City Council - Regular Meeting

We have asked Councillor Richter if he would lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please rise. Join with me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, Thank you, Councillor Richter. We have asked Councillor Hanson if she would offer our invocation.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for this opportunity to meet together on behalf of Riverdale. Please bless us that we may be open to the inspiration to know those things that would be in the best interest of our residents and our employees and that would be best for the city. We're grateful for the many blessings that we have to live in Riverdale and for the many... amazing workers that we have. And please bless all of our public safety that they may be safe and return home safely and all of our employees that they can appreciate and feel the value that we have for them. We ask thee to help guide us and provide us with patience and understanding as we consider and make decisions on behalf of the city tonight. And we pray for these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Councilor Hanson. Arnold, did you have something?

Just said amen, brother.

Oh, okay. Sorry. You got it. All right. We'll move on to public comment. This is an opportunity to address the city council regarding your concerns or ideas. No action will be taken during the public comment period. Please try to limit your comments to three minutes. And if you do approach the microphone, please state your name and your city of residence. Okay, seeing none, we will move on to presentations and reports. For the mayor's report, I don't have anything for this meeting, so we'll move on to the city council assignment reports. Councilor Stephens, anyone have any reports from their assignments? Okay, we will move on to item number three, Riverdale Fire and Police Recognition. Mr. Brooks.

Thank you, Mayor. We had intended on doing this at the last meeting. But at that same night, Washington Terrace had done a recognition for these same individuals who are here tonight. But I think it's important that we as a city recognize both our police and fire departments. They've had a busy summer, to put it mildly. And there was the one incident up on the hill that could have turned even worse than it was. I mean, it was very tragic in the fact that we lost a life. But our guys were directly involved in this thing. And I think but for their actions, that thing would have been way worse than it was. And so I've reached out to both the chiefs to get everybody here that we could possibly get tonight. And I think what I'll do is just maybe turn the time over to both our chiefs, our police chief and fire chief, and let them kind of explain a little bit, go into a little bit more detail. I think it's important that you guys hear that. I hear these stories, and you guys don't get that a lot of times. And so I think it was important that you hear. what we did. I mean, not only saving lives and property, but trucks and all kinds of stuff. It was just an amazing story. And to be honest with you, our guys deserved any recognition they get. So we wanted to honor them. But I'll turn some time over to Casey and Matt then to kind of clean that up. Is it on?

Good? All right. Thanks, Mayor and Council. To start off, I think this call is just a great example of your public safety departments working hand-in-hand together with one common goal. It doesn't matter if you wear a blue uniform or red uniform. I think over the course of my career and these guys' career in Riverdale, we have always worked as a team. On this particular incident we're talking about, Riverdale fire was dispatched. Our guys were dispatched. It was on the border of Riverdale and Washington Terrace. The actual fire itself was probably in the terrace, but we were literally houses away from Riverdale. Our guys went up there to check out and assess and help where they could. And the initial call came in as it was just a grass fire. As our officers, police officers arrived on scene, they were the first law enforcement officers there. Our fire department was also probably the first, if not maybe second, just shortly behind Washington Terrace. I got there shortly after, and as I got there, I was like, wow, this is dangerous. This is scary. Our fire department was working at. Mega speed. I mean, running around, pulling hoses, directing people, trying to hook up the fire hose to the fire hydrant. Meanwhile, it's like a race against this wall of fire that's coming up to these houses. And this wall of fire, you've seen some of the photos. I mean, it's an impressive wall of fire. And it's like they're racing to save these houses. And I think with their quick action and then getting there as quick as they did from an adjacent city to protect our residents and to help protect the residents of Washington Terrace. I think we would have lost a couple houses. For sure the one, maybe a couple more, maybe some lives on top of that potentially. If we don't stop there, does it jump the street to where there's more hillside with vegetation and houses even closer? Meanwhile, the police officers there, as the fire department is working to fight the fire, we're helping evacuate cars from driveways so they can get... The firetrucks closed, pulled the hoses. They were evacuating the entire street and nearby residents. And like I said, during the course of all this action, they had got the whole street evacuated. Everyone was supposed to be out. And another guy came out of the house and was saying, hey, wait, I've lost, he called him the old man. I don't know where the old man went. Well, as the fire department continued fighting that fire, I mean, this house is now almost getting ready to be engulfed. The trailer's on fire. There's a boat in front of it. I worry if the gas catches, is it going to explode? And these fire guys are right there trying to fight it. Our police officers are trying to get in the house to figure out where he's at. They end up having to kick the door. They forced entry. We had a couple guys try to go around the back of the house to get inside. And as I watched their body camera, there's just a wall of smoke. It's like, oh, my gosh, and flames. And so they ultimately make entry inside with the help of a Royce City officer. And I think by now there's a couple deputies there. They extricate the guy out. He's severely burned. So with the fire department fighting the fire, there's traffic everywhere. It didn't make sense to wait for an ambulance. So the officers made the decision, let's load him in this police truck, in the back of a truck, and let's get him to the hospital. The individual, alive, well. Terrible tragedy what happened. Not well, but you would think he's able to communicate, a lot of pain. A lot of pain. Not wanting to necessarily even go to the hospital. But we were like, hey, you got to go. Tough, tough, tough man is what he was. He was a tough, tough old bird. And we ultimately get him there. And because of the burns that he had, you know, there was nothing they could do to help him. But what we did do, what these officers did... And with the help of the fire, putting that fire out, is they bought that gentleman time. Time to say goodbye to his family, time to have some closure, time that he may not have had had they not risked their lives and went in there and got him out and got him to the hospital. And so I always try to tell the police and the fire when we talk to them about situations like this. We deal with some very awful situations. You say, well, what is the good from this? Certainly there was a tragedy, a major tragedy where we lost an individual resident of our community. But the good, if we find any good in it, is we bought him some time to where he could have some closure with his family. We got everyone else out so we didn't have more tragedies. The fire department put the fire out and stopped it from catching the houses and burning up memories and jumping the street to other neighborhoods. And so it's just a real good team effort. And our guys don't want credit. I know the fire department don't want credit. But every one of these guys was running around. Matter of fact, I went to the hospital with this guy. And so when I was at the hospital, I said, I'm taking all this water because it's hot and they're fighting fire. And I could see these guys when I was there how hard they were working. And every one of them, police, fire, I mean, running, sprinting, place to place, exhausted. And so when you have guys and gals that are willing to do that, you know, It says a lot about the character, and it says a lot about the city, because I know every one of us want to be in this city. And I know there's some talks with Riverdale Fire being Weber Fire District, but they're always going to be a part of our family at Riverdale City, these guys. They're always going to be a part of our team, and I just want to thank them and tell them all good job. Entire fire department, all the police officers was there. I'm proud of them. It was a good day to have Riverdale City on our shoulders. So that's all I got.

I had Chief Warren go first because he pretty much sums it up. I'm just going to read a little excerpt that we received from Washington Terrace because they pretty well sum it up, too, in regard to the fire department. This is coming from the mayor, their city administrator, and their fire chief. At approximately 11.45 a.m., Washington Terrace was faced with the largest fire in our city's history. The incident ultimately burned approximately 78 acres, required evacuation of nearly 250 residents, resulting in the tragic loss of Mr. Burrell and an injured Weber County sheriff. It was an event that quickly exceeded the capabilities of any one department and required immediate coordinated regional response. When assistance was requested, the Riverdale Fire Department and Police Department responded immediately by deploying multiple rush trucks, structure engines. and officers to the incident. Those resources proved critical as firefighters worked to slow the fire's advance, protect threatened homes, and support suppression efforts across the rapidly expanding fire scene. The versatility of your equipment and the professionalism of your personnel strengthened the overall response and allowed incident commanders to place the right resources where they were needed most. Throughout the operation, your firefighters worked seamlessly alongside departments from across Weber County, state and federal partners. Their dedication, teamwork, and willingness to accept difficult assignments reflected the highest traditions of the fire service and demonstrated the strength of mutual aid relationships that protect all of our communities. Incidents of this magnitude remind us that public safety depends upon departments that are willing to answer the call without hesitation. Riverdale's immediate commitment to personnel, brush trucks, fire engines exemplifies your professionalism, preparedness, and service that have been the hallmark of your department. Your response played an important role in protecting lives, limiting property loss, and helping bring this incident under control. I as well, just like Chief Warden, are very proud of our guys, and the collaboration we have with our police department is just second to none. This is one incident that we run EMS out of our department as well, but when the fire's there, we're trying to... keep that team back. And they realized the need that all our EMS resources were taken care of, and they went right to patient care and made the good call in getting that unfortunate victim out of that situation. And this is just one example of kind of what's went on. As Mr. Brooks has alluded, it has been a busy summer. Just a couple weeks later, we had the same team effort with our police department over at America First. As we went to work doing our thing, they went to work doing their thing, and it's just worked seamlessly. It's just even the minor details. We're up there at America First. We're cleaning up hot spots. We've been there all day. It's hot. We get back to the station late at night, and Our police guys have had a block party that day that we were not able to attend, but they cooked us a whole bunch of hamburgers and brought them over, and they were just sitting on our table there. And that type of team effort and just watching out for each other is just valuable, and it does make me proud to be a Riverdale firefighter and have the collaboration we have.

