City Council Work Session Transcript – 4/18/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 4/18/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 4/18/2023 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:00:58 AM] The city council of Austin, Texas, for a work session. It is Tuesday. April 18th 2023, it is nine o'clock, actually 901 in the morning. Member of the way we'll move forward on this is, you'll recall that we were going to take a quick recess at the beginning of this work session to take care of some other council business over in the chambers and then come back to the work session, but so that we can make sure that all council members are present when we go do that other business. What we're gonna do instead is start off. With a discussion on item number. 10 which council member Fuentes has asked that we pull it so that we can have a discussion about that? We will then hopefully unlikely recess at that point, for about 20 to 30 minutes and we'll come back in. We'll reconvene, and that's when we will take up the two briefings and we will go into the executive session at the end of those briefings. So with [9:01:59 AM] that, unless there's any questions about that what we'll do is we'll go to countless items. See council items of interest and I'll call up item number 10, which is related to the authorization and negotiation and execution of a contract for license plate, reader camera systems and services, and I recognize council member Fuentes. Thank you. Thank you, mayor and colleagues. I pulled this item for work session in spirit of I'm sure we all I hope everyone has seen the mayor's message. Meeting processes and I think and the spirit of trying to address this issue before Thursday's council meeting, I want to talk about item 10, which is around the license plate reader technology. There is an item on this week's council council agenda to approve that contract with the vendor that provides the license plate reader technology. Also as part of that resolution that captain Burt Kelly brought forward the outlined a community engagement community stakeholder process, to four for us to have a conversation with our [9:03:02 AM] community around. The guidance and parameters of technology having it within our city. What that would mean we received a memo from the city manager. I'm an a C. M. Bruce mills yesterday afternoon that has that draft policy that would go along with that license plate reader technology. I have a few questions if their staff available to speak to it. My first question would be, you know, has the community seen this draft lpr policy and been able to weigh in on on the draft policy. Try it again. There you go. Okay the community was able to see a previous version of the draft. This draft includes the input that they gave us when they saw the previous version, so this last version that came out yesterday has not been seen by the community and you if I [9:04:03 AM] might interrupt, and I apologize , council member you identify yourself for the record. Yes, sir geoff Greenwalt, assistant chief for the Austin police department. I have with me, lieutenant. Ask you who is with our police technology unit. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt. Thank you. And I think you know, with census technology. Was one. Ah you know, we discussed for several weeks on council and knowing that we now have, you know, state troopers operating within our city. I do think colleagues. It is. Perhaps considering this. Policy in this contract at a later time, you know, we also had a conversation about utilizing our committees, in a more robust manner, so this might be a good item to have for our public safety committee, which I think is meeting next week. So I wanted to put that out there for us to consider. And what we can do and members. What we can do is we can post. This item. We have time is what I'm saying to post this item for the public safety committee, [9:05:04 AM] which is, in fact, as council members want to suggest meeting next week, council member Kelly thank you and thank you council member Fuentes for pulling this item so that we could, I understand that you believe that time, but I think it's important to hear from the city manager and also maybe from apt to find out if the delay will impact the contract itself or if there are any other things that we need to consider before delaying the item. Let me ask. Are there any contractual issues that we have a conservative? We just delayed a week. No contractual issues. I just think I don't think we would want to know is if we've given a memorandum try to anticipate the questions if there are additional pieces of information that are needed so that we can have a complete discretion next week. If you'll get those to our office and we get them to the chief to make sure that we address any issues that the council may still have his pending relative to this item so that we can get those addressed. Okay, so my next question then is once it comes to public safety committee. Then what would you anticipate? Vanessa or council members want [9:06:04 AM] to excuse me? Well I mean, I think the committee would be a good time to convene community feedback and the community have an opportunity to weigh in and let us know what they think of the policy. And then I don't know if the council of the committee needs to take action to recommend it to counsel or if it would just be placed on the next agenda. So just so that I understand you anticipate this going before the committee just to have an additional day for feedback from the community, and then it coming back to council following that. Yes okay. Yes thank you. Yes counselor. Qadri thank you, mayor. Yeah, I just wanna second with councilwoman Fuentes said, you know, when we brought up the resolution around Rainey street in public safety, we did have a public engagement , you know, forum and we had folks from the community folks who had lost loved ones come and I think that helped us draft the resolution that we did, and I think that can only be beneficial for, you know, you know the item that the council member pulled. Ah, so I'm very much in favor of that. Other [9:07:07 AM] comments. Yes customer agree with council member Fuentes and, I have. I want to say it was a backup posted very recently with the policy was posted. You know, I think of a couple of days ago. We have not had a chance to look at it just yet. And I would like some time. I think Thursday's a bit quick to review and, short continuance would be very appreciated it now we will be prepared. Will be prepared to have the discussion on the second and then action can be taken on the fourth. We tried. We tried yeah, hang on. I want to make sure I got the date, right? But when you say seconds you're talking about the work session. Well you have the work session next week, but then for action? No no, we have a public safety committee next week and then then it would be the next week is the fourth would have that's right. You have action on the floor. I misspoke. It's the got it so but I want to make sure we get it done next week, [9:08:07 AM] so and I agree with councilor Fuentes that we have been trying to figure out a way that we use the committee's more and this might be a very good way to do that. So what? What I'll do is make sure as chair of the committee, the public safety committee. I'll make sure that it's posted so that we can have the discussion and then it would be proposed to be an action item on may 4th so satisfied. Councilor Alison alter. Good morning. I appreciate moving that to public safety committee . I just want to point out that we have a really important conversation that we need to have about the police academy. And so I want to make sure that as we are thinking about the amount of time that we have for that meeting that we leave enough time for that conversation, also concerned it would be helpful if we can get some information about when we will be talking about the prior Kroll report, so it ended up [9:09:07 AM] being listed on the agenda that it was only the curriculum review, but there are a whole host of recommendations that came out about the most. The immediately prior grow. Report that when we when I requested that briefing or that discussion I had asked about, so I would like to know when that's going to happen if it's not under the current heading or if that's possible to adjust if we're adjusting. The heading. I know there was some discussion that that might be that there were some changes that the interim city manager was implementing, and that might be better in may, but I would like to have some clarity. We tried to report to your office about why staff had indicated that that might not be ready on Tuesday, and what I'll do is I'll get an answer on all that, and I'll post on the message board so that everybody will know. What the overall situation is on when that will be done, and we will certainly make sure that there's plenty of time for all of these issues. So don't so that doesn't worry anybody. It's council member. Kelly thank you. Since we have a [9:10:09 AM] pd here, wouldn't it be appropriate for them to give us a high level over you of the policy now? Or would you prefer that that way on what license plate readers item. 10 can do that, that's kind of flies in the face of what we were getting ready to do. Okay, come back, but, that's why we have work sessions this. Thank you item if we're pulling an item so that we can have additional discussion. I would prefer that we have the discussion and then we come back on that. Understood thank you. Thank you. Anything else on this? Topic. Butts. I'm waiting . I'm I'm waiting on one thing, and I don't want to delay us anymore than when we need to. How long is the briefing on left working at the briefing? Not not very long. I think we're ready to roll. And you wanna do? Yeah remembers. I'm gonna call up the [9:11:10 AM] briefing will go to briefings now, and the first briefing will have. It will be the briefing on lifeguard recruitment and hiring from the parks and recreation department. Gentlemen thank you all for being here. Kymberley Mcneely is here and, good morning. God morning, kymberley . Mcneely serving as the parks and recreation director. Yeah yeah, it's all yours. Okay so, the title stands for itself about like sitting hiring in the presentation. So council members I wanted you do. You can just understand a bit about what our guiding principles are as when we are making decisions about our swimming pool operations. We utilize the long range plan. We utilize the vision plan for aquatics that was adopted in February of 2018. We do consider annual feedback. We do take a [9:12:14 AM] look at our annual maintenance of assessments of our swimming pools and the needs of those pools, repairs and other such refurbishments that are required . We try to respond to and foreseeing challenges and then we also consider equity when we are making decisions about swimming pool operations. So I tell you this only because lifeguards is an important component, but it's not the only component that makes us ready for a swim season. So I'm going to focus on our vision plan and what the vision plan recommendations have told us about our operations. And the first thing that we talk about is the fact that we had a vision plan that told us that we had seven critical pools that were identified, and those critical pools required renovation or they could possibly fail within 5 to 7 years. And so we have worked to address all of those but one pool, and that pool is leaving only the garrison pool that we're in going to be addressing in the near future, so all of the critical pools have been addressed at this particular time or are in the [9:13:14 AM] process of being addressed. There are another nine pools that were identified that are going to likely need some major renovations. And so in the next 3 to 5 years, those were also be things that will be taking a look at and will need to be considering as our schools start to age, and you're going to see this right here. This is a little bit difficult for you to see. But if you can pull it up these are the average age of our swimming pools are these are not the average age is the age of our swimming pools. And so the average age of a commercial pool that has its lifespan is usually 25 to 30 years so you can see that many of our swimming pools are in their eighties 88 102 89 . I won't read them all to you because I know you can read them. And what that little yellow line shows you as those are the renovations that had been done and those renovations actually taken 88 year old pool that has been in a particular location. And now because of the renovations that makes it closer to a 47 year old pool, so that's [9:14:15 AM] a big Stacy by way, of example, or Bartholomew pull that was completely rebuilt. Instead of it being a 7 62 year old pool, it's now closer to approximately a 10 year old pool. So all of this is just to say that we have a inventory of that we have a set of assets that are aging and they are all many of them are past their life expectancy with that said, I do want to point out that deep eddy, this is a pub a picture that I put in here in deep eddy it it's a little bit. It's disingenuous in that it it's making it appear as though deep Betty ah, it's a swimming pool that is only approximately six years old, and that's that's no. That's really not true. We did some major renovations to make it a zero depth on three. But there are some, still some major work the wells need to be there being refurbished right now as we speak because dpt is closed. There's also some swimming pool shell. Renovations that need to happen. And so I just want to [9:15:17 AM] make sure that you know that of this the one that's perhaps a little disingenuous as deep eddy. But I couldn't find, in time for this. I couldn't find the right the right image to put up here. So the parks and recreation department has worked for a number of recent renovations and new constructions to be able to make sure that our swimming our inventory is ready. So we're in the process of building a new poll, a colony park brand new pool. We are doing major renovations to givens. Pool as we speak. We're in the permitting process for both colony and givens. Shea pool go valley pool, Montana polis pool in the valley pool are completely renovated. And they're, they're part of they were one of the seven critical polls. Montana, polis and northwest are going through some major renovations in the near future. And of course, we're in the process of rebuilding the barren springs bathhouse and the parquet Zaragoza bathhouse. So those are the projects that are upcoming so that we can keep our our system. Operating here's how we tried to maintain or how to, [9:16:18 AM] get on top of our maintenance issues. And so we did a strategic realignment of our of our aquatics division, using resources that were within our own system, so we didn't ask for we did get some new resources. But the strategic alignment is reclassifying position so that we can better respond to maintenance issues throughout the year and in the in the season when we're getting ready for the swimming pools to become up and running. We've increased the number of increased number of complete units, and so what that means is that we have complete sets of individuals, crews that go out and so rather than we made sure we filled vacancies to make sure that those individuals are going out and complete crews. We utilize contractors to assist. We've reviewed the facility downtime because we have a use technology . So instead of having to have a maintenance person respond to a particular chlorine or acid issue. We now have. We can do that electronically sitting in our in our seats in our cars in [9:17:19 AM] our desks to be able to increase that so that has decreased the amount of downtime. We've tried to extend our splash pad hours and I only put that on there because that splash pads in and of themselves have their own maintenance issues. And so, while we're extending that, to be able to provide more access to water, it does provide us a few more glitches, sometimes in our system, but that automation is helping us tremendously. And we've participated. We've had our step, participate in cross training. Opportunities so that they can respond to just about any, any any sort of maintenance issue. So here's the thing that I think most people are really interested in. And this is all about our lifeguards. And so in our in our in our operations. We need approximately 850 lifeguards each summer and you can see here from 2014 all the way to 2022 how we've had not, or perhaps did not meet the goal in each year except for you can see 17 4018 and 2019 were in the [9:18:23 AM] upper level. 2019 you might remember was a living wage increase. And that was very helpful in helping us, received those lifeguards or to get the right number of lifeguards and in 2020. Obviously that was the year of covid. So there weren't we didn't need the lifeguards at that particular point in time. So I let you know this because I wanted you to realize that in 2019. We were completely on track for lifeguarding and we are similar this year. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. We've put in some interventions this year to make sure that we are on track for 2023. But we're comparing it to 2019, which was on one of our most successful years. One of the challenges that we have is to be able to have lifeguards is that you can see where all the swimming pools actually are. And then you can see where the population actually lives. And so one of the things that is a challenge for us is when you're 16 or 17 or 15, and you need to get to a swimming pool and you [9:19:24 AM] live on the outskirts of the city or in the suburban areas of the cities in the in the polls are actually more towards the middle. You have to be able to get there. And so that's a little bit of a challenge. But I'll tell you a little bit about how we have, how we have tried to manage that. So the vision plan told us we know that you're going to have staffing issues, and here's the things that you need to do you need to train and mentor staff. You need to update your hiring practices you need to hire year round lifeguards. Please implement policies and procedures to enhance their recruiting efforts. Please make sure that you are procuring full time. I'm sorry frontline staff to do things that are non lifeguarding things. So you're not asking the lifeguards to do a additional jobs, so bring in your cashiers bringing your maintenance folks and please don't ask your lifeguards to do that. At least that was the recommendation. And then also to enhance the lifeguard experience by providing them some amenities that are desirable. So here's [9:20:25 AM] what the department has already done and will continue to do. We have worked with our human resources department in collaboration with the human resources department to automate some of our processes, including ri nine process in our commercial, our criminal background check, both of which are needed to become hired. We created something called tops, which you may have heard some negative feedback on but what the tops program is, I want to tell you that it's not negative. It's actually positive when you are a lifeguard. You have to do all those employment things that I nine. You have to do the criminal background check. But you also have to have your lifeguard training. You also have to pass your a E, D and first aid training. You also have to be able to do in service training. You also have to be able to do your sexual harassment training. You know, you guys can see where I'm going with that. So what types does is it's able to allow us to keep track of all the different things that you have to do before you can actually sit a stand. And so that system while it had a few glitches last year, we have since, to retooled it. [9:21:26 AM] We've tweaked it, and we've also shared it with our H R D department to make sure that we have on feedback from them to make it the best system that can be, and this year it's working. I'm gonna say seamlessly, right? But there's going to be a glitch at some point in time, but up to this point it has been working seamlessly. We hired those 13 full time lifeguards. They are already working and in our system, and that was things to councils allocation last year, we have a new pay rate of $20 per hour. The living wage that has been quite effective and then just recently you saw last week we announced the opportunity for lifeguards to earn up to $750 bonus. We've reduced the barriers to entry. There's you are. You can train to be a lifeguard for your charge. If by chance, you don't pass the training, then we're going to offer you a cashier job or some other job within the park system to be able to work this summer. Once you complete your training we're going to we're going to provide you a $400 stipend to pay for that training so that we're going to [9:22:28 AM] pay you for your time. Whether you've whether you passed successfully or not, but we're gonna hope that you're going to pay for you're gonna you're gonna work somewhere for us. We have free uniforms were issuing free uniforms. No longer do you have to pay for those? We're trying to create a culture of intention. Retention I'm sorry by creating opportunities for job growth, letting individuals know what could be. You can start here as a lifeguard, and then you can become by way, of example, the director of the parks and recreation department for the city of Boston, or other things, also through the offseason, we're trying to provide off cross training opportunities to keep lifeguards engaged. And then those amenities were trying to put amenities at our as we revamped, re renovate our spaces. We're trying to make sure that there's a requisitioning. There's fan. There's good air circulation. There's opportunities for our youth are sorry our our young folks to put their lunches so that they're in refrigerators instead of perhaps the facilities that we had in the [9:23:29 AM] past. Here's our marketing efforts, you may have seen on CBS there was, actually on the news. They were announcing the fact that you could come and be a lifeguard for the city of Austin. You can see little real estate signs. You can see banners. You can see it in the chronicle. You can see it in the Austin American statesman. You can see our advertisement on social media. We've been to the hiring fairs. We go directly to the schools. We have our swim 80 X program still, so we are. We've dedicated $100,000 to marketing and advertising. Specifically to make sure that we're recruiting our lifeguards. Also in our vision plan recommendations. This goes to telling us a little bit about what we need to do with our programming and a lot of what that's what our vision plan told us is that if you can engage youth at a young age and get them swimming lessons and help them feel as though they're [9:24:30 AM] comfortable and part of a community at your swimming pool, guess what they're going to want to come back and work there. So really, our vision plan about programming tells us that we need to do a better job of getting those young folks swimming lessons, engaging them , and so we've been working to increase our year round swimming lessons. We've been working in partnership with the school district to try and see if we can start something very similar to ah, what we call it a swim safe program it it's sort of, do you click decreased in in amount and the number of students that we had during the covid, but we're trying to revive that program. You could imagine that we have to have the lifeguards to be able to expand the programming. But it's on our mind. And we understand that this is a real opportunity for us to be able to engage our youth and get them interested in swimming. We also know that swim lessons are in super important in order for people to be able just to have that life skill so that we can prevent, any sorts of negative. Experiences when people go to the water before I [9:25:32 AM] end this, and you're asked questions. Please know that as of 4 14. So that would have been , Friday, right? We have 299 lifeguards ready to work right now, which means they all of their paperwork's done. Everything is in the boxes are all checked. And in 2019, when we had more lifeguards than we needed, we were at 302 at the same point in time, so it's a significantly there's no significant difference. We've had 700 applications to date for the month of bay. We have 167 lifeguards signed up for or individual signed up for lifeguarding classes, and we have 46 individuals who said, hey, I worked there last year. I love to return to take that one class. So we have 337 lifeguards certified and only 299 that are have all their paperwork done. So you can bet that we're working real hard to contact those individuals so that we can actually make the 299 number the 337 number. I'm ready to answer any questions. Thank you for [9:26:33 AM] that report. We have any questions? Yes, counselor, everybody. Thank you so much for the report. It's great to hear and it would just be spectacular if we were to able to open all or virtually all of the polls at the start of the season. I think that that that would be very well received by by our constituents. Just a question on the budget. Are you budgeted for the $750 bonus? Because I know you all have some some serious expenses related to the winter storm in terms of like Lynn management on the parks and all that. So are you fully budgeted to pay out the $750 signing bonus or so this year we are able to. We're able to use our vacancy savings. So the reason why it took us a little time. To announce that as we did our second quarter estimates, and we will have sufficient vacancy savings this year to be able to pay bonuses. I can't say that we would have that for future years, but we also might be so successful in all of the other things that we've implemented. Folks will just want to come back and work for us, and we [9:27:35 AM] might not need a bonus next year, so I'm being as optimistic as I possibly can. But I'm also a realist. Thank you to that, and I understand that there are some thoughts about going to an a quite correctly but step pay for lifeguards. Or like a returning where someone would you know their second year make more their third year MCM. Or could you discuss that or what do y'all thinking about? What we're trying to look at is that our current are are the current rent. We have the ability. The parks and recreation department has the ability to create, think that's a good word. A step pay that says that if you've been with us for a certain amount of time, or you have a certain skill, we can pay a certain amount of money and then be able to increase. The hourly rate based upon the skill set that you have. That's one of the incentives that we may be able to. We're looking at our budget very carefully. How can we work that into our budget to be able to make sure that that's the incentive to come back? Not necessarily getting a bonus, but [9:28:35 AM] because you know that you've had a certain amount of experience and a certain skill set, you'll be able to earn some more money. We think that that might be a motivator for individuals, great, and, and I know there's always a careful balance to strike between. You know the splash pads and in life guards and other expenses. I mean the huge benefit of the splash pads is that you don't have a lifeguard there. And so that's their their their cheaper. Of course, it's not the full swimming opportunity. You know where kids really get too, but just thinking about portions of my district in particular about the northern portions like north of Ramberg, there's not a lot of swimming opportunities. I know that there's a development of a park. In that area, but I just I think the splash pads are a big hit, especially in areas of north Austin that don't have a lot of access to polls and have a lot of apartment complexes with kids that need that, you know, summer recreational [9:29:35 AM] opportunities. There are a real big hit, and I would definitely encourage parks to continue to invest in the splash pads, although I know how difficult they can be, and I see the maintenance at Bartholomew were it gets clogged and I see folks out there kind of clearing it out and fixing it up, but they are really great opportunities for families and kids. And last . I would just note that I've noticed on my cat metro bus rides that there are still signs that stay lifeguards being hired at $15 an hour. Thank you for telling me. Yeah I didn't wanna. I didn't want to upset the bus driver, but I had half a mind to just pull that side down myself . So I made that mistake the other day. The we have to just double check and make sure it doesn't say why. Emc because the Y M C a is I'm not advertising for them, but anyway. And I almost pulled it down and I realized it was their sign. And then I thought, oh, god, you know, that would be that would have been awful, right? I'm taking down there, but we'll [9:30:35 AM] double check. Thank you for that information on tiktok. Thank you, director. Appreciate it, Brian alter. I just want to second notion or the comments about the splash pad as someone who was utilizing one just this weekend with my almost two year old son. They my kids love it, and it is such a great opportunity for kids who can't swim to be able to get that water exposure and experience, so they're definitely a big hit in our household and definitely encourage as much as we can. I know the headaches. We've we've also experienced them, but they definitely have their place in the system right. There's an appropriate balance of pools and splash pads. And I do I do agree with you kids. We one of the things that are long range plan says that we want to increase access to water. That's the way to do it. So we have that on our radar. Protein. Thank you, mayor. Also in a second. I like the concept of the step pay. I know in probably every other department that the city runs. You know, the longer you're here, you're able to kind of get [9:31:36 AM] into higher pay scales, which encourages people to come back. And it's this is all great news. So I'm really glad you did the presentation. I know. Oftentimes we're getting presentations because there's things we're trying to work together to solve. But it seems like some of these conversations and initiatives over the past couple of years of really been helping, and I want to flag for the city manager as well. We had a conversation, probably about a year ago around temporary employees and things like dental insurance and making sure you know, are full time employees qualify for the city benefits but some of our temporary and seasonal employees may not qualify for that. We didn't include it in the last budget cycle, and I'm not sure how much that impacts the folks that are lifeguards and work for part during the summer because I'm imagining there's a lot that are already on their family and insurance plans. But I am very curious just about making sure that we are enticing people to come work for the city and doing everything we can to make sure people can go see doctors and dentists as much as as they possibly need to, especially at a young age. You want to get [9:32:37 AM] people set up early. And I know that we have talked about the financial impact of the paid training. And so is that where the $400 completion bonus came from. It's kind of incentivizing people to get all the way through the program. Whether or not they passed the test. As you said, yes. So the one thing is the way that our system is currently set up, and we're working very closely with hrd. So this is not a criticism. It's a way to make, keep the promise that we made while we continue to work with the system is that it's hard to hire somebody to hire somebody to do a job that has a minimum qualification of being able to have the certification. But yet they don't have it. So this is the way that we have, that's this is the way that we can pay people for training is by providing them. The statement with that said, we got a great suggestion from the city manager's office about thinking and working, perhaps, with the police department to understand how they run a police academy. Not that this is anything like a police academy. But the concept of paying some statement for [9:33:38 AM] folks to go through. How do we how can we perhaps work with hrd to put in a system like that, but it's it was a way to get us to keep our promise for this year and then we can still work on a system that might be more sustainable future that's great. I'm glad to hear that conversation is happening. And then I would just add on saying I'm glad that the pipeline is getting built again that jobs pipeline because I know with covid. It was really hard to get people who had decided to take other careers during that time to get them back into lifeguarding. So I'm glad that that, return rate of people coming and working in the department is getting better. So we're happy to hear that. I hear that. Thank you, member Jim. Council member qadri. Yeah thank you, mayor. I'll make this really quick. We got a notification. At least I got a notification during this meeting. So I just want to give all the flowers to your comms team. Ah for their summer jobs. Just got hotter. Post about a, so props to you all. You know, I just wanna, you know, react what everyone has said about the step pay and the benefits that the mayor pro temp had mentioned. Ah [9:34:40 AM] I just had a question about the renovations. Ah, the slide that had, you know, age of the pool and then time of renovation. Is there a I guess. A benchmarking pool hits to need a written renovation. You know what is the average age of running? Yeah. I guess the need arise the most right. So the lifespan of a commercial pool is 25 to 30 years so usually at 30 years, right? That asset could not usually oftentimes at 30 years. That asset could be rebuilt. Our our team has a asset management process. It goes into an entire system where we are. Those pools that are past their time or need the renovation, along with other men maintenance assessments, they get prioritized in that asset management system so that we understand what do we need to keep them going? And then at what point in time did they rise to a complete rebuild? And when [9:35:40 AM] they rise to the complete rebuild, then we look at our bond program or other other opportunities for us to be able to, two. Hmm. Renovate completely renovate that particular assets. So probably a little bit longer conversation than we have right here is I could explain our asset management system. Thank you. Yes council member Alison alter . Thank you, director. Excuse me , director Mcneely. This is all great news. I'm really excited with the direction as my colleagues have mentioned, I wanted to dig a little bit on a couple of the items we had mentioned at one point that there was a need for transportation support. Can you speak to how? How you've addressed that. I apologize. Thank you. I said I was going to talk about it in the presentation, and I forgot. So we make sure that our lifeguards have an opportunity to have free bus passes. It's just like any other employee. That wasn't something that was advertised or made available, but we make sure that that is part of the process that should somebody one thought [9:36:42 AM] that they absolutely can have that. We also have kicked around the idea, although this has not come to fruition of being able to have some sort of shuttle that could pick our lifeguards up, but at this particular point in time, that's not something that we could work into our budget still runs summer camp. You know, and make sure that we're balancing all the needs of the department, but we definitely have the bus passes. Thank you. And then for some of the pools that used to have swim teams before the last few seasons. You know, it's a challenge. How are