Police Department - 5-26-23 City Council Strategic Planning Workshop

[0:00:00] good afternoon again afternoon it was somewhere between 60 and 80 slides but we'll try to move through this fantastic well we were thinking about 100 25 percent with pictures we like pictures at this point in the game we'd like some pictures yeah we're gonna move through this rather fast I know all this is available in your package so we'll start with it we didn't get these packets so we weren't where we didn't we wouldn't we didn't have any of it okay we'll start with the Department profile our current Staffing numbers for 2023 authorized by City councils at 180. currently sworn officers we have 162. we do have five Cadets who will be graduating the police academy on June 9th we have a total of 31 civilian employees dispatcher told authorized number dispatchers is 24 authorized as of May 18th there are 15 dispatchers 10 fully trained five in training and four in the process as you see we're already establishing a pattern here of employees and lack of their uh both in the police department and the civilian side and dispatch um the the number one challenge that we're facing is as he said is Staffing uh we continually lose 10 officers per year in in the past we were able to hire 10 to 12 per year but now we're starting to slip behind and we're uh you know we're at nine per year when we're losing 10 per year so um so you're staying neutral we're staying neutral or just a step behind definitely 19 until president of the department has seen significant drop in number of police applicants who apply or test for the police officer position for over the last five years our average has been 30 applicants I know when I took the test which has been long ago or well over 200.

[0:02:03] times have changed in the last 30 years I understand that but with those numbers like David said we're losing more due to retirement or leaving the profession and we can't replace them enough we just had an oral board out of this test which we had to postpone for four months to begin with to get enough people to take the test we had nine people go to oral board our pass fail rates about 60 percent so as of yesterday we hired six fail rate of 60 percent is significant and that's that's due to the background uh I know no I think I think I'm aware of that but that is you know and it seems like to me on a daily basis we get these you know unfortunately we have social media that doesn't help anybody and the amount of negative press on being a police officer and lawsuits and civil suits and everything against police and challenges to arrests or whatever it is would not be encouraging for someone to step into the boots of being a police officer and I think that's really unfortunate is it's needed it's a sign of the times yes and this is this is not an issue isolated San Angelo taxes it's a nationwide Statewide I talked to the director of DPS over this whole quarter or this whole section District he's down 120 officers CPS Patrol officers and with that being said it's several factors why that is and that's because the profession itself and the negativity student debt loan and there are some that are just that will go to higher paying departments but pay is not everything a lot of them are just totally getting out of profession of your traditional guys your traditional employees when I grew up your 35 40 Year guys that's a thing of the past you're not going to see that anymore they don't want it see that anymore Daniel did you have were you going to make a comment I was just making a comment a while ago you're uh you're

[0:04:05] losing 10 people and you gain nine you actually have a deficit of one every year you know so that number goes down every year that's correct over the five years you lose five and you just can't make those up that's right and and you can only have uh it takes a year to have an academy so you're never making it up okay keep that in mind right quick David we just hired those folks it'll take it better part of a year if not a little bit more before we can ever hire somebody again so with those that haven't even started today that brings our numbers to 174. we're authorized 180. I know of three or four that are fixing to retire or will retire including my positions as well as a few others between now may of 2024. well Chief card because you just brought it up and we just passed those things what because we changed the election of the police chief which would have traditionally been in 24 right correct so now we're not doing it till 25. no it the election I didn't correct you earlier the election will be 2024 it will remain elected with a couple Provisions it will not be a one-year term it will be a three-year term on the first cycle then thereafter after the first three-year term it'll turn back to a four-year term that's what we just need clarification on just to make sure everybody is understanding that rather than it being one year yeah would be three years okay what you have in front of you is our calls uh calls for service from 2018 to now and this projects out to be probably 97 000 calls for service this year so they're increasing the next slide will be our crime stats from 2016 until current May of 2023 as you look there you can see the bottom figures in red percentage of changes eoi totals we've had significant drops over the last five six years significant drops and at some point in time based we're not going to have a a crimeless city so that's going to bottom

[0:06:09] out at some point in time and I think we're close to that we did see a rise in 2022 of a four percent increase um with that in mind that's about 170 incidents if you'll go down and look at 2022 look at the number of larcenary increase from 21.95 um that's what's killing us right now and I think a lot of that's economy driven with the price of everything we could actually station somebody at the Walmarts full time and do nothing but take theft reports that's what's driving our crime we're very fortunate that our crimes against persons if you'll notice there are murders and some of those others are down which are violent crimes but crimes against property are on the increase here this is just a graph that gives you a better description depiction of it and I I wanted to whoops the rails here sorry I wanted to go through the the murder sexual assault rock those are part one crimes that's what I was going to get to show you that's what your part one crimes those are what you're measured by now and they are Define that well they are murder sexual assault robbery those yes all those those are we're required to report to the FBI and the state those particular offenses they're yes on a yearly basis so can you attribute that to anything I'm sorry Rob can you attribute that to anything I mean well a lot of those crimes so you know you're not on the spot you're yeah investigating sure who knows where the sexual assault's going to occur I mean you're not sitting there waiting for it I mean I drop an aggressive assault it's staggering yeah and there for a while there was an increase in agassaults prior to 2016. there was a huge increase but it's