We have some little certificates. I know it's not a great thing, but we put this together just as a show of our appreciation. And I want to mention, I know, you know, Casey was first, he was actively involved in this thing, but to both Casey and Matt both, I mean, these departments are good because of the leadership that they have. I don't know how many times I've been over to fire, police, whatever, they're right in the middle of a training, and they're not afraid to get their hands dirty, and it shows when these kind of things happen, they're right in the middle of this mix. So we included a certificate for them as well, so... Thanks to all of you. We appreciate it. And it's very impressive. So, Mayor, if you want to hand those out, we'll get a little picture, and we'll get that posted. So thank you, all of you.

Should I do them one at a time? Yeah, let's do that.

I will make mention, this is like pulling teeth to get these guys to come here. They don't like doing this. And Garrett's one of them. They threaten me, yeah. So I don't know what the Chiefs threatened them with, but it's a miracle we even got them here. They don't like the recognition, but we appreciate it. We really do.

I just want to personally express my appreciation to you guys. I know way more about our police and fire than the average resident, obviously. And I just can't tell you how much I appreciate your professionalism. Beyond that letter, I got the same letter as the chief did. But just in interacting with the other mayor and the city administrator, they were so grateful for you guys and your professionalism and your training and how quickly you got there. And we had a fire behind my house years ago. And it is chaos. as anybody trying to figure out what to do and the police and fire are just doing their thing.

You know, they're just focused on what they're doing.

And it's amazing to watch him work. And I think our residents can feel so comfortable with the guys that we have. That's what I like is we have the best of the best. If these guys can't handle it, then nobody can handle it. And so that's just such a testament to the guys that we have and their training. I would not want any other fire department coming into my house or my backyard than these guys. They're the ones I want there. So anyway, thanks for all you guys do. And I'll get these other certificates out to you.

Okay.

All right, Dean, you're up. Okay, Marcus.

As I understand it, Marcus actually saved a couple of trucks. Isn't that right, Matt? Not only ours, but somebody else's? by some of his actions, so he must have saved a lot of money right there.

I should say, I should have told this story real quick, so sorry to interject, but we had the, it's the county fire warden, and he showed up and he comes on all the wildland incidents. He's our state and federal resource so that we can coordinate the BLM and the Forest Service if we need them and all those resources. He showed up in his brush truck, he's assessing the situation, and He hikes up to a hill where he can kind of get a good view, and these guys pull up. They're trying to fight the fire and realize his truck is getting burned over. So they weren't even able to jump in the driver's seat. They had to climb through the passenger seat, got into his truck, move his truck out of the way. In the meantime, now our brush truck is being compromised. So they're able to get that, and they're driving both of them out. realistically, they ended up having to drive through a fence to get away from the fire. It was so hot at the time they're trying to get it out, but got both of them out. So they, I mean, they saved the property, but that's both incidents. They had to go through the passenger seat because it's just, the flames were too hot. So it is one of those very, like you say, mayor, the very tense situation and everybody's on point and active and they had a good heads up to definitely save his, that would have been a lot of paperwork for them to fill out. So.

Okay. Cordell.

All right, thank you. Well, if you want to feel small, just put these butter guys.

They're all giants.

That's part of the reason I like them so much. I wouldn't want anyone else coming to my house than the giant to haul my family out of there. All right, Mark. Okay, Eddie. There we go. Thank you.

Thank you everybody. That's awesome.

All right. Yeah, perfect.

All right.

Well, that was good. We do have some of the best in our public safety. So we'll move on to agenda item F, consent items. Number one, consideration to approve the meeting minutes from the August 18, 2026 council meeting. Is there any changes or corrections to those minutes? Seeing none, we need a motion to approve.

So moved.

We have a motion to approve. Do we have a second?

Second.

Motion to second. Any discussion on that motion? All in favor say yes.

Yes.

Okay. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. We'll move on to action items. Number one, consideration of Resolution 2026-34, awarding a bid to Sports Field Dr. LLC for softball infield repair, reconditioning at Golden Spike Park and Riverdale Park in an amount not to exceed $22,885.50. Rich is next.

I will take that, Mayor. You'll notice a number of our department heads had conflicts tonight, and Rich was on the verge of a divorce if he did not go with his family tonight. He's dropping a child off at the MTC tomorrow, and his wife threatened him, so I told him I would cover for him. It's pretty straightforward. We budgeted for this. I believe we got $50,000 in the budget, and we came in well under that. There was only one company that submitted. We've used them in the past. And Rich has been very pleased with their work. So I think it's pretty straightforward what we have in the packet. We just ask that you approve that. They're going to do three diamonds. And like I said, it came in almost half of what we were projecting.

So it was a good bid overall.

But like I said, we only had one. But sometimes that happens. That's what happened this time.

Any questions for Mr. Brooks? Okay. A motion would be in order.

I would move to approve Resolution 202634, awarding a bid to Sports Field Doctor, LLC, for softball infield repair and reconditioning at the Golden Spike Park and Riverdale Park in an amount not to exceed $22,885.50. Okay, we have a motion.

Do we have a second? I'll second. Motion to second. Any discussion on that motion? Ms. Maragoni, will you please poll the council?

Councilor Hanson? Yes. Councilor Richter? Yes. Councilor Anderson?

Yes.

Councilor Stephens?

Yes.

Councilor Arnold? Yes.

All right. That passes unanimously. Very good. We'll move on to item number two, Riverdale Fire Department, Weber Fire District Annexation Update. Discussion? Mr. Brooks?

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to keep you guys updated as we progress through this. There has been a little bit of movement since we spoke at the last meeting. I told you that we were just beginning those phases on some of those documents. We've got the two big ones. They're still in draft form. I didn't want to bring them in because we're not quite there yet, but they're really close. And so as we move forward, I just want to keep you in the loop, keeping you apprised of what's going on. The one big movement that I wanted you to be aware of In one of our previous meetings, you had asked about having a public hearing, and so I went ahead and scheduled that, and I apologize that I didn't get permission from you before, but I needed to get it into the newsletter, and the only chance I was going to get, I had to get it in there for that so that we get good notice out to everybody in the city. That will be at our next meeting, so plan on that. Hopefully all of you will be here, and I'm hoping we'll get some participation from that, and anybody who might have some concerns or questions, I don't know that we could necessarily address them, but We'll have that ready to go. But just so you know, that will be at our next meeting, our public hearing, on the whole annexation process. And in addition to that, we didn't list on the upcoming events later on on your agenda, but on the 28th, I believe, isn't it, Matt? we will have our open house for the fire department on that night. And we will have, whether it's booths or tables, the same thing that we had on our little open house, we'll have that set up there that night too. So if there's residents that have concerns or questions that night, hopefully we can address those things. So I think after this month is done, our residents will have had the chance to voice any concerns or opinions they have. And I think we're covered at that point. Do you have any questions on any of that? It's just keeping you updated and informed of what's going on.

Council Stevens. Chief Hennessey, if you would. Hey, there's two fire districts. The one that we're going with.

Weaver Fire District and there's Northview.

Right. Weaver Fire District has been around for a long time because it's always been for unincorporated. And I don't know how long. Probably...

1981 is when they finally went to Weber Fire District. Before that, they were part of Weber County, an arm of that.

Okay. Thank you. I was looking for dates. When was the fire district in the north part of the county, when was that created?

Do you know off the top of your head? I don't know that one off the top of my head.

Because that's primarily for municipalities, whereas Weber Fire District was rural, unincorporated, and it's recently added municipalities. Right. And so, anyway.

North Ogden, Pleasant View, and Harrisville are the ones that encompass the northern fire district.

Okay. And then moving west, far west, and Plain City is in Weaver Fire District.

Okay. Along with Ogden Valley. So really pretty much the whole outskirt.

Okay. Even though they're incorporated as, you know, okay. I had some questions brought to me, you know, as to more rural versus urban areas. And where this is maybe not a departure, but it added to their paper fire districts. Density areas, even though in the western part of the county it's certainly developed into some of its urban. Yes. Okay. I just had – if you knew when they were –

I'm not familiar with the North view when they did, but I can look it up or ask somebody, but definitely the, the Weaver fire district was 1981 when they kind of, you know, transitioned over to the fire district, they separated away from Weaver County. And that is a common misconception that they're part of the County and they're not, they're a Weaver special service district. So, and they do, um, a lot of just due to their demographics is rural. Um, With the annexation with Riverdale, this would be their hot spot for commercial. I mean, it is in the whole county, so that would naturally. And if they annex Roy City, they've got a higher dense population. That's their highest density in population. So they're adding a little bit more to it. Now, when it comes to response from the guys' level, and how we do what we call stacks and dispatch, we'll get Weber fire, whether coming from Uinta or even Marriott Slaterville, if we have structure fires inside Riverdale City. And, you know, that's just through the mutual aid. So capabilities, we're all, you know, trained to interface on either one of them. I actually really enjoyed the fact that Riverdale City didn't have hay barns up until a couple years ago. So, because those are just a nightmare to fight and try and suppress. I mean, if you remember, that thing skunked around for weeks on end, and those guys are really good at them because they happen quite often in their area. So it just kind of helps mesh things. And overall, you know, with this annexation and them and us, it does kind of... Mix things up to where, you know, we can help them out with the commercial stuff and they can help us out with a little more of the rural environments that we don't see a lot of. Okay.