you working? With those teams to help. You know, get them back up. Running a council member. I'm gonna have to get you some more information on that. I just had a great conversation this weekend at a hiring fair that one of our staff was at, and she was talking to me about all the things she was trying to do to ah, increase programming, and we didn't talk specifically about swim teams. But I will get you that information. Thank you, because I know for Ramsey in particular. We've had a swim team in the past, but it hasn't been active at Ramsey for [9:37:43 AM] several years, and I imagine there are some issues of restarting up that that might need attention. And I'm sure it's not the only pool that had that experience. I'll get that information for you. Great thank you, and then, with respect to the amenities, you know, there's quite a difference across our pools in terms of how well constructed. The bathrooms are and the break rooms and etcetera . So I think it's really good that you're paying attention to those amenities. How are you? How are you approaching that for the pools that have less of those kind of built in brand new amenities because I think that's a real issue for our lifeguards when they're out there in the heat. Yes so, we have. We do have some limited options there on quite frankly right. We have tents. We have to be able to expand the shaded area. We have fans. We have tried to make sure that we're providing coolers, ice water, those sorts of things kind of some of the basic but to the point that I was making on [9:38:44 AM] two council member quadri. We do have that asset management system and we do understand where on our on the priority list where renovations need to occur, and so again, we'll be putting together a very comprehensive list of things that need to happen to improve those amenities at those locations. But right now it's not. It's not really. It's not something techno technology or something far out. It's really just the basics extra shade. Ah extra coolers, extra fans, extra opportunity for ice water, those sorts of things and then our summer camps are really important for our families with for the experiences of the children, but also for the child care during the summer. How are we doing on hiring the summer camp? We're tracking. We're tracking positively there, too. I don't have the exact numbers. I didn't bring them today, but I know I just talked to ah to our I was on the phone with our hr team, and they were telling that we were tracking positively also using that same top system for those individuals because they [9:39:45 AM] have extra set of training that they must go through to make sure that they're able to chair for care for our children. I can get you some answers to that. Also, along with the with the swim team answers great. Send it out to everybody said it. Thank you. Thank you. Council member any other questions or comments on this briefing? Thank you very much for being here and for what you're doing, remembers what I'm going to recommend we do is that we recess until 10 10. Just the child from from standpoint of trying to manage our time. You'll kind of know how and when we recess, let's as quickly as we can meet in the council chambers. Is there any objection to the city council? Recessing this, work session for 30 minutes. To go take pictures. Yeah I'm trying not to. We're all going to have our pictures made. So that's why we all look so good today. Wearing our special clothing, and, it's school picture day. Madame city [9:40:48 AM] attorney. So let's go take our picture. Now that the world knows thank you. MM hmm. (RECESS) [10:10:18 AM] Members. I'll call back to order the Austin city council for this work session on April 18th 2023 it is 10:10 in the morning. The next item on our agenda will be under briefings, and there'll be a briefing on the Texas department of public safety collaboration with the Austin police department. I recognize the city manager. Okay? Mayor mayor pro tem council members before I asked chief Chacon and Dr Finnegan to come up on their report. I just want to provide you some background. And some context to how this partnership came to be. I began again as interim city manager nine weeks ago. And at the time the city was was and is experiencing some serious challenges. Chief among those challenges the historic staffing crisis at Austin police at the Austin police department you know that I've tried to instill the bias for action in this organization. And you all gave me a charge to make changes and to make them quickly. We knew we knew and we knew we needed to address significant [10:11:18 AM] issues that are unacceptable. Record high response times for calls for assistance and increase in gun crimes and high profile incidents such as the street takeovers that occurred shortly after I became shortly, took place shortly after my appointment. And the expiring police contract that spurred concerns about the retirements and resignations. Given all these factors, we were presented with a an opportunity to partner with dps. In my professional opinion, that of chief Chacon and in room assistant chief assistant city manager Bruce mills. This was an absolute right move, particularly given the partnership with dps has helped us respond, to the takeovers we experienced in February and yielded 17 arrests. I think that from the information presented today, which includes the most recent data that this is another successful partnership, making an impact and making Austin safer. I recognize that acting quickly in response to the opportunity to address critical need in our community didn't allow time to normalize this with the city council, and I'm [10:12:19 AM] hoping that today's presentation we'll provide answers to your questions that you've raised and provides assurances to the partnership that is producing results. But I can say is that I know that that all of you have a sense of urgency about this situation as I do, and given the factors before us, we wanted to launch this partnership as soon as possible. And with that alternate this over to Chicago. Good morning, mayor and council . Mister manager Joseph chuckle and chief of police. Also with me is Dr Jonathan Christian who is the chief data officer for the Austin police department. We're going to present to you jointly on an update on the partnership between the Austin police department and the Texas department of public safety. Which actually began on March the 30th of this year. Thank you. The next slide, please. So just ah, quick, kind of overview of what will go through a little bit of the background, just kind of expanding on the remarks made by the manager, how the partnership is working. The [10:13:23 AM] parts that were trying to instill regarding collaboration and importantly, transparency. The and then alternate over to doctor Creegan, who go over the data driven approach to both traffic safety and violent crime . And then an overview of what the initial results look like right now and then the obviously leave time for questions and answers at the end. So if I get the next slide so with regard to the background background today , a P D currently has more than 300. Vacant officer positions just this year in 2023. We're currently at 102 separations year today. And that number grows every single day. We have fewer officers today than we did 15 years ago. And the city is now over a million people. The call load has increased commensurately. Ah these staffing shortages combined with this rapidly growing city have created a challenge. These [10:14:27 AM] vacancy rates and recruiting challenges are not ah, exclusive to Austin. We're seeing this around the state. We're seeing it around the country. And particularly here in central Texas, whether we're talking about Austin pd Travis county sheriff's department, dps or any of the about 46 different law enforcement agencies that are in central Texas. We are all competing for the same small pool of applicants. We want good qualified people. We have to be competitive. And that is what we're trying to do as a department. And as a city. But what it means realistically, is the these decreased staffing levels have led to longer response. Times officers getting to the highest priority calls it takes longer to get there. As well as longer wait times for the lower priority calls that have to wait while officers are handling the higher priority calls we've seen those times. Increase, kind of year over year [10:15:30 AM] and Dr crane will go into that a little bit here a little bit. Next slide, please. So how the partnership works. The partnership is designed to be a valuable and innovative measure to increase public safety. I pretty much talk with, the regional director for central Texas for dps. Ah it is director Vincent Luciano on a daily basis . He and I are talking about, that things that we can do to make the partnership stronger. If there are things that arise that give either of us concern we address them head on and very quickly and as briefings are held every single weekend. Myself and other members of my staff are there with the dps troopers, kind of talking about Austin. Many of them have never worked in Austin before, so we want to make sure that they understand. You know what is our [10:16:30 AM] what is our community feel like? What is the culture of Austin? Ah what can they expect as they as they conduct this operation within the city and importantly, what are my expectations as the chief of police on how this community, expects to be policed . So, it's important to understand that each one of the departments maintains their own operational jurisdiction. Of course, the, Texas. Dps has jurisdiction statewide. Ah, it is not new for them to be in the city of Austin. They've been here many of the people that I go to these briefings with. I've known for years because they work in the city of Boston, and they understand the city of Boston. But of course, ah, they operate under their own set of policies and procedures. We operate under the same state law , and we're also commissioned by the same commissioning body that Texas commission on law [10:17:31 AM] enforcement, which requires the same amount of training for both Austin pd officers and Texas dps officers. I know many questions have have risen about what is the difference between the training that the two departments receive and the fact is, is that they have to meet the same standards. So my experience with Texas dps is an incredibly professional and respected organization that is here to help us right now, as we're going through, through the tough times that we are next slide. The partnership really has a twofold objective. Ah the first is to assist us with our our traffic enforcement. As part of the traffic enforcement, having a lot of officers out there, they're making backups of a P D officers on high priority calls. And when necessary, will be the first unit on scene for priority call response. They are [10:18:33 AM] targeting aggressive driving, reckless driving racing, as was mentioned just a little bit ago and then other hazardous traffic violations. The second part of the objective is reducing violence and particularly gun related violence. These can include shootings, assaults, robberies, other major crimes that happened unfortunately, on a daily basis here in Austin and have been working on that for almost last three weeks. And have been incredibly effective and we'll talk about that in just a moment. As I turn it over in a moment to doctor Creegan, he's going to be talking certainly about numbers about the number of crimes that have happened in different parts of the city. And how how those are changing based on this operation. But I think we cannot lose sight of the fact that [10:19:34 AM] behind every single one of those numbers is a person is a person who is a Ben affected by some type of crime that has happened in this city. A person or a family. That is grieving. Potentially or hurting because somebody in their family was hurt. And. Isa chief of police, and I know everyone in my officers takes that incredibly seriously. That is the reason that we put the uniform on every single day. It is my responsibility to make sure that we maintain the safety in the city. And so I want to make sure that it is done in the right way. But at the same time we cannot. We cannot. Lose sight of the fact that we need to be people centered that we need to keep people at the center of this effort and make sure that we're doing it the right way, and not causing harm but actually helping alright. Next slide. I mentioned the collaboration. What I've heard [10:20:34 AM] over and over and over from director Luciano as well as other members of leadership with dps. Dps is here to help. They're not here to take over. They're not here. Certainly not here to cause harm or to cause anxiety. That is not their mission. Their mission is to help. And that is clearly communicated at the outset of every new squad that comes in to work in the city to make sure that that is the mindset. That we're here to keep citizens safe to always have that smile on your face to when possible, write a warning. You don't have to write a ticket. And that has been happening. Ah Texas dps dps I mentioned this operates obviously under state law, but its own set of policies just like a P D does. They are not following a pd policy, however, their policies and our policies many many times align. Director [10:21:37 AM] Luciano, talks every week. With D, a Jose Garza and county attorney Delagarza about how things are going and it is their normal practice when it whatever jurisdiction that they go into to contact the local prosecutors and see how things operate in that jurisdiction so that they can align their enforcement actions with those prosecutorial practices, and that's what they're doing here so you will see them many times, doing a side and release based on the side and release policies of both offices. And that is kind of the same thing that a P D is doing. So so again just because dps doesn't follow our policy doesn't mean that many times those policies aren't very, very similar. It is our intent to continue to report weekly and push the numbers out. To push data out. And we will be doing [10:22:38 AM] that on a on a regular basis again weekly, including the number of arrests and traffic stops that are made as well as other information. Next slide, please. On mental health calls, Texas, dps also trains their troopers and mental health response and crisis intervention. But to the largest degree that we are able. We're trying to get a P D officers on the scene of our mental health calls. As a matter of fact, we're trying to get them on the scene of every single dispatch call if a call comes in 911 call comes into the call taking center, and it generates a call for service. I want a P D officers at that scene handling that scene, as opposed to dps. That doesn't necessarily mean that dps won't respond to it or even get there first. But what I would I brief out and, I know that dps is doing the same with its troopers is please get to the scene stabilizes seen if [10:23:38 AM] violence is occurring, stop the violence and then hold everything in place until a pd can arrive. And that is why you will. You will see that the number of for instance, mental health interventions that they've actually done are relatively small. It's because we are responding to those scenes and we are handling those were I want us to be handling the major investigations. I'll talk about that here in just a moment. But again, whether it's a mental health call or another major investigation, I want a P D to be handling it. The troopers at the outset of the week or provided in Austin resource guide to assist them on calls. So in that guide, it has things related to sobering center, the arch caritas of Austin life works for the youth of veteran resources and other important community partners. We want them to have that information so that they can make the same type of referrals that we make on a regular basis. [10:24:39 AM] And then, as I said, calls for service and involved major investigations, domestic violence, we're handling all traffic fatalities, sexual assaults, homicides, aggravated robberies. Those type of investigations continue to be handled by a P D. That doesn't mean there might not be some collaboration with dps. And there they bring their criminal investigative division C I D into help, sometimes with those investigations, but ultimately we want a pd to handling and presenting those cases for prosecution. Alright next slide and I'll go ahead and turn it over to Dr crane and at this point to talk about some of the data thank you so basically and beginning the partnership with dps, we're providing a great deal of data about what's happening in Austin. We recognize that while you know some of the troopers have a background here are some of them that will not and for them to [10:25:41 AM] manage their operational efforts. We want to make sure they understand to the greatest extent possible. What is happening in the city of Boston, and so we're focusing primarily on two areas. One is traffic safety. And the other is violent crime in particular violent crime involving firearms, so I'm going to start by talking about traffic safety. Dps is patrolling major roadways and this is, this is based on analysis that's been done by a P D as well as in conjunction with Austin traffic, so we coordinate with Austin traffic on a weekly basis to provide an update to dps about where traffic collisions are occurring. Where most interested in those that result in an injury, so they're higher speed collisions and whatnot. Additionally Austin traffic provides us some information on the sort of rate of travel as measured in places the number of cars that are exceeding the speed limit excessively, as opposed to just as opposed to being at or mindedly above the speed limit, so the fundamental areas. We're looking at its highway 1 83. It's mopac, and it's like 