Public Safety Committee

PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE September 7, 2017 A special meeting of the Public Safety Committee was held this date beginning at 4:03 p.m., at 2 George Street, Public Meeting Room. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Kathleen Wilson, Chair, Councilmember Lewis, Councilmember Wagner, Councilmember Shahid, and Mayor Tecklenburg Staff: Interim Chief Tippett, Interim Chief Taylor The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Chairwoman Wilson. Approval of Minutes On the motion of Councilmember Wagner, seconded by Councilmember Lewis, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the August 4, 2017 minutes. Review and recommendation of proposed subcontractors to conduct an audit of the City of Charleston Police Department Chairwoman Wilson stated that at the past meeting they had presented material from three different entities, a formal company, and two individuals. Since then, they had one of the individuals drop out, thus reducing to two. She wanted to open that to discussion to see how the Committee felt and see if they wanted to make a recommendation and to find out what the pleasure of the Committee was. Councilmember Shahid asked who had dropped out and Councilmember Lewis stated that it was Dr. Jeff Rojek from the University of Texas at El Paso. Councilmember Lewis stated that he would talk to Ms. Novak to see if she had anyone else in mind and he would defer it to another meeting if she had anyone else in mind. At the next meeting, they could discuss and vote on one of those two. He knew she had been having discussions with the organization, and he would see if she had any other firms in mind. If not, then they could go ahead and vote on it at the next meeting. Mayor Tecklenburg stated that it was a good suggestion to ask her, and they had done that, and she didn’t really have anyone else to add to the pot. He wouldn’t say it was an awkward situation, but asking people to put their name out there in the public light when they didn’t know what was going to happen might have given Dr. Rojek some pause about this matter. The bottom line was that at the last meeting, they had come to the conclusion that all three were good choices. Ms. Novak was not promoting that they add another person to consideration, so he would respectfully ask that they consider one of the two remaining. Councilmember Shahid said that he was comfortable going forward on the decision with one of the two remaining. He didn’t know if they would find another company or individual who was more or less qualified. He was ready to make the decision. They needed to report on this, so it was important to get the ball rolling. He was ready to vote on one of the two remaining. Chairwoman Wilson stated that her feeling was that three was the minimum and now they had two. Of those two, she knew who her preference was. Ms. Novak stated in so many words that they were kind of being steered towards one. How well that would go over with Council, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure it would pass muster with City Council, but that wasn’t her call to make. Their job, as a Committee, was to decide whether or not they were comfortable referring one of the remaining, and if not, explain that to Council. They were one step in the process, and she would vote if it was the consensus of the Committee, but she didn’t know how well it would be received. Councilmember Shahid stated that he knew they had the meeting at 5:30 to discuss the hurricane and asked if it was a consensus that they would cancel Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Mayor Tecklenburg said that it was. Councilmember Shahid stated that there would be a delay, so they would have to re- schedule. Mayor Tecklenburg stated that they didn’t have a date yet. They would look before the 5:30 meeting, but it depended on how severe the storm was on Charleston. They would recommend that they be closed on Monday and Tuesday. Councilmember Shahid said he thought that was where it was heading. He would like to go ahead and vote on it that afternoon, and get the ball rolling on one of the two remaining folks. They could call an interim meeting, but he wasn’t sure how long it would take them to come up with another name or another series of names. He was comfortable moving forward. Mayor Tecklenburg said that they had asked Ms. Novak and she was satisfied with either one of the two. She made a preference, and that was okay, because they were situated in the same home town, which would make it easier for them to work together. There was nothing bad about that, but at the last meeting, they had said that it looked like all three were qualified. Since one dropped out, that still meant the other two were qualified. Respectfully, he didn’t want the audit to drag on and on. Councilmember Lewis stated that Mayor Tecklenburg had answered his question. Ms. Novak said that these were the two, and she didn’t have anyone else. They could vote on one of the two. It didn’t matter and he was ready. He was fine. Chairwoman Wilson stated that the two they were discussing were RTI International and Dr. Robin Engel. Those were the two remaining candidates for this work. If the consensus of the Committee was to proceed with the vote, they could. Councilmember Lewis said that someone could make a motion for whatever one they wanted and they could vote. He stated that he moved that they go with RTI International, because it seemed like they had more staff to work with. Chairwoman Wilson stated that they would vote on RTI first and Dr. Engel second. Mayor Tecklenburg stated that if the motion carried, that would be their recommendation. On the motion of Councilmember Lewis, seconded by Mayor Tecklenburg, the Committee voted unanimously to recommend RTI International to conduct an audit of the City of Charleston Police Department. Updates: Fire Department- Interim Chief John Tippett Chief Tippett stated that the two pumpers and heavy rescue should be coming to the next City Council Meeting. He