Then this is kind of a – maybe a rhetorical question. If you want to broach the topic, that's fine. But, you know, Washington Terrace has been – I think they professionally run volunteer fire department, I think is how they categorize it. With this recent incident, is there a direction that not the You have the pulse on it. Like I said, this is kind of rhetorical, that they might see the wisdom of joining the fire district. And I'll just leave it. You don't need to answer that.

No. And I mean, what they do is what they do. What I can speak on is that within the last couple years, they have went from more of a volunteer into now they're doing a 24-hour stationed assignment. So I believe they've got three on duty up there for 24 hours. Where before they were more of a volunteer and they would respond from their houses. You had to kind of live within the area. So they have bolstered theirs within the last couple of years. But moving forward, yeah, I can't speak on that.

Thank you. I could add a little bit on that, a little bit of background, mainly more for our new council members. But we've been looking at this for a long time. Originally, we started out talking to Ogden City about maybe contracting out with them. And then we went to discussions with Washington Terrace and South Ogden and us and Roy about looking at our own district on the – southern end, but we just never really could get it off the ground to where it made sense for anybody, really. And then when the district and us met on this most recent one, especially when the district acquired U.N.A., I think they had a big interest in filling that gap in between there. And so the timing was just almost perfect for everybody. And so now adding Riverdale and Roy, that's just a continuous fire district that surrounds the whole county for the most part. The only one that's isolated anymore would be the valley. And it's just worked out smoothlessly. But we've looked at a lot of options. This is not the first time. So it's been a long process. And Chief Hennessey's been involved in most all of that.

Councilor Anderson, just of note, in response to your question, Northview Fire District or whatever it was, was 2005.

2005. I knew it was kind of recently, but I didn't want to put a number on it. And they're a two-station department with a third one being, I believe, I believe they're groundbreaking anytime and it should be open this next year. So they'll be opening up a third station.

I wouldn't be surprised to see South Ogden and Washington Terrace follow suit once the momentum is there and the economies of scale. I think that we'll probably see others following our path in doing that as well.

Yeah, it's very expensive for cities anymore on all of these. It's just nobody's fault. It's expensive to run any police and fire. They're all expensive, and everybody's facing the same issues. You're seeing that statewide. It's not just us. It's everywhere.

Okay, any other questions? All right, good discussion. No action on this one.

Anything else you want to bring up, Mr. Brooks?

No, not on that.

We will move on to item number three, discussion and update on the community center air conditioner unit replacement.

Thank you. Again, this is one we briefly talked to you about last meeting, and I sent an email out to you because I was a little bit concerned about this. We have those air conditioning units out on Rich's building, and we knew we were down to one. They're all fairly old, and that was a concern. But we had a gentleman come out who was looking at replacing those. And when he inspected those, it was worse than we thought. And he was afraid we might lose them that week. And between him and Mr. Douglas, they think we'll just be completely out of AC out there. And so that's why I sent the email out. Sean's working on it now we've been able to juggle some it's kind of a shell game we're pulling money from different areas and stuff but we just thought we need to replace it because if we end up with no air conditioner we're in big trouble out there because even the one that's running is just doing you know four times the duty that it should be and it's barely meeting the needs out there so I just felt it was important but I did notify you guys of that before we did that but we've moved forward on that and we're getting those replaced as we speak so Again, do you have any questions on that? I just felt that I didn't really have much choice. We had to move. We didn't have much time on it.

That sounds familiar. This is up first.

You're up first.

This sounds familiar. Is this the same type of units that we did with the senior center?

Similar, the big heavy ones that sit up on the roof. Yeah, same idea.

It was on the front part of the building. Yep, yep, yep.

Okay. And you've got to remember these all get installed at the same time, so the odds of them going out – around the same time are pretty high, too. And so where we've lost three of them already, we knew we were in trouble on this one. So we moved on.

And there's four over there? Yes. Yeah.

Okay.

Councilor Anderson? So these units that we're replacing are strictly air conditioning?

AC, yes, that's correct.

So... Do we have any idea of what the heating units, how long are they, what their life looks like? Sometimes doing everything at once is proactive. Do we bid these out?

Yes, when we have time. If we consider it an emergency, we don't. And this one is one of those I don't think we did. Sean's been heavily involved in this, so he could answer those questions a little bit more. And if Sean's very, I don't know, conservative on that kind of stuff, if he felt we needed to do both of them at the same time, we would be doing them. But between Sean's opinion and Cody's, I felt, you know, let's just pull the trigger on it. And so I'll follow up on that. I don't have a direct answer for you, Ken, if that's tied in, but I think they're separate.

Just know that sometimes pooling them together and doing them together can broker a better deal.

I don't think they're related, but I don't want to swear to that. I need to double-check with Sean on that.

Thank you. What's the timeline?

Sean was hoping we'd have that done this month, by the end of this month.

September? Yes. Okay.

I mean, I recognize we're getting close to the end of the year, but even getting through September, those days are still awfully hot, and there's a lot of people using that gym out there. And you remember when we had this senior center, there were people that weren't real happy with us when those went down because it does get very, very hot in those big buildings like that. So just updating you on it. That's moving forward.

When did the prior tree go down? How long have they been down?

I think two of those went out this summer completely. I think one was down even before that, if I recall correctly.

All right. Any other questions on that, on the air conditioning? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on to item number four, discussion and update regarding the flock cameras within Riverdale City. Chief Warren.

I'll give you just – I asked him to do this. I know he reported briefly to you last time, but we didn't get into a lot of detail. And it concerns me a little bit when I see states and cities and counties making, you know, sometimes rash decisions based on feedback they're getting from the Internet without getting the full story. And so I felt it was important that we took a little bit of time and had Chief Warren just walk you through this step by step and any concerns that we had. And I believe he's got a little PowerPoint for us. These things have proven to be very valuable to us and to law enforcement. Counselor Richter actually had done some homework on this. There's a state law in place right now. This is not new. It was passed in 25. And to Casey's credit, we have a policy in place. It's an internal policy, but it binds his department on what they can and can't do. And he can address that if you have more questions on it. But I think as far as us being in compliance not only with state law but just in good principles, Riverdale is probably well ahead of everybody. We've been dealing with this for a while, and so we're protected. He's got a lot of safeguards in place. Those kinds of abuses that you're hearing nationwide, they're not going to happen here. I mean, we're set up quite well. So anyway, I'll turn the rest of that time over to Casey and we can open it up for questions if you have more in regards to that. I wanted you to be informed rather than be proactive rather than reactive like a lot of these other communities are being right now.