35, right. These are the areas that we have asked dps to focus traffic enforcement on with the specific goal of reducing [10:26:42 AM] collisions in particular injury collisions and those that might result in a fatality. This is an area that I think we're all aware has been understaffed in a P D as we've made operational changes about what we can do on patrol our ability to proactively patrol traffic has gone down. We've had various adjustments to the units that are involved. And so this is an area that's been understaffed and dps taking up that that for us has had some initial results are promising. Basically as far as their activities go in the first two weeks, they conducted 4016 traffic stops. Most of the traffic stops are focused on intervention, right? So in most of the stops, they're issuing a verbal warning, right. So approximately 75% of the time. It's a stop. There is some legal reason for the stop. There is someone who is speeding someone who's running a stoplight. These types of things to stop is made. A verbal warning is given and the person lives on the way right. Tickets are issued about 25. So about one out of four of [10:27:43 AM] those cases. And so basically related to the traffic stops have been a lot of questions about that. A P D and D P S are held to the same standards related to the collection and reporting of demographic data on traffic stops. So the demographic data about the traffic stops conducted by a PDF by dps in the city of Boston will be publicly available, right and we'll provide it as soon as it's made available. Next slide with so violent crime is the area. We've talked about a little bit more. Basically the brief that we've given out to dps and request for assistance has helped them understand where the highest area of number of calls for assistance occur. These are calls from the community to the 911 call center for violent events, and in particular, with an emphasis on those that involve a firearm. Dps officers are patrolling those areas to do a number of things. One is to provide some deterrent effect, too, is to be [10:28:44 AM] able to respond more quickly as chief Chacon pointed out to be able to stabilize the violent situation while we wait for a pd to arrive to ultimately handle the situation, right, and so they're also responding to elements that they might see if it occurred in front of them. At the same time, those type of things would likely in most cases be referred to a P D when we arrive on scene. So tps dps is partnering with the violent crimes investigative unit, right ? We're really particularly interested in homicide and aggravated assault as well. We pay a lot of attention to what's happening with robbery because there's a great deal of crossover between robbery and aggravated assault. I can come back to that in just a moment. As we stated in all these cases what we're really looking at. Is the gun violence, right? What we're most concerned about is how do we reduce gun violence? How do we resolve active cases? And how do we proactively target crime in areas that are experiencing high levels of violent crime? Next slide. Alright so the initial results are promising, and I want to [10:29:45 AM] present this with a little bit of an explanation because I believe there's been some confusion about about what was discussed in the last perfect constant and the memo. There are fundamentally two separate questions. One is did it go down? Right the second question is did that reduction happened as a matter of chance, or is it likely related to the dps deployment? There's been confusion because the techniques for answering either question are slightly different. A lot of questions have focused on what happened last week in the state last year in the same week, and I can state in the first week of the dps deployment. This year, there were 67 violent crimes in Austin in the same week. The previous year, there were exactly 89 violent crimes. That is the 25% reduction that has been discussed. The separate discussion about comparing to averages is a statistical technique that allows us to say at a level of scientific certainty we would not expect to see a 25% reduction happen [10:30:46 AM] randomly on its own or by chance. The initial evidence suggests that that reduction is an effect of the dps deployment. Moving into the second week. We see some other numbers that are likewise informative. There's a 31% decrease going from the second week of April in 2022 to the second week of April in 2023 last year, in the second week of dps deployment, we had 100 and 24 violent events. Last week. We had 68. That's a 31% decrease again. The statistical testing that follows that suggests those reductions are not random. They're not an artifact of anything else. They occur exactly at the point that dps begins their patrol efforts. So statistically, the initial evidence suggests dps is patrol is reducing. Violent crime in the city. Now the areas that they're specifically working. You see these effects being remarkably stronger in the actual areas that dps is working [10:31:47 AM] where we have the highest volume of calls for service for violent crime. There's been a 58% decrease in the first week. 49% decrease compared to the previous year in the second week. Those are remarkable size effects. The follow up on that is that this is reducing the number of calls for service coming into the department. Those reductions of 58% and 49% are occurring in specific areas where we have a high call volume load. Throughout the city. The availability of a P D officers as a result of those decreases has resulted in substantially improved service, which likewise relates to a decrease in overall calls for service. So we see a 15% decrease. In violent crime calls for service in the first week and a 12% decrease in the second week, suggesting that that effect is at this point holding now, more importantly, what we want to look at is how are we servicing the community? When we actually get that call [10:32:48 AM] for service. So if we go to the next slide, this is where we actually see the results in terms of a pd operational ability to support playing out emergency assistance calls. In the deployment areas, so these are the most dangerous, most risky, violent calls for service involving firearms. They decreased by nearly two minutes in the first week of the deployment. That held relatively strongly at a minute and 33 2nd reduction in the second week as compared to the previous period. Those differences are. Remarkably large, given the actual process required to receive a phone call finding available resource in an officer and get them to the scene of the crime, but urgent calls for assistance and I want to make sure everyone understands the difference. These are all violent calls for service. The fundamental difference essentially between an emergency call and an urgent call is an [10:33:48 AM] emergency call is happening at the time. The call is made. An urgent call has just ended the activity. So if a standby person standing by calls in a robbery. In a convenient store. That is an emergency call because it is currently happening if the shop keeper makes the phone call the moment the person leaves. That's an urgent call for service. Urgent calls for service are still exceedingly risky because the suspects tend to be in the area. If they're armed with firearms. We tracked many occurrences where other events happen very close in time, very close in space with the same individuals. Those calls for service the urgent costs for service we reduced response time by over seven minutes in the first week. Five minutes and 26 seconds in the second week, so we're seeing remarkable reductions in those call for service times. And so we as we explained in the memo, those call for service times were on the order, and there's been confusion about this. They were [10:34:49 AM] averaging 19.5 minutes. They're now down to 12.5 minutes. There's been concern that perhaps that was a single call for service. That's the actual average in those areas. Prior to the dps deployment, so we're getting them down remarkably something on the order of about a third in reduction. Right and this is actually playing out through the whole city. A lot of the analysis that we've done suggests there's a high level of interdependence when we have difficult response periods in one area of the city. It draws resources from the entire city and service everywhere suffers, so we do see that urgent calls for service were decreased by almost a minute and week run in the entire city. Right and almost a minute again in the second week in the entire city. The emergency calls decreased by 23 seconds in the first week and about 15 seconds in the second week, so we see the effect of faster response to these violent events in these high col. Areas, playing out throughout the entire operation throughout the [10:35:49 AM] city, and these results are very promising. So in summary, we've seen a reduction in violent crime. We have seen a reduction in the number of calls for service for assistance related violent crime, and we see that we're arriving, were quickly to respond when a violent crime occurs. Next flight. All right. Thank you, Dr crane gin, and that that concludes our presentation and kind of prepared remarks. But glad to take any questions. Thank you. Sure thing, council member of Alaska. Thank you for being here. I so I'm not sure how how everybody else is receiving calls that the second this, partnership came online. I was inundated with phone calls from community members. Text that wanted to understand the partnership better. I also love driving across the city and can tell you that there is a disparity between what is [10:36:49 AM] happening west of 35, east of 35, as far as presence is concerned. So I had a few questions to that. How many troopers are now dispatched as part of this partnership, so the actual number of troopers will vary week to week. And that is a that is a dps decision. We don't tell them how many how many to send every single week. I can say that it's generally a sizeable presence of troopers. And then they split them between those two objectives that I talked about. Some of them are doing traffic and some are doing the violent crime, but there is no set number per week. So if we if we said last week do we know how many were here last week? I don't know the number. Okay would you be able to get that for us chief? I can find out and ask them whether they're you know if they can share that information. Thank you, how are we ensuring that there's equitable distribution of troopers across the city and not just a heavy presence along the eastern crescent like and you and I have discussed this, and I discussed this with with our city manager is I mean, I've [10:37:50 AM] I've driven from both parts of the city, and there's a there. You can tell that there is a very heavy police presence in district three, especially the Riverside area on top elice and alter areas, so I'm gonna let doctor Creegan first talk about what? How the deployment is, and then I'll kind of close to those remarks out. Yes so I definitely understand the concern. Want to make sure everyone understands that the information we provide dps to make their appointment decisions. Focus is fundamentally around those calls for service. It's not a decision by the Austin police department to say here is where we want you to patrol. It is basically reporting on what the community is asking the 911. Related to violent crime. Now I can say as far as the distribution goes from my analysis of it. I do know that dps has worked at least seven of the nine sectors in the city. And so one of the [10:38:52 AM] reasons that this might be difficult to understand is that dps is moving its patrols as the effects are have played out. So I pointed out in the I pointed out in one of the previous slides, the substantial reduction in violent crime calls for service in the areas they worked in the first week. Which means the areas they work in the second week are different. The areas they work in the third week will be different, and we can already say based upon what we have seen certain the initial areas where the highest volume of calls for service are no longer the highest volume of calls for service. So as we provide updated information to dps, they shift their patrols right and we have already seen reductions in certain areas that will likely move them to different areas. I expect within a short period of time, dps will have worked every sector in the city. Depending upon as we move resources, or as they move resources. Depending upon whether we see crime level of [10:39:53 AM] calls for service come back up in that area. They may return, but ultimately our goal is to have assist them in moving as efficiently as possible through the city to reduce violent calls for service everywhere in the city. Is sorry. I just kind of wanted to reiterate that this is called driven. The decision on exactly where to deploy is not based upon. We're telling them to deploy to this sector of this sector were telling him is this is where the calls for service or coming in. And as doctor Creegan was just saying, we have seen the mapping of this is beginning to change. And so I can tell you this week is different than last week. Next week will be different than this week. And you will see over time . Where you feel that presence right now, probably within the next couple of weeks will will certainly dissipate and those troopers are moving as he said. We've already worked seven of the nine sectors and anticipate that before this is done, we [10:40:53 AM] will have worked. Pretty much the whole city. Thank you. Is information related to immigration status being collected at this traffic stops. So I specifically asked dps that question and the answer was was no. The only time that immigration status is asked is if a custodial arrest is made for a criminal offense and then that that question gets asked at the jail and whether it's a pd or dps that that question is asked. Can we can we get further information on how many undocumented individuals have been stopped or cited? We don't have that information because we're not we're not collecting the information on how many are documented or undocumented, saying just at the jail just at the jail. That's correct. Okay, how many of our dps stops for low level violations have led to arrests that have placed people in immigration detention centers. Or under an immigration detention. I don't know that information. The. The actual [10:41:55 AM] breakdown of arrests. That's dps data. What they're providing us is higher level data right now that we're pushing out, for instance, whether it's a felony offense that they arrested for whether it's a misdemeanor offense that they've arrested for, but I don't know the exact categories or you know the offenses that they're arresting for, and then once they get to the jail and whether they are whatever happens there with regard to if they go to a detention center or not, is outside. I think the control of both APD and gps and has more to do with, with jail procedures, okay? And just to follow up on one of the last questions you said that people are being dispatched because of calls about reckless driving and whatnot. So people were at the beginning. At the outset, we were having heavier calls from, let's say Charlie sector district three, and that's where people were being dispatched. It's all contingent on where the phone calls or the calls are [10:42:55 AM] being are coming from false for service, and it isn't I would say that you know, as we're looking at it, it is not contained to one single sector. You will have, you know, as we're looking at it, maybe. Probably I should let doctor Creegan explain this a little bit more, but you will see crossover between sectors and that we have heavy carloads. But if you want to, if you want to address that a little bit yeah, really quickly, and I just want to make sure for clarification because to eliminating confusion, when we say dispatched what we specifically mean as when a dispatcher from 911 orders and a pd vehicle to head to a location. I just want to clarify when you're saying dispatch, you mean where generally are ap dps choosing to work right. And so and so, you know, as we said, we provided them initial information which looked at what sort of happened in the previous year. Related to calls for service. We specifically did not focus on arrests or crimes known to police. We focus on what we [10:43:57 AM] think of as sort of customer demand, right? For those issues that we think are most important , that we want to have the most immediate safety gain on but those things are those things are changing, and I can say and hopefully we'll have enough information soon to be able to provide some some indicators on it. These locations have changed drastically in the first two weeks. And if we if we think about it, and we say, you know, this area has the highest demand , and we've just said we have a 58% reduction there. I can say in the latest analysis, there are areas of Austin that, traditionally we would not have predicted as having the highest area of number of calls for service for violent crime and dps when I'll be working those areas. So in the end, the initial deployment was fundamentally dps decision based upon our information about what happened over the last year. Right as they're affecting it. We're providing updated information and they're moving. [10:44:57 AM] As long as they continue to be effective. They're going to move through every area of the city, and so and just to make sure that I understand it. The. The initial response was data from last year. Where they're moving now is going to be data from this year or calls that are coming in. That's correct. So what we looked at to give them initial data was fundamentally what happened for 365 days prior to the day they deployed so it it's recent and that it really is what happened yesterday, right as a good 80 initial appointment. But to track a historic pattern that goes back over the course of a year. And with that, you said, you were surprised that there were certain areas are you able to share? What areas those were that you were surprised about? I need some more data to be able to say it with this sort of level of scientific confidence, but I will say this sort of initial exploratory on it is that the effects in the high call volume areas have been substantial beyond what I would have predicted. As a result of that the violent crime happening in other areas can now become more of a priority. Thank you. [10:45:58 AM] Kashmir Ryan alter. Thank you very much, and I just at the outset. Ah both to the manager and the chief. I just wanna make sure you know, one of our jobs here is oversee and represent our constituents. And tough questions doesn't mean you know we're criticizing you or or think you're doing something wrong. Just part of our jobs. I wanna lay that out before I have a couple questions for you and really, it's on slide 10. You talk about that decrease week one compared to the first week of April the year before week to convert second week over the second week of April year before and when I'm trying to get a good sense of is what about week zero or the last week of March, right? How does that compare? This year. The last year did we already see some kind of reduction? Or was it just a yeah . If I understand the question, and this is this is a really [10:46:58 AM] valid question, and that's why we do what we call a significance test based upon a ton of data rather than just what happened one week last year, right? We can all understand that I've said it a few times. It's caused confusion. This week this year compared to this week last year is informative. But it is not definitional, right? You can think of any example in Austin, where we had an awkward week any any issues that we had in the city that might have affected people's behavior, and if we're looking at that week compared to this year, it's going to be different. So we do both. In fact, what we do is we look at the rate of change from week to week. We look at the rate of change from the four week average prior to the to the next week. We look at the 168 day average, which is the six month average the next week and we look at the year long average related to it. We also do the direct comparisons to the individual day, the individual weeks, which is to last week 24 weeks ago, right 2626 months ago until one year ago. Now. The modeling is reasonably sophisticated, right. When I say [10:47:58 AM] we look at averages. What we're really looking at is a long term average as well as a moving average. That happens seasonally as well as an order of integration as crime fundamentally going up or down at all, as well as something we call auto regression, which is how well can we predict today given yesterday and how well can we predict today given. And so it in all of the cases of the descriptive comparatives. It's gone down. Right so the ones that are most meaningful to report it's been made clear that the preference of the public in general is to look at sort of this week versus last week as the most basic summary number, right, the one that is most relevant to me and try and understand whether this is achieving anything is actually the statistical test, right? And so if you did that same statistical to test for the last week in March before this occurred would you have had a statist statistically significant decrease from the year prior not to say that we might have a greater decrease now, but did we already see that [10:48:58 AM] decrease happening? So there are there are two things to be aware of. One is there's a confound involved. Which is to say we begin our analysis with the first four weeks of dps deployment. We did have dps troopers arrive in the city of the week. Prior smaller group as my understanding and only for a limited number of days. There is a reduction from the week prior to that to that transitional week. It's not significant. It is within the range of what we would predict, given the basic seasonal patterns of March, moving into April. Right so there's hope that that answers the question. Kind of I I'm it sounds to me like the answers. You haven't done the analysis. But if he if you had taken a week when there were no dps officers whatever week that is first week of March 2nd week of March, 3rd week of March. And you perform this exact same statistical analysis. What would the result be? Would the result be that even in a week in March, [10:49:59 AM] before we had gps that we had statistically significant, significant, less crime, or would it be that our crime pattern has been pretty static, and now we've seen a statistical change? So we have done the test for the week prior to any dps involvement to both the week of partial deployment and the week of full deployment. And in both cases, you see a significant reduction. And the amount of crime looking at the comparisons , okay? And then on slide 11 where you talk about the reduction in response times. Is that the comparison your every year like like we had on site 10 compared to that same week that your prior yes. So we look at your over your comparison. But in our statistical tests, which is more meaningful, we're actually looking at what has been happening with call for service times. So in this case, the statistical test, it's more important, understand what recent call for service times have been. So while we look at what happened a year ago, the internal metrics that we used to [10:51:01 AM] think about it have a lot more to do with what's happened over the last four weeks, so that's why in all of these cases we do the previous week, the previous two weeks the previous four weeks 168 day mark and 365 a mark, so that's seven minute reduction. That's over to your four weeks or to your previous year. So the seven minute reduction in one second, it makes right pull the slide. So the seven minute reduction was related to a 19 minute and 30 seconds. Average response time for that area. That average response time as that average response time was, if I recall correctly, because I don't have my analytics slide up. Wait, I have it on my phone. So we reported a seven minute reduction in urgent calls for service. Only in the areas ah, that were worked. So the seven minute reduction he has [10:52:03 AM] consistent with a reduction from 52 weeks prior, right, so the year long it is about a 3.5 minute reduction from the week before dps deployment right and with the are those like your priority ones? Twos yeah, those are priority ones, so those are emergency, meaning it was violent. But the incident has just ended and building off of council member Velasquez questions. We talked about the calls. I had the privilege to go on a ride out a couple weeks ago, and you know, sit there. You look at the screen and there's your one. You're too are they is dps logged in the exact same system, so they're seeing the exact our officers are saying they're not. They're not logged into the same system were working on the technology to at least be able to let both sides see where the other units are. Madam working with director Luciano on that right now they're not in our system, but they are on our radio so they can hear the calls as they're being dispatched, and that's how they're figuring out where to [10:53:03 AM] go. And they'll just responded. I'm responding to correct okay. Okay that's all I have. For now. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you, mayor. You know, I think we can all agree that a reduction in violent crime is as a win for our city. You know whether you live in in downtown like myself where you live in Hyde park or you live in another, you know another district. You know, we can count those as successes, but I think it's also worth pointing out that Austin is a very safe city. Right here from from the dps. When you compare violent crime in Austin that is less than violent crime in Arlington, Fort Worth, corpus Christi, Lubbock, San Antonio, Dallas. Houston Killeen, Amarillo. We are incredibly safe city. I think that says a lot about the leadership that you you and your department have shown chiefs account. But, you know, I think it's always very important to get contacts and to ask these this hopefully not too tough questions, and I'm thankful that y'all are here today. But my first question [10:54:04 AM] could you provide information out of the data provided on page three of the staff memo of how many arrests were made due to violent crime? On page three of three to date, the joint operation has resulted in 96 felony arrests and 63 misdemeanor arrest. So my first question of that is how many were violent crime and then also how many of those arrests were drug related? Again, that's the high level information that dps is provided to us. What I can do is request at the same time as I'm making these other requests. You know, regarding how many how many people were deployed and so forth, whether they can break those down a little bit, at least in some general categories around drug related arrests, violent arrests and then and then maybe nonviolent, you know, for instance, warrants and things like that, that they'll come across, got it. And then my next question is in. It's been stated the average number of violent crimes in a week for 2022 was 89 per week. What was [10:55:05 AM] the overall overall trend for violent crime for 2022? If you all could provide information as well as broken down by murder and non negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault? Yeah, we can absolutely provide that. And given that it's a reasonable amount of data we can. We can put it together for a number of places. I do want to clarify one element that has created a great deal of confusion and cautionary note. Everyone should be very cautious and reading whether it comes otherwise. Any of the reports about the comparative level of violence in cities. In fact, FBI% that is the national repository for all this information specifically indicates that those comparisons should not be made. There are various reasons for it. One reason I can tell you very quickly off. The list that you shared is that we? The agency is on that list actually report under different federal standards, which. So you know [10:56:06 AM] for what it's worth, I'm I'm not alright, asserting that the net conclusion is wrong. I would just say use those numbers with caution. The other element of that reporting that has that reporting change that FBI put into place, beginning with agencies and about 2016. Is that the way in which crime is counted? Because Austin has adopted the new standard is actually different than most jurisdictions in the us it causes a great deal of confusion because we produce a document called the chiefs monthly report. Which includes an FBI neighbors, category of crimes against persons. That category of crimes has shown a marginal reduction. Over the last six months. That is not violent crime. The next category. Crimes against property includes robbery. FBI has decided to classify robbery as a crime against property because the goal of the crime is to obtain property. But the nature of the crime is inherently violent. It [10:57:07 AM] is the coercion of property by force. So we have a lot of confusion about the counts on violent crime because we include for operational purposes, robbery as a violent crime, so the documentation vary substantially. So we'll provide that will include the robbery. Generally the categories that we're most interested in would include robbery. Aggravated assault. Sexual assault. And murder. Those are the categories that make up our composite of violent crime because that composite is different than either the neighbor standard or the ucr standard that most agencies are still on. It does make the comparison problem problematic. Well, thank you, a few more questions. Just wondering how many violent crimes and you might have answers already occurred the week before the partnership. I believe the because the data that's been collected or is two weeks worth because what we had already seen, at least the first [10:58:07 AM] year was, you know, comparatively generate 2023 if you compared it to Janet 2022. Likewise February 2023 versus February 2022. Violent crime had gone down by 8% in January. The previous year and 5% of February . So it seemed like there was already a trend of the decrease in violent crime, but I'm just curious. What how many violent crimes occurred the week before two weeks before the partnership ? Yeah, I'll get you the council on that so that you can look at it. I will say, those numbers are the neighbors, reductions and crimes against persons. Those do not include robberies, which are actually up. So there is a marginal net reduction of about 1% if I recall correctly on our index of violent crime. It's also important to recognize and this is something that gets lost in the minor discussion is that in 2020, the number of violent crimes and violent crime [10:59:08 AM] calls for service in Austin went up precipitously. It has not come back down. So we make a we spend a lot of time discussing the 5% reduction or the 2% increase. Went without looking at the 35% increase that occurred in that year that has held so it's important to keep in mind that the longer trend and this is an example of where it's important to think about the different periods of comparison. The other part that is not reported in there that we're happy to provide information on is more concerning to me than the increase in the number of crimes. Is the proportion of those crimes that involve a firearm. That proportion went up precipitously in 2020 and has not come down either. So this again becomes another way in which comparing violent crime statistics is challenging. In that call for service for aggravated assault can mean a great number of different things. You may have a jurisdiction that has more aggravated assaults, yet fewer aggravated assaults with firearms. And so those are the [11:00:09 AM] numbers that we really need to discuss. And I mean, a lot of other questions might have the same answer. But ah, do you have any timeline of when we would be able to get any, an end of that data. Yeah we can start pulling it together for you. So it should be reasonably quick. Okay, great. So a few more questions than and I'll be done. You know, 11 of the big things that you all talked about in in your side deck was ah, traffic related debts. Is there any data on the reduction of traffic related deaths? Since since this partnership has come to be so a fatality and a traffic collision . Yes fortunately, a relatively rare event. Predominantly for analytic purposes. What we look at our cr threes or collisions that involved an injury. So it would be a reasonably long period of time before we could make a statement about that would be scientifically supported about it. Brutalities. We should have enough data in the next probably 2 to 3 weeks [11:01:10 AM] to be able to discuss whether it has reduced the number of injury collisions or perhaps a number of actual collisions and just to follow up on that we work with Austin transportation in the vision zero project to kind of track those numbers as well. So that's a interdepartmental kind of effort. And you know, even the deployment strategy that we had on the traffic side has been driven in part by Austin transportation. So we're working. We're working with them as well on this piece. Great. Thank you. And then my last two questions are kind of off of questions that counselor Velasquez that and ask, but would you guys be able to also provide information on arrest by districts that include demographics, so the 10 council districts and then break it down into you know, demographics of age race, gender, et cetera. So we have requested. I've requested the demographic data and don't have a solid answer on how quickly they're going to be able to provide that when you know when what they're providing me right now is pretty high [11:02:11 AM] level. You know, with the number of stops that are being made, for instance, which we know are significant, breaking down that data, that's and how how they, however it is that they're collecting it. I would imagine is going to it would take as much time for me to be able to do it. But ah, you know, we're certainly willing to provide that data once it's provided to us, where exactly two stops are happening. Certainly they don't know our council districts with they would have to provide that data to us. Somehow I'll have to ask whether that can be done. And how you know how heavy a lift it would be and whether they're willing to do it. Yeah yeah, I mean, just anecdotally and I think councilor of Alaska is that Ed mentioned, but I certainly got a lot of calls, but, you know, things that happen on the east side often differ from a lot of other neighborhoods in districts, right the ah you know how how one is treated or how one's neighborhood is patrolled or lack thereof differs. I would just be curious to see if, if [11:03:12 AM] possible, we could get like district by district district information. And then my last question before I. Stop talking . Is would you guys also be able to get a breakdown and the and the state of probable cause that is that is used for dps. Traffic stops. Traffic stops in general, you know, at some point, when it makes sense to do it, because right now, I think that a lot of the questions that are coming at us are really directed towards a P D. Having dps come to the briefing, and director Luciano has has offered recently to come to the briefing and perhaps answer some of the questions because some of the questions that you have, I don't know the answer to because yeah. Yeah. So I think that you know, at some point in the future, it's going to make sense for them to come and answer your questions, right? Thank you. Medicine. Can't remember. Harper-madison has her hands up. I'm sorry, counselor. Qadri where you