oh, there we go. Perfect. You got it.

Okay. Perfect. Well, good evening. And for the record, I'm Shelby Parker, your new chief of police, and thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on the Olympia Police Department's public safety initiatives, operational performance, staffing progress, and the ongoing challenges and opportunities facing the organization. Tonight's pre presentation is organized around three key areas.

First, I'll provide a overview of our 2025 operational data, including service delivery, crime trends, and the impact of our crisis response unit. Second, I'll discuss our current staffing levels, recent hiring progress, and the operational impacts of attrition. Finally, I'll highlight our wellness initiatives that we've implemented to support the long term health, resilience, and readiness of our workforce. Even as staffing challenges continue, our department remains highly active and responsive across all service categories. In 2025, OPD personnel fulfilled over 3,600 public records disclosures requests, rather.

Each of these require careful review, redaction, and preparation by our records professionals. This number does not include reports that are available to community members through our online portal. Staff completed more than 6,600 incident reports which were reviewed and appropriately distributed. That number doesn't reflect the many supplemental reports that are often added under the same case number as investigations develop. Staff processed eight sixty civil orders, most of which require officers to personally serve the documents.

And staff handled nearly 54,000 dispatched calls for service. One area of significant growth continues in our community and that is for our Crisis Response Unit, which responded to nearly 5,900 contacts in 2025, almost doubling from 2023. That trend reflects both increased community need and the success of our alternative response model comprised of 12 crisis response team members when fully staffed. While community engagement numbers appear lower in 2025, that reduction reflects staffing limitations rather than a reduced commitment to community partnership. This slide provides a brighter look at crime trends over time.

While individual categories fluctuate from year to year, our overall data shows relative stability in major crime categories with some targeted outreach service and enforcement efforts driving reductions to repeat nuisance behaviors and chronic problem locations. We continue using data informed deployment strategies to focus resources where they have the greatest public safety impact. You'll note that there were no homicides in 2025. You will also note reported increase in rates to 44 incidents. OPD has partnered with nonprofit organizations and expanded reporting options through the Seek Then Speak reporting tool.

This tool allows survivors to privately gather information and consider their options for medical care, support services, and reporting to police. We believe the increase in reported incidents reflects improved access and support for survivors who choose to come forward. You'll see robberies decreased with 56 reported incidents. Many of these involve suspects who use force while stealing from businesses. Felony assaults declined significantly with 147 incidents reported and misdemeanor assaults were slightly higher than the previous two years.

It's important to note that about 45% of those were related to domestic violence. I'd like to highlight what the data reflects regarding known suspects versus stranger crime assaults and rapes. Seventy four percent of the cases in 2025 indicate that the suspect was known by the victim. Twenty six percent of the cases, the suspect was a stranger or the victim offender relationship was listed as unknown in the police report. For this dataset, I have removed assaults against police officers and staff because it artificially inflates that number.

We're gonna transition to property crimes, which are the last four crimes in the table. Auto thefts dropped significantly in 2025 to 01/2010 reported incidents. Commercial burglaries also decreased with 120 incidents reported. Some of these incidents involved individuals who had previously been trespassed for a business and later returned and committed theft, which increases the charge to the commercial burglary. Residential burglaries also declined.

More than half of these cases were related to domestic violence situations where a suspect entered a residence despite being prohibited from doing so by a no contact order. Trespass arrests increased compared to 2024, though they remain lower than 2023 with two fifty seven incidents. I'd like to highlight that in July 2025, OPD launched a proactive policing unit in collaboration with the Lacey Police Department. This unit focuses on significant regional crime trends, including felony assaults, robberies, fraud, and the selling of stolen property. In its first six months, the unit arrested more than 22 chronic offenders, and these investigations are incredibly complex and labor intensive.

