City Council - Regular Meeting

also received some followup from um the parent of that individual. On the right, you'll see competitive grant awards that we've received. Um these these just validate the fact that we are proactive and we are having measurable success um because there were many persons who sought out these grants that exceeded the actual amount of funds that were available. So, um, state asset forefeiter grant, we were awarded 33,000. Um, the alcohol drug free equipment fund, 20,000. Those funds are going to be used to to modernize what we have in place. Um, upgrade our camera systems in our vehicle, which in improves transparency, but also improves prosecution. Um, and then you can see that, you know, with the 33,000, um, we're establishing a bike patrol program that's also part of a community policing effort. Um, we purchased some advanced crime scene investigation equipment that's also works nicely with our um, traffic accident reconstruction. And then we are in the process of trying to identify some advanced technologies to assist us with report writing in an effort to reduce the amount of time our officers spend committed to report writing as opposed to serving the community. So this is just I believe some illustrations of what setting the pace looks like. So in this end or in this uh deep dive we're going to look at a couple different topics annual reports key performance indicators statistics future considerations and then and if at any time you all have questions please stop me and if I'm talking too long just hit say like next or something like that.

All right so the annual reports they're available on the city's official website. They can be located by using the um going to the police department website, going down to the bottom right side, and you'll find the the tab that'll take you to our annual reports. I'm going to cover some statistics here, but the annual reports go much deeper. Um and if you're having troubles falling asleep at night, this would be a good place to start. So, let's talk about our key performance indicators or our expectations vision statement. Um Syracuse Police Department form is professional, well training, community force that responds effectively to crime and public concern. When we look at the bottom there, some of our um some of the indicators that may point us in the direction that we're hitting those results. And one of those is the uh amount of training our officers receive. Um 100% of our employees exceeded our state mandated training mandated training, which is 40 hours. Um on average, our sworn officers received over 109 hours of training during 2025. At right there you'll see 77% of supervisors receive greater than 15 hours of supervisor specific training. Um this is training that is designed to help us manage risk, improve leadership, improve management. Um our target for supervisor training is to get 100% with regards to that 15 hours additional training. So we have room for improvement there. 81% of our urgent calls were responded to within target time frame. Um our goal there was 85%. Now, on average, we felt actually we succeeded because on average, our response time was 5 minutes and 58 seconds. And response time is from the time that dispatch radios the officer to respond to their arrival time. Um, so we do have some room for improvement there as well. But again, on average, we are 5 minutes and 58 seconds. And the priority one calls are these in progress calls where you see police officers oftentimes turn their lights on or could be a lost child. um crime in progress,

vehicle crash with accidents. Those are going to be our priority one calls. 100% of cases assigned to investigators are resolved within target time frame. Um now resolved just means that the case is no longer being investigated and it has a closure assigned to it. So that could be with an arrest or prosecution of some kind. That could be inactive, meaning there's just no further leads for them to follow up on. Or it could be an exceptional clearance. Say a victim contacts us says, "I no longer want to be a victim. might want to participate before proceeding. So that would that would close the case out there.

Alex, do you have any idea what the percentages of things that just there's no further leads? How often that happens? I just have no concept of what that is that 10% 100% 2%. Um I couldn't I don't know that I put a percentage on, but I'll tell you a large a large volume of calls that are at the patrol level. Um there just are no leads. It's something that occurred in the past. Maybe it was a delayed reporting event, you know. um vehicle ver for example, they don't have any cameras outside. Nobody saw this. They didn't discover it for a week or two when they're rifling through their car. So um I I would say, you know, it it happens quite frequently. Those usually stay at the patrol level because there's no no point forwarding those on.

That helps. Thank you.

Officers are courteous, service driven, and respected by the community. Um, you know, one of the one of the ways we we engage the community is understanding that um some persons will suffer from some type of mental challenges. Um, and because of that, we really emphasize our officers receive crisis intervention training. Um, 40hour training program. It's a huge commitment from the police department to have our officers gone for that long. As of now, we're at 70% of our swarm members have valid crisis intervention training certification. Come May of this year, we're going to be above 80%. So, we're going to continue to try and hit that hit that goal of 80%. But, um,

how long to get that? You have to redo it. Like, how often? So, 40hour certification, it's good for three years. During that three-year time frame, you have to have some continuing education, and it's not much. Um I want to say it's like eight hours of engineering education during the three year time period. So you do have to reertify and that extends it for another three years. Correct. Yes. That's good to keep up. Yeah.