done [11:04:13 AM] ? Okay. Thank you, council member harper-madison. You have the floor. I think you're on mute, though. There you go. There you are. I would just like to weigh in and say very much that I appreciate. Our new council members asking such vibrant questions and look forward to the answers. Seven. I think maybe our public safety committee is a good spot for this information to be presented. That really. I'll step in here for the mayor. Did you want to do it? Oh I would just say, I'm sure that is acceptable. I think there was already some conversation around other topics we were discussing today coming to public safety, so I will defer to there's two vice chairs in the room that probably could corroborate. Ah, [11:05:15 AM] taking taking this up and getting another deep dive. I know it's a conversation that a lot of people in town are just, either curious to know how it's going. How the partnership works . I've got some questions as well, do you? Do you have questions today council member harper-madison that you wanted to continue with. I think my colleagues have already stated my positions. In which case yeah, I just. Look forward to those answers. Appreciate that. Let's go with council member Kelly. Thank you, mayor pro tem sorry. My mind just went blank. I was like I was gonna say. Thank you, mayor pro tem. And thank you, chief and doctor Creegan. For me questions. I appreciate that. You addressed a lot of questions that I put my memo in the press conference. That I'm always sent to the in terms that he manager so I appreciate that also, you've been talking a lot about the different districts here in Austin and how the response has been. Have you collaborated with [11:06:16 AM] Williamson county at all on this initiative, and the reason I ask is because Williamson county is also in my district, and I know that Williamson county sheriff's office handed me a report with assistant city and Trevor's mills, where in the last think it's since October of 2022, October, 1st of 2022 through March 21st of 2023. They have responded to over 8200 calls in my district, and so I was wondering if any of your data collaborated with them on that. It has not. Council member haven't reached out to the sheriff there to discuss this. I guess it is not. You know, it is . That's a surprisingly high number of calls. But it shouldn't be because, as doctor Creegan was talking about when we have these resource intensive calls that happen and the areas that we're talking about it draws down on other parts of the city. Which will draw us from from certain parts that [11:07:16 AM] ultimately you know Travis county, Williamson county or hays county may have to respond to because there's no available a P D officers that are there at that moment. I've tried to be a good partner with our our local law enforcement. I've certainly had many conversations with sheriff Fernandez but have not reached out to sheriff Gleason. So yeah, that's a great idea. I did reach out to sheriff Leeson in order to get this information and I actually want to correct my number is 8528 calls. And they are everything from suicidal people to livestock to abuse. I mean, I'd be more than happy to provide you with this list. Chief if you'd like it thank you. Council member. You know, district six is one of the furthest districts away from the center of the city. We are one of the furthest from I mean, the closest substations lamplight village and I know that a lot of calls happen in our district. And so they need for law enforcement is high. I just want to make sure that when we are looking at that data that we are ensuring that we're collecting all of the available data that [11:08:17 AM] we have so that we can get a more complete picture, and that when our resources are distributed. They're distributed equitably. So thank you very much for taking that into consideration. What feedback from officers at a P. D. Have you heard in regards to this collaboration? The feedback has been pretty tremendous, on both sides. Quite honestly. I've talked to dps troopers. I've talked to the LAPD officers. And it you know, it was put the best way that I can put it is, one of one of the members of dps leadership, who's out here on a nightly basis along with with with our folks? Ah, said that it feels almost seamless, that it is almost like it's one agency that's working because of the collaboration is working so well. Dps troopers are backing us up. We're backing them up. We're handling. We're handling all of the dispatch calls as well as taking possession of all firearms that are recovered in the city, and those will be handled per city policy and a [11:09:19 AM] policy on the on on the disposal , ultimately of firearms. And so it has been very, very good, very well received. And quite honestly, much needed. Thank you . You spoke earlier about sometimes how dps and APD policies line. Could you give me examples or give the council examples of when that has occurred since the collaboration began? You know the one that that certainly jumps to mind is on the issue of marijuana enforcement. A pd generally is not taking much action on low level marijuana, and there's a number of reasons for that, not not the least of which is council direction. Normally for dps, that is a that's a custody arrest. But working with the local prosecutors, they are siding on those and releasing, and then those citations go over to the justice of the peace court generally, or they may go to the county courts, depending , but you know, that's one. [11:10:20 AM] That's certainly an example that I can give of where those those policies are aligning. Thank you. That's very helpful. I have one last question and that is have you heard directly from any community members regarding dps is contact our conduct while conducting patrols. And what has that been, like? You know, the feedback that I'm getting has been very positive. One story that was recently told information be receiving a round of applause from the people that are just there. The citizens, and ah and certainly gratitude to the governor to colonel Mccraw, head of dps and to all the dps troopers that are that are here to just help. I think that you know people understand that and they hold themselves accountable the same way that we do so, I think that it is, you know, it's just been a good partnership. Thank you for saying that I ran into some dps officers often mopac who are [11:11:20 AM] having dinner one evening, and I actually bought their dinner without letting them know you can do that. That's the thing you can just tell the weight person, but as a token of gratitude, I thought it was really important to walk over there and just say thank you and then to do that behind the scenes, so we definitely appreciate that. I definitely appreciate the assistance that we're getting from dps and I am more appreciative of the transparency that we are having today regarding the questions that the community as well as these council members have, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council member council member Fuentes. Thank you. The doctor Creegan. You mentioned a couple of you understand how the data presented in the it was confusing to some and I wont underscore the reason why it's confusing is because we received council received a memo on Thursday. And then there was a press conference the next day, touting these numbers without any other additional information . The questions that we're asking here for demographics for [11:12:20 AM] specifics on the types of citations for the specifics on where the traffic stops are happening. Which we still have not received access to that is what helps make this a confusing situation because ultimately we as council members have to go back to our community and explain. Where are these troopers patrolling? Why are they patrolling in our particular neighborhoods? And, you know, is there a disproportional disproportionate impact in our community? Those are the questions we have to be. Ah responsible for and we are held accountable, to the safety of our communities by by the voters, so I just wanted to underscore that point there. One of the and so just to get back, so I want to make it really, really clear here. The questions that we've asked, around the demographics of who is being pulled over. You know, receiving citations arrested and where this patrolling is happening is [11:13:21 AM] specific because we are talking about you know what makes Austin a safe city and part of us being able to talk about the safety of our community is being able to talk about, you know? No, there's not, you know, racial profiling happening, and here's why but unless we have that information that I can't make that case to my community, so as receiving just half of the picture here really puts us in a challenging position. And I'm really pleased to hear that dps is being collaborative because I hope in that spirit of collaboration that they're able to come before us and share that information because that those are the questions that I have been receiving, and so to be really clear on our requests for more specifics on the data. When can we expect that information become available? I have, I've passed that request along to director Luciano. We've spoken about it a couple of times already. And not only has he, [11:14:22 AM] committed that they are going to provide the data, although he's working with his kind of bosses there, dps on how quickly that can be done, as well as his own. Data analysis unit on how quickly it can be extracted, but has also made a commitment to come in front of mayor and council. If you all want him to directly answer questions, so it isn't just coming through me. So the short answer is I don't know how long it's going to take them to be able to collect that information. But that they have made a commitment to provide it. Thank you. And I certainly would like to see you have to invite him to come before us and to have that kind of conversation. Ah and as part of that the other topic I want to talk about is accountability if there is an incident to occur involving a dps trooper and one of our constituents, where is the accountability mechanism? What happens in that situation? So [11:15:22 AM] you know, I think that that's a really great question. Because you know something maybe that needs to be explained really well to the public if they have interaction with an Austin police officer and want to offer either a compliment or complaint , then we know that the mechanism is the office of police oversight with dps, who has distinctive uniforms from Mars. There are different color. They have different patches and different badges and all those things. If they have a complaint , and they're going to need to go through their process, they can't go to the opio to file those complaints because the opioid doesn't have any jurisdiction over them. So so being able to and will certainly if that is, if that is the case, be able to help push them in whatever direction we need to make sure that the complaint goes to the right place. To my knowledge there. I think there's been one complaint that's come into the opio related to a dps trooper that we have. We have referred over to dps to make sure that that happens. That's not the preferred way of doing [11:16:23 AM] it. It's going to cause it. It's going to cause a delay. And really, it's not the O pos responsibility to do that. So I don't encourage that. But we want to be helpful. We want to be responsive and dps has its own way of processing complaints. And we'll be able to provide that information to the public director Luciano to be able to speak to that. Yes, ma'am. And you know, and as part of getting that's you know a lot of the questions. That have come up or just like what? You know. What is this partnership for? How long are we going to have this partnership? What we've been sharing back with the community is the staffing shortage, which we know dps also has the staffing shortage. I think they're down 500 troopers , so, chief akane, can you share with us what we're doing to address our staffing shortage and the practices in place? Thank you. Council member for highlighting that. I think this is a big big part of this conversation. We as a city and [11:17:24 AM] I've been working with the interim city manager, enormous assistant city manager on how we can increase. The number of cadets so we have going into our police academy. So it's really a twofold. A two fold answer. The first is, I need more cadets and even more brand new officers coming into the academy. I also need to be able to retain the people that I have. And quite honestly, a second one is more important right now than the first one. The first one. They're both important, but I've got to spend a lot of time with my workforce, making sure that they feel supported making sure that they understand that this is a great place to work and that they've got a bright future here. And hanging on to as many of those folks as I can. So we're working in in both arenas on the on the cadets side. We're offering a very substantial signing bonus right now that's competitive with other big cities were still because we had [11:18:24 AM] opened many hiring cycles prior to the expiration of the contract. We can still go out of town and test recruit and do those things and so we're doing that as well. I want to be able to put 100 cadets into each class. But the fact is, is that right now I'm putting about 35 35 to 40. And at that rate, and with the attrition rate that I have right now, I'm not making any progress on these vacancies. As a matter of fact, we're falling further and further behind every month. So we've increased the pace of cadet classes. We've increased our recruiting effort. And as a matter of fact, we're looking right now at a structural reorganization of a pd to be able to have a commander that is just over recruiting that is wholly dedicated to recruiting so that we can put even more effort into into that. Ah on the other side. I think that it has to do with it comes down to making sure that leadership understands what we're trying to [11:19:24 AM] accomplish that. We're here for the citizens of Austin to help to elevate the intrinsic value of this profession, and particularly that Austin is a really great city. It's a great place to work and it's a great place. To live and raise a family. So hanging on to those officers is paramount to us as well. Thank you. Council member if I could just add just living to achieve, chikane said. And it was in in the information that was presented. Our officers are have by and large been very positive about this experience. I think that is made their jobs easier. That's why they're being able to respond to calls much faster. Their workload is incredible when you have a 300 person vacancy, that is an incredible workload for the officers, the rank and file and this additional, officer. Contingent the dps has provided us is really a relief for them. And I think in the end that may help us with nutrition, right? [11:20:25 AM] And we need some help with the attrition right? Because we need our officers to stay. Until we get these classes filled and finally would like to say about the overall safety. I understand those comments that are made and I've even heard it from from my family members. The issue is that when you're in certain neighborhoods, some neighborhoods don't feel safe. And these are these call areas are from our citizens. These are the citizens that are calling, saying we need help. And when you can't respond in a timely way that makes those areas of our city not feel safe. And so I think that's why this partnership is important. I think we've made some progress. I think we need to do the accountability that you just mentioned and we intend to keep doing that through the public safety committee. Thank you, manager, council member, Alison alter and then the councilman Rivera. Thank you. I think that conversation leads directly to what I want to talk about. And before I raised some points I want to. I want to stay from the get go that I believe that we need more officers than we have right now to keep our community safe. But I'm really interested in us thinking strategically, if [11:21:27 AM] we have a shared goal of improving our response time of preventing crime, reducing and eliminating traffic fatalities, we have to think long term we have to think. Strategically. And I have some questions, and that's that. I want to ask about this strategy because I'm not sure it gets us to where we need to. In the long term. I'm not sure it's sustainable in a way, that our community will embrace or that we can afford or the state can afford. So I think we need to have a more strategic you and I want to start by asking the city manager. Actually if we agree we want to improve response times. If we agree we want to prevent crime and we want to reduce traffic fatalities. How would we approach that from your one city angle? So you have said over and over again. We have to think as one city we have to be taking these problems, and thinking about it across departments and [11:22:28 AM] really honing in on how do we address the problem? You know, more holistically. We ask a lot of our police officers. I think that's one of the problems. Over time. So if we took this one city kind of approach, we want to be collaboratively. One of impact. We want to have accountability. Wanna have transparency? What would be the other pieces here that are missing? And what are you doing? In that regard. Well I think with respect to there's some specifics. Better just related to enforcement. I know in my own neighborhood, southwest Austin southwest parkway is a speedway. People move. They don't move at the 50 mile an hour speed limit, but then they certainly move at 70 plus I mean, you need to have some presence out there because sometimes with a number of the amount of traffic on that roadway, it is a it's. It's right for some type of accidents that sometimes could result in injury with