They are an important part of addressing individuals who are committing multiple serious crimes across the region and really helps reduce harm in our community. This slide addresses the question raised during our community policing board meeting regarding juvenile arrest in 2025. The data shows that juveniles accounted for just 2.2% of all arrests made by the Olympia Police Department in 2025. What this tells us is that the overwhelming majority of our enforcement activity, nearly 98%, involves adult and not youth. While juvenile crime remains an important area of focus, these numbers suggest that youth are not the primary driver of overall enforcement activity in Olympia.

Just as importantly, reinforces the value of prevention, early intervention, and strong partnerships with schools, families, and community organizations to help keep youth connected, supported, and out of the justice system. As community needs continue to evolve, so does the way the Olympia Police Department delivers public safety services and our Crisis Response Unit is an important part of that evolution. The sustained increase in contacts demonstrates both the demand and confidence in this model. These teams often resolve behavioral health crises without criminal justice involvement, connecting individuals to treatment, housing resources, and stabilization services. This work helps reduce repeat calls for service, improves outcomes for vulnerable individuals, and allows patrol officers to remain available for emergent public safety needs.

The table on the left shows how the crisis response unit contacts were initiated. Most often, crew is dispatched through Thurston nine eleven communications, followed by crew staff initiating the contact themselves in the field. In 2025, crew responded to more than 5,900 calls for service, an increase of 13% from 2024. Of those contacts, crew was dispatched to more than 3,300 calls while self initiated over 1,300 contacts throughout the community. The pie chart on the right highlights another important trend.

In 2025, crew responded independently 81% of the time, a 10% increase from 2024, while corresponding with law enforcement in 19% of the incidents. This shift reflects the continued mature program development and our commitment to ensuring community members experiencing behavioral health crisis related needs receive the right response at the right time from the right resource.

Keith, we've had a question. Yeah.

Chair. Chief, can you help define self initiated for me or help me understand what that looks like?

Absolutely. So we have crew members in the field walking. We also have crew members in vehicles throughout the community. And the expectation is that while they are active in the community, they are helping folks that they see in need of services. So it could be that they are just patrolling, and they see somebody who appears to be maybe just sad and sitting down on sidewalk, maybe appears distraught, and they pull over and make contact with that individual to see if there's anything that they can do to help impact wellness for that individual in that moment.

Thank you. I was thinking of self as the individual and I was trying to figure out how they contacted. Thanks.

Any other questions? Okay. Thank you for that. It's good clarification. Alright, we'll move on to talking about staffing levels. There's going to be a lot of data that's coming at you in the next several slides. We're going to get into the weeds, and so if you have questions, I'll be looking for those hands to raise and I will provide clarification. So as many agencies across the country continue to face recruitment and retention challenges, Olympia is not immune. This slide shows our staffing levels at the 2025. And as a side note, I'd like to boast we hired 15 staff members in 2025.

That includes officers, a lieutenant, and crew members. OPD has authorized 129 full time positions. This includes 88 commissioned employees, our sworn law enforcement personnel, and 41 non commissioned professional staff who provide critical support across the organization, whether that be records, evidence, administration, outreach services, and various specialized services. In addition to our full time staff, OPD also benefits from 26 dedicated volunteers, seven youth explorers who represent the future of public service, and three canines, two patrol canines and one community engagement canine. The column on the left shows our vacancies at the end of 2025.

Forgive me, the column on the right. So at the end of '25, we had 22 vacant positions across the organization. This included 13 officers, one sergeant, a chief, four crisis response unit positions, two community service officers, a sergeant, an administrative position. So a fair number of vacancies, and that's even having had hired 15 people in this calendar year. So while we have maintained cooperations, vacancies continue to place pressure on patrol staffing, specialty assignments, training capacity, and proactive community policing efforts.

Vacancies directly influence patrol staffing, problem solving on the patrol level proactively, specialty assignments, employee workload, and ultimately our ability to deliver the level of service that our community expects and deserves. Despite these challenges, however, our employees continue to show up every day, adapt, and maintain essential public safety services while we work to recruit, retain, and develop the workforce needed for long term organizational stability. Really, what this means is employees are working a lot of hours to cover minimum staffing. So we have good news. Let's take a look at where we're at in 2026.

We closed 25 with 13 vacancies, and even with our work moving forward, we're at 13 vacancies. So explain how. So as of March 31, we are at 13 vacancies. While that number reflects the staffing challenges we continue to navigate, this graphic also shows our measurable progress. During the first quarter, we hired six new team members.

That's three police officers and three crisis response unit professionals. That brings the crisis response unit one person short of fully staffed. The graphic on the right highlights another encouraging trend. Three hiring incentives have been paid, including one lateral officer incentive and two internal recruitment incentives, reflecting our ability to attract both experienced officers and new talent into our organization. Unfortunately, we did experience two resignations during the quarter and promotions, which increased that vacancy rate.

A reminder that staffing recovery is not simple and retention is can be a challenge. Even with that reality, these early gains represent meaningful progress toward rebuilding staffing capacity and strengthening the long term stability of the department. So six individuals hired is a significant accomplishment. I'd like to highlight the amount of work that goes into that in the next slide. We'll talk a little bit about the number of individuals that we screen to get to those number of officer hires and crew hires.

Deposit momentum has continued into the second quarter. In the upper left of the slide, you'll see that we currently have two conditional offers in progress for lateral officers. These are really critical hires because these are folks that are gonna come into the organization and not have to go through the police academy. So they are going to impact those staffing levels out in the field much faster than a brand new hire. The center portion of the slide highlights an important reality of workforce planning and public safety and that's succession planning.

While we currently have 13 commission base vacancies, we anticipate two upcoming retirements, which will temporarily increase our vacancy rate to 15. At the same time, those two pending hires are expected to bring us back to our current baseline of 13 vacancies, helping offset anticipated attrition and maintain forward momentum. So on the right side of the slide, you'll see some important organizational progress. We have a newly appointed chief. Thank you, Citi, for that opportunity.

And that allows us to move forward with a police, a deputy chief police recruitment, a critical position that the organization has been lacking for over a year now. So this graphic really illustrates that staffing recovery, it's not a straight line. Hiring, retirements, promotions, academy timelines, and field training all influence how quickly new employees can become operational. So in practical terms, from the time that we hire a new police officer, it typically takes about twelve months before that officer is fully trained, working independently, and contributing to staffing levels and service delivery in the field. So to give a little bit of context about the applicants coming into our organization, in just the 2026, 129 individuals applied to work as officers at the Olympia Police Department.

While that level of interest is encouraging, we have retained our high standards. We believe that our community deserves the very best in policing and we're not going to reduce those standards. So out of those 129 applicants, seven advanced to the oral board process. That number reflects both the high standards we maintain for the profession and the realities of a highly competitive market. So when folks apply to police departments, they're using an outfit called public safety testing and they're sending their test scores to multiple departments.

So often by the time we respond, which is very quickly, they have already moved on to another organization. I really want to thank our city council and our city manager for their support of our recruitment and retention efforts, including our lateral officer hiring incentive and our employee referral program. Both of these programs are working incredibly well and leading to our success in bringing applicants into our organization. And I'm pleased to share that just this week, we added two additional officer applicants to our hiring process. If they successfully move through the testing and selection phases, our commission vacancies will be reduced from 13 to 11.

Are there any questions before I move out of the numbers and into talking about wellness? Yes, council member Green.

Thank you, Sheep. Can you talk to me a little bit about so you mentioned our high standards, and and I recognize that a lot of the folks coming in through that that portal system are are applying at other agencies as well. What are some of the things that are that you that we most commonly, don't consider people for or, like, screen people out for?

Absolutely. We have a suitability tool that we use. When somebody sends us their test scores, that's the first step in our process that's Olympia specific. And it is a multi question test that, asks folks to disclose things about their background and their personality, kind of mini psychological tests in in many ways. And when I look at the answers to those questions, it confirms that we are, on point for having our high standards.

Folks are disclosing significant thefts, deception, integrity issues, whether it be lying to employers or other critical people in their life. We're seeing anger and aggression tendencies in their their psychological profiles, substance use disclosure that's too close in time and proximity to the application, some domestic violence disclosures, and other answers that indicate that there might be some impulse control issues. So that's a snapshot of many of the reasons why we may not move forward with some of those candidates. Any other questions before we move forward? Okay.

So this slide highlights why staffing stability matters, why we're working so diligently to fully staff our organization. When vacancies occur, they can affect response capacity, reduce the time available for proactive problem solving and specialized services, and place additional demands on employees who continue showing up every day. At the same time, I do wanna assure the community that our team remains committed, adaptable, and focused on delivering essential public safety services while we continue building our workforce. We have minimum staffing in the city of Olympia. Not all police departments do, and we always maintain our our minimum staffing, and that ensures that our public is receiving the the prompt responses they deserve from their police department.

The progress you've seen in our hiring efforts combined with our investment in employee wellness and retention is helping us build a stronger, more sustainable organization in the future. I'd like to transition to talking about our robust wellness programs at the City of Olympia. In the profession, wellness is truly everything. It's front and center of the work that all police departments are trying to do. We are very fortunate to have the capacity to really engage in this work on a high level, and I thank the city for that commitment.

Recently, while speaking with a community member about the unique stressors that first responders face, one person said something that stayed with me. This is something the community really needs to hear about, is what they said. The reality is that first responders, our police officers, our crisis response unit professionals, firefighters, and many others in public safety are exposed to more trauma in a single year than many people will experience in a lifetime. Research continues to show that suicide is one of the leading causes of death of law enforcement professionals outside of the line of duty and that the chronic stress associated with police work contributes significantly to elevated risks for cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke. Occupational health research has also shown that in some law enforcement populations, officers experience significantly shorter life expectancy than the average population, highlighting the real physical and emotional toll that this profession can take over time.

These realities reinforce why investing in first responder wellness is an operational necessity, both for the health of our employees and for the long term service our community expects and deserves. At the Linfia Police Department, we have a robust 14 member peer support team that receives additional training in supporting their peers. The team is comprised of both commissioned and non commissioned professionals. It's not just officers who are exposed to trauma through their work. All professionals in the department have various levels of exposure from our records staff who are watching hours of body worn camera footage in order to fulfill public records requests to our evidence technicians who are processing pieces of evidence.

We have a partnership with the Counseling Team International, abbreviated to TCTI as an acronym. This is a critical piece of our wellness strategy and ensures that our employees have immediate access to culturally competent clinicians whenever they are in crisis. In addition, every employee has access to 10 confidential counseling sessions a year. For law enforcement professionals, having access to clinicians who understand the unique trauma and cumulative stress associated with this profession is critical. TCTI also provides additional support following critical incidents.

In fact, during an especially traumatic period last year, we requested additional assistance and two clinicians responded directly to our department, working alongside our staff to help ensure their wellness, resilience, and continued ability to serve our community. We also maintain a partnership with Ready Rebound to ensure that employees who are injured have fast access to medical care and recovery support. In addition, through a grant from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, we partner with Sigma Tactical Wellness to provide intensive cardiovascular screening for all of our employees, helping identify early warning signs of stroke, heart disease, and other serious health conditions. These are just a few examples of how we're investing in the health, resilience, and long term wellness of our employees so they can build sustainable careers in law enforcement and continue showing up at their best for our community. In closing, despite staffing challenges and increased service demands, the Olympia Police Department continues to deliver high levels of service, innovative in crisis response, and invest in both community safety and employee wellness, ruining the committed transparency, accountability, and building a department position for long term success.

