Public Safety Committee

PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE January 18, 2018 A meeting of the Public Safety Committee was held this date beginning at 4:00 p.m., at 80 Broad Street, Council Chamber. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Shahid, Chair, Councilmember Lewis, Councilmember Wagner, Councilmember Seekings, and Mayor Tecklenburg Staff: Assistant Chief Chris Vanhoy, Fire Department, Interim Chief Jerome Taylor, Police Department, Mark Wilbert, Emergency Management, Kay Cross, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Councilmember Seekings. Approval of Minutes The minutes of the November 27, 2017 meeting were deferred. Update from Turning Leaf Project Joe McGrew stated that he was excited to be there and update where they were. They could not be there or exist without the City’s help. In 2017, they had the opportunity to work with 63 men, and of those 63 men, 57% were placed on jobs. There were four main components to the program. Phase one was when they first came into the program and lasted 10 weeks. They worked with men aged 25-50 and worked with the men who had the highest chance to reoffend. The men they work with have a 60-70% chance to reoffend. The first phase was where the intensive classes happened. They were in class Monday-Friday from 9-12 and they also received case management with the case manager. If they made it into Phase 2, then they would have had 130 hours of Cognitive Behavior Therapy in the classroom. Research said that they needed at least 200 hours before it would kick in, and no one could tell you how to get those hours. They try to get as many hours in as possible. 57% of the men who came in to the program made it into Phase 2, which were the transitional jobs. They worked with the City, who was the biggest employer, the City of North Charleston, and the County. They had also started doing in-house employment in their printing business. 61% of the men that made it into Phase 2 were successful in the transitional job, but they felt like that number should be higher. They had 16 % of men graduate from the program in 2017, and this was a step they were excited about. None of those men had been re- arrested, and that went against a 67% re-arrest rate nationally. That was at the one year mark and they monitored the men for three years total. Over the last 3 years, the City had hired 15 of their men, and 13 had kept their jobs. Two had been terminated, and they also had 4 men working for the County full0time, and three at the City of North Charleston. They anticipated working with 75 men in 2018, which was a lot to work through the program, and they only had 3 staff members. They were always looking to expand transitional jobs, but had been really lucky for the City to continue to fund them, and offer those jobs to them each year. Chairman Shahid stated that some of the jobs were with the Parks Department, and Mr. McGrew stated that was correct, as well as Sanitation, Fleet, Stormwater, and Streets and Sidewalks. They had men in most of the departments; some of the departments wouldn’t make sense for their men. They had future plans to grow into a community re-entry center and to get to the point where 50 men were going through the in-house employment each year. The goal was to have every man go through the in-house employment, and then go to the transitional jobs, because that would allow them to be more successful. Chairman Shahid stated that the Committee was very familiar with this project, as it had come in under the administration of Mayor Riley. Chief Mullen had been very engaged with this. They had some growing pains. Mr. McGrew stated that they had re-vamped their entire program from what it was when they first started. Chairman Shahid said that he knew that the judges, Federal and State, were excited about this program because the rate of recidivism had gone down. Mr. McGrew said they had good relationships with the Federal judges. Men did still come into the program on bond instead of going to prison. But, they had to finish the program as part of the bond. Sometimes it was successful, and sometimes it wasn’t. Councilmember Seekings asked how the men came to them. Mr. McGrew said they came in a lot of different ways. He taught in the County jail, and a lot of it was word of mouth, and they handed out a lot of flyers. Councilmember Lewis said he had heard that it helped them get into a job and keep them out of the system. Mr. McGrew said it was tough, and it wasn’t bulletproof. Phase one was critical. They paid them an education stipend to come to class, which was unique. Many programs charged for things like this. Councilmember Shahid stated that they loved this program and had heard nothing but great things about it. He was very supportive of it. He said anything they needed, Amy had his contact information, but that they would like a semi-annual update, but if he felt there was a need to come back, they’d be glad to have them back. Chief Taylor stated that they met with Turning Leaf quarterly to get updated. Mr. McGrew stated that they could come in and sit in the class because it was hard to explain what they did. They loved having visitors and they could get a full grasp of the intensive program that the men went through. They had high expectations and they had a lot of work to do in between classes. They