respect to the issue of crime. You have? Yes you have to think the lot in the terms of [11:23:28 AM] the long term, so what it is about economic development. What is it about, the issues around behavioral health. It's a whole host of issues that you need to take into account. But it's not either or it's both. And so you take the one side of the equation needs to get done. That's a longer term approach. And then you've got to do the immediate enforcement approach. I think you do both of those. Hand in glove with one another, and you do it. The way that the that at least the using the call volumes in terms of the way we've responded to the patrols. That's an appropriate way because that's where we had the most demand for service that we weren't able to get to entirely way, so I think we're trying to do as best we can, with all the different tools in our toolbox, and I think there's another set of tools that I know that you mentioned to me the other day that I haven't had a chance to dive deep into, but we will and we'll figure out how those pieces fit together so that we're cooperating across all departments in terms of we're trying to get done. So, chief. How is a pd engaging with the office of violence prevention? And how is their expertise being used? You've talked about part [11:24:28 AM] of what we're using. Dps four is to address gun violence and office of violence. Prevention is one of these. Tools that we have. That is not yet part of this conversation. That needs to be part of the conversation. So can you speak to that? Certainly so. Really when we talk about the dps, there's in other words, there's two different sides to what we're talking about. There's what we can do preventatively. And then what? What what we react to because it's already happened and largely the dps. You know, we're trying to prevent, but a lot of times they're reacting to something that has already happened. I've been working very closely with the district attorney's office and Diego Diego Garza with the office of violence prevention on a couple of different efforts, the first being a violence intervention program, that we are providing data so that they can, they can try to do things that don't [11:25:31 AM] involve law enforcement to be able to interdict and to be able to intercede in that. And most recently, we are rolling out a program related to domestic violence with our youth. And how can we divert some of those type of cases away from the criminal justice system altogether? In the heat of the moment, so we're talking as officers are arriving on the scene of family violence that involves ah young person who is a juvenile. And being able to make a call to the district attorney to be able to divert that case, right on scene. So it is a bit reactive. But at the same time the office of violence prevention is, is working with us on this on this to see what resources they can bring to bear. And so we've been working in that in that area. Yeah, I can follow up on that with just a little bit of specifics. The project with the office of violence prevention, and it's tied to the white house [11:26:33 AM] violence reduction initiative involves an outside organization called the national institute for criminal justice reform, and we have just cleared their personnel so that they can actually come to the police department. We're going to schedule it starts scheduling process next week, they'll be coming and what they'll be doing is sort of an independent analysis. On everything related to gun crime victimization. Wright victims, offenders locations, times places, etcetera. They'll use that information for ovp to begin a more aggressive targeted community outreach to support one of the only empirically validated approaches to reducing gun crime, which really represents a partnership between social service organizations, police and the community. And so we've been working pretty diligently with them to get that in place. The national institute for criminal justice reform. Finishing their first round of analysis is the first step take it. I'm very much looking forward to. I will just point out. It took well over a year to [11:27:33 AM] get the clearance and get them in the pipeline. I think we've got that address. But we need to have the same urgency about the prevention aspects and the violence prevention work as we do about having the troopers. Go out there. I thought you might have mentioned the work that's going on with the givens park. Community initiative. This is very much more emblematic of the one city approach where you have parks and watershed and a P D, the D a. And the county attorney all working together, to address challenges of that community with that community. They're using environmental design for safety as we're talking about these areas, which have the violent crime in the, I think it would be really good if we could think about not just surging deeper ps officers but surging the resources into those areas because what we're talking about with gps is deterrence. And focused deterrence is not going to do anything beyond the short run. We really have to be talking about that long term peace. So I wanted to make some [11:28:36 AM] of those points about the strategic part of how how we're thinking about this and how we have to broaden it, and I think it's important when we're talking to the community. That we don't lose sight of the work that we've been doing as a community to make people feel safe, which has many other dimensions, and there's a lot of good work. Being done, I think we, to understand whether this is fiscally sustainable and what it would mean. And also given the number of officers in the challenges recruiting, this may or may not be a sustainable approach. It's hard when we don't even know the number of troopers that are involved to really be able to understand. You know what we're talking about, or do we have an extra four cars? Do you have an extra 20 cars? Troopers like we need to understand that basic thing. It's really, really challenging for us. To make any statements, so we are going to need that kind of data. Is there a written agreement? There is not a [11:29:39 AM] written agreement. No, ma'am. Okay so should we as a council as Dallas did decide we wanted to not being gauging dps in this way. What is the exit strategy? What are what are the options for doing that if there's no written agreement, how does that happen? Well, I think that's probably question maybe for the manager, even the mayor because I think they kind of initiated some of these conversations to begin with. You know, dps is being a good partner for us right now. We have we have talked about, slash and the short answer is right now. We just don't know. We're trying to give it time to work. We as as has been described the initial deployment areas do not look like the deployment areas today, and, and we're seeing a dispersal of the violent crime calls that are coming into 911 from those areas. And prioritizing other parts of the city. Right now, I think that [11:30:40 AM] when we feel comfortable that, that we've stabilized, essentially stabilize the situation is when we're going to be having a discussion about whether dps stops its deployment or not. Okay well city manager. I think we need as a council. Whether that's an executive session or here. I think we need to have a better than a fuller understanding of how this works . Should something happen? Or should there be an issue which hopefully there won't be but you know, I mean, I don't think we understand that at this point, absent written agreement certainly. And we'll and we'll certainly, provide that information actually. Well think through the process of how that works. I just want to emphasize again and I guess you don't I can't emphasize it. We're in a crisis situation. With respect to staffing at a P D. This isn't just an would be nice to have it's a must have and we don't have it. And we haven't had it for a while. And so this is one [11:31:40 AM] way not to complete way, but it's one way of addressing it. And so before we begin to talk about what are the ways we pull the plug. Let's give our officers time to catch their breath because of the type of work that had to do over the last year or so. With these number of vacancies, I'd ask you give us that time and then let's see what happens with the crime rate. Let's see what happens with traffic fatalities. Let's see what the successes would be. Before we start thinking about what what is what's the exit strategy? And I might just say that, in all my conversations with with folks at the capital that are related ah to what this partnership would look like because there's been other discussions with people to capital about the fact that we have this partnership but one of the good things about it is we're not bound. Ah we have the ability to make decisions. With regard to length of time, how we want to go about doing things much the same way that you're talking here, and it's also [11:32:40 AM] important to keep in mind. Part of the context of all this is that, dps can pool work our streets. Regardless of whether there's a partnership that starts with the presumption that what they're doing is they're supporting and supplementing. And that's that's so what part of this agreement that sometimes gets lost is that it is the help that is needed, but it's done in such a way where a P D is providing the data and doing the kinds of things to allow for supplement support and collaboration. Thank you, I do have some other questions and again. I think we still have an oversight role as many of my colleagues who said to ask questions, and we haven't had the benefit of being in some of those conversations, and this is really been the first opportunity for us to engage in [11:33:41 AM] that publicly at this point in time, so I think there are appropriate. I would like to know what happens and what rules does dps follow? If there are major protests as a city and as a council and in terms of you, chief as the leader of a P D, we have changed a lot of rules about how we respond. Two protests. It is not without possibility that we experience that and I would like to understand what rules govern dps . If there are protests, we have said you can't use the rubber bullets and a lot of different things for crowd control. Help me understand what dps would be doing in that? Yeah. Thank you. So, just understand, please, just for context that we're in the capital city and particularly during session right now, we have protests essentially every weekend, their protests that happened here we have worked. Forever it feels like for many, many years and quite honestly decades with dps [11:34:42 AM] jointly on managing peaceful protests, you know, with regard to, you know their operational standards that they have as compared to a P D, they have they have theirs and kind of we have ours. Ours have largely been shaped by by events of the past by council direction by my direction as the chief on how we're going to handle it, and have been shared with gps and gps again. Wants to be a good partner understands. What our direction in this here in the city is and in every instance that we worked previously has allowed us to take the lead. On on protests that occur outside of their jurisdiction. Other words on capitol grounds they handle those, and we come in, if necessary, vice versa. So that generally has been how we've worked in the past and we will continue to work in the future. Okay, I think I may want to have more conversations with you on that and then with respect to body cams and other kinds of [11:35:45 AM] oversight mechanisms, you know if a dps officer is involved in an issue and their body camera footage, what are the rules about disclosure there and you know if they are interacting with 911, or there's a need to see those interactions. What what? What governs that situation policy would would govern and I think we're talking about mainly critical incident. So for instance, they're involved in an officer involved shooting. They would handle all of the administrative and criminal part of any critical incident that that they're involved in. So Texas rangers would would be the investigative body. And then they have their own administrative investigation that occurs as opposed to if one of my officers than then we have our process. Thank you, again. I think there's still some clarifications here that. I'm hearing from folks that that [11:36:45 AM] they want to understand better about how that is working and I think it would be better to have that clear before any sort of incident happens. So that and hopefully no incident will happen. I want to just go back to kind of where I where I started. We've been trying for a really long time to take a broader strategic view of how do we improve response times? How do we prevent crime, etcetera, and while in the short run, maybe, you know, we do need more officers in the way that you're doing. I don't know. Just having more officers is not the only way to improve response times and prevent crime. And I want us. You know, as we make these choices, which I hear from the city manager that he has particular reasons that he think this is important from an operational standpoint, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we have other tools. We have other things that our community has said are important. For them to feel safe [11:37:48 AM] . We have other things that we recognize are going to allow our officers to do their jobs more effectively allow them to focus on violent crime. Allow us to retain them if they're not having to be everything to all people at all times, and we cannot lose sight of that, as we move forward, and we try and address this. I am not comfortable just saying let's wait for six months and see how this we have an opportunity with new leadership to really be pushing on those other things and having the different departments work together. You know, the office of violence prevention should be working really closely with the police department, you know, and in these areas and trying to figure out how to design these crime intervention programs. You know, when it's a park that we're talking about part can be involved. We can use environmental design. What would happen if we put you know? We surged with those resources to, we have to be asking those [11:38:48 AM] questions, and I think our community is demanding that and it is it is, I think. Has to be part of the way forward. It is not sustainable. To do this. We don't have a clear solution to the officers between recruiting, etcetera, so we should be making those investments now, so that we can really address the issues here in our community. Thank you. Let me start actually, with a question for the city to see what exactly is a the jurisdiction of dps. Actually chief chikane got it exactly right. In the beginning of the presentation. Dps has statewide jurisdiction by state law. They enforce the public safety laws and are tasked with detecting and preventing crime. So even before this robust or more intentional collaboration with dps. They certainly had the authority to be here. So [11:39:48 AM] regardless of you know, county line, you know, city limits dps can and will enforce the law within the state of Texas and so implied within. That is that dps has the authority to pull people over in Austin arrest people in Austin. Again regardless of any partnership agreement with the city. That's correct. Chief where dps filing their the tickets that they're issuing. I believe if it is a moving violation in just to the peace court five. So, can they file in Austin municipal court? I asked that question and it wasn't entirely clear to me. I think they made an operational decision to file them and JP five for just to keep it. Simple. Keep it simple and keep it smooth. So from the city's perspective, then we don't know where. And how many the tickets [11:40:50 AM] are being fired because they're not being filed in and then as we can get that information from Austin municipal court, but if they're filing in, JP five, we're going to have to ask J P five to ah, you know, to turn over that information. Well on their own. They have to collect the data because they have to file a racial profiling report every year. Just like we do so you presumably they've got you know they've got the data also, municipal court, generally for us does not provide that data. We may pull the data the police , but, but, you know, I think largely, you're correct. So again. I'm just trying to think of the data and I know that we've requested it from dps, but just, you know, I don't know. You know when or how long it will take to get it. But the county attorney would have misdemeanor data in terms of arrests, for misdemeanor arrests. The district attorney would have felony data in terms of how many you know dps and not just how many. But what and who are are the I think the pertinent questions and then JP five would essentially be or potentially other jps. I'm not [11:41:50 AM] sure if it would only be JP five. But the other jps would have the details. In terms of the tickets. I think it's important that we get that as soon as possible, and I would hope that we can reach out to our county attorney attorney and jps to find out exactly what's going on and who's getting ticketed who's getting arrested and for what? Those are extremely important questions for the public. I completely agree that that you know again, your gun crimes your violent crimes. Those kinds of things like that we really got to ah to crack down on that. Drug crimes. You know marijuana very small, you know, class state jail felony level. Ah pathetic controlled substance crimes. Those are being declined prosecution at the at the D a level I'm I don't think that there's a ah that there's a grassroots kind of, you know, bubbling up to really hammer down on, you know, tiny amounts of pills or some kind of ah, illicit drugs. So I think it's [11:42:51 AM] very important questions in terms of I think public