Yeah. So um in 2025 logged over 220 selfinitiated community oriented policing details. Essentially, that's our officers driving around the city, seeing an opportunity to have a positive engagement with our citizens, stopping out and checking out on the radio with that. Now, that number's probably low because officers are sitting in a restaurant having lunch and, you know, a kid comes up and engages them and and they have that positive interaction. So, these are just calls in which we check out on the radio. The rate of sustained complaints for 10,000 that's 0003%. These this is when we're talking about external complaints being uh the police department being notified our investigation and then the finding findings of those sustaining some type of policy violation that our officer committed. So we have external sources of complaints and we have internal just in the normal processes of the supervision where we discover something that maybe we could have done better on. So that's separate from from this statistic here. Department staffing levels are guided by clear city policies aimed at effective policing. Um, you know, when we look at the staffing compared to target, what I consider to be our target level is what the city council has approved for staffing, which currently sits at 31 sworn officers. Um, today I have 26 sworn officers. um one conditional hiring process right now, two vacancies, and then my two frozen positions. Our officer turnover rate for 2025 was 25%. Um if I recall correctly in speaking with Shauna, the city turnover rate was 12 for 12% which was probably inflated by the 25% at the police department. So there's certainly some room for improvement there when you consider one in four officers left our department in 2025.

Are we doing exit interviews with those officers when they leave? Yes. So we have a good pulse as to why a lot of them are leaving. Yes. Okay. [clears throat] You want to know why? I want to. Yeah. [laughter]

So you're gonna have you're gonna have a mixed bag. Some some left for promotions, some retired. Um, and I'm trying to think uh in 2025 specifically. I don't know if my memory is getting into 2024 or not, but um I'm trying to think of others who have left for to go just work somewhere else. So, we had one that left law enforcement altogether. Oh, yeah. Uh, one, well, sorry, two left law enforcement altogether and one left to go work at a neighboring agency. The two that left altogether. Was that in the move termination?

No. No. There was no dis. It was their own volunteering one retirement, right? So, or is that not in that? One moved to Texas and was going to go do something entirely totally totally new career.

Yeah. and [clears throat and snorts] the other same thing lived in Boxelder County and decided that he didn't want to be in law enforcement anymore. And then we had the chief retire in 202. So that you know that's just a age out. That's not anything on us. The one that moved to another agency just wasn't comfortable being a more senior officer. Wanted to go somewhere where they were more junior. And then if we look at um days minimum staffing we're at risk that's at 60%. And the way the way I calculate this is I look at our schedule and I say okay anytime we are scheduled to our threshold minimum staffing level. um that would be at risk because a single person that calls in, we now drop below minimum staffing and and this is focused entirely on our uniform patrol division, right? Like those are the ones that we have to have them in uniform out on the street for the benefit of the city. And so 60% of our um schedule was at risk during the last year. So transition into looking at some call volume. um 2024 16,700 cases. 2025 15,300 cases represents an 8% decrease in total police activity. Um this includes dispatch calls for service and officer generated calls. So you know possible explanations for the decrease in spite of a population increase just less proactive enforcement um which could be compounded by the frozen position, the traffic officer position and their position. Um and then you know the chief police chief's dream is less demand from the community. You know it could be a combination of of all these things. So

that was a combination of dispatched and selfinitiated. Correct. Correct.

And transitioning into just some statistical data. Um this this information comes from uniform crime reporting. Um it's the national intentbased reporting system. It's a it's voluntary participation, but it's a database that's housed and run by the FBI. Syracuse Police Department does participate in uh NYERS as well as most other police agencies in the state of Utah and quite honestly across the nation. Um you can see that statistically when it comes to person crimes by offense, we don't have a lot of variables there. It's pretty consistent. As we look to property crimes by offense, um I'd like to point out the one data set point there is the false pretense swindle confidence. If we were to just generically define that, we would consider this a cyber crime. Um and you can see that there's a a mark spike there from 37 to 69 incidents. Um you know, this is this is something that I think we're going to continue to be faced with um as a as a community and and police department. It's become uh much more sophisticated. Um, and so people are are falling victim to this. I will say that with the assistance of Cara, um, she's done a phenomenal job of the public outreach and just reminding people of, you know, why why you don't give out personal information. I want to comment on that because I've done a few workshops that the states put on about, you know, the continue of online crime. And the really difficult part I think that we need to understand is while it still happens to people in the city, the people best staffed to take on such a crime are the federal agencies or a much larger agency. we're not really staffed to take on, you know, a scam swindle racket that is going on across cities, cross states, even across countries. So, uh, we do have, it hasn't

been mentioned yet, but and I don't want to steal your thunder, but we have a great, uh, working relationship with the IAK, which is crimes against children, but we don't really have anything for like somebody conned me into giving him a free gift card type thing. Those those kind of scams, it's you can't prosecute just a single one and the probably the perpetrators in another foreign soil. So that kind of thing is probably going to increase and we're going to have a hard time fighting it as a local agency, but we can certainly support the bigger agencies. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. There is the the federal government runs a clearing house in which they compile all of the information from persons who are willing to submit it and then they look for you know um assoc try to associate these crimes with a single organization or cell operating out of a foreign country and then they try and get cooperation from a foreign government to participate in the investigation slightly exceeds our capabilities. Um but we do we we do we do direct um victims to IC3 IC3.gov is the website and we ask them to file that information so that you know maybe they don't find relief from it but eventually there's some action taken to take down these you know these organizations that are are very complex and organized. So it is a challenge.

It is the organized crime of this generation. is yeah just a slide to look at sworn officers per 1000 population in comparison with um those cities that we've identified as comparison cities you can see where um we are at about 08 with respect to our population the statewide average for the state of Utah is about 1.6 six or 1.7 officers per 10,000 in the state. I don't have a lot of data on this other than I thought it was a an interesting graphic that represents um or is something to pay attention to and track the trend over time. While it's great that we have cooperative um relationships with outside agencies, ultimately I have a lot of pride in um our police department being able to handle the the issues that we're confronted with. So in 2024 um we were we received aid less than we provided aid. Um in 2025 we can see that that's somewhat inverse relationship there. So, I plan to just use this as a metric to track and see, you know, how we're doing. Are we are we able to um is it cook what we catch what we cook? Anyways, clean what we catch. [laughter] Um, as as as as I get better trends on this, um, I think it may be more revealing, but I certainly don't want to, um, tell our officers not to have a cooperative relationship with other outside agencies, but I I also want us to make sure that we're we're handling our own responsibilities. Yeah, every every year is different. Typically, you know, you'll see a 6040 relationship somewhere in there one way or the other. But once it gets beyond

that, that's when, you know, the flags start to raise that, you know, something's going on with one of the entities that's either not provide enough for staff [clears throat] or or or or whatever. Got to look into it and see what's going on. I I will interject here for council's benefit that we have kind of an ongoing thing that's been bubbling up amongst some of our neighboring cities and that is one of them does not have their own police department and is served by the county which is not all bad but [clears throat] um it means they're served at at a lower level because that they're serving other cities that are not even close to where we are. So, there's three cities in the county that are serviced by the county sheriff. That would be South Weieber, uh, West Point, and Fruit Heights don't have their own departments. And, um, we're seeing that there's a lot of the demand for mutual aid among neighboring cities is rising sharply, and that's a concern. We don't have the power to do anything about that as ourselves, but uh you just need to know that statistic is being talked about on a county level.

All right, just some points um for future consideration. Um just further discussion in the future. um population commercial growth. This is no surprise to anyone in this room, right? This is a challenge that we're all we're all faced with and um one that I'm confident with um time and and good leadership that we do come out come out ahead. So um it is a challenge, but it's one that we're all up for. New elementary school um there will be a new school opening um this next this coming fall. Um the challenge with the new elementary school is the demand it places on the police department to supply crossing guards. [snorts] My understanding as of now it's five new crossing guards will be needed. Um you know each crossing guard on average cost us about $9,000. So that's $45,000 in addition to last year's budget with the opening of a new elementary school. [snorts] State statute mandates that that is our responsibility. Um and certainly we want our kids to be safe in this city. So um it is a challenge and need to be mindful of it with this kind of budget. On that I would throw out two things that council should be aware of since we have some newer council. Number one, there uh I have reached out to legislators and asked if there would be some future consideration that uh the school district help bear that burden because as they grow, you know, they we have no way of planning what they do and who falls in our city. So bearing some of that burden of shared cost of crossing guards. And the other thing that I would throw out to all council members is we have to constantly be recruiting. And if you're a council member then you hear about a friend looking for an extra little something or you're hear of somebody who even just has time. Please talk up the fact that

it is terribly rewarding to be a crossing guard. And it actually is. I I have talked to several crossing guards who have great relationships with the kids at the elementary schools and they they just love these kids. The kids love them. It is a wonderfully rewarding thing, but we need them. We we cannot do that without people being willing to take those positions. We can't buy them. We couldn't pay people enough to get just enough people to come and do that job because it's not full-time. It is part-time. So, we have to constantly be recruiting and promoting to help our department out. So, please be aware of that.