put a lot of work into changing. Kay Cross stated that they had been working with Turning Leaf for several years and it was a benefit to the men, but also to the City. They had gotten some very good employees. Sometimes they appreciated the jobs so much that they were hard workers, and it was rewarding to see someone turn their life around. Chairman Shahid said it was beneficial to have these guys working and be able to keep them there. It avoided turn-around. Mr. McGrew said it went both ways and they really appreciated it. Update on Fire and Police Chief Searches – Kay Cross, Director of Human Resources Ms. Cross stated that they were much closer now then the last time she had reported to the Committee. She wanted to share where they were; she had mailed out letters to all of the Councilmembers the previous Friday. They had set dates for the interviews. On January 30th they would have a breakfast and they were inviting all Councilmembers so they could meet the candidates. It would be a City Council meeting starting at 9 a.m. and the candidates would all present with a self-introduction. Then, they would go into Executive Session and all of the Councilmembers would have a chance to ask them questions. They would be brought in one at a time. The media would have the opportunity to meet the candidates and talk to them. That after, from 2:30 to 4:00, they would meet with the Fire Department and all of the firefighters would have the opportunity to come to the Maritime Center to meet the candidates. She sent an e-mail out the previous week to Fire and Police asking for suggestions for questions and she had been getting some of those in daily. She would be submitting those to their consultant and she would be going through and picking out the ones that most represented what was important to the Fire and Police Departments. The following day, they would have a full day of interviews. They had asked the Public Safety Committee to participate, had some community leaders, as well as department heads that would be participating. That would be an all day event and she hoped they could attend. For the Police Chief, it would be the following week, February 6th and 7th. They would be following the same format with a breakfast at the Gaillard Center, a meet and greet with the Police Department, and then a full day of interviews at City Hall. They would have three panels and the candidates would rotate through the panels. They were close to having the final group and being able to share that information with them. They would have the information prior to the interviews. Chairman Shahid asked how many candidates there were and Ms. Cross said she couldn’t, but she was expecting it to be around 5 for each. She didn’t have a final number yet, because they were still working through the process. Chairman Shahid asked if they would get a copy of their packet and resume and Ms. Cross said they would be getting those the week prior to the events so they would have some time to review the information. Councilmember Seekings asked if the schedule on the 31st was all day and if the Mayor was participating in that because he had a meeting scheduled that day with the President of the College of Charleston. Ms. Cross stated it would be all day, and she would have to defer to him on that. She did have him tentatively scheduled to be on one of the panels depending on his schedule. Councilmember Lewis said that the 30th was the breakfast and the 31st was the panel and Ms. Cross stated that was correct and the breakfast should end around 10:30 a.m. Chairman Shahid asked if all Councilmembers were invited to attend the breakfast and if all Public Safety Committee members were on the panels and Ms. Cross stated that was correct. Mayor Tecklenburg arrived at 4:20 p.m. Mayor Tecklenburg stated that the schedule allowed about another week for him to have the opportunity to meet and get input from Councilmembers and Committees, and also representatives from the Fire and Police Departments before he made a decision. Chairman Shahid stated that if all went well they could have a selection by the end of February. Mayor Tecklenburg said that was true and then they had to accept the offer and give notice. That wouldn’t happen overnight. Updates: A. Assistant Chief Chris Vanhoy – Fire Department Assistant Chief Vanhoy stated that Fire Station 14 had a punch list that was due the next day to the Senior Project Manager and once the punch list was resolved, it would move forward with taking over ownership of the Station and moving the Company in. The front-line apparatus that would be assigned to that Station was already ready to go. Station 21, on Cainhoy Road, was waiting for them to do the walk-through and once they got the punch list, they would be able to lease the Station and move in. That apparatus was ready to go as well. Chairman Shahid asked what type of equipment would be in those two stations and Assistant Chief Vanhoy stated that Station 14 would have an Engine and a Battalion Chief. The Battalion Chief was currently assigned to Savannah Highway. Fire Station 21 would have an Engine there with 4 men personnel, the water tender with two men assigned, and a brush truck, which was an F-250 with a skid in the back and a booster tank of water. Chairman Shahid asked when the move-in date was expected to be and Assistant Chief