appreciated DFRC’s support and procurement. Spending trends continued to be on target for all categories. They would run down all the stations in detail but they had a lot of work to do on some of the stations including Fire Station 6’s retro-fit, and repairs to Station 10 (struck by a vehicle). The new Station 11 was moving through its review boards with minimal change required. Station 14 and 21 were also coming along as well. They were working on the needs assessments for multiple station projects. There were a lot of needs for the stations. On a personnel front, they had an Assistant Administrative Service Manager that was added, along with a full-time Administrative Assistant to help at headquarters. Through cooperation with BFRC and HR, the Fire Inspectors had been reclassified as Assistant Fire Marshals, and they were able to negotiate a change in the forced hours overtime pay and get a premium established for Battalion Chiefs that were forced to work overtime. They were working in conjunction with HR and BFRC on a pay plan, which they hoped to present once the storm passed. Promotion Exams were under way. Engineer had just been completed and Captain and Battalion Chief were underway. Recruit classes were continuing and they were down to 17 recruits. They had another withdraw for a medical reason. They were significantly engaged in preparations for the hurricane. They were notified of a Grant award, one of six agencies in South Carolina. It was in conjunction with the Police Department and would allow them to get a second marine vessel, and materials to move the HAZMAT team to a level one team. Their share had already been discussed and would be in the 2018 budget. Councilmember Lewis stated that several months ago they had applied for a grant having to do with Cannon Street. Chief Tippett said that was for the Station 6 retro-fit. The structural reinforcement design had to be developed first. That was sent up and had been approved, so the second phase was being able to produce the rest of the work which included the re-building of the living quarters. They had a meeting with Parks and the architect, and had involved the station Captains in that process. They were going through revisions, so once they got the whole plan pushed through they anticipated funding would be released. They had met all of their marks in getting the process applied in a timely manner. Councilmember Lewis asked if they had any plans for Huger Street, because that was another Station that needed a lot of work. It was a very flooded area. He was sure there was a lot of mold, and he thought that was one of the busiest stations in Downtown Charleston. Chief Tippett said that it was and one of the issues they had with Huger Street was there was not much they could do to the building until they got the flooding taken care of. Anything they did to renovate the building would be adversely impacted by flooding. They were working with Stormwater Management and Environmental Services to acquire some grants to correct some of the flooding issues in the Huger/King area before they moved forward. Some preliminary discussions for grant applications on Station 8 said that they wouldn’t get funds until they fixed the flooding problem. Chairwoman Wilson asked how they handled flooding at the Station when they had high tides or a weather event that caused the street to become impassable and how they kept the Station up and running. Chief Tippett said that, historically, the Station stayed running until the water rose to a level that they couldn’t stay there anymore. Since they built Station 9, the plan was to move the crew to that Station, and they would have to abandon the Station until the water receded. Chairwoman Wilson said regarding over time, she knew they had significant amounts of over time with some of them working shifts back to back and asked where they stood on that and how long they foresaw that continuing. Chief Tippett said that he thought the over time had leveled out as they were getting out of the summer leave period. As soon as they got done with the promotion exams they would be able to fill some of the vacancies which would help and when the next recruit class graduated, it should bring them to almost full staff. Chairwoman Wilson asked how many they were short in the Department right now and Chief Tippett said if they took the two new Stations they were getting ready to open, then it was somewhere between 30-50 personnel. Councilmember Lewis asked if he could get a racial breakdown in the Fire Department and Chief Tippett said that he could get that for him. Mayor Tecklenburg said that the Chief had mentioned applicants and asked if they had a training school getting ready to start. He asked how many were accepted. Chief Tippett said they had a school under way right now. They had started with 22 and were down to 17. One hadn’t shown up on the first day, and the others had dropped out for a couple different reasons. Mayor Tecklenburg asked if that would be the last one this year and Chief Tippett said it would be the last one in 2017, but they had another one scheduled for February 2018. Councilmember Shahid said the Chief had said they were 30-60 personnel short and asked how much of that they attributed to the opening of the new Stations. Chief Tippett said there would be 30 of those openings for the new Stations. There were 3 Captains, 3 Engineers, 3 Assistant Engineers, and 4-5 Firefighters per station, so about half of the vacancies could be contributed to the new stations. Councilmember Shahid asked how they would cover the shortfall, and Chief Tippett said as they did the promotion exams they would fill the vacancies. The firefighter positions would be filled as they had they had the recruit class graduating towards the end of the year. Councilmember Shahid said that if all 17 finished the class, they would all come in as firefighters, and asked if the plan was to promote within. That was confirmed by Chief Tippett. Councilmember Shahid asked what the schedule was for that and Chief Tippett said they had