Thanks for that, Mayor. And, you know, on that same line, we've been very accommodating with our crossing guards to to facilitate them being able to show up at those crossings and to serve our community. Um, you know, community orient policing, that's entirely, not entirely, but partially dependent on us maintaining a baseline level of staffing. Um, that just allows us to be visible, to be connected to the community, to have the um discretionary time to engage, retention versus recruitment. Um, this is this is just one of those key points that um is good for us to be mindful of when considering how we staff and and what we do to retain our our experienced officers. Um, at the end of the day, an experienced cop is who you want showing up to your house to resolve your problem. um the the cost associated with it. Um you know, it's it's it's it's cost associated directly with um hiring a [clears throat] new officer, but it's also those costs associated with the officer training them and spending those 16 weeks with them out in the field, no longer doing their primary job and responsibility. Um it's the equipment that we purchase for them. It's the uniform cost [snorts] associated with that and it's you know lost lost time when it comes to supervision and administrative task. So there is a significant cost associated with replacing an officer aside from the loss of experience and connection to the community. In addition to that, when you hire a new officer, there's significant um pipeline constraints. And I've got that graph there just to illustrate, you know, how how long it's going to take us to get somebody through the door and on

the road handling calls by themselves. And it really is 9 to 12 months before we have them out on their own. I stole this slide from retired Chief Atkin um because I think it is a it is a great slide to show what I have control of, what we can do better, and you know what the um others in this room may have control of. And these are not in any particular order. Um but green is something that is, you know, we we do a good job of. Orange is, you know, could we do better? are there opportunities that I'm missing or that leadership's missing to to do better? And then the blue is um you know what what control do we have over the compensation benefits and retirement system? There's been efforts made over the the past several years to to try and undo some of the harm that was caused back in '09. So those are considerations and challenges that we have with regards to retention and what control we have over them. And I just want to put a projection out here for our five-year. Um, this is assuming a 5% year-over-year increase. That's a high estimate, I think, um, yet to be determined. But consistently over the prior five years, we've had at least a 4% population increase. So if we look at just projected population and we look at maintaining that staffing level of 0 eight officers per 10,000 um these are the numbers that we're going to need to hit over the next five years. So it does present um you know some challenges with regards to hiring these officers but also staff also funding the the hiring of these positions. Um this represents sworn officers. It doesn't represent necessarily an increase in support staff that is going to be needed at the police department.

Here's our current organizational chart. I'm offering this just as an example because on the next slide I'm going to show you what buildout looks like in 2041. So this is our current structure. The way we're set up, we have two patrol sergeants, a detective sergeant, support services sergeant. So, the green boxes represent some some change or addition. Um, [clears throat] it's not necessarily a new person. It's just a change to either the staffing level or their part-time status or their title. So, um, as of now, we do not have a record supervisor. Um, but we do have two full-time record staff and one part-time staff. Uh, my proposal would be to have a record supervisor in place and then two full-time staff eliminating the part-time position. Um, we see the addition of two patrol sergeants there. Now, you know, that's that's a position that costs more than entry- level police officer, but what my proposal would include is the elimination of the master officer position, which um our master officers have their base wage plus additional compensation. Um so, when you remove those positions, you're not bearing the full cost of two brand new patrol sergeants. And then obviously, we're going to have a increase in our patrol staffing um and an increase to our detective staffing. Right now we have two detectives. I would propose that by 2031 we'll want to have a third detective in place. And then you'll see the crossing guard coordinator in there. Um this to me along with the record supervisor is a ongoing need not a future need. Um my current crossing guard coordinator or supervisor is uh serving as doing that as a collateral duty. Um, Master Officer Beam's currently assigned to the junior high. So, this responsibility pulls her out of the

junior high more than I would like. And also, um, it's it's not ideal to have somebody wearing so many hats. She's also the emergency manager coordinator. So I would propose that this is a need um now and with the addition of five new crossing guards that just increases her responsibilities and time commitment as well as the the record supervisor physician. Any questions on that slide? I know it's it's a lot of information, but all right. And we are last year I was really excited. We were number three S. I just checked and we have moved up to number two in the ranking.

So that's fantastic. My desire is to keep us well my desire is to be number one, but let's hold our position in the top five. Um, and let's do whatever we need to to control that, ensure that happens in our community. Um, happy to answer any questions you may have or if it wasn't addressed on this slide. But let's qualify this slide. We're we're not actually second to a city, we're second to a a district [laughter] that has twice the resources that we have as a combined uh patrol district. So, as a city, we're the number one city.