Vanhoy said it was hard to give a date because over the course, since July, they had gotten pushed back. He stated that he hoped Station 14 would be in the next 45-60 days, as well as Station 21. It depended on the contractors. Mayor Tecklenburg  said that before, they had taken possession prior to the issues being resolved and it created conflicts with the contractor coming back and arguing who’s fault issues were, so they decided to wait and let them get in completely done before they stepped in. Assistant Chief Vanhoy stated that Fire Station 11’s plans were 100% complete and were expected to be submitted February 1st. That process looked like it would take about 4 weeks, and then they would go out to bid. It would be right next door to the superstore site. They had a recruit class, 1801, under way. It had started January 8th. They had 17 recruits. The pay plan was moving forward. Chief Tippett had been working with HR, Legal, and Finance to implement that and once they got to agreeance, they would be scheduling meetings with personnel to address changes that the needed to be notified of. Once the pay plan was approved and put out, they would be scheduling an Engineer’s Exam during the first quarter of this year. They had a Promotionary Awards Ceremony that was scheduled for February 1st at West Ashley High School. They were working on a Fire Ops 101 that was scheduled for April 21st, on a Saturday. The invitation should be going out to Council. They hadn’t received a time-line and they were still working out the program and work stations that would be demonstrated. He encouraged everyone to attend if they could. The haul-out for Marine 101 was completed and had received some new electronics for the vessel itself and they had to get the proper training before it went back into full service. They had run 584 incidents during the snow period, Wednesday-Monday. There had been several structure fires throughout the City and West Ashley area and a Hazmat call on Sullivans Island earlier that week. Chairman Shahid asked if there had been any uptick in wellness calls. Assistant Chief Vanhoy said that he had transitioned to training in Technical Service and the calls had stayed steady on average. There may be a little uptick in structure fires, but EMS was holding the same every month. They did a weekly report and they averaged, roughly, about 1200 calls every two weeks. About 90% of those were EMS calls. Chairman Shahid asked how many recruits were in the class and if they would be fully staffed if the class graduated on time and Assistant Chief Vanhoy said they had 17; they had started with 18, but one had resigned about 3 days into it. They were sitting at 330 employees roughly. He stated that most of the vacancies were at the firefighter and assistant engineer positions. Amy Wharton said that they had 21 vacancies and Assistant Engineer had more than that. Assistant Chief Vanhoy stated that they went by minimum staffing and if they looked at budgeted positions, they should be at 5 per truck and 4 per ladder truck. Ms. Wharton said she thought it was roughly 20 vacancies for each position. Chairman Shahid asked for them to e-mail them the number of vacancies. Assistant Chief Vanhoy stated they had just promoted engineers and captains, and so hopefully, they would be able to get an engineer’s exam once the pay plan was approved. Councilmember Lewis said they had put in a grant about a year previous for the Cannon Street Station and asked if they had heard anything about it. Assistant Chief Vanhoy stated that it had moved into Phase 2 and they were designing the Station. It had moved from Grant stage to Design. It would go through another phase after that. Fire Station 8 was approved to go through the first stage. B. Interim Chief Jerome Taylor – Police Department Chief Taylor stated that they had 24 openings. The previous year they had 40 new hires and the overall attrition rate was 8%. They had a total of 461 officers now and the following morning he would be swearing in 8 officers. The previous year they had 37 officers leave the Police Department for various reasons such as retirement, and going to the FBI. It was a challenge to get to 100% fully staffed. They talked a lot about de-escalation within the Police Department and they would be training all officers on a program developed by PERF called ICAT. This taught officers to safely diffuse various types of incidents. They were also going to launch the Police Department Advisory Council this year. That had been approved by the Mayor and Legal was looking at it right now. Councilmembers would appoint people to be in a position to look at closed cases within the Department and to have discussion. Once they got the final format from Legal, it would come before Public Safety to be discussed in great detail before going to the full Council. People were doing this throughout the country and they had been looking at it since the inception of the Illumination Project. They were also working on the cameras and had talked to Mr. Keith Benjamin. They wanted to bring the cameras from West Ashley into the Department. Right now, the cameras they were looking at were the cameras on King Street. They had also started looking at moving the Forensics Science Building. They were looking at the FLEET Garage. Last year, they hadn’t gotten the COPS Grant. As