just finished the Engineer’s exam, and were getting ready to post grades. The Captain’s exam was slated for September, as was the Battalion Chief’s exam. Councilmember Wagner said that he wanted to talk about Station 14 and said that if they wanted to see a good looking Fire Station, the Carolina Bay Station was a good-looking Station. One of the last meetings that Chief Brack attended, she was talking about an apprenticeship program where they could ‘grow their own’. He asked if that was still out there and if they were trying to do that still. Chief Tippett said that the one program that Trident Tech offered was EMT only and most of the candidates were only interested in the medical side. They moved away from the program and were having discussions with Trident Tech about a firefighter program, but that hadn’t proceeded any further. Councilmember Lewis said that he knew firefighting was a tough job, especially in Charleston with the houses being so close. He knew that everyone didn’t train the same but asked if there was a manual that they went by. He knew over the years they had lost a lot of people to other places where they then passed the course. Chief Tippett said that their training was a combination of national training standards plus training that they did in-house specific to Charleston. Where they were seeing issues was with the entrance exam, so they had a new company with a new entrance exam that they just put in effect. It would take a couple of cycles to see if that made any difference. Councilmember Shahid said that he talked a lot about his concerns with the turnover rate and even if all 17 of the people finished the class they would still be short. The guys came in, were well-trained, and then they would leave after a few years. It seemed like they were falling behind, and they needed to come up with a game plan and policy on how to address the attrition rate in the departments. He was concerned that this was an ongoing issue and wondered if they had a long-term plan to address it. Mayor Tecklenburg said that he wanted to thank the firefighters who were there today. It was interesting to him when they did the review at Council, that the turnover rate in the departments were about the same, and that was significantly less than the turnover rate of City employees at large. Part of the challenge was that they were adding new Stations and they needed to add more firefighters at the base level, which would create holes when others moved up. They needed to take more applicants in when they did the training or they needed to increase the frequency of them. Next year, they may need to go to 3 courses per year to try and catch up. Chairwoman Wilson said that her concern was that it cost the City a lot of money to run a recruit class, and it was a question of holding onto these people. The attrition numbers varied depending on who you talked to; she had heard anywhere from 10-35%, so she didn’t know. They needed to create an incentive and figure out why they were leaving. Chief Tippett said they conducted an exit interview with every employee that left, especially the 3-5 year people, and the main reasons for leaving were financial. The secondary reason was that they were going to work for another Department anyway, and Charleston hired them first. They typically left Charleston to go outside of South Carolina. Councilmember Shahid said that he was taken aback a little when he did a tour and asked how many recruits were from Charleston, and not one person had raised their hand. He asked how many were from South Carolina and one raised their hand. They were getting a lot of out-of-state recruits, and part of this might be going into schools and recruiting. Maybe it was a pay issue, and they needed to take a serious look at a pay increase, and other incentives to hold onto them. Chief Tippett said that he thought the solution was the local schools, as he was a product of the high school program where he came from. He stayed local for the duration of his career. If they could tap into that resource and convince the younger people that fire-fighting was a good career that would be their salvation. He planned to bring that program to them, but it was still under development. Councilmember Wagner said that he had heard something that had stuck in his head and that was that the City gave them a pre-test and most of them weren’t passing. He wondered if that meant it was too tough or if they were expecting more from a recruit then they could give. When he was in the Navy, he didn’t have to take a class. He was wondering if the standards were too high. Chief Tippett stated that they had just changed to a different test to see if that helped. Councilmember Wagner said that the Police Department was now going back to a high school degree instead of Associates Degree, as a minimum requirement. They had to back off because it wasn’t a popular job anymore. They had a nation-wide problem and he didn’t know the answer. Councilmember Shahid asked if they needed anything for the preparation of the hurricane and Chief Tippett said so far, they were well off. They had the plans ready and were following the storm track. They were preparing for two different levels of staffing, one being if it was a Category 1-3 and the other being if it was a Category 3 or more, and that would determine how they were doing, resource wise. Police Department- Interim Chief Jerome Taylor Chief Taylor said that they had the consultant from PERF visit the Department and she had an opportunity to walk around and talk to various staff members. They were also preparing for the storm, but their plan was already in effect prior to the storm. Two weeks ago they had received intel, that they could not sustain, in reference to a possible KKK rally. The rally was slated to occur this particular weekend, so they were already prepared to go into 12 hour shifts starting on Saturday. From a personnel point of view they had changed around some shifts, and they were still tweaking it. When it came to a storm, the key was recovery. The