All right. Thanks again for having me. Just to kind of recap, Steve and I spoke, and I've been communicating with the mayor frequently in regards to the flock cameras. I just want to start off with saying I know you guys get a lot of questions about these, and there's a lot of stuff going around. Part of the purpose of this is to ensure that you guys have all the information we have of how we're operating so you can answer questions if you're addressed by the public and that you have confidence in what we're doing. You know, we all take an oath. We raise our right hand, we swear before God to uphold the Constitution, to protect our citizens of Riverdale. And I want to assure you guys, as the chief, I would never take on a product or service or something that I felt was going to infringe upon our citizens' rights. My oath is the opposite of that. It's not to take their rights away. It's to make sure that their rights are upheld and to provide public safety. And it's always a difficult balance, right? But we've got to balance the two. And so I do believe that these flock cameras are very valuable to public safety. And I do believe that if they're used appropriately and not misused, that they are within the confines of the Constitution. And the greater good is there's more benefit than risk to the public of them being misused. Whenever we get hot topics like this in the community, sometimes it's law enforcement, sometimes it's war, sometimes it's other commercial companies and cars and different things, it draws a lot of attention and scrutiny. And I think the average citizen needs to be educated. And that's kind of what this attempt is. And so if you guys have questions, you can reference this PowerPoint. You can call me directly. Hopefully, if anyone's watching at home, they can reference this. They can look at it later to hopefully answer some of the questions they might have. So you hit the next slide. The biggest three problems. What's that? No. So the biggest thing that we're seeing, I think, is government overreach. Outside company data, they're worried about the data being misused or it being compromised and then misused by law enforcement officers. So the government overreach, I think there's this fear out there that the police and the government is somehow tracking every citizen in our community. In reality, the only time we would look at that camera, it's a very reactive a reactive tool that we use to develop a lead. If we have a crime or we have something, it doesn't give us everything about the person. It just gives us a possible lead to follow up on. We can't rely solely on that one lead to say, hey, you're guilty. And so we'll talk more about that here in a minute. The security breaches, I kind of touched on this last time with the actual Flock Company itself. We rely heavily upon all kinds of outside tech companies to store our data, to disseminate our data, so we can use it in the field. As you know, we have the MDT, which is a mobile computer that has Spillman. It's owned by Motorola. It's a private company. And they have access to all of our police reports. Well, they don't have access, but it's the company that stores them. driver's licenses, everything that you can possibly think of as far as personal information. We have to trust that company that they have safeguards in place, that they will not be misused, and then obviously audit those through the bigger scheme of law enforcement in general. And I think those same type of safeguards are occurring with FLOC. Misuse by law enforcement. Unfortunately, it's the world I live in. It's terrible that a few bad apples give us all a bad name. Every now and again, you'll have an officer that will misuse flock. You may have an officer who uses inappropriate force. it doesn't mean that we take every cop's gun away because one bad apple. And so I think that we have policies in place at Riverdale City. We have state law that governs those policies, that puts these safeguards in place to make sure that we hold our officers accountable, that this information is not being misused. It's the same type of principles and policies that govern our MDT as far as driver's license, registration, insurance. police records, everything. You can hit the next one for me, please. And so the government overreach, so a lot of times they wonder, like, okay, how is this being accessed? At the Riverdale Police Department, and let me take a pause for just a second. Well, we'll just go right here. The Riverdale Police Department, there's one of two ways where we would access these cameras. The first would be if we have a crime and we don't have a plate number. Let's say we have a a shooting that just occurred at Cherry Creek Apartments. I'm just going to use a random location. And they travel on Freeway Park Drive, we believe southbound. and we have, let's say it's a Black Honda Civic, we don't have a plate. Well, we have a timeframe and we have a direction of travel. We could search and flock today's date within the last hour, Black Honda Accord at that particular location, and maybe we only get one hit, maybe we get five. Let's just say for this example, we get one. That's not probable cause for us to go arrest him. It's not probable cause for us to do much of anything. It's one piece of the puzzle that helps build probable cause to maybe get a warrant to figure out more stuff or one piece of the puzzle to maybe reach a detention level to maybe stop that car to see if it was the car that was involved in this shooting. That's the situation where we don't have a plate number. It's just kind of a random search by description. And we get those quite often when people don't get plate numbers. We will try to search in proximity to where the crime occurred and during that same time frame to develop leads. That's all they are. Sometimes we have one hit that's perfect. Maybe we get lucky and it has like a weird bumper sticker on the back and they didn't know the plate number. We're like, oh, there's the bumper sticker they described that gives us more evidence to say this is probably the car. We may have to weed through five of them and decipher, okay, which ones could be a lead or not. But it's just a lead. Search by plate. That's one a little more common. If we have a known suspect, known stolen vehicle, we can put that plate number in. And it will search wherever that plate number has crossed a flock camera within the timeframe we distinguish. We would only distinguish really what's relevant to our case. We'll talk about it a little bit more. They only have 30-day retention anyway, so we can't go back for the last year. People are thinking we can track people's movements for years. It's not the case. Right now it's 30 days, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. But that becomes important, and we use that. I have a list of cases that we've used flock cameras on dating back to 2022 when we didn't even have cameras when we were using other agencies' cameras on examples of where we used these cameras to solve crime. As an example, the homicide we had two years ago, a year and a half ago, where the children were taken after the homicide down to Spanish Fork. We were getting hits on the vehicle in Spanish Fork, so we were able to send a team down there to get them. I don't know if this was recent. We had a homicide suspect out of Las Vegas that came. got in a car chase with Ogden City, not us, came through our city. We ended up going out to Roy City, helped them catch them. Again, Las Vegas PD called up, called Ogden City and said, hey, this suspect in this known vehicle just passed through a flock camera. Had they not shared that information, we would not have been able to apprehend that suspect. And maybe that suspect goes out and murders another person. And so here recently, another one under this scenario. Actually, this is another scenario where we had a lady that was taken at knife point on Riverdale Road. The guy jumped in the car. He says, drive. I believe he was going to kidnap her. Who knows what else? She fought, was able to get out of the car. He continued in the car. This is before we even had the cameras. We put her plate number in, tracked it down to 26th Street, roughly, where it passed through a flock camera moments after the car was stolen. We were able to saturate the area, find the car. Now, we didn't find the suspect. but we were able to search other cameras, locate where he went, and lead to him. So again, these are very small pieces of the puzzle in the grand scheme of an investigation to help locate or identify potential suspects. So what it kind of looks like, we have to have an event. We can't just go in there and randomly search. We're not just going to go in there on a witch hunt. We have to have a crime that has occurred, specifically that we're investigating. And so if it's under the first criteria that we said I was talking about, it may be a time frame, a vehicle description to develop a lead. We may have a known suspect that we're trying to locate. And then that would be more where we have a case number already with the plate number that we could just put in there to find where they may be now. So it all starts with a specific crime. It's like we just get in there and say, okay, let's see who's in our neighborhood today. It's all based on a report. of a crime. Uh, they, when they go in, they have to put that in there, they had to put the case number, they have to document the reason for the search in a flock camera system and then it'll give a result. Um, it will return possible matches from there. They have to document and verify that before they go make contact or do anything with that information that is valid. Good.

So is this Riverdale's procedure or is this the general procedure with flock cameras?

This is Riverdale's procedure, and generally speaking, pretty much every law enforcement agency's procedure that I'm aware of in Utah, this is kind of the general guideline of what it's used for. But specifically, yes, I can speak to Riverdale, and I can speak to most of the surrounding agencies around us. This is kind of the protocol of how it would go. But for us, yes, this is kind of our policy and procedure. So there's the human verification part. And then, again, it's just one piece of the puzzle. There's a lot of follow-up that needs to be done. I think I've seen videos where it's portrayed that the cop is showing up strictly because of the plate number. You know, they have to have other information. It's just a lead. It'd be the same as if someone said the black conduct cord went around the corner and it turned its life up parking that driveway. And so we go there. We knock on the door. We can't just arrest them. We have to still build the case. Go ahead and hit the next. So a hit is not an automatic guilty verdict. It doesn't mean we're going to arrest them. So there's a process that we go. It's just a tool that we have. And this tool is very similar to what we've been doing my entire career. As I explained last time, we frequently would use business cameras to get vehicle descriptions, sometimes plate numbers. And then we'd go down the street to the next business and maybe a home camera. And so... It's not that law enforcement wants to infringe upon people's rights and look at cameras to spy on people. It's because I'm looking at a mother, a father, or someone who's a victim of a crime, and they want me to try to solve it and use all the tools that I have available to me within the public that are within the confines of the Constitution. And that's what we do. And so this is just one of those tools. How do we hold our people accountable? Well, like we said, written policy. I've got it attached. IT WOULD BE ATTACHED TO THE PACKET AFTER THIS. IT OUTLINES AND IT GOES STRICTLY BASICALLY OFF OF STATE LAW. WE HAVE SOME OTHER THINGS IN THERE, BUT IT'S TAILORED TOWARDS THE STATE LAW, WHICH IS basically says the reasons we can search we have to have a policy we have to audit we have to get rid of we can't retain the information for extended periods of time all those things are controlled in our policy and then the accountability part is huge we do audits all the time on our mdt like we have bci audits so we we look and see what the officers are doing we want to make sure they're not running their ex-girlfriend they're not doing things they're not supposed to do and the officers know that we do that and if they breach that policy and law then they will be held accountable and i've seen officers have not in our department but outside uh agencies they've things that I've seen and read. You know, they've had officers anywhere from reprimanded to terminated based upon violating these policies and state law. And the FLOT camera falls under those same guidelines. I don't think, I haven't seen a whole lot of things in the media, you can hit the next slide, of Utah has a state law. I mean, raise your hand if you've seen in the media the state law that governs law enforcement that says we have to do X, Y, and Z. I haven't seen it yet. The reason why I haven't seen it is, unfortunately, people, they like controversy. And again, I'm not here to engage in controversy. I'm here to assure you guys and the public that we're here not to violate people's rights, not to infringe upon their privacy, but to solve crime and keep the community safe while doing it in a lawful, constitutional way. So this kind of talks about the Data Outside company. They have a lot of safeguards. When I log in to Flock, they have the multi-factor authenticator. I know some of these IT people... probably know more than I do, but it takes a lot for me to log in, okay? And every officer has their own password, their own security system they have to go through so we can show who ran what when. So, like, when I run an audit log, I can go in there and see when they logged in. I can see what cars or what searches they ran, date, time, everything. It's just a complete audit log of who's done stuff under our system. Go ahead, the next. The third concern was the misuse by officers. We talked about that. Just bear that. I think I've covered that adequately. There's always a risk of having a bad apple. We don't hire bad apples in Riverdale. We don't do it. And if there's a bad apple that comes in, we're going to hold them accountable to ensure that we hold the line. And so we have good policies in place. We have good procedures. We have good hiring practices to ensure that we stay within the confines of the law and and honor people's rights, not try to violate them, not try to misuse our power. And like I said, we have good policies in place that help us keep order in that fashion. So the big thing is right now it's 30-day retention is what keeps it. It's nice to be able to go back. But some of the concern that's out there is the longer we retain the data, the more we can kind of infringe is what they're thinking and track people. Really, 30 days, I think they've set that as the standard is in case you have to discover the crime after the fact. I think they're talking about shortening that to seven days.

I was going to say, I thought that's what it already was.

Yeah, they just announced that. They're moving it to seven days.

For new clients, we're still on the default 30.

Yes, and so we've got to switch some of that stuff over.

That's the way I understand it.

It's up to the – yes. And so I've been working with Flock. They just made that change just barely to seven days. And so we can set it, but the default right now is 30.

But I think for new customers it's now seven.

Yeah, seven. But we've got to evaluate, do we want it 30 or seven? In my opinion – I get why they're saying this. I think they're trying to provide comfort to some of those that are concerned. If I'm a victim of a crime, I want 30 days. I know that if it's going to be misused in seven, it could be misused in 30. And I have faith that the law enforcement officers are not going to misuse it. If it goes beyond those time frames, let's say we had something where we knew there was a crime and we wanted to preserve this evidence and in order to preserve it longer than that timeframe, we would have to get a warrant or subpoena to preserve that. We haven't had to do that so far. I can think of rare instances if we had a major mass shooter that we knew was somewhere and we didn't have the vehicle, but we knew at some point that that could be a crucial piece of evidence, then maybe that would be a time where we would apply for a warrant and a judge would have to say, yeah, we can see the need of preserving this data for an extended period of time. But after that was... no longer necessary, then it would have to be, by law, deleted.

Hang on. So are you saying you would prefer to keep us at 30 days?

That's just me, but we can do whatever. I'm comfortable with either one. The 30 days, it just gives us a little bit longer window to go back. I look at it like, hey, we'd have had the suspect if we had two more days. That's a hard sell to a victim because, you know, the public doesn't trust us. I mean, so I think 30 days is a good window where it's not overly doing it, but we can move it around to whatever.

Seven days is usually pretty good. Do you know if they offer anything in between?

That I don't know. I've been working with them a little bit. They're pretty busy right now. Yeah. Getting someone on the phone has been a little challenging. I have been able to get hold of them, but I know they're fielding a lot of complaints right now. And so that's something that we'll continue to explore and mitigate. I dare say. that I heard there's – we already have a law. They're not talking about it, which is surprising when there's all this attention on Flock, but yet no one's addressing, hey, we already have a law. There's good legislation on this. I suspect there will be more bills and we'll probably have more of a hard day for all of Utah is what I'm guessing here soon. And so we'll probably just default to the law, which – I'm guessing they'll put a hard date on that in one of these new bills, I suspect. I don't know that for sure, but that's my guess. So I did talk about last time when we started having concerns and problems with the public being concerned about sharing this data with outside agencies. I turned our sharing off. I only share with the Ogden Real-Time Crime Center, Ogden City Police, because they have like a crime center where they have all their data that goes in. They're kind of like the tech people where you're like, think of like a crime lab where you're like, hey, this is what we got. They're like, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot on the computer and they just come up with stuff. And they govern all their cameras, and they've shared theirs with us. And so I feel like they kind of manage all of Weber County. So I share with them, and they share with us. Outside of that, I discontinue sharing with other agencies because of some of the concerns.

Does FLOC have third-party access or sharing?

No. To my knowledge, they can't third-party share it.

Or access. No.

They're not supposed to unless it's kind of an internal IT type thing. There's no third-party proprietary where they can go out and sell the information or do anything with it. It's supposed to be strictly our information.

Kind of like a cloud hosting. They host it and provide the service, but...

Yeah, they can't take it and sell it or do something or share it or do something else with it.

Or use it for their own purposes.

Yes. They say it's our data. Yeah. Our data. We own it. And they will never share it. They never have and they never will, which never.

The only way it can be shared.

They won't share it with anybody ever.

It would be the same as with our police reports. It's a third-party Motorola. They have a plethora of everything. And could they, it's the same type of agreement. We do have access right now to 70 other cities' cameras. And so I didn't turn off the access they gave us because I can give you a success story. I have a success story of when we have a suspect-known suspect, put the plate number in, all of a sudden, boom, they're over here. I think it helps us solve crime and keep people safe. I do feel the same with us sharing other entities in Utah. It provides the same safety to our residents and other residents. I just put a temporary moratorium on it because of some of the things that were happening. And I did this about six months ago because I could forecast some of these problems that are arising and some of the stuff I was seeing in the media. And so I do believe sharing within the state of Utah I feel like we can share our information with Spillman, with other law enforcement agencies, and I rely upon their policies and the state law that they're going to follow appropriately. I feel I can trust them the same with our FLOT cameras. Out-of-state is a little bit different. I don't really feel like we should share necessarily out-of-state unless there's a special request. Now, there's some of the things, just to kind of address a little bit, we've heard that Texas agencies have accessed cameras 400,000 times and Riverdale, or it hasn't been Riverdale, but the other agencies only accessed it 1,000. Well, look at it this way. So let's say there's, I think there's like 40,000 flock agencies that have cameras across the country. And the idea is that we share this information amongst law enforcement the same way we share warrant information. So if I type a warrant in, it'll search nationwide at NCIC, every other agency in the country, to see if there's a warrant when I have an individual. Because I might have an individual who's wanted for murder. If they don't share that information, I won't know. Flock is kind of the same thing. They can share that information. When you have 40,000 people, let's say there's a homicide suspect in, we'll say, California, and that agency, instead of hitting their own network, they hit all, that will search every camera for that plate number because maybe they're thinking he skipped town and they're trying to locate him to keep the public safe, right? So if we have 40,000 people, users of flock, police agencies across the country, and let's say each of those every day had one missing person, one search that should be a nationwide search, that's 40,000 hits on ours if ours is accessed to them. So it's going to appear that they accessed our cameras. 40,000 times, or we had 40,000 things from outside agencies. You follow me? And so it's not that they're actually going at our cameras. It's that they have a suspect they're looking for that could be anywhere in the nation, and they broaden their search nationwide. It's not that they're like, oh, let's see what Ogden, Utah is doing. like trying to find people there it's they're looking for plenty of plate in california they put it in thinking they came to utah or anywhere in the country so they hit all and so that's what generates those high numbers uh in my opinion hit the next for me okay uh this is kind of what i was talking about why control interagency access can matter um we have let's say we have uh a victim that's been kidnapped and they flee. And we searched the plate, and every agency, the 78 agencies that share with us at this point, and I've stopped asking for other access about that six-month period. I probably could get a lot more, but we've kind of put more time on spreading our fingerprint, if you will. But if they cut us off, and if I could have put that plate number and had it, and they were hitting in Cache County... that might be the difference between returning that child home safe and not. Because, because, or let's say someone in Cache County has a kidnapping and they're like, okay, we need this plate. There's an Amber going out. They search and we've turned them off. And that plate number came down Riverdale road and it would have alerted them. And then they could have called us and said, Hey, it just went through your camera a minute ago. Here it is. We saturate the area. We see the child. So, so, You can see the benefit to sharing with other police departments for public safety to get people home safe, to apprehend violent fugitives, to do this. But you can also see where if you hit the all button, how it's going to generate a whole lot of, it's going to appear like all these other people are looking at our cameras. They're really not. They're looking for their suspect and we don't know where they're at. A lot of times you just hit the all and hope to get lucky like we did. Spanish Fork. We're able to get our officers up there. Moments later, we get a call from, you know, hey, the truck's right here. We have people right there. So it really does work when you share. But in order to share, you can go ahead in the next, and to assure the public, we've got to have trust. In the policies and laws that are set in place, and I feel like we've got good policy and we've got good laws, you've got to have trust in your officers that they're not going to misuse it. And I can assure you there's a lot bigger things that if you have a bad officer that are a lot worse than looking at a camera on a license plate. We don't hire bad officers. We hire good ones, and so we've got to hold that line. And so I think it's important to share. Right now we're not, but I hope that we can get the public educated. I hope that we can get good policies. We already have them, but I feel like if we need to make them better or add some stuff to provide that comfort to the community, that they're not going to be misused, that that will hopefully – Help us share those cameras again and have us be able to be shared with to keep people safe. This is a screenshot on the bottom of ours. So that's from August 1st to August 31st. Those are Riverdale cases that we searched. It doesn't give any description as far as like private information. You see kidnapping right there. I don't want you to be alarmed. We didn't have 92 kidnappings. You've probably seen it on social media. We had a vehicle that was up at the trailer park, 5648 South, M50 West, that approached some young kids. And there was an allegation that they may have had some nefarious, like, hey, get in the car type situation. And so we had a lot of officers there. in our department trying to figure out this car. We had a very unique description of the vehicle. And it falls under that first search. We didn't have the plate number, but we did have a very good description of the vehicle, actually a picture of the vehicle. And we were able to search our cameras. And unfortunately, this just goes to tell you, we haven't been able to identify that car yet, even with our flight cameras at this point. There's a lot of larcenies on there, stolen property, hit and runs. This is all the different searches. Every one of those numbers has an officer's name to it, a case number, and a reason. Right? So if I want to look at any one of these, there's another screen I can go to, and it'll tell me who ran it, when they ran it, why they ran it, to account for those numbers.

Go ahead to the next.