If [laughter] I could add it right here, mayor, I would cut and paste it up there. All right, then. I'm not going to force you to ask questions. No, I do have one. What What are your three If you were to give us your three top needs, priorities, or requests for this council, what would it be?

Retain the people that I have through um the existing recruitment retention policy that the city has in place. I would like that position for the crossing guard coordinator and I would like the record supervisor position. Any other questions? Last I heard looked like opscom was going to be a problem and we're going to need to find a new place to go. [clears throat] Um does it look like we're headed down to the bountiful for that then?

No. Late what what is that going to cost us? blatant and it is a considerable increase in course the state I'll just be really quick here because you need to understand this that the state requires that these districts be contiguous and because Kisville has now gone south we will and we won't be able to do that and it it was approximately a 3x increase over what we're paying today it's pretty terrible

it is terrible And what happens is growth continues to happen in Leighton and then they go we don't have the capacity for you. Then then what do we do as a city? Like we need to be thinking really long out because this is not just police. This is our fire department. And this is this is this is potentially a categorical big problem. If we had a, let's just say, an earthquake, a natural disaster or something that happened, the legislature would have to make a change because the way the current law reads, if uh an agency goes away, a service district goes away, it can't be replaced. So, we'd have to go to an existing. And so, um, James County is closing. So, we have to go somewhere. Leighton is really our only option to be contiguous with these other cities. It's the only option that we can currently legally do. Um there has been some effort amongst uh the mayors of the abandoned cities to consider formation of a district that would replace that district, but it doesn't look like it's a financial option. I mean it and that's completely aside from creation because we started with the assumption when we were talking amongst ourselves. We started with the assumption that there would be startup costs that wouldn't be continual costs but just the operations it will be more expensive for us to operate than to join Leighton. And so knowing that there's no point in trying to figure out where we get the money for startup because we're going to be endlessly more money with that option. So it hasn't gone anywhere.

Yeah. I think the natural solution would be like a district, right? a special service district if Leighton were to say, "Hey, we're we're not going to provide service outside of our city anymore." But yeah, that would require a change in the law and there would probably be support to do that if that were the case, I would imagine. But the natural course would be several cities get together and form a district and and create one. And you should know that Leighton's expanding their services because they've already taken on other, you know, uh, Clearfield shut down their dispatch and has already joined Leighton. So that that means that they're already doing this and they're already prepared and and the expansion is taking place whether we do anything or not.

And and they've intentionally built this new dispatch center to a size that can accommodate future growth. Yeah. Okay. Well, I wish there were other options. Nobody in this room's fault, right? No, it's one of those hot topics that I actually have talked with the neighboring mayors and we've said we wish there was another option, but um we we had a a quick meeting, three of the four of us, and

three of us agreed that because it's more cost that doesn't make any sense. One of them is holding out, trying to figure out if they could if they could create a service district, but knowing that it would cost all four cities more money than we would spend going to Leighton. The rest of us, you know, cost is an issue. It really is.

Well, I hope the individual that is responsible for closing Davis steps on Legos very [laughter] because it's not cool. [laughter] Well, it it's happened be I don't want to get into it too much, but it's happened because the south end of the county always had their own anyway. Five cities that always had their own dispatch

and a couple others wanted to join that and so the reduced service the deci the explanation publicly was that it didn't make sense for them to continue to to do it. Now I I'm not involved in that. None of us were, none of the adults. But that was the public explanation was it didn't make sense with people leaving to continue. So it forces the others of us in the north to merge as well. It's wild. It is what it is. It is. Yeah. No, I wish I had a solution.

Right. Any other questions for Alex? Well, thank you all very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Before you leave, I just want to say we do express our sincere appreciation. We have a great department. We have great officers. The more I learn about them, the more I just love the people who choose to serve here and the culture of the people who serve here. And leadership needs to be commended for retaining and maintaining and improving that culture. Syracuse is well known as one of the best places you could serve and thank you for doing that and uh keeping that up. We really appreciate it. I personally uh am fear for my life if I'm in a neighboring one particular neighboring city and I'm have to encounter the officers that seems like everyone who can't pass the human intelligence yet is there. So

psych evaluation we we have the best of the best here. I love our officers the more I get to know. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. So retention retention retention. Let's keep them. Let's keep them. [clears throat] Okay. With no further questions, that brings us to the end of our regular agenda. We do have a need for a close session tonight. Uh so I will take a motion for us to go into close session. I'll make a motion go into close session. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay, we will need just Noah, I think. And thanks, Chief. You're welcome. Thank you guys. Really appreciate you.

Have a nice evening. Have a good night. It's been great.