event itself would occur, and the biggest call was with the evacuation itself. The key was making sure that everyone was in a prime location, so that after the event they could respond. In the Department they had resignations from people that were mostly going to Federal Agencies. The FBI had hired five officers in the previous two weeks, two sergeants and two patrolmen. They just had a recruit class graduate and they had 17 vacancies. The promotional tests were in place for Police Officers, Senior Police Office, Master Police Officer, Sergeant, and Lieutenant. It took 60 days to complete the test process so it would be completed around November. Everything in the agency itself seemed to be going well. They had the event on King Street at Virginias which was a hostage rescue that was one of the few times that they had an active shooter and a hostage that was actually rescued. They had an event that could have been much worse, and he thought that all of the departments came together. The officers felt positive about it. They had a discussion amongst themselves on ways on which they could improve, and it was a successful event. One of the things that was mentioned, in reference to the audit, there was a lot of apprehension in the department on exactly what was being looked upon. The officers and staff were pretty well in-tune and welcomed the audit and individuals to show them ways and methodology to improve on what they were doing. They were hiring individuals with a high school degree, but they had to have experience. They were getting a lot of out-of-state applicants and they had the same issue of getting the local talent. Minority recruitment was a challenge. They were getting good applicants, and were trying to fill all of the vacancies. Overall, he would tend to believe that morale was pretty high. With the homicide on King Street, they had had 4 homicides in 2017, but overall violent crime seemed to be on the decrease. They had a concern about juvenile crimes. They were starting to look at the ‘rose petal’ kids differently. People in the program were identifiable by their shirts, but a lot of the individuals who were selling roses didn’t have permits. Those particular individuals were being warned and those who were aggressive were being cited. Overall, they were preparing for the storm, but were doing pretty well. Councilmember Lewis said that he wanted to comment on the morale in the departments. If the morale wasn’t good in any department they wouldn’t have good service, or good people working in the City. That was a problem in several departments, so it was good to hear morale was good in the Police Department. He read something in the paper that had baffled him and that was Andy Savage representing the officer, he thought he had the answer, but when they were out there doing their job, why would they need a high profiled attorney to represent them. Chief Taylor said that he was the attorney for the Fraternal Order of Police and a lot of Police Officers were members. By law, when individuals get into an event, they had the same right as a regular citizen. He was representing that officer in reference to his constitutional right. Councilmember Lewis said in other words, he was doing his job, but because he shot someone the organization would represent him in case someone out there wanted to file a lawsuit. Chief Taylor said that he personally thought in the investigation, SLED was handling it, normally most officers, when they got involved with events were represented by an attorney. It had nothing to do with the internal investigation, but with the criminal investigation aspect. His representation had not been adversarial. Councilmember Shahid said he wanted to commend the Police Department for the hostage situation. He thought they had addressed it very professionally and quickly. Unfortunately, there was a loss of life, but he thought it could have been a lot worse. It was well done and he didn’t get the sense that people were afraid or thought there was any imminent danger because it had been confined. Chief Taylor said that they had received comments from professional teams across the country who realized the magnitude of the event. They had launched another program under the Illumination Project called Pharmacy, which was working with the hospitals and the food bank to deliver food on the East Side every Monday and Wednesday. They were very engaged with the Illumination Project. They would be bringing more things to the Mayor for review, such as the Citizens Advisory Committee. Councilmember Lewis said that the best decision for the City was getting the inter-governmental agencies together, so when there was a situation, everyone worked together. They never knew when they might need someone and so he thanked the departments for all working together. It was a good thing. Chairwoman Wilson said that Mark Wilbert wasn’t there, for good reason. Mayor Tecklenburg said that he wasn’t there but they had the telephonic Council meeting at 5:30 and Mr. Wilbert would be on the line. He said if they wanted to stay, they could go upstairs. Chairwoman Wilson said there was no point to go home to make a phone call. Mayor Tecklenburg said he wanted to echo the comments about the professionalism of the Fire Department as well. He knew there were challenges they continued to work on like the pay-scale and attracting new employees, but even when there had been challenges, there had never been a lack of professionalism in the department when they did their job. Both of the Departments shined and showed that level of training, despite the changes and challenges they had been through. Councilmember Shahid wanted to echo that as well. He was proud of the firefighters who were there tonight. Chairwoman Wilson said she thanked them all for what they were about to take on with an interesting couple of days ahead of them. She felt much better knowing they were on the job. Having no further business, the Committee on Public Safety adjourned at 4:52 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary