[Music] good evening everyone this is the city council work meeting today is February
the 19th 2025 the time is 6:30 p.m. this meeting meeting has been duly advertised in the City newspaper in conformance with the open public meetings act otherwise known as the Sunshine Law call please P here
kimona pres clay oy present ftis here sson here Thomas here six and for a record um Council and we um had to attend a [Applause]
funeral next um may I have approval of previous minutes motion second all in favor we have Rick Rick Adela did I say that right yes ma'am here um from the local assistance
Bureau of of Chief he's from uh the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and this is just a presentation the floor is all yours sir thank you so good evening everyone and thank you all for coming as uh the young lady
said my name is Rick richardella I'm a retired police chief um my partner is Bob simino will'll be a part of the presentation he is also a retired police chief and we put this program together so um can everybody hear me or do I need
to use this microphone good all right tell me I'm loud at home so the Department of Community Affairs um I'm part of the local assistance Bureau and Mike Rogers is the director of local government services um
you've already heard from me and Bob is the local assistance Bureau manager in charge of our program so the first few slides are our standard slides that we use from commissioner Suarez where she wants to let everybody know when we're
ever ever doing these presentations that community fairs can do a lot for your municipality that you may not be aware of some of the things that we talk about are local government services codes and standards Housing and Community Resources local planning Services fire
safety disaster Control Office of information privacy and oversight for the New Jersey Redevelopment Authority so those are all the programs that we have in Department of Community Affairs and the divisions that are within it again what can we do for you for the
state of New Jersey DCA provides administrative guidance fiscal support technical assistance which is what you're getting today for local government community development organizations individuals to improve the quality of life in New Jersey the local assistance Bureau which is part of the
local government services that was created in 2019 um provides a fair consistent and judicious report that promotes efficiency effectiveness and performance without jeopardizing Public Safety while exercising good fiscal
restraint the other thing I like to mention to especially the members of the governing body and the people in our attendance today is DCA has an actual program book that's online that you can go on the link and pull it up and everybody's name is in there so if you have something you want to talk about
affordable housing you want to talk about something with local government you can go into that book look at it it's about um 200 pages has a lot of information that's in it again the commissioner um Jacqueline Suarez wants to make sure that whenever we're doing these presentations that everybody knows
that we have this book and it's available for them to follow up on so again professional backgrounds on the people that were involved in this report we have over 60 years of law enforcement behind us um I'm a retired police chief 26 years as a law enforcement officer up
in up north in Essex County seven as the police chief um Bob 36 years in law enforcement 16 years as the police chief up north and he was a deputy Emergency Management coordinator in the department I worked
20 years for local government services soon as I retired from the police department I got hired I also worked for the local for um icma which is the international City County Managers Association they're worldwide and I was characterized as a subject matter expert
I traveled all around the country doing police reviews Bob is has been involved with us for just two years now he's worked 5 years as a security sales consultant as you can see he was trying to help us with the uh technology over here before and um he went to the FBI
Academy and he's also went to the UK for the police Staffing for the Chiefs Association so he's got a a wealth of background and I have to tell you that at our place of business um we're always being constantly called upon to um help municipalities with with any kind of
government issues whether it's police Fire EMS or the municipal courts So today we're going to provide Pleasantville police dep Department agency with an operational study by means of adopting Innovative best practices which come out of our fiscal
office to R talk about responsive Solutions regarding police Staffing levels we provide relative facts examples and recommendations and principles of organization that are in every one of our reports we recognize that there's no
one right way to put a police department together we don't do one size fits all we have to make everything um look at every little piece of it and what we've done in the past has been tried and tested for over 20 years in fact the IP
is over 40 years with some of the things that you're going to see in this report so some of the facts recognizing the fiscal crisis as Pleasantville as all the towns in the state of New Jersey are all suffering with um struggling with economic uncertainty so the
commissioner at that time who was lieutenant governor um Oliver created this program the local assistance Bureau in 2019 and we put it together and when we put it together we wanted to make sure that um we would be able to provide some kind of assistance to municipalities
when they called upon us so we provide these Financial any cwn that's having Financial challenges they can call us on the phone and ask us to come in and look at their Department more interesting is we don't only look at police we can look at fire we can look at EMS we can look at codes we can look at any aspect of
government when we started the program in 2019 we had five individuals working in the local assistance Bureau we have 19 now so the new commissioner Suarez has really put her heart on her sleeve to really get this program up and running
with regard to the program we also have taxpayers concerns that I'm sure sure that the people in this um dis have heard about from people complaining about high taxes and things of that sort so what we do is we come up with some ideas that will help you come
up with some fiscal stability the things that we use in doing the evaluation on the police department are all the accepted practices that are issued by the Attorney General's office or the issues that are issued from FIA I'm sure the law enforcement officers that are in this room today understand about Kalia
for the people that are involved on the Das is the or organization down in Washington DC or the New Jersey associations of chiefs of police that actually come in and do an evaluation on your department to see if you're evaluated and if you're doing everything
right and I think am I right Lieutenant we are certified uh as far as accreditation yes no not yet working on it we were years ago okay not anymore okay well it's a recommendation probably should get recertified and the New Jersey State Police New Jersey State
Chiefs Association we'll come in and look at it but these are all the aspects that we look at and things that we take into consider and that's where we draw our information from so there's a variety of models that come up with police Staffing everybody
has an idea on how do you think they should come up with policing and how we're going to structure a department so we have five that they've been using for the last 40 50 years one is based on crime Trends that's a good one except when the crime goes down law enforcement
goes down so you want to have something that's labeled that's even the other item is per capita and you'll see this later on we put a slide in here about it if it's some of the people like to use like 2.5 officers per thousand people that's not a good one either because if
you get a population goes down then you're going to reduce the police department so you have to have something that's equal the other one is minimum Staffing or budget level well this is all we can afford or this is all we can have on board that's not a good one
either but the New Jersey but the International Association of chiefs of police down in Washington DC came up with a program a standard that you can Benchmark how to figure out how many police officers you need in your department and we have that formula
built into this slide presentation that you all have in front of you so you'll be able to follow along to see what it is again over the years this approach has been tried and tested and accepted around the country as the National Standard for figuring out how to come up