So... We do quarterly reviews. We do kind of a random audit, look in there, see if there's any discrepancies, make sure there's case numbers, things of that nature. If we are going to share with outside agencies, we would have written agreements. A lot of times, it can be done through the software of Flock, where you have your policies and your MOUs, and they have theirs. And you say, basically, you click this button, you're agreeing to XYZ, kind of like we would do with anything else. We have a policy, obviously, that we've been trained on. Even most recently, we just did a review of the policy, test of the policy, to ensure that officers are regularly reading that and understand the consequences if they misuse it and they're familiar with when and how and when they should or should not use the system. And then we can look at it annually to see all of our stuff. And... Honestly, if we ever had any misuse, we wouldn't tolerate it. It's just like anything else. We've got to be able to trust the officers with the tools that they have that they're going to do their job and use them correctly. And if they don't, we have to hold them accountable. And at this point, I don't have any concerns with any of my officers misusing this information. zero. I know they're all adequately trained. They know the ramifications if they don't use it appropriately. I entrust them with far greater things than using these cameras, far greater responsibility, far greater consequences than misusing this. So I feel very strongly that you don't have to worry here about officers misusing it. And I can't predict the future, but if we ever did, just like any other scenario, my job is to ensure that we detect it, we correct it, and we hold them accountable. Maybe hit the next slide. So let's just kind of go summarize some of the stuff we talked about. Can you hit one more? I just copy and pasted synopses of several cases, not all of them, dating back to before we had cameras, even to current cameras, of kind of brief scenarios of how these were used to solve some of the different types of crime that you can reference, just kind of see the results that we're getting. Is there any questions so far? Go ahead.

One of the prior slides that you had, it had approximately 70 cameras.

Okay.

So is that in our broad community? Not Riverdale alone, but Weber County, Utah?

Yeah. I could get you the list of names. Most of them are Utah agencies. There might be a few out-of-staters. Those are the ones that they're sharing with me.

Okay.

I'm not sharing with them.

Riverdale. How many does Riverdale have?

So we currently have contracted nine. There's nine, but there's only eight up. One of them is on Freeway Park Drive that has not been installed yet because of all the construction.

Excuse me, Kent, there's one by the pawn shop on 1150.

So there would be nine. Right now we only have six operational. One has not been installed. They just finally got the permits because of all that construction. Another one was cut down, down on South Weber Drive.

Was it vandalism?

Vandalism. Yep. And then the other one is near 1500 West that they redid the – The traffic pole there, the traffic light, it was attached to a UDOT pole, and they replaced that pole and took the camera. So we only got six operational at this point, but we have contracted nine.

One other question, and sometimes I get questions from residents asking, for example, Target and some of the big box stores, Target has a blue light that's flashing, but that's their own security. Yes. And they're entitled to that. Yes. Those aren't flock cameras. No. That's for their own benefit.

Yes.

And has nothing to do with any of this. No.

It's just the blue light... Kind of a deterrent. It's perceived as police, but it's not ours. It's theirs.

Target, Sportsman's Warehouse.

Lowe's has a couple. Home Depot has a couple. You're starting to see a growing footprint. Now, we don't have access to their cameras. If we want – we have to have a case with them. We have to put in a request. And if it was something that we wanted unfeathered access to for a particular case that was sensitive, we would have to do a subpoena or a warrant.

So they're just using it as a private security system?

Yeah, private security. Yeah, it really – I mean I was actually kind of stunned one day when a roster was like, hey, there's plot cameras everywhere. I had no idea they were going in to the businesses. But they're starting to be a lot of other places. I think they look at it like every one of our stores. It was kind of what I alluded to earlier. And it has been this way most of my career, if not all. The cameras have gotten better. But they're like Fort Knox. There's cameras everywhere. Like you go to Walmart, there's a camera in every aisle. Sportsman's Warehouse at one point was like theirs was second to none for a long time. I mean they could see you taking a little fishing fly and putting it in your pocket. I mean the thing you like can't even tie the dang thing. Well, I'm stealing it. And so like most of the businesses in our camera have always had a lot of cameras inside and out. That trailer is I think – I heard it's more of a demo they're trying to get them to buy off on. They're starting to pop up a lot of places because it kind of gives that parking lot overview. And I think the biggest thing is I think that blue light really just deters a lot of people. And they perceive it as police, but it's not.

Mr. Stevens, did you have a question?

Well, yeah, a couple of comments and a question. Five, six months ago, I took a phone call. from a person who only identified himself as a quote-unquote concerned citizen. And he was very passionate, energetic, and talked to me about the flock cameras and how he was being denied because he couldn't do business here in Riverdale because of the cameras. And, you know, since then, there's lots of, you know, That does not preclude – and I tried to engage him in a conversation. I said, well, that's your choice. No one is making you not. Anyway, this was a very interesting phone call. Eventually, after he started repeating himself four, five, six times, I politely disconnected and terminated the call. But the point of it is I became – started looking around and seeing – The flock issue on media, mainstream media, observing it a lot more. And I don't think this is coincidence. I think this is coordinated. Even in my personal life, in our home, we don't have television. We don't have streaming. We don't have anything. Haven't had for 20 plus years. But I do have internet. And I was on television. YouTube, and they have little vignettes. I think they call it TikTok or whatever style, vignettes. And in just a couple of minutes, I saw two of them. Every time I see flock, I will kind of zero in on it. But they were individuals. One of them Go get a reciprocating saw, what type of blade to use, what to wear so that you look like the mask and everything so that you don't stand out and you look like any other person. How to cut it down and then how to destroy the camera itself. That was one video. The other video was a gentleman talking about how to get one of those laser pointer pens, where to get it from on Amazon, what brands work best to point it at the camera to disable it. And I just thought, boy, this is really coordinated. It's saturating the market right now. And so – or the media and social media and whatnot to the point where it's like this is coming across as extremely coordinated by whom – I can speculate. But anyway, that's not for this conversation. And so – but I've been watching this to the point where this is all fine and dandy. I have no problem with it, what you're saying. I mean what if you'd been talking over half an hour explaining something that is – To me, it's a non-issue. It's an issue because it's manufactured as an issue. Now, I recall that in 2021, on January 6th, when there was a – on the national capital – After the fact, they went in and did essentially geofencing, what we now call geofencing. They went to the phone companies and got cell phone records of any phones that dinged off and then they would triangulate to where even if you had the phone in your pocket, They would triangulate it to where you were at on the mall or on the lawn. And if you happened to cross some imaginary line, then you trespassed and were arrested. And I just thought, you know, whoever is coordinating this is doing it out of instilling a lot of fear. And in talking to other law enforcement, the resources law enforcement has at their fingertips is, to access such as, for example, cell phone data, pings off of cell phone towers, just driving around with your phone on will ping the, and they can go back after the fact and get the data. Now, that takes a warrant or a subpoena, whereas Flock is a little more easily accessed. But to me, the coordination of trying to derail Flock, And to even the point of advocating how to vandalize them – by the way, it's right by our house. There's one right down the street from you. And once you know what you're looking at, it's like you can see them everywhere. But this is coordinated and it's like – This is hitting home on some buddies that they want these off and out of the area. And I'm just going, this is – yes, there is an opportunity for quote-unquote Big Brother, but that's already there. That's already in place. Big Brother is already conceived with all the cameras, with the cell phone towers. I mean, you've got to be analog and you've got to be in a vehicle with no electronics. I mean, you've got to have everything built prior to 1978 to avoid any detection if you want to live off grid. But anyway, so this is – and I understand where you're coming from. This is a legitimate concern, but it's manufactured by – by somebody who's doing a coordinated effort to rid the flock for whatever reason.

Anyway, that's all.

Great comment, Councilor Stevens. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you're saying. And that's part of why we're here is to hopefully provide some insight and education to maybe some people that are seeing some of these things online or hearing from some different people to give them a little bit of a background of why and how we're using these and to hopefully provide comfort and trust in that they're not being used as they're portrayed. Because you're right. I mean, if you're worried about government tracking you, throw your cell phone in the lake. If you're a subject of a crime, there's so much more information on a cell phone that I trust the officers to use that information to obtain a warrant or subpoena the same way I trust them here. And so if... But with that information, there's just far more, far more stuff that's there. And so some of these people are worried about it. There's cameras everywhere already. It just provides us a lead. That's all this does. But I think there's a lot of misinformation, and it's generating a lot of – A lot of concern. And so I'm just trying to educate you guys, so I know you guys get questioned a lot, and also anyone who's watching that may be concerned. What other questions you guys have?

Any other questions? Councilor Richter, do you have something?

Yeah, just a few. So the quarterly audit that you do, is that just you do that internally?

Yeah, we just do it internally. So we can run, as you've seen there, it gives us a date range. We can just pull up the date range. We can then pull up the search. We can see what was searched. We can pull up the case number, look at the case number, and say, okay, this is a legit crime. The case number is a report that says a vehicle was stolen, a retail theft, possible kidnapping, to kind of

Do you share that with city administrator or attorney or is that just? No, it's internal. Yeah, it's all internal. On your network that we have here for flock cameras, do you have, how granular is your control? So when you share cameras, is it our network or one camera by camera?