support for the program. The in terms of liability. Which again has become more and more of an issue in terms of the paths that we've made. If again, god forbid that there was some kind of serious incident involving dps, who gets sued. What. I'll answer it. Dps will be sued. Ah and in terms of disciplinary action, ah. Is dps . I'm assuming that they are not covered by chapter 1 43. They're not so any kind of disciplinary , for example, the one complaint that the opio forwarded over to dps should be publicly available there. Let me rephrase that. There is no confidentiality restriction or any kind of, you know open records. Restrictions on the report filed against dps is there yeah. That's probably [11:43:53 AM] question for dps. I'm not. I'm not too sure how they operate in that space. My sense of it would be as long as it's not appending crime as long as it's not a petty criminal investigation that there it would essentially be available to the public. So in some instances, in many instances, honestly, we may have more transparency into dps complaints filed against dps and the revolution with regard to complaints filed against gps, and we do against a P D. Ah! In terms of. The data available to the public that's been also and in discussing dps and you know the information that is out there. I know that there is your monthly report that is put out, which is just a monthly list of the arrests. Number of arrests type of arrest is that correct? That's correct and the monthly report and then I, and please again I'm my memory may not serve me while here, but I believe there's also a sector by [11:44:53 AM] sector report or something similar provided to the public safety commission. Ah every month it is can can you elaborate on that? Are you aware of that? Yes so that's the quarterly report from the department. And so we provide some information is provided at the sector level. Most of it is actually summary information from at the city level, so in particular, we look at numbers of calls for service and response times by sector with them. But that process is driven primarily by discussion with them, and we're in the process of changing what information is going to be shared. Okay? And I remember having a conversation or my office had a conversation with, assistant city manager Arellano a few months back, possibly year back, but my understanding was that there was a data portal being developed, or that was in process where we would be able to show share more data with regard to, for example, calls for service. Ah you know individual crimes in terms of not just like a monthly kind of snapshot, but a kind of [11:45:53 AM] longitudinal analysis so we can see what's going on in terms of criminal activity. So one of the department initiatives that I put in place upon getting here as African evaluation of the data sharing portals that the city has available. We do not have adequate technology to put forth anything that I believe is sort of commensurate with the level of transparency that the city desires. Most of that is a technology issues, so we have been working on modifications to underlying data systems for about two years to try to bring us to a point where ultimately we can put forth a new portal. Now you know that we have the current available applications crime viewer, for example, which was developed by ctm, and it didn't have a lot of at the time. It was useful, but I didn't have the forethought to still be useful now and so it's it gives some information about it has challenges. There's the portal currently for a pd incident, reports the internet report database. Similarly that gives you some information, but [11:46:54 AM] it's not easy to summarize and kind of understand what's happening. So we are working toward a new system. It does involve still at this point, substantial upgrades to one of our fundamental underlying databases, and I think the timeline on that's about 18 to 24 months. After that, then they'll have to be a substantial upgrade on one of the main servers that ctm to be able to support the amount of traffic we would expect. What we don't want to do is put forth a public portal solution that works when it's a few people looking for information, but any time that there's actually an event that would likely draw a large crowd, we don't want to crash. So again. There's a number of sort of fundamental steps. We have to take to be prepared for a new system and then we have to implement the new system. Ah so you said 18 to 24 months. Timeline on that, huh? So that's on the underlining the underlying database that are major record system runs on. It was an out it was an out of service Oracle database that there was no support for it was a huge I T risk. That's been now migrated to a current version of [11:47:55 AM] Oracle. Anyone's technically inclined Oracle is unique is the word I would use for it among databases. And so the department the ctm has to migrate that. To some version of sql database in order for it to be to play well, if you will, with portal systems. At the same time. We're also working with the vendor on cloud migration. So these things are happening parallel. Ultimately which path we take determines our specifications for the portal system. So that's where we're at with it, and I appreciate that, and I bring it up because we consistently hear, complaints concerns with regard to the amount of data that is available. I mean, obviously, policing and public safety is a major topic of public concern. Ah, and you know, working closely on project connected very similar situation where you have folks that are extremely knowledgeable, knowledgeable and dedicated that want access to data so that they can run their [11:48:56 AM] own analysis and provide feedback, both to the police department to us as individual council members. I welcome their help and assistance, and sometimes they can really kind of ferret out little details that that that some of us may miss. And I would really, you know, urge that especially in light of the questions that are coming up. I know. One of the questions has been kind of the call for service versus number of full time. Police employees, you know, what is that? Is it going up? Is it going down? You know the sector by sector analysis where the calls for service, you know, per sector. I think releasing a robust data set and again I understand there's operational concerns. I'm not saying that, you know, we need to see what where the police are in real time or anything like that. But you know, a three month delay on it, or, you know something like that to ah, solve for any operational concerns. I think that would be very well received by the community and would be very helpful in in, you know, helping us. Suss out public safety, you know, policy guidance, those kinds of ah of issues. And [11:49:57 AM] lastly, just a brief comment. I'm glad to hear there's a shifting balance there because a lot of the feedback that I was getting from my constituents, particularly, I'll say in the Lamar Ramberg area was that they were feeling over policed. And I've been trying to kind of, you know, go out and make sure to kind of just keep an eye on things and you know, there were a number of dps officers. I'd say aggressively patrolling that area. I don't know if that's still the case. Ah in terms of the week by week shifting that's going on. But and again, I understand their you know, serious concerns about safety and we have to respond to those calls for service to come out, but there is a balance to be struck where there is kind of a resentment, especially where you know a lot of the stops are just patrol stops for relatively minor traffic violations and tags and registrations and those kinds of things like that. So ah! We need better data exactly [11:50:59 AM] to see what's going on. But I would just urge both a P D and D P S to be extremely cautious and respectful of communities and their response to a swarm of cruisers. You know, stopping every single person that is, you know, going 35 30 or you know something to that effect. But but but I do appreciate the briefing, and I look forward to learning more about about the program. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I appreciate the presentation. I and my team are fortunate to get to go to see tech on Friday and go talk to some of the call takers and understand a little more how incoming 911 calls are triaged and how that system works. It was really fascinating to get the opportunity to do that. I wanted to ask a question about dispatch. So you know the calls come in. Someone takes the call and identifies all the details and make sure it's accurate before it goes to dispatch. Are they assigned at that point to [11:51:59 AM] an APD officer or a dps officer by nature of the call or? Yes so none of the calls are being assigned to dps officers. If there's no a P D officers that are available, they will sound the call out, say there's a call holding at this location, and then it's on gps. To go ahead and volunteer for the call, so we're not assigning them, and as dps troopers or even because we don't know necessarily what they're doing at that moment because they're not in our cat system for us to be able to even assign them. We are relying on them to either be available or make themselves available to go take that hot call. Like I said, stabilize the scene until APD can arrive and are those mostly the highest urgency calls as opposed to the lower urgency calls. That's correct priority. If that's the right terminology. Yes that is, and that's correct . Thanks and then I was curious in the memo that came out on the 13th. There was mention of 25 handguns and two of the shotgun [11:53:00 AM] rifle style guns. How does one determine that they need to be confiscated? You know, given that Texas seems to make it easier for people to get ahold of guns at younger ages at times , how how is it determined that they need to be confiscated? So there's a couple of different reasons why they might be confiscated. The first is, that if you are not legally allowed to own a weapon because of your criminal background which can they can determine at that time , then that weapon will be seized if it is used in the commission of an offense. Then it will be seized or if it's in your possession while you're committing some other crime. Then that can be an enhancer and they will be seized, so it just depends on the circumstances. Okay, that's helpful. And I do remember when some of these conversations have happened at the statewide level, public safety is often times gone and said you might be making our jobs harder. Because sometimes, folks shouldn't be able to access weapons so easily, [11:54:01 AM] especially if they have a history of violent crime and domestic violence and things of that nature. As far as the list of arrests and warrants. Are those numbers mutually exclusive , or are they different? I believe that they are that we're not talking about the same overlapping new charges versus old charges that are in the form of a warrant. Okay okay, that's helpful. And as far as traffic stops. Are those completely separate from everything else that might be on the list. And is there a breakdown of what types of traffic stops have been conducted? So there there is no breakdown of the of the types of traffic stops, and I think that some of the information that's being asked for along with other information related to the stops, but, that is a standalone category, and it might be happening as part of either part of that initiative, part of the violent crime initiative or part of the traffic safety initiative, okay? Okay that's [11:55:01 AM] helpful. And I also think mayor when you had stepped away there was a request from council member harper-madison about being able to talk with dps as well. In future conversations. There was mention of it going to public safety committee. I don't know if that's the appropriate venue. If it needs to be a different work session since I'm sure we're all curious about the details is, what we had talked about was bringing it to the public safety committee again back to the idea about how we we've been trying to figure out how best to utilize committees. And since we post those anyway, anybody can come and I will make sure as chair of the committee that if when, when? Not if when we're having reports like this, which will probably be the next time we have a report. I'll make sure everyone is aware through the message border and shouting it from mountaintops that, people are invited and come so that we can have this kind of robust. Discussion I think [11:56:04 AM] that's helpful, and I've got one more question for the chief on the on the gun topic. If it doesn't slip out of my mind. Oh, when they're confiscated, do they become property of dps? Or does a P D how does that process work? So I mentioned that briefly earlier, but just to clarify, every weapon that is seized by dps. They do not want to hang on to that gun. They want it to go if it's related to a crime that is occurring here in Travis county or heyzer, Williamson, whatever county it is in the city. Then it will be maintained and controlled by a P. D. And then upon disposal of the criminal case, they are, it will fall back under our disposal policy for that weapon , so they don't want to transport those weapons back to their their home jurisdictions. Okay, that's that's helpful to know because I was just curious. I think we're all kind of learning a little bit about. How does a pds jurisdiction versus dps? This jurisdiction work and trying to understand how this how? How this is going to function and my last point to [11:57:05 AM] the city manager, essentially highway you know, we had tried to start a conversation about allowing more either constables or sheriff's to be doing work inside the city limits on specifically traffic enforcement . There was a case on slaughter lane in circle C recently where a 19 year old person was going 90 miles an hour and the car in a tree. So the speeding is a huge concern. You know, we don't want people pulled over for, you know, small things. We don't want people to feel like they're being unfairly targeted. But I will just say, especially in southwest Austin. People are commonly going 90 or 100 miles an hour on the highway. And so if it is for speeding, aggressive driving things like that. I can say that the southwest community by and large supports trying to make sure that people are being respectful of the road and respectful of their neighbors. Given how dangerous that type of behavior is, so we've been trying to tackle that for a few. At least a year now trying to come up with creative solutions. And so [11:58:05 AM] there there are some portions of this that I think are going to make some people safer. But we have to be very mindful of the perception of safety. And I know of some folks have mentioned to me just the terminology about how how people feel safe and how we as policymakers, do that. And there are some folks that feel safe when there's police around, and there's folks that don't feel safe because police are around and we need to be very sensitive to that, because our community has has asked us to be responsive. But thank you for your answers. Thank you. Council member harper-madison. I think I saw you with your hand up. Do you wish to be recognized? I believe you're still on mute. Thank you for recognizing me, mayor. It turns out that, our mayor pretend as all my questions. Very good. Thank you, so, councilor pool do you wish to be recognized? I guess I [11:59:08 AM] would just kind of encapsulate all of the comments and the questions and the information that we've gotten today as really helpful throughout for everyone, not just us sitting here and folks at the at the city but also the residents. I think that the information sought, council member of Al, I think you you used the word balanced. And we're looking for that in the community. There are people who are looking for and asking for, a presence from our police department and we all want that to be the appropriate presence. And so I think when we balance out the needs of the community on both sides of the question, then we will get to the right place. And I think mayor that the conversation that we're having here on these issues is really going to help us get there and also for everyone in the public to understand how hard we're working in order to achieve that balance. Thank you. Mayor. Yes very good, robust conversation. Yes. Okay yes, counselor, Ryan [12:00:10 PM] alter said one follow up question on some of the other when we talk about overtime. How is dps presence? Effecting our use of overtime or you scaling back in any way is it the same? No it's the same council member . We have not scaled back on our backfill on the number of overtime officers that they were having a higher so they're just a supplement. And whenever if I assume you're going to get some requests from various offices for data, if you wouldn't mind sharing that with all the offices are through the I figure, but just. Members thanks for the robust discussion and all the questions, gentlemen. Thank you all for being here and answering those questions members at this point, the city council will go into a closed session and we will be going into a closed session to take up one item and that is pursuant to section 551071 of the government code. The city council will discuss legal issues related to [12:01:10 PM] project connect by the way out of E one has been withdrawn. Is there any objection going into the executive session on the item announced? Hearing none. The council will now go into executive session council member harper-madison. If you'll please use the webex link members will meet in the executive session room. Thank you all. [12:02:12 PM] (Executive Session) [12:47:10 PM] We are out of closed session. We discussed legal issues related to Item: E2 Project Connect. There being no business become, before the City Council Work Session, With no objection we are adjourned.