with um Staffing for police officers so when you're doing an assessment you have to come up with ideas on what you're going to be looking at to care collect the data analysis and you have to go into the cad system the computerized aided dispatch system which the chief
was very good in giving us all the information that we needed to do the analysis on the program but while you're doing it you also also have to look at other issues regulations and compliances to make sure you're not violating the fair labor standards act you don't want the police officers to work too long or too little you want to get your best
bank for your buck and you want to make sure the officers are working the proper shifts at the right time when the crime is occurring so the IP came up with this uh scientific and mathematical concept they actually came up with a maical
mathematical science to figure out how many police officers you need in Department although the system is not perfect but it's much more effective than any of the other systems the four systems that I mentioned to you earlier and again it's the best one that they're
using all around the country first thing you got to figure out is how often do your police officers come to work everybody in this room thinks everybody works 2080 5 days a week 40 hours the police officers work
27 24/7 so you have to come up with how often the officers come to work now when officers come to work you have to deduct their vacation time their leave time their training time away from the 2080 so you might come up with maybe 17 or
1,800 hours a year that officers actually come to work after they have all their Rel time so you have to factor that in here if you don't Factor it in and come up with a relief Factor you won't have enough officers to patrol your town so that's the reason why you have to come up with how often the
officers come to work and in this particular case we have found out over the last 25 years of doing these reviews that officers come to work between 1700 and 18800 hours a year the rest of the time is used for leave
time so how the formula works onethird of the officer's time is answering calls the other third of his time is writing the report so when he goes on the job and he gets to the scene he writes a report that's the second third the last
third is what they call unobligated time that's the time that the police officers are riding around looking for hazards looking for problems stopping Motor Vehicles suspicious people whatever it might be so that's the other third the first third is going to the job the
second third is taking a report and the third third is is the um part where you have to do um look around for disorderly or special attentions or things of that sort so what you see on the bottom of this slide is the actual formula that
they came up with from the iacp where you you use calls for service times how much time it's consumed on a job now most police departments are between 30 and 45 minutes and for the officers in
the room it's like everything so if you got a barking dog we all know how long we're on that job but if you have a DUI or you have a domestic violence case we know it could be 2 hours by the time you get the judge on the phone and you're going to find out if you're going to release the person or not so that's the formula that equals
how many police officers Patrol officers that you need on the street in your community this is how it's broken down when you look at the pie chart the next item is how the calls come in this is what you're seeing at the cad system when it comes in most of
the times it's a citizen initiated call unless it's an officer initiated call where the officer might be out on a motor vehicle stop or he sees a suspicious person or he sees a crime in progress that's the second item the other item is the administrative tasks where he's writing a report and of
course the next item is when the chief or the captain or the lieutenant speak to him and they say to him I want you to give extra attention to 123 Main Street that's part of the cost for service that you're putting into the system to make sure that you're carrying your the guys are getting the proper credit for the
jobs then you add up the total reported events and then you have to apply the formula to it understanding the fact that motor vehicle stops directed patrols do not count for calls for
service it's only the actual 911 call that's being sent to the job so in this particular case the chief provided me from the cad system which I think comes from a Harbor Township yes a Harbor Township
um 37,000 calls for service in 2023 that's what that's how many calls your officers responded to which I think is a very high volume of call um detectives and traffic stops are not calculated in this the average time
for the officers going to these calls and getting back in service was 30 minutes and then the actual Statewide average as we talked about earlier based on the 2080 is between 17 00 and 18800 hours that officers come to work so
we're going to be using these two numbers in the formula that's created by the IAC so we have to multiply the 37,000 calls for service times 30 minutes we all base it upon 100 so it's
050 um it come up with a number 18,000 185 thanks Bob um of obligated time you multiply it times three which by way is the formula that I gave you before and it tells you how many officers you divide it by the 1700 and
it tells you how many officers you need for patrol in this particular case we need 32 police officers to be on patrol in this town not sergeants not detectives not lieutenants not captains none of that just your patrolman on the street
answering jobs again this is what the formula looks like and you're going to keep seeing this over and over and over again and the people on the DI it's in your report you're going to see this over again because I try to explain it in the algebra form in the mathematical form
and in the pie chart that I showed you earlier so it's 37,000 * 30 minutes which is 05 by three consumed administrative and unobligated time divided by 1700 how often the cops come
to work you divide it by 1700 comes up with 32 Patrol officers on on the job again the formula my little thingy works it does but it won't work on the screen 37,000
calls multiply it by 0.5 you get the 185 185 * 3 55,000 and you divide it by the 1700 and it comes up with 32 it's a very simple formula with all the information that you put into the
program well we figured out here is what it's costing this municipality to send the police officers on jobs so you got 37,000 calls for service the budgeted amount that was provided to my office was
9,340 th000 and 412 we divide that into the 30 the the amount of money for the budgeted amount it says that it costs $2500 to send a police officer to a call for service in this town criminal investigations guess what we
got a formula for that too so in this particular case um we look at the Uniform Crime Report that's provided by the New Jersey Cate police every year and we use those numbers to calculate how many detectives you need in your
department in this particular case we had 803 part one crimes in this T and by the way we're using the new iers system here so we had to make sure that we researched the numbers correctly and the
chief was able to provide us the New Jersey State Police neers crime report was 803 so we have found out over the years that Urban cities the detectives can handle about 80 cases a year and in Suburban towns they handle 120 so in
this particular case we took the 803 part one crimes we divided by the 80 and by the 20 and we came up with 10 detectives needed in this community and you'll see later on in our chart how we
added up the 32 officers and then the 32 I mean 32 officers and then the 10 uh investigators that are on uh the department in this particular case you have 800 crimes we divided it by the
budget and it cost you [Music] 11,363 $1 to send an officer to take a report on a crime a burglary into a house you know narcotics offense whatever it might be that's what it cost in this municipality which by the way I
use this formula with the division of the budgets every place we go some are high some are low I did L Como it was $40,000 a call $40,000 a call guess what L Como is no longer a police department they come now with
Belmar just C to much to run the police department um we also did an analysis on how many residents are paying for the uh cost of service in the town you got about 20585 residents which came from the
Census reporter and it's each resident's paying about $453 a year for the police department which I don't think is a lot of money for Police Department um households are paying about $1,389 for your Police Department just
the police department next item is our recommendations that you maintain the 59 police officers that you have in the police department no more no less the police department is set up ideally from
our scientific and mathematical review that we put together in the department couple of the other things we recommended is that you create a class to two officer feeder program so you can get the diversity from the community
onto the police department go out and beat the bushes go to the faceb groups get them all involved which by the way I was assigned to Atlantic City and the same thing I'm preaching to you right now is the same thing we preached to Atlantic City and guess what they got 25
police officers from the city from diversity and they put them in the police department and they're now full-time C because you know civil service now if the person's living in a community they don't have to take Civil Service tests they can just be put on the police department so you can create
it by coming up with a class two theater program Implement a robust comstat City stat program there's two fold for this one is the governing body gets to meet the citizenship at least twice a month
and listen I didn't create this I didn't come up with the idea it started in New York City and I just stole it and brought it down here to you guys in fact I gave it to l City first the but the bottom line is besides the citizens
coming in and meeting the members of the governing body they're also meeting the police officers so it creates a bond between the governing body the police officers every month or twice a month and the citizens and what happens is the
citizens come up complain about an issue they hand it off to the police department whoever is in charge is in IND and then the people come back two weeks later and guess what we do tell them the results of their complaint and this has been absolutely fantastic in
Atlantic City the Atlantic City Press has been raving about the program that we have in place in fact when we kicked it off with the lieutenant governor in October or November I think it is that shows you in here um we were doing it every other week and the people room was
pack with people but after all their complaints were taken care of stops lineing down tree limb down kids carrying on at 2:00 in the morning all those things were adjusted code enforcement there was a strong code
enforcement DPW and you'll see later on we brought all the department heads in to City stat com stat was for police City staff is for you guys and the governing bodies and the and the department heads when somebody would come up and complain about a street sign
being down or something's leaking or this isn't right they would hand it off to that person right at that meeting and that there was an obligation for that director to call that person before we next meeting to make sure they had the item adjusted one of the issues that
came up pertaining to police one of the pastors came up in front of us and said I have kids dealing drugs in the alley behind my church yeah guess what happened the next day the cops made made a grab they arrested
the guy guns narcotics everything they're like Heroes now so when they bring something to the governing body they complain about it and it gets taken care of and resolved right away so we want you one of the other things we want to maintain is a good Community U
policing program which I think you guys already have just from the time that I did an on-site visit and I wrote around with some of the administrative officers they all explain to me how your community policing program works and it seems to be working fantastically
they're out there they're they're touching with the the community they're definitely coming up with good ideas and they're officer friendly when when they're involved in the community um so many other observations I wanted to bring on and this is for
especially for counselor is um I observed that department is well run with the supervisors that we have in the department the guys and gals seem to know what they're doing in the department and how did I know that I wrote around with them and they showed me the town and they showed me the areas
of are problems they took me out to the Water Area they said this is where the rappers come I mean it was it was fantastic learned a lot about all the areas that they had and the people that were getting you know um help for their drugs
um I wanted to make sure that um the Miss poy explores the feasibility of securing Grant funds whatever might be out there and the reason why I say this is our office offers a lot of Grants that's why want I want you to look at
that DCA formula book that came out they give a lot of Grants they give grants for EMS they give grants for fire they give grants for recreation I don't know if anybody has taken advantage of any of those but we have those grants that are available for you to take advantage of
jump on them get them we gave out 512 recreation grants last year for $1 million these towns are going crazy building playgrounds I'm sure you guys could want to um build some playgrounds you know it's interesting
Bob and I Bob and I have visited Savannah Georgia and for those of you who have never been or those who have been you go down there at the end of every block is a playground it's like in this it's beautiful you know and they're giving they're giving that we gave that
$1 million take advantage of it Governor Murphy's doing his budget address next week and the I understand the recreation grants are going to be in there the other thing I wanted to mention to you is leak grants these are the grants where if you want to do something with a
neighboring Community you can do it so if you want to do something with EMS you want to do something with fire you want to do something with codes you can get startup cost from us up to $400 $400,000 and guess who the guy is that
runs those grants you I'm the guy with the check you're our best friend best that's I know a guy would have checked um the other thing I wanted to mention is that we came up with the idea that you need
the 59 officers you should make the promotions in the department don't be stalling on them anymore because when I talk to these guys you know I heard it's a moral they're all acting they're all acting they're all acting so move ahead with it they're
getting paid for it anyway they're they're getting the money so why not just make them the rank that they are the other issue I wanted to bring out to you is something that really bothered me and it bothers me in all the police departments that I go to in fact Bob and I are doing a presentation tomorrow in
Trenton and Dr Ley who is the criminal justice um doctor down in Stockon is helping us up in Trenton and she's helped us in in um Stockon she's concerned about long-term
illnesses for police officers long-term illnesses you got your attorneys in the Room Tracy Mr um blickman they should be attacking maybe it's a bad word they should go be reviewing these cases where
the officers are out on long periods of time it's hurting the department the overtime whatever it might be and and let me just explain one other thing and this is just my opinion if you have and Bobby will tell you the same thing if you have officers out for
a long period of time and then they come back you know what happens after they come back for a little bit they go back out again and before you know it you're carrying this guy gal for 25 years and I'm sure these guys gu guys and GS in this room will tell you that because I
think they're a little upset with the fact that these people have been on long-term illanes and haven't come back the one that they cited to me is that they saw a body at a scene listen we've all seen bodies at the scene every one of us we didn't like it and you know
what we gave them employee assistance we helped them we got to move on this you have two Good attorneys I know Mr Gman for a long time bring these people in in my department if you were out for over a
year you know what we did we sent you involuntary pension papers guess what happened miraculously they're fit for Duty oh my God why you laughing he knows I'm
telling the truth seriously this is something you got to look at in your department I mean when when I did the Ride Along both officers told me the same thing that these guys are out gals are out for a long period of time it's putting
pressure on the department so many people don't want to come in you know today's are they Millennials or what are they or G G generation whatever it is they want their they want their time off they don't want that they don't want
that beat like we did we were hungry for the money um they want their time off so it's important that you know we we try to attack this issue and get the people back to work and if they can't work there's a there's a direction for them
they can get a a Disability Pension or they can get a 65% pension from pensions with regard to that but this is something that you really need to look at and this is something that Dr Le has emphasized to us over and over again in all the towns that she's been in with in
with us on um one of the things Stockton University came here and did a review on the Pleasantville police department and one of the things that they that out in I think the three-page report that they did was civilianization so the dis and the
administration should be looking at jobs in the police department that could be done by civilians not sworn because we all know sworn officers cost a lot more than civilian people costs so we should explore the feasibility of looking at something like this now what we've used
in the past and and Bob and I used this in our departments is is a retired police officer who wants to leave the job he can come back and do the job as a civilian he doesn't lose the camarad you
know his knowledge in Atlantic City they brought back 20 officers that were retired to work in the surveillance Center the reason why they're doing that because these cops you know how to spot crime so why not bring them back for $20 an hour and let them sit in there and
watch the boardwalker sit on the major streets and if you read the atlan City Press you see a lot of times the surveillance Center C somebody the surveillance Center C somebody so you should look at maybe retired people bringing them back to do the job it could it could be firearms in Patterson
when I was up there a retired cop came back it was the firearm instructor he did firearms for the police department when he was there he came back and he did it as a civilian that's more boots on the ground with regard to it the other thing we're going to talk about very quickly cuz I don't want up
too much of your time is the Baltimore City staff program this is where the program originated at down in Baltimore Maryland the mayor who later became the governor for the state of Maryland came up with this program and the people that
you see in that room are the department heads and the police department in this room they map the crimes and they map the issues which is very easy to do with the cad system system that we have in
the police department I'm sure that the police department's already mapping crimes based on you know um surge areas and things of that sort so it's not like we're Reinventing the wheel it's something that they're probably already doing but we're going to enhance the program with this city sta
program so comstat is a police management tool created by the New York City Police Department in 1994 and what it does it analyzes the statistics and the areas that crimes are taking place and what they do with that mapping is they put
the crimes on the map and they overlap them and wherever the darkest spot is on the map is where they tell the neighborhood stabilization unit which we'll talk about to go out there and concentrate on that area so we're going to recommend that but you know I think
the Chiefs already doing something like this it's like I'm not reinvent the wheel I'm just trying to give it a little thead but I think the Chiefs already come up with a program that's similar to this that we have the main thing I want to emphasize is that I want
to create a bond between the agend the people on the dasas the police department and the citizens so they're all in the same room together and they're all listening to the same things that are coming up and then you can call the chief the next day and say hey did you hear about that thing did you take
care of it and then you report on it you know you're what you're doing is you're holding people accountable for what they're supposed to be doing and you'd be surprised when the meeting is coming up everybody starts to scary like what happened at the meeting what am I supposed to be following up on so they
can give a good report and you'll see later on here how Atlantic City sets it up and and the people on the the Departments um HR DPW um I can't think of the other the Law Department they're all on this city
a dis and they're answering questions from citizens that came up and they those citizens aren't afraid to drill down on those um department heads when they didn't get something taken care of like they complained about a tree or a race sidewalk or something of that
sort so Bill Bratton I'm sure you guys all know about this guy he's from New York City he's from Boston cops probably know all about him he's the one that came up with this idea of analyzing crime statistics and then concentrating
on those areas so he's the one that comes up with it he went from Boston to New York to LA went all over the country and what did he Institute this program everywhere he went putting two cops on every corner
in New York City Times Square and people felt safer that's what we got to do here got to have this program City stat com stat with the police the citizens and the people under dasas to make sure you let them know it's safe to be in this community you can play and have fun and
raise children in this area this is what it looked like when when Bratton took over to the police department all those pluses for crimes robbery um Grand Larsen I mean look at
those numbers 48% 42% he took over 6 months later crime went down 5.4% just by coming up with a program where you kept everybody accountable in the department and in the City with
regard to doing their job quality of life issues can be controlled by the police and the governing body easiest thing in the world crime is a little tough you know you go by a guy or gal they break into a house you don't see
them you know you drive by them again you don't you don't see the guy or G you broke they broke into the house quality of life complaints are the easiest ones to control and the ones that the people most are concerned about that they care about when somebody calls up boom box
double parking um nobody's at the crossing guard Corner those are all quality life issues that you want to be responsive to so that's why you have to have the city stat and crime stat together so this is what it looks like when you're doing com stat and City
stat for Pleasantville you're going to use the city stat program in Baltimore and you're going to use the com step program in New York down here in the police department and the great great thing about it is we will come down and help you set the program up just like we
did in Atlantic City just like we did in Patterson we do this and guess what no question we'll help you set this up but let me tell you you got a smart group behind us I think they'll catch on very well I mean I spoke with these
lieutenants and captains they got their they got their act together so and November 19th no November 9th yeah I know I need glasses my wife tells me all the time um in 2022 we implemented this program Lieutenant with
Lieutenant Alber from um the governor's office put the program in place and we set it up in Stockton University that's Dr Ley she's the young lady who helped us put this program
together and you can see in the background what the PowerPoint looked like and all the people that were involved in it and it was this real handsome guy I didn't know if you picked up on it or not we saw right you picked up on right but I said this to my boss to look
at she goes who's the cute looking guy in the front this is what it looked like when we kicked it off with the cops in the room citizens coming in I mean and that was the lieutenant Governor's um
commissioner um they at that time time my director jacn Suarez who is now the commissioner of this program and as I told you earlier she wears her heart on her sleeve with this program with the local assistance Bureau she loves the program and this is what the DI looked
like again there's this nice looking guy on the end little robust around around here this is the city stack individuals and this particular case the
law Department's there the code person's there the HR person's there the DPW person's there the one with the red mark on his face that's the um fire chief because the fire chief was there because we were getting complaints on fire prevention for fire inspections so we
had to look at it you know soon as they go in and look at it you know what happens they put the chairs back in front of the exit and then somebody complains about it so he want to check on it so those are all the individuals the police chief of course was at the at the meeting with us but I wanted this picture to show you that the department
heads come to the meeting and if you have it at 5:00 at night they could still be here it usually doesn't last more than an hour you know in the beginning you're probably going to get a lot of residents because they want to come in and gripe and complain about things but once you start to correct some of the issues and you start to
create that Bond it starts to drop off and before you know Atlantic City is down to once a month we were doing it bonly now they're down to once a month mon because the activity we've taken care of a lot of the activity and the people got a complaint they know the DAT
to come in and they can watch it on live stream so they can look at it so again um the neighborhood stabilization unit which I think the chief already has in place would work
off of the comstat city set so if something comes in like that Pastor complaining about drugs in the alley they pass it to the neighborhood stabilization unit in Atlantic City the next day they were there so these officers who work in this neighborhood stabilization unit have to be fluid so
that when a complaint comes in they're able to take care of they can't be working like a regular schedule they have to be fluid usually it's about two or three officers that are involved in it one supervisor is involved in the program so specialized unit yes yes I
mean how how I would do it is you look for the the eager be on patrol and that eager beaver is the guy or gal that's going to be in the neighborhood stabilization separate from the detective yes but they could answer to
council they could answer to the detective um this is what we came up with on the structure of the department you currently have a police chief you have three captains you have four lieutenants 10 Sant 10 detectives which you all know we got from the crime
reports and the 31 um police officers that was based on the calls for service it comes out to having 59 police officers now I didn't make this number up I didn't pull it out of the air I didn't say it was based on a budget it's
based on a mathematical scientific concept that this is what your police department needs you build a police department from the bottom up like a house the foundation is your 31 officers the other 10 officers that are working
detectives you need them to follow up on cases you need sergeants to supervise the officers that are on the street and you need a lieutenant overlooking the ship and the captains are in each division criminal uh criminal
investigations Patrol or Administration I want to tell you something that probably not all of us are aware of um Bobby would know more than me because I've been out 20 years he's only out five this camera system thing where you
have to look at the officer's cameras all the time that's important and the prosecutor's office wants you to look at those cameras and those cameras are being reviewed by these lieutenants and captains in the department and they're looking at it to
make sure that the officers are doing the right thing they're doing it they're inspecting it randomly or they're inspecting it based on a complaint that comes in it's very very labor intensive and time consuming so don't think we can
cut these upper excellance officers because their job now is the liability of the department this is where you could get sued if you don't follow up on these programs it's very very important that you understand that they're looking
at these cameras all the time and look at you how many officers you got on the street citizen calls up the officer will Embrace to me first thing the C's got to do he's got to look at it or the lieutenants got to look at it the other thing I wanted to tell you is that the lieutenants in the department and again
I don't know if you're aware of this they're on call for free on the weekends you got a criminal complaint comes up you know what they do the officer Sergeant sends it to them the lieutenant is reading the complaint to
make sure the body of the complaint has the probable cause in it he sends it back and approves he has not put in an overtime slip for them that's part of their job duties in their Administration that means that if you're an officer in the department you're getting paid via
salary employee unless it's a heinous issue where the lieutenant has to be called in or the DB people have to be called in but something that I thought was very unique in this department was that these lieutenants are home and they get a call or they're out to dinner and
they got to look at this complaint which I thought was very unique for the Department yes sir earlier you said that we have we should should have four lieutenants and you said that the four oversee the shift correct two two are and you have the other one's in the
bureaus two overlook the shifts let me just make sure am I correct we have two Patrol liut tenants one seeing over squad one and two and one on three and four we have a investigations lieutenant and Community placing and training Comm right so we have lieuten on the Shi
then they wouldn't have to worry about being set that home they would be in the street especially working on the weekends but you know when I first came down here councilman I looked at that but the department is working so efficiently with the way they have the structure now it's not broken so let's
not fix it it's doing fine the other thing I wanted to recommend is that um the police officers already doing a great job on community policing um um their hours of operation they get out of the car they walk around
um we talked about the city staff program and when we have the city staff program the police Command Staff should be at the meetings so they can answer any questions that they can be passed on and the only other thing I thought that we could recommend is that the community policing individuals should be
generating reports and I don't know are they yeah they do that's just like a standard that they should be doing something like that so so here's your shot Q&A no no I got to go no questions okay yes sir Hi how are you so I my question
is the cost factor I know that you said that you'll come in and set up com stat but is that a subscription is there a maintenance fee that isn't that something that has to be maintained ongoing because I know that the discussion we had with the former je in
2023 was that there were some cost um what would what would be the I I don't know that's why I asked you was there I'm familiar with comad I think it's wonderful I I represent the city of Department as well where East Orange where Cordo brought comat in 2005 yeah
and all those cameras and all those cameras which are fabulous I'm well familiar with right so and crime dropped off and we know the hot spots and the zones and they you know but I always heard and I don't know that's an administrative issue so I've never delved into it that there was a cause Factor so I know that that's something
they would interesting if you're saying there is no cost Factor then there'd be absolutely no reason not to do it so I would ask if the department and Lieutenant I'm sorry I'm going to ask you because you've you've been helping
us with the answers so far are you is the department able to generate reports sufficient enough to be able to conduct a comat absolutely okay so they don't it sounds like they don't need a additional
equipment that would be required to do the comstat that Rick has described for you well there's the manual where they're actually doing a manual calculation of the crimes that are taking place to create an analysis
on where crimes may take place in the future versus having a the ability through some type of software computerized program to have it automatically creating the data and spitting out the reports I know from a crude perspective that that's what
happens in the municipalities that that have Comcast that I'm familiar with right so most departments these days and I didn't visit with Pleasantville they they have computerated dispatch depending upon the type of system that they
have those systems can create certain reports that would be able to provide the hotspot information that Rick talked about so that comstat could be conducted and resources could be directed to the
areas where those hotpots for crime or even quality light violations would occur um I couldn't tell you exactly but it sounds like based upon the Lieutenant's answer that sufficient information is able to be developed by
the existing systems so that they can do that you know I I don't know the age of their their software I don't know all the components of their software but it sounds like that a very at least a basic form of prat could be conducted and it
really comes down to the data and the accountability of going back to the areas that have been identified as problem areas and determining if there's been any change or Improvement so that's really the concept I got so and you're familiar with what the police department
normally does and I I don't know what how they run their their crime their administrative crime reports is everything runs from Sunday night Sunday night Monday morning to Sunday night at
23:59 you take all the crimes and things that occur during that period of time on Monday they do an analysis inh house with their computer computerized A dispatch that I talk about and it generates the information that
information is then generated to all the commanding officers in the department and on Wednesday when they have comat the chief or you know other departments I went to normally the chief would sit and the captain or the deputy chief
would run the com that meeting so the chief can think about command center right yeah and yeah command center right and then would then analyze the crimes and hold people accountable or why is this going on Lieutenant why is this happen happening Sergeant what are we
doing about this issue now if you went ever went to New York because I did and watch them conduct a comat meeting it was embarrassing I didn't want to have those people drilling down on me because every one of those lieutenants and
captains that were in those precincts knew all the crimes that were going on and they had a policy in the department that said anybody you stop and talk to you have to do a warrant check on them one person they didn't
check the guy was wanted for attempted murder on a police officer now can you imagine the cop confronting the person who just assaulted or tried to kill a police officer and you're talking to him and you never even checked to see if there was anything wanted
them that's the kind of stuff holding people accountable to make sure they're doing their jobs on the street which often times gets confused with quotas as well careful we don't talk about well but that happens RK well that that's a
whole different unconstitutional you know we have a thing at the Chiefs Association just so you know and I'm sure these guys canar with it if somebody's not doing their job the chief's Association says you put
a sergeant in that guy's car or gal's car and point out areas that are concerned and make sure that they're handling it guess what there's a car parked on the corner over there in violation guess what somebody just speak down the street I just saw a car go
through the stop sign and you don't want that Sergeant to ride in the car doing that to you all night long so guess what happens the cop starts to perform listen a white paper from the Chiefs Association it's on their website you can read it
that's what they use I you're talking to me like I'm I'm but I also live in the in the world of litigation I know I know I know you including police officers I know so I know but I was
concerned we're on right now but I'm really more concerned about just the the cost factor that was my question because whether or not they had the capacity to implement comat the way in which it should be implemented even if you were up right the main thing is you got the
com stat you do City Staff first and you follow with the com stat so the people see the officers anything come up department heads answer all the questions and then everybody leaves and then the chief or the captain runs the
um program for the com and the the captain's holding the information that was generated for the whole week before that and then what comes out of it is is you know what we got a problem 1 2 3 Main Street this fluid group of individuals that we have working for us
under the neighborhood stabilization unit are going to be assigned to that area it could be speeding it could be you know passing school buses that's these people are fluid and they do whatever comes out of that com Stat or city stat meeting they
follow up on it and most of the times it's probably away so we're done the wa questions I can go home oh boy yes first uh according to information I have the presal police department to be
credited for a substantial reduction in crime um H having said that I assume that your proposal your recommendations include the sustaining the Manpower uh in case as you said that
changes hopefully it won't you saw less crime right well uh and that's also a fluid in a matter of opinion uh when you came to do the site
visit did you uh speak with any folks in the community or any I'm a new councilman okay any of the councilmen who were on board at that time I just Happ it just happed Happ to be councilman I was on patrol with the
lieutenant and we have lieutenant what's your name Lieutenant vanle oh okay thank you so he went out with me on the road asked if I wanted coffee lunch you know no I don't want
any well it's not a bad idea to visit some of our great restaurants but anyway we did we did go around and many times he rolled a window down in the car and spoke to individuals right and he also pointed
out some of the houses that are maintaining areas that um I got need more attention yeah okay but and he took me to the back alleys he showed me everything so went down to the mall
where they had the center where people are being rehabilitated and things of that sort and we talked we talk to people all the time and I went out with the other lieutenant same thing what education I got from
her Mar on me the to yeah in fact she's doing Christmas songs she told me she starts them in Thanksgiving yeah they play all the house her kids D her crazy Christmas song she loves but listen I
learned a lot um R and when I worked for icma which I told you was down in Washington DC I went out to U MSI Oklahoma I was out in stockley California doing reviews on the police department and every one of those places I went to I always rode around with the
cops not some Consultants come through that they got in the car and they ride with the ladies and gentlemen to find out this is what really is going on in the city you're seeing it and I have a list of questions that I was asking as I'm driving along what about this what
about that how about how does this work and you said that you guys you support a couple of recommendations from stock review that's the um the stockt report which you can probably get um I got
aop talk about um civilianization oh that's common sense I know the police department has retired uh policemen who are civilian doing clerical type positions good one
of them is processing uh uh Firearms applications great they wouldn't give me one um I wonder if they would give me one now but I I do want to tell you that um I was very impressed with your
Chief and I was also impressed with your chief that wasn't here anymore you Sean no he works for me he works for you he works for me attic City I thought he was
a a great a Great Character to have working for us he's really he's been very proactive in Atlantic City Bobby and I work with him you know all the time he's really he got you should be proud that you produced something like that out of this department and DCA
thought it was was good you when you first came um you didn't know about the Stockon report you asked to see that and then through out I see that you this do closely so what was the relationship and what did you think
about this do report compared to what you were doing because it seemed like you guys really were together I know a lot of them concerned um I thought the Stocker report was was pretty good um it could have been honestly could have been
in more detail you know um I compare the stock report that Bob and I work with Dr Le on I mean I I see her reports that she writes with us and how she enhances my
report that I've written like we're doing one tomorrow in Trenton we already did one in and she and I did one in Atlantic City you know and she probably will be going to Camden and she might be going to Patterson you know cuz we have her she's hired now to be like our
professor on board to look at something objectively so we don't want to be slanted looking at as a police officer but she's looking at it objectively a little background of Dr Levy guess where she was involved with Bill Bratton on com cuz she taught us a lot
of the stuff that was going on in New York City next Council I I have one more question one more yeah for our specialized unit for our specialized units and I'm hopefully hoping that uh we be to get our motor Patrol and motorcycles back out there and then you
mentioned I'm hope and then you mentioned uh the specialized unit yes that I asked you about would that affect the men and women on patrol cuz we say if we cap at 59 and then we start pulling away from Patrol for specialized units how how
would that work or is that still considered be onol it it it's still in my department when I did it um what called sack unit special anti crime when they did it they were still in Patrol and they still filled the voids got for
somebody was out somebody was short they so you had to keep your uniform in your locker um but um they didn't have a problem with it some of them wore their uniforms and they were on MAR cars and you know they were doing their thing and ours was set up on a three three man
department now what I wanted to tell you is when I examined your department and I said this to Bobby you have almost 60 officers in the town that I was a chief in I had
70s so it's almost the footprint of what I had in Maplewood which is back in county that this department has so it was a footprint and it's almost set up the same way that we ran ours the only difference is we ran this
we call it special anti-me unit not a neighborhood stabilization unit and we pulled people from Patrol who were eager beavers to work in this now guess what happens after they're eager beavers and they do a great job we create a career path for them they
become that's a good seg my next question is did you compare our department do any other department with similar demographics in the state of New Jersey or outside of the state I take note that
in the stockin report I know they didn't go to Arizona but they compared us to some Town AR somewhere somewhere that a relevant okay so because relevance is important
uh so did you look at that interesting question I I think I told you that I've been doing this for over 20 years and when I first joined that's all I did was review a police department so I was all over the state doing reviews I was in Irvington I was in North I was in mwood
South Orange Bob was the chief we did a review on his Department um I I think that I've got enough um career path in all the Departments that I've been in especially
the big ones North Camden Jersey City I I was in all these towns and Fact one of the reasons why I'm the the bureau chief because all the people that work for me are all in those Towns now and when they're talking to me I know what they're talking about because I've been in those towns so I think what I want to
say is that I think I have enough background to be able to say what you really need for a police department and the bottom line is this is not me this is your calls for service how many people you have on board and the scientific mathematical equation that
the IP who's well respected in the whole country formula that they use all around and I went to I went to Atlantic City in 2016 and Governor Christie um did to take over so I spent from
2016 to 2019 when I got promoted in Atlantic City so I got to know all the players that were there all the police officers and things of that sort and listen if you think when I first went there they love me you're crazy they did not I know exactly what you're talking
about so does everybody else in here so I think it's a great report and uh I'm going to I have a lot of other questions but I'll so save them for the sidebar and U do appreciation well I appreciate I got a
little bit of it I appreciate you guys being on the Das giving up your time coming here at night you know I I tell you the truth I don't know how you do it I don't know how you do it I thank you for coming and giving the report today too the thing that I wanted to say though I heard you earlier say about the
authors just retiring and coming back and being able to work you know more or less do Consulting you know iring off the only problem that I have with that I think it's a good concept because then you're in the community you know the community but in our area we don't have
many career paths here in this area Atlanta County so you want to save the jobs for the people in the city yeah and a lot of us you know when our children get grown and move away they don't have career to you know they would be that would be eliminating the careers they could have right you know and stay in
the area to some that may not mean anything but to a lot of people it does do and that's the only thing that I have you know the only problem that I have with that that's I understand that I feel like I'm talking to commissioner Cory really he says the same things to
me I told him I want to hire hire cops back um the issue is civilians they have to get health care when you hire a retired police officer most of them have their healthare and you're saving and I don't have to I don't have to tell the people in this
room how much healthare cost today you're talking about $25 $30,000 so you're saving that so I understand the fact that as a mayor or as people on the bias you want to give jobs to the people in the community but but no I understand that the cost and I
understand the whole concept of but I'm just saying that's just in my head what I'm y course he beats me up with that all time okay God bless you that's it I'm done thank you very
much thank you sir Tracy nothing no but I wanted to say hello to my South Orange person over there um Mr Glickman no you said it all thank you all right ladies and gentlemen thank you thank you any any any
questions from the audience okay super thank you we take may I have a second come back from theak all in favor Madam cler agenda review first of
the agenda is resolution 37 approving the transfer appropriation reserves for year 2025 any questions councel C9 resolution 38 participating in the lead implementation grant for the J spedal
data solution any questions councel see9 resolution 39 authorize an execution of a Redevelopment agreement with GNA GMM Associates regarding the property located at the corner of Route 9 and Brighton Avenue and Wellington
Avenue 1 and 14 and block 382 any questions Council c i resolution 40 authorizes execution of amended Redevelopment agreement with Savage collaborations LLC regarding California Avenue Redevelopment to accept a
transfer of 100% interest in the be development project and property to likewise LLC any questions Council C resolution 41 authorizes to reject all bids and allow for negotiations Pur to njsa 40 a call
11-5 any questions Council cing n resolution 42 amending resolution number 193-202 to change the business name for the support of suitab builing CID business Happy Tree Pharmacy any questions
Council seeing none next is review of the bill [Applause] list so the bill is has been um so we have paid some bills and some bills are to be paid um anybody has
any questions any items on the bill list that [Music] Madam chair I just now I just want to say for the record I Rie the bill this I had
some questions I called the ba and I want to thank her for getting those questions answered thank you anyone else have any questions about the bill list thank
[Applause] Council anyone have anything to add see may I have a motion to close the work session second all in favor good evening everyone this is the
city council meeting today is February the 19th 2025 the time is 7:54 p.m. this meeting has been duly advertised in the City newspaper in conformance with the open public
meetings act otherwise known as the Sunshine Law please stand for a silent prayer and the plag with please [Music] Amen conations to the flag of the United
States of America and to the for which it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all here come on pres clay
Obby B here swon here Thomas pres may I have a motion to dispense previous minutes please motion may I have a second all in favor mayor you have anything accomodations
proclamations nothing like to wish council president happy birthday happy 30th again yes thank you thank you so much next we have public [Applause] portion Mr Tim Jones good evening
everybody good evening it was good to hear the presentation this evening on um on those two studies um one of the things was mentioned how we could utilize the comat and City stat Services as I understand we do currently have
services in place where that kind of data is being collected and I'm pretty sure we pay a pretty penny for that service currently Ian I'm talking tens of thousands of dollars a year I'm sure we pay for that right now so I think that needs to be given consideration and
get the real cost like um M car said of this new um proposed service down and do an analysis and maybe we could cut off what we already spend a lot of money for and um and you can get the same thing for free that's a possibility um the other thing is I like to have on record how many of the
officers are still on leave for that shooting incident years ago I know this is a a lingering issue that they even brought up tonight and I know there're still in our books you know and and I don't even are they part of that 59 count can someone answer
those questions I would know that off hand sir how many officers still about you give us time we can find out would know that off tonight well I because it's been such a long standing case I thought that would be like a common knowledge kind of thing how many officers that
still I don't sure okay well guess I do encourage actually resolving that issue as was suggested because those are lingering things you know you're getting you're paying people and getting nothing for it you know that that does need to be resolved you know and that's was suggested by him I just encourage you to
do so and only this other question I have is that on on resolution 40 what's the location in that facility that's across from my house C oh okay thanks um in response to the question about the
number of officers we there may be other issues medically uh that we may not be able to to as but I want to know too yeah that's why I just asked for a number count I was know
number but we do need to resolve that sometimes you have to get a little tough on these things and not let people linger for decades on our payroll right that that's kind of hideous you know clearly I'm going make the statement we going get in trouble the city got ripped off in that yeah it needs to stop
clearly good people I'm sorry next we have m rade brown that's you I know who it is how's everybody how you doing a little stiff but I make
it um I don't really have a lot of questions I just um asked one of was answer [Music] um did I hear to hear correctly that he said you can get gr for
recreation I can't hear you we've already applied for last meeting we passed the resolution for uh Recreation Grant that's the $2 million uh Statewide that uh every every municipality and every
school board in the state uhi governmental entity is eligible for now one he was talking about was 11 million 11 11 million yeah is 20 million 20 million I'm sorry yeah 20 so yes we we
applied we reviewed it and submitted the application uh already pass resolution m brown let me add to that um one thing he failed to mention if you
apply is no guarantee that you're going to get it that's understood I mean some people probably think you know he said we had those grants out there that is guaranteed that we may be the recipient of it
yeah I I I understood that part okay it yeah I think that's going thank thank you may I have a motion to close all in [Applause] favor resolution 37 approve the transfer
appropriation reserves for year 2025 may have a motion motion may have second second R call S yes Pon yes speak yes btis yes
swepson yes Thomas yes resolution approved resolution 38 implementing the Lim implementation grant for the GM Spectrum data solution may I have a motion motion May second
call Fe yes Kon yes orus yes ftis yes swepson yes Thomas yes resolution approved resolution 39 authorizing the execution of a Redevelopment agreement with GMM Associates regarding the property location
at the corner of Route 9 and Brighton Avenue and Wellington Avenue locks 1 and4 and block 382 may have a motion motion second second roll call
no kimona yes ois yes ftis abstain swepson yes Thomas yes resolution approved resolution 30 resolution 40 authorizing the execution of amended Redevelopment agreement with
Savage collaborations LLC regarding California Avenue Redevelopment to accept a transfer of 100% interest in the Redevelopment project and prop the likewise LLC may I have a motion motion may I have a second
second roll call yes kimona yes o yes vtis yes yes Thomas yes resolution approved resolution 41 authorizing to reject all bids and allow for negotiations assort
to njsa 40a 11-5 may have a motion motion may have a second second roll call P yes kimona yes o yes FIS yes swepson yes Thomas yes
resolution approved resolution 4 2 amending resolution number 193-202 to change the business name for the support of suitability candidates business Happy Tree Pharmacy may I have a motion I move have a
second second yes over speak ftis yes swepson yes to yes resolution approved I need a motion
to approve the bill list I'll move secondo yes Pon yes o yes vtis yes swepson yes thas yes motion approve mayor you have any comments uh
know well I like to say that um I'm happy with the report that we finally have [Music] anything I didn't get a chance to thank uh public work for the great job they did mooving the snow I appreciate what they did a good job I was out there
riding around make sure they took care of everything they did a good job thank you hold work if uh people were paying close attention the difficult question that I asked was not answered on pap presentation and that was the one about compar
comparing our community to others in this County for years during the late '90s and early teenss we compared a lot of our stuff to Gallow but I think it's important in a study like that uh although I thought it was pretty good uh
that that that is a critical Factor um instead we got more of the personal resume I started giving M but I decided not to um I'm serious uh that's an important question I think but there was a lot of aspects uh I do think that the
the the uh the distribution of of ranks was uh a little generous we also need to get from the police Department a organization chart
and uh in comparison to the stock uh State uh this was uh you know 500% better yeah uh of course the standards they're well established we Mr Oglesby and I are both very familiar with
because of our previous careers uh so I think we have a good base upon which to uh look at our Police Department Army that's doing a good job and in terms of uh the economic issues which we glassed
over also the econom the mayor did kind of raise that point so we got something to work with final just took took too long to get it and and the other thing that I recommended to I recommend to
this body is that part of the the city stat program we had something similar to that many years ago under Ralph Peterson and the key piece to that is that the department heads used to come to city council meeting and when a councilman
couldn't answer a issue or a problem department head was here to answer that I think we should restore that restore that it's about accountability you can't just put accountability on the police department and not on everybody else so that's all
I got to say pck back off our Council Med I let you know sir we do have in possession of Galloway's report Galloway also had one done we have that I figured our Council might want to know that in advance so we
do have that okay uh number two uh today's so much point will be closer to us now of financially uh but I like to thank everyone uh every report's been a long time coming and I like to thank the community because you guys been asking and and asking and it was not up to us
when that report was done so I'm glad that it came out tonight um the city clerk told me earlier that they don't want it now it's out and open you can uh open request to the so the public can get it and hopefully everybody review it and also hopefully Council will review
it uh cuz we just seen it like y'all did tonight so I I got to look over and I going have some questions on not but I like to thank the community for being patient but this what we waiting for is have I going to have some type of base with the PD and we also need that with
our fire department because we are one of the only communities left besides AC metler and Mar that is full service we have a paid Police Department we have a paid fire department we have a paid public works department we have a paid sewage Department we are a full service
Community we talk about taxes remember we are a full service community and to is not they don't pay for EMS and all that stuff they don't pay for firefighters gway done even some going dou and they're close enough they don't do it but we do
so there's issues and things that we might have to look at coming up in the future financially but I want to say on the record we are a total PL is a total full service Community thank you oh you know what um we have an executive session item oh yeah we have
one item for executive session so if um if you all want to you know leave or stand out there you can come back if you you know know choose to for the purposes for the purpose of discussing legal [Music]
matters shut it off brother we roll oh so who made the motion second I second second all in favor second session second they have a second second all in
favor anything else counsel motion second I just want got speak I just want to put it on the record that officer p is presiding over this meeting and a wonderful job he did
thank you offending not presiding and thank you offic thank you for the TV you for may may all in favor happy birthday happy birthday
[Music] y [Music]