[0:08:13] dropped considerably and we're very fortunate in some cities that our house hours and larger seeing an increase in crimes against person particularly murders so on the burglary burglary burglary if I could say right it's late in the day is there a section of town that is specifically or is it all over the city of San Angelo or maybe you don't want to talk about that and that's okay that's fine and that's that's how we station our guys it's all over town I mean crime of any sort Could Happen anywhere whether it be at the lake up north south east and west predominantly the majority of the property crimes is in District what we call or beat one and two which is everything north of the East-West freeway predominantly but a crime again could happen anywhere so this this just shows the rest numbers for the rest of them I know there was some some talk earlier about the numbers of citation Revenue in 2018 I think that we've based that in our projected incomes on that which is a high expectation why it is but uh you'll notice in 2018 the arrests are extremely high it was an all-time high for Rex as well and it was all-time high for calls for service I can't answer that as to why yeah because you go 2018. why 2020 I can explain some things due to covet and some other stuff this is prior to I can't explain some of the reduction that's going on now post covid uh but we're talking four 4 761 arrests in 2018 versus 3883 in 2022. that's a significant difference so this is just uh some some insights to some of our divisions Division and science narcotics unit we've seized approximately 244 pounds of methamphetamine seven pounds of cocaine

[0:10:16] and four and a half pounds of heroin since 2016. that's a huge amount of drugs currently our Narcotics Division is down two investigators and one sergeant the anti-crime unit was started in 2017 the aggressively look for repeat offenders and locked them up when they have a chance and since 2019 they've arrested 717 individuals 2019. as we continue to decrease in size the services available and the folks that we have allocated to certain sections are going to decrease and that's certainly not one that I like to see that's the core almost ever problem there's narcotics so we are down to at the moment as we continue to decline we may have to cut calls for service and other things uh back when we were fully staffed we did make it to 180 officers probably two years ago we short-lived we were able to add a couple extra detectives a extra Cold Case detective in which we use very well we solved two cold cases one dating back to 1986. Debbie Dykes case so when the Jordan Holden case so we're very proud of that but with that in mind we're able to staff any child's crime Detective traffic safety program what we've done is is the officers are focused on high accident High complaint zones in an effort to reduce the the number of problems at those locations and we've had a decrease of 12 percent in accidents since 2016. 37 uh Seventh Street continues to be a problem right both at chadburn and Bryant Boulevard that talking about what the homeless underneath no I'm just talking about the number of accidents that happened on 7th Street whether it's at the Bryant

[0:12:17] Boulevard or whether it's at the the the the bus station accidentally oh yes it's such a high traffic area yes just touch on a briefly briefly um ticket Revenue this is there's multiple reason why that is this is actually one of them it's a traffic safety program a couple years ago we got a program where we actually can look at all intersections in the city and see where the majority of the accidents are located or happening so we're trying to focus during our traffic safety program which these officers actually get paid overtime to go out and write tickets Focus their time on that or citizen complaints that come in through the PD or they come to me I will tell you those locate and school zones and I will tell you those locations are probably not as productive as somebody that sits out on a flat long stretch of road where somebody's probably going to be speeding but what's the result other than a ticket so I we're down 12 percent I like that figure whether we can attribute that totally to less wrecks as you'll see here I just told you all ago in 2018 we had the highest ticket Revenue which you are Basin we also had the most rakes well do they correlate or do they not but our mission is safety I don't care if it's a warning verbal warning a written warning or a ticket and by law I cannot tell an officer which law to enforce which law to give a warning on in which law to give a written ticket on I can't give a quota I can't tell officer X you're going to write two tickets per day that is against the law for me to even discuss anyway those are just a few of the reasons why our citations can vary the DWI step program a lot of emphasis was placed on Ed we got some new software and it streamlined the process so the DWI arrests have increased 120

[0:14:21] percent uh used to a DWI arrest would take you three or four hours once you you'd be off the street for three or four hours that time has been reduced to about an hour and 25 minutes now so Lumber accidents graph in 2018 we'll discuss again there was 2613 we'll move forward the end of year 2022 2297. this is the graph on the number of fatalities each year so you can y'all can see that grant funding uh 22 and year 22 2022 and 2023 we utilized six hundred eleven thousand dollars worth of Grant funds and there's a list of items there that we purchased using Grant funds I know you uh submitted I think through uh Congressman Lee um pfluger's office for some things and when I was in Washington DC he specifically said that the one you guys requested was one he was going to push forward good hard to make happen so there were two things he was really going to focus on and that was one of the key ones that he was going to try to push forward I don't know where it stands have you had any word back on anything secretary did just advise me that it was one of the grants that they are looking at it'll probably be several months it's a Cooperative effort and a basically a radio upgrade system upgrade of several million dollars if that Grant goes through and it does happen we'll we'll get an additional seven to ten years out of this radio system so it'd be a big deal donations this is just people in the community the back the badge fundraiser we've had 185 000 worth of donations uh and using those donations you can see the

[0:16:25] list of things canines gym equipment safety equipment door entry kits to make access into like buildings that are locked school buildings if you need to get into a door with Firearms so trying to paint a picture outside of our budget which is very slim I mean 90 it seemed like 99 percent of it is personnel and and pay so we're utilizing and doing everything that we can within our power to find these grants or even donations of back to badge and stuff of this nature a lot of this stuff wouldn't have been funded 185 thousand dollars over the four or five years donations for canines that it's normally not stockpiled in our budget is very thin what we we have although it's 19 or 21 million dollars this is this is some of what we covered earlier so we're not going to beat the source of death there's some pictures of the inside of the building if you want to take a real close look there correct real scary as those on the right there is one of our evidence rooms yeah those over there that's that's evidence now it is organized barcode and catalog but that's that's not good and then the steps we've got safety issues I know you do I know you do it is so I'm gonna wrap up here and have any questions our mission critical needs is competitive pay increasing the total number of sworn officers by five if you remember back in 2017 I approached council with an increase of 20 bodies over four years we were able to increase 15 bodies over now would be seven years highly appreciated and I know we're at the point that we can't even get 180 is probably what you're asking yourself but there will be an appoint in time that I hope that we will we hope you get to 180. we got there it was short-lived and there so it's challenging times right now for everybody

[0:18:26] new police building new training facility with that in mind we're going to wrap up if anybody's got any questions thanks for being patient thanks for sitting through the overview of our city and I appreciate what you all do go ahead when you all go through the applicant process and you get somebody to apply and go and this is going into the recruitment phase tell me how their compensation starts do they start do we hire them and they start getting paid is there a training period you know you had student loan debt down there I didn't know kind of how that applies so just give me an idea what those kids have to do sure we're civil service departments so we can't hire like a lot of people do or Sheriff's Department's lateral transfers I know you hear that and we have our own Academy so once they take a civil service test an entry-level exam and of course they go through the background polygraph and everything we decide okay we're going to hire them once we do we give them a conditional officer they go to actually our Academy drawing a salary complete that Academy I don't know exactly how many months to the day it is roughly eight months when they complete that their next cycle would be riding with an officer for a total of 16 weeks they complete that then they've got roughly six more months left and then they're no longer a probationary officer they're vested so that's the process it's a very long now if we were not during that process that's correct they are getting paid the entire time Cadet pay so from the time they get approved and you hire them to when they start getting income is that days weeks month we've shortened that down you still a little bit longer but by the time that we decide okay we're going to hire them or our form a list and go through and do all the backgrounds it roughly takes about four months before we actually send them to the academy as soon as they start the academy they start drawing pay okay it's a Cadet pay then uh that pay increases once they're certified officers so we need each more applicants we need to get you more I mean you have two sons right

[0:20:29] I'm going to send one the Air Force Academy luxury of a lateral program you can pick somebody up that's already got experience and trained as to where we have to send them to our own Academy being civil service you either have to be meet and confer or non-civil service department to have a lateral transfer program well you need help we need to figure out what we can do yeah thanks guys I have a question yes sir you have a hard working bunch of people that are volunteers for you how are you doing on volunteers right now I think our last count we had 12 volunteers we we work with the RSVP program and they'll send a letter and what are your needs we have this person that fits this mold and uh in in some areas the technology has caused us to not be able to use some of those Volunteers in area in areas that we used to but but they do actively participate they go out and they do the handy they love the handicap enforcement they're a big help to us and the public so we do have a bunch of active volunteers do they do any traffic uh work you know no actual traffic enforcement other than the handicap and private public parking lots and that's all they'll do they call a lot of victims on reported crimes that are sent to criminal investigation division whether they want to follow up or not but a a large help a big help they are I get more help out of some of those retirees and I do a full-time employee and they don't get paid we appreciate them thank you very much

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=hFH2W8MoHYo