I appreciate the committee's continued partnership and support. We'll be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Chi. I am looking to my, committee mates for any questions, and I see that Kelly's there with one. And and, Ian, feel free to just jump in. I know I know you might not have your raised hand function, but I'll go ahead and call in Kelly first, and then I'll just watch to see if you come off of mute, Ian.

Cool. Thank you so much for that, chief. That was, there was a lot in there. It was good stuff. An easy educational question. Are the are the crew staff, are they commissioned or non commissioned, like, we look at those numbers?

Excellent question, Kelly. They are non commissioned staff, and so they are not sworn police officers. They are not armed. They do not have any protection tools that they utilize. They are dispatched by our same dispatch center as both firefighters as well as police officers.

Then one thing that struck me on the crime trends slide was that between '23 and '25, almost all of those categories seem to show a pretty significant decrease. What do you attribute that to?

That's such a great question, and I read all of my law enforcement journals and go to all of my conferences, and we have some answers and, not all of them. We believe that a number of folks are being held accountable for significant crime trends during earlier years, and so they aren't out in the community committing additional crimes. I'd also like to believe that folks have moved through the criminal justice system and into other paths. And we have a lot of technology that's entered law enforcement that's helping combat some of the challenges. One one example is we had a very significant increase in automobile thefts around the 2020 era, and we knew that that was in part because we had a couple automobile vendors that had some vulnerabilities, and those vulnerabilities have been addressed.

So that that's helping decrease those those auto auto theft numbers significantly, but certainly something that we'll pay attention to. As we see more organizations leaning into some advanced technology utilization, it is helping close a lot of cases, hold a lot of folks accountable. We also here locally, our special investigations response team, the unit that we developed in in the middle of last year, it really is having a significant impact on our regional crime trends. These are long term chronic offenders who commit hundreds of crimes in the region. And so holding those folks accountable is definitely having a positive impact on on crime trends in the community.

Are those trends like, are other places in our area, state, nation, like, seeing similar trends? Is

The entire nation is seeing an incredible downward trend in crime. Thank you. Absolutely.

Go ahead, Ian.

Yeah. Chief Parker, it's so great to just say that. Right? Keep it simple. No more interim. Thank you so much for this really wonderful presentation. Even though I I, we can't see each other right now, I've been, listening. And, just it's just amazing what you just left off with that, we're seeing such a downward trend in crimes. I am curious about retail theft, and I'm sorry if I missed it in your presentation, but I know that, was and I believe still is quite a big concern. So could you share, what you can on retail theft in the area?

Thank you for asking. It it is a significant problem, and it's one of the focuses of the special investigations response team is really taking a look at the organized retail theft, and it's definitely a regional issue. So up and down I five. And that's really where we work with our crime analysts throughout all of the agencies. We work with the Washington State Fusion Center to track, what's going on. And, we're having just a high level of success holding folks accountable, working collaboratively, closing a lot of cases. It does continue to remain an issue and one that we're paying close attention to. I can have more data for you in the next presentation.

Thanks so much. I've that would be great. It's not a hard to do, but it would be something I'm interested in. I think other others would be too. I've also noticed that definitely private businesses, namely corporations, big box stores that I guess maybe have the budget for it. But there seems to be hiring of private security, and so I just wonder about, OPD's sort of partnership with private security. And, is there any and is it going well? I wonder about that every time I see private security officers.

Absolutely. We have relationships with a number of our larger stores and with their security teams, and the relationships are positive, they're a significant deterrent that is a a big piece of the puzzle. And you see a lot of businesses engaging in environmental designs. So whether it be gates that that close at the access points or carts that have locking wheels, but most of your large businesses are taking as many creative steps as they can to really decrease the amount of of significant theft that's occurring in their stores. But the the relationships with the security teams are positive.

They're trained witnesses and observers. And so when we respond to those locations, they they do a very good job of of briefing us on what happened and so we can move forward with an investigation in a case that's in the best interest of everybody's time.