I think it goes so if we were to share our network, it would be our network. I'm sure there's a way if I want to say to another agency, you can have access to this camera. We could probably splinter them. But I think generally speaking, if you're going to share, you just share all of them. Right now, if we get a request, we have a form that we have the outside agency fill out that says, you know, we suspect they may have come down Riverdale Road. Okay, give us your case number, the reason. So we have documentation. We write a report documenting that. If our officers are actively helping with an investigation with another agency and we can confirm that there's a lawful purpose and all that, then they'll just enter our case number for the agency assist and run the search. But if it's like we get something, which really we haven't had this happen, I think the benefit, one of the biggest benefits of FLOC that we're not sharing is sharing. And so a lot of times they have to actually know that they came to Riverdale and they're trying to maybe piece together something as part of the crime. Maybe they ditched a weapon in the river or something. That would be when they would call us. Outside of that, it would be more of a generalized search to locate a known suspect is why they would probably search our cameras.

So you have an internal policy that you've got listed, and does it make – perhaps this is for Mr. Brooks as well. Does it make sense to put that in the city ordinance at all under police, or do we keep that internal to publish? I guess is where I'm going with this, Mr. Brooks.

So it's published on our website.

As your internal policy.

As our internal policy. We have – I don't know how many – our police policies – Like there's a city policy.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's so many. We have a policy for everything. There's the city policy. Which we adhere to. But the police, and I dare say fire, has a whole other set of policies as well that are far more restrictive and definitive than a city policy. And so it's published within our department. The officers have to acknowledge it. We post it online along with a lot of other policies for the public to view. The ordinance, I think the code is what you're asking is more of a like a...

I'm asking for a complaint.

I'll give you my response because I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I would lean towards doing that. I mean, it's ultimately your guys' decision because it's going to be your codebook that we'd have to adopt it in. But I think the benefit to it is... And Annie can confirm this. Every time we sit down, we write a new order, and she always looks for other cities who have already done it. So I think it would be a good idea for us to do it just because, like I said earlier, I think we're kind of ahead of the game on this. So it might not be a bad idea to do that. But it's your call. It would be easy for me to get that adopted in there and put it in. I wouldn't have any issues with that. But I think it's a pretty good idea, to be honest with you. Just because of the climate right now, these – you know, when – When Casey first came to myself and the mayor and talked to us, we both looked at each other like deer in the headlights. The mayor and I going, well, you're going to do what? You know, because this was kind of a new concept. But after it was explained to us and now having known what Casey's explaining to you guys tonight, I'm not even concerned about these things at all. I think they're one of the best tools we've got.

Absolutely good tools. I don't think there's any dispute there. I think it's, I think it's more of the challenge has been with the company. Sure. Then it has been with municipalities.

The one thing I'd say, like, was we're talking adopting it into our city code. It's already a state law. I mean, the state law is gold. Like when you have a state law that governs it, I mean, I think that's pretty solid to make sure we follow that. I mean, we always got to make sure we follow the state law and we don't, The one thing I do like, maybe going above and beyond, but the one thing that is a little bit tricky when I start mixing policy into our city code, when the city code changes, or excuse me, state law changes, and we don't catch the city code, now we're... We're crossing wires. And so the way our policy works with Lexapol, Lexapol is a nationwide policy company that governs your policy. And what it does is it makes sure that, especially with police, we really got to make sure we're in line with state law. I mean, city code is one thing, but state law is number one. And case law on top of that, the Supreme Court, all that stuff. And so what this Blexit poll does is when there's updates, whether it's legislatively through the state or whether it's through the courts, it automatically updates it and ensures that it's not in conflict. So if we start having our policy and then we start having the state law and then we have a separate code over here. I'm telling you, being over code enforcement, sometimes we constantly have to update it. The system we got works really well because it stays right in line with case law and state law.

And obviously we can... Yeah, I mean, that's something we can stay up on. I would say, Mayor, you might have to refresh my memory. I've been in a meeting just recently, and I was thinking it was LPC just last week, and they said there's 15 bills already that are written or about to be written that will be in this legislative session. So there's going to be changes. Now, how many of those would pass, I don't know, but it's... They do this. They find these things they want to beat to death, and we'll see this for the next two or three years until it fizzles out. But we'll see changes this year. So that would be an issue. We may have to tweak it if we did. We may have to anyway. But just so you're aware of that, we'll see changes this year, most likely.

And I did. I actually, while he was talking, because Councilor Richter emailed us this weekend and was like, hey, I can't find the policy. And I just looked on the website and went to the police and policies, and it's there. Just like he said. So that's good. Thank you for having that there. And that might be as good a solution as anything. Just direct residents and say, here's the policy.

It's there and it explains everything.

And I get automatic updates on, like, well, state law is an easy one, especially with FLOC. But... and you can probably attest to this, we get our legal updates and there are so many laws that are hard to stay up with and laws really intertwine majorly with police policies. And, like, if you're not on top of it, it's really hard. And so that's what I really like about our Lexapol is it's an outside company, and we're doing updates once a month on our policy. So anything that comes in through the courts, anything that comes in from state law, Flock will be an easement because it's a hot topic. But there's a lot of things that aren't hot topics that we get those updates on. We're like, I'll be dinged. And then you look at the code, like, eh, they just stopped that in May, you know, and we didn't hear about it.

Well, and I think an important thing on the Lexapol thing is, is that it requires all of the officers generally to read and acknowledge it and show that they read the updated policy, and it tracks that. So it's not like it gets updated in the policy book and the officers never see it. They have to.

Good point. Every time there's an update, they have to acknowledge that they've read it. We also have daily training bulletins that create training scenarios, synopses they read that are based upon the policies. So they're getting at least one training bulletin a day. And it varies from use of force to flock to training. I mean, anything you can think of. It's a really cool program. I'm glad we have it. Sometimes it's a lot of work, but it's a lot more work managing it yourself. That's for sure. And then because it'd be almost impossible with all the updates we get.

And I wouldn't be surprised if in those legislative changes, because there's so much coming on it, BCI has gotten so strict over the last several years to the point that generally officers, if it's a legitimate violation of BCI, they are terminated. Because BCI will pull your license for your agency.

Then you're ineffective.

And so you have to hold them really strict. And I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't start to tie straight into like a BCI level issue.

thing at some point at least to appease and protect the public that way well and i think where there's a state law on it right now um if an officer was found in violation of misusing flock or license plate readers it would have to be sent down to post then post would review that police officer certification to determine if it's going to be suspended or revoked That's on top of whatever we do internally. So we might come to the conclusion of, you know what, this is unacceptable. You're terminated, violating this policy. We would then in turn turn that to post. Posted, we review our internal investigation, the law, the officer's actions, determine if they're going to have a suspension of their certification, revocation of their certification. And so this is, again, relevant to the big topic I talked about earlier. This is newer, but... BCI has been around for a while where people are misrunning licenses, different things. There's not it. They get caught. They get terminated. They get reprimanded. And even those go down to post because it's a class B misdemeanor to misuse that.

So, Chief, I just want to tell you thanks for this. That PowerPoint or slideshow was amazing. Like I can't imagine how much time that took to create. So thanks for it being so thorough. My opinion on flock has cooled significantly. I have gone back and forth over the last couple of weeks whether we just – if I could convince the council to pull them. You know what I mean? It has been – it changes by the hour I feel like, which I hate being like that. I do not like being undecided on an issue. But it just depends on the room I'm in almost because everybody has such good arguments for and against it. I worry so much about the data, but I've spent a lot of time on the website. So it probably sounded like I was in favor of it, but I've just spent a lot of time on their website this weekend. The seven days thing I think is – it's interesting. we have cameras at the pharmacy and uh but they aren't they aren't cool like flock you have to have like a time and you have to know you can't just watch them for hours for someone to do something wrong you have to know exactly what happened and these are cool because they they they they you're looking for a specific search thing so they are more powerful but they i just worry i worry about it being misused i feel like in the wrong hands that data um And government can't control itself, I feel like. And I worry about, like, if we were to have lockdowns like we did during the pandemic, are we going to be watching for people that have left their houses and stuff? Like, that kind of stuff weighs on me just a little bit. Like, are they going to be misused down the road?

It's the AI component behind it. Yeah, yeah. It's so powerful.

It's so powerful. And right now, they don't look for faces. They don't look for anything other than license plates and car type. Sure.

So it's pretty specific.

And your PowerPoint is so convincing, and I'm like, okay, yeah, this is okay. I walked in tonight thinking, I don't know where we're going to go with this. I mean, if the council says they're uneasy, I'm like, all right, let's get them out of here. This is a tough issue. This is a tough issue in my mind because it is powerful. And, like, I know Mr. Brooks is here. It's so interesting for you guys that work here because in the city, oh, they're awesome. They are awesome. But does Mr. Brooks want a flawed camera on his street? I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. So it's interesting. I know West Haven's had three cut down. and they're just sitting in the public works building right now because they just don't want to put them back up um plain city said i think two cut down and so and there's supposed to be a big thing on halloween which i hope just doesn't materialize but me too i just i mean i would almost feel more comfortable if it was so significant if they misuse it then you're gone you are you know and and whatever these guys want i want the council to know that I don't know what the answer is. I think it's a hard thing, and I will discuss it any time they want. We can put it back on the agenda. And, I mean, just your thing was so thorough today, just so well done, and I just appreciate it. And I think it helps us explain it to the residents. Having this available, having that policy on the website, it's good. It's good. It's still just a little bit scary, but it's good.