Thank you. That that's good to know and helpful to hear. And, also, just wanted to give you, and your staff some kudos. Chief, I see, just by happenstance, a lot of police officers out in the community, varying levels. So it's not just officers, but members of OPD out in the community and, really taking the time to educate and, talk to people through some of their issues, whether they're big or small.

I know for me and and my neighborhood, we're looking forward to meet with Rebecca soon to and probably a couple of officers to just talk about, hey. What can we do around our neighborhood for a neighborhood watch? You know? And so those types of, that type of ongoing outreach that I know you all do, all year round is, really, really important to people. So thank you.

Thank you.

Great. And I've got a couple of questions myself, chief. I'm curious. I feel like I I've known this at one point, but I'm not I'm not quite remembering. With community service officers, are they are they considered partially commissioned? What what how are they classified?

So they're specially commissioned. They they do not go to the police academy. They're trained in house. Right now, we have two. We have a total of four allocations for for community service officers, though they're they're they're not all the same.

So one is a supervisor and three are your mind level staff. Only the supervisor is armed. So we we're in the midst of a change to the way that unit is comprised based upon, the move to the district courts and and reevaluating what is in the the the best needs of the community. So little bit of a change there.

Okay. And and could you say more about that? Like, what kind of responsibilities do CSOs have that tie with courts? Or and also just generally, what are their responsibilities, and how's the transition with the courts changing what they do?

So the the CSOs, one of their primary responsibilities is transporting people out to the Nisqually Jail as well as bringing folks from the Nisqually Jail to court when they need to appear physically in person. So they're responsible for transporting folks. They're also responsible for if people need medical care and they need to go to one of our hospitals or one of our clinics, that's ideally their responsibility. And so the fully commissioned commissioned staff can be available in the community. They also address a number of equipment needs within their organization.

They can do traffic control in the community, pick up found or lost property found property. They can do a number of details that just that don't require a fully commissioned police officer.

Okay. Very helpful. Thank you. And I'm curious about, you know, this seems to be like lucky number 13. I can't seem to get past that. But, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll get to 11. But, how do we compare to other, you know, comparable police departments in Washington? I know things vary state to state quite a bit, but how do we how do we stack up with other similar sized communities in Washington in terms of recruitment, retention, things like that?

Thank you for asking the question, Danny. By and large, most police departments are struggling with staffing. So to what extent is really a variable answer. Within the region, we are certainly not alone. Most of our partners are also struggling with retention and staffing.

We're at a time where folks are really evaluating the risks of this profession and what other options are available to them. And if they have other skills and abilities, they're they're interested in exploring those. So we've had a lot of hires who are really amazing, talented individuals, and they do have other skill sets. And so after coming into policing and experiencing it, realizing that it's not exactly what you see on TV, Most investigations don't start and finish in sixty minutes, and they they either return to other career fields or or explore other options. So but but to your to your question, Danny, lots of challenges throughout the region and certainly throughout the nation.

There's challenges with with hiring in general. So a very large, law enforcement agency in the state of Washington, I'll be vague on purpose, they're they have hired so many people because their vacancy rate is so high. It is a six month wait after you get out of the academy before you start your field training because they do not have enough field trainers to train all of these officers. And so you can see there's multiple challenge points throughout this this staffing progression and training pipeline. And so it's it's really a tricky balancing act that all agencies are really trying to figure out how to navigate.

So for the city of Olympia, we have hired so many people. All of our training officers are allocated with recruits. And it's a it's a puzzle piece because as somebody graduates from a phase, they need to move to another field training officer and you run out of field training officers very quickly, as well as when the work doesn't stop, we're just training and training, folks are getting tired. It's very difficult work to to train new police officers.

Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you for that context. I'm I'm curious too. You know, I think you mentioned that we had two resignations recently, and you were just talking about, you know, how people sometimes they get into the work, and they're like, oh, this isn't for me. Was that the case with those resignations, or are we losing people to other departments?

We we have folks who decide that the work isn't for them. So one of the resignations, an incredible individual is very, very hard for me to accept their resignation. The more I tried to convince them to stay and to just give us a little bit longer, the more I was convinced that they were in the right place because their ability to communicate with me as I'm I'm trying my best to retain them was exceptional. But ultimately, it's not a good fit for them, and we have to we have to support that. There are some folks that go to other agencies.

They want something unique from what, the city Of Olympia can offer. So I when I do my chief's interview, I try to ask very specific questions, be very articulate about what policing looks like in the city Of Olympia. For example, our officers are incredibly well rounded. They're gonna respond to a scene, and if it's a high level felony crime, they are going to investigate it from start to finish. They're incredibly skilled.

In very large agencies. Officers are going to respond and stabilize. They're going to take reports, and then additional resources are gonna come in and take over pieces of that investigation. And so if somebody is looking for that type of police work, Olympiapedi isn't a good fit. So in doing these chiefs interviews, I really try to hone in on what this individual wants to do in policing and whether we're a good fit. Because if we're not, the whole the whole region needs law enforcement officers, and I want them to go to where they can be successful.

Thank you. Thank you. I guess it's not really an option in some cases to be like, no. I don't accept your resignation. You're staying here with us. That's not an option, is it?

I've tried. I I I often say, I'm not gonna take it yet. So can you take the weekend and let's sit down again on Monday, and let's have another talk? And here's here's all the people I want you to talk to between Friday and Monday. But what I will say is by the time somebody who's put in so much time and effort into this career field, by the time they've arrived at that decision, it's hard to convince them otherwise. They really agonize over the choice.

Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. I see Kelly's got another question.

Yeah. It's actually a follow-up to an answer you just gave. So you talked about for for some folks, if they leave to be laterals, they might be looking for something unique. As we have had success with laterals, like, are the unique things for us that might be attractive to someone from another agency? Oh,

such a great question. Thank you. It allows me to boast. It it's it's so great having laterals come into our organization and getting to educate them about what policing looks like in Olympia and what we have to offer. So one of our laterals that's in the process of being hired comes from a very small organization. So they don't have a minimum staffing. They have one partner on graveyard. If their partner calls in sick, they are the lone officer in that community. Sure. They're supported by other agencies.

But if they have a traumatic call, the support agencies are gonna move on and go back to their organizations, and that individual is gonna be alone processing the trauma all by themselves. They're not gonna have somebody that they can talk to and go to the next call and just have human contact. So one of the big pieces that we have are incredible teams. Our law enforcement officers are exceptional. They're dynamic.

They're unique. They're diverse individuals who bring just different skill sets, different personalities. And so you you get to have this amazing team environment on your shift. And then certainly within the larger organization, you get to develop your skills as we've discussed. You are a full service police officer, so you're going to be fingerprinting, photographing, swabbing DNA, conducting interviews in the field looking for your subjects, as well as you're going to receive exceptional training.

Our department provides ninety six hours as a minimum of training every year where the state standard is twenty four hours. There are many departments, especially smaller ones in the state where all they can allocate is that mandatory twenty four hours. We provide phenomenal training, and we have opportunities for people to become trainers and really develop their their skill sets and, and really just grow as professionals.

Great to hear. Thanks.

Anything else from the committee? Alright. Well, thank you so much, chief. Really, really appreciate the update, and we look forward to seeing you next year for the next update and, of course, many times in between now and then.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me tonight. Bye bye.

Alright. So that was the only, item of business on our agenda this evening. We're now at reports and updates. So I will look to my committee mates and also to staff to see if we have any reports or updates, to to bring forward. Okay. Well, oh, go ahead, Debbie.

I'll just make a friendly reminder that we will have two meetings in May. So we have another meeting on May 27. That's your regularly scheduled meeting.

Great. Yes. And that's my fault. Thanks for everybody for being flexible with my schedule in April. Alright. Well, with that, I think it's dinner time. I will go ahead and call this meeting adjourned and see you all soon. Take care.