Well, I just want to add, if it's okay, you know, I work for our residents. I'm a citizen first of America, and I'm also a police officer. But, you know, I love this community. I would never want to do anything that would cause the community to lose trust in me or my officers. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to keep our residents safe, whether that be give my own life, doesn't matter what it is. And so the last thing I ever want is for our residents to not trust my police force over a camera. There's too much on the line for that. And so this effort is to educate and hopefully gain trust in this tool that it won't be misused and that it's there to keep residents safe and solve crime. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I'm here to serve our community, and I can't serve my community effectively if they don't trust some of the tools that we're using. And so that's my number one priority, is ensuring that we have trust from the public. That's part of the reason for this. If I don't have trust from them, then I can't be effective. And the last thing I would ever do or any of my officers would want to misuse anything to violate anybody's rights. Our goal is simple, public safety. And if we have a tool that can help us keep the public safer and the public is comfortable with it, the courts are comfortable with it, I'm comfortable with it. But if that changes – then I'm right on board as well. I mean, I'm here to serve. And part of that is having the trust of the people I'm serving. So that's all I have.

Real quick. The brouhaha, for lack of a better term, is the fear of it being misused? Is that... Is that kind of surmise?

I think so. I think the biggest fear is those three things. Misuse by law enforcement, government overreach that the big brother, big, big brother is going to somehow retain it and track people. And, you know, and then data breaches by the company itself. I think those are your three concerns. big concerns, and I tried to kind of address each one of those individually to give an explanation of, you know, why I feel like we're safe.

Can I just throw a scenario at you? Yeah. For whatever reason, I help out. My wife and I choose to help out our kids, and we let them use a paid-off car, an older car, and one of my kids recently in another city was I got something that came to me in the mail, and so I opened it because it was addressed to me because my name is on the title of the vehicle that my son was driving in another state, another city, and it was he had apparently driven through a traffic light as it was changing from yellow to red, and therefore he had run a traffic light, and it had... Beautiful pictures of our car, my car, or the car he was driving, him in the driver's seat. And there was not a license plate on the front. There was a license plate on the back. It had a picture from the back with the license plate invisible. I mean, I'm sorry, visible on the pictures that they had printed on this form and sent to me saying, you ran a red light. Here's your fine. You can go to court. Where was that at? Spokane, Washington. Oh, wow. We don't do this here. No, no. Or in Weber County, for that matter, even though I see cameras up on the traffic lights.

We got a new traffic camera for crashes over in 300 West. You see that one? Uh-uh. There's a private company that's crash cameras. And it's caught a few good collisions.

But the point I'm making is there's so much other stuff. Stuff out there that it's like – I mean I was stunned at the clarity of the pictures as he's driving, I don't know, 45 miles an hour through this. through this intersection. And, you know, so for them to singularly focus on something, I'm going, okay, this, and I go back to what I've already said, but the point of it is, is there's so much other stuff out there that is a resource that can be used and potentially abused, and the fact that they're zeroing in on this particular one tells me that it's hitting home in some regard, and somebody's scared of it. Okay, I'm done.

Anybody else have any questions? Thank you. Great, great information. Yeah, I just, yeah. We just need to keep an eye on it, and I appreciate the audits. I'm supposed to do some audits in my job. Don't let them slip through the cracks. Yes. Sometimes a month goes by. You know what I mean? They're important. Let's make sure we're really following that. Keep everybody honest. Making sure we're doing that, and I think that's a great thing. Oh, another thing, and you had it, but Flock is going to require you to put the case number in. Yeah, we do that already. I think right now it might be optional, but they're going to require it.

Yeah, they'll probably make it to where you can't even search without the case number.

That's what they said. They said by the end of the year they'll have that. It would be mandatory.

Right now it's policy and state law to do that. But, yeah, it will be a software requirement, which will be good.

And one last thing. I think there's tons of misinformation about what the cameras do. They don't catch speeders. They don't catch red light runners. I thought they decided those were almost unconstitutional. Or Utah, outlawed them, I thought, those cameras. I don't know. The traffic cam or whatever they call ticket cameras or whatever. Photocop.

I don't know of any that have ever been in Utah personally. Yeah, I thought they tried to bring them. I think it was a California thing, like you'd get a ticket being on the freeway or something. Yeah, oh, sure.

Way to make money. I think there's tons of misinformation. They don't get pictures of your face. They don't catch speeders. I think there's tons of misinformation out there. And I was relieved to know that the data is maybe only 30%. or maybe even as short as seven days, which I see both sides of that. Like I only want my data on there for seven days. Sure. But that is a pretty quick window for the crime to get reported and for you to search, you know, to get the case rolling.

And if it needed longer, like, and we catch it within before it's deleted. Yeah. Then they could do a preservation work or something.

You've got to catch it before that. Yeah. So we'll see what the state does. I'm sure they're going to be going, they're going to go crazy. Yeah.

I think we're going to see a lot of new things. There's going to be something. I don't know what it will be. There will be something. I just wish there was more out there to the public about policies that police have and the state law that already exists. Like nowhere online are you seeing that there's a law that governs this in this stuff. And so I'm like, that's kind of important if we're going to say this is being misused. But, hey, there's actually laws that govern it. So, but I do appreciate you guys' time and consideration. I just, I can't stress enough how important it is as your police chief to maintain the trust of you guys in our community. And that's what this is. It's just to explain why we're doing it, why we have it to hopefully provide some comfort. And if we can always readdress it, my phone is always on. Mayor's reached out to me quite a bit. We've been working on this and we'll continue to work through it to make sure we are in accordance with the law and and we're doing it right. So, thank you.

Can we put this on the website, the PowerPoint?

I know.

Maybe with the policy where it's a little more prominent, at least while it's such a hot topic and we can send people to it.

I think it's great information. It's so much work. Yeah, put the policy about it if you don't mind.

Yeah, the policy, and we can put it right there on the website and maybe even direct them to some of our other policies around there because we do have some other good policies, body camera policies, things that people are hot topics. I mean, body cameras for a while. hot topic.

Yeah.

Uh, we were on the forefront of that. We, we always had them. We were one of the first to have them and had good policies and using them. And so I feel like Riverdale is always on the cutting edge of doing things right. And we want to continue that.

So thanks. Thank you, chief.

That's all I had on that mayor.

Okay. Uh, we'll move to upcoming events. Um, thank you for always compiling those Ms. Maragoni. Um, and yeah, make sure you get that fire station open house on their nine 28. Um, And with that, we'll move on to our comments section. Comments from the city council for this meeting? None. Comments from the city staff?

We have nothing further.

I just have one thing, and it's just something that I hear about almost weekly. And just to prepare you guys for next budget season, the bridges back on the trail are in terrible condition, the wood bridges. And I get photos and send poor Sean Douglas or his guys back there And I always send the commentary to, Mr. Mayor, please fix this bridge. This board's broken. This board's missing. They're in bad shape, and they're going to cost tons of money to fix. I remember when the fire burned half of one of them. I couldn't believe the cost of it. And if we want to do anything that's more durable, like a Trex or a Type, I don't know. But just put that in the back of your mind. We've probably got a really big expense. Yeah.

I do have one item that I became aware of just today. Apparently UDOT is going to be – closing down 4400 while they're in putting in new bridge supports and They're going to be rerouting traffic This is September 12th. They'll be closing that down from 10 p.m Saturday night to 8 a.m. Sunday morning, so they're going to be diverting traffic my only concern is that some of that traffic as it comes off, because it'll come off 84 at Riverdale Road. And they can either go up Riverdale Road, out 1900 and back on 31st, or they can go down Riverdale Road, Wall Avenue, 31st. is that there are going to be some that are going to want to cut through and use GPS and use 700. Yeah. And if we could maybe consider putting in a road closed for local traffic only just for that night to avoid. We've had trucks try and go through there. They get stuck under that old Bamberger Bridge, and it just is a mess. Yeah. Just a thought.

Yeah, we can look at that.

I'll talk to Mr. Douglas on this. You have to be a little bit careful on some of those things, even signs you have to be careful with. So I'll double-check with you and talk to him about it. I know he's aware of that because he did speak with Matt for sure, and I think he spoke with you because we have to route those guys different ways, and we've got to give them notice. Was it one more time you said? I don't remember. I'll get with you tomorrow. Sean knows it.

I heard you talking about it. They put out an email on it in 4400.

Yeah, he did, I think, kick something out. But, yeah, I'll talk to him.

Okay. And I don't have anything else. So with that, we need a motion to adjourn. Motion. Oh, there we go. Alan's still there. And can we get a second? Second. Okay, motion to second. All in favor say yes. Yes. All right. We are adjourned.

I heard we're getting Goodwill Industries going into Japan.

Is that true? Really? Really.

I have not heard that. Was that a good source? Was that a good source?