population grew, they must expand the Police Department, unless they cut back on the delivery of service. Last year, the entire State had gotten $197,000 under the COPS Grant. This year, since it wasn’t funded, they would be putting back in for the Grant and they needed to close the gap. That funding of officers was based on a national standard that looked at many things to tell you how many officers they should have. Charleston’s population was 142,000. They had 461 officers right now and they had to deliver service 24/7 which was taxing. When they had large events, it took a lot of individuals and planning. Right now, when there was a critical event, they had to take all of their resources to address the crisis. It wasn’t as simple as closing it down and it was disruptive. Chief Taylor stated that he didn’t have final numbers for crime, but he knew that in June or July of 2017, crime was up about 17%. They were looking at crime through a sense of urgency this year and he was sure that overall, non-violent crime was down. He would expect that if there was a percentage increase for violent crime, it would be less than 1%. That would be for sexual assaults and aggravated assaults. They had a strategy they were looking at to address that. Overall, they were in a good shape. For homicide, it would depend on the statistics for the King Street event, but they would either end up with 6 or 7 homicides for the year. North Charleston had 35 the previous year. When they looked at all of the major crimes, they had overall reduction. Another challenge they had last year, was that South Carolina mandated electronic reporting starting on January 1st. They were in compliance. They had taken all of the data that they were submitting by hand and were now submitting it electronically. The State agreed to train the entire Police Department within a 30 day window on the electronic submission. This will help with some of the issues they had in regards to traffic stops. Chief Taylor stated that there had been a lot coming together in the past 60 days. They were very involved in Turning Leaf and that was a good program. The two officers that had been involved in critical incidents were being transitioned back to duty. SLED had sent a letter that would allow them to return to duty. They had met with the Solicitor’s Office and the Chief’s in the Tri-County area had decided how they would come together to address that issue when they had incidents involving officers in the public. They were moving well in that area, and hopefully by the end of the next week both of those individuals would be removed from the administrative aspect and put back into full-duty. They were compiling information for the yearly report, and he wanted to thank Ms. Wharton and the entire Council and Staff for their support.  Councilmember Seekings asked if one of the objectives for FLEET was to replace with higher profile vehicles. It seemed for the future, that the high profile vehicles would almost be a requirement for them to be able to maneuver around. Chief Taylor stated that for every car they took in, they sold one. They were looking at reducing FLEET 10%. They had some trucks and were deciding to look at military vehicles. It could increase over a period of time, but right now the only high profile vehicles belonged to those in specialized units. Councilmember Wagner asked how high the water was during the last flood event. Councilmember Seekings said there was 4 feet of water at Ashley Avenue at least. Councilmember Wagner said that high profile wouldn’t do much good if it was 4 feet deep. Mark Wilbert said it would get them to the edges, which was what they were having trouble doing right now. Chairman Shahid asked about the program for advisors and what the purpose would be. Chief Taylor said that under the Illumination Project, they stated they wanted to get citizen involvement. That was one of the standards. It wouldn’t be adversarial. It was to look at the department and be able to explain. Mayor Tecklenburg stated that each Councilmember could appoint someone from their district and the Mayor would get a few appointments; it would consist of about 18-20 members. They would become familiar with the Police Department and be able to make recommendations on an advisory basis. C. Mark Wilbert – Director, Emergency Management Mark Wilbert stated he was in his new position, and they had hired an assistant. His old position should be listed soon. Work the previous few weeks had been a lot of cold sheltering work. They were setting records; it seemed every morning, with the number of people in the City that they found in cold shelters. They were over 270 that morning. One of the bigger challenges had been transportation. It took about 70 volunteers to run a shelter, they ran shifts all night, and then they had to find people who would drive the residents back to the City. Councilmember Seekings and CARTA had offered to try something new with a bus to load the 80 plus people and get them out of there, because they turned that right back into a school. Running the shuttles back and forth was hard on the volunteers. They were having a hard time getting volunteers, particularly women. Chairman Shahid asked where the shelters were located and Mr. Wilbert said that one was in Mt. Pleasant, and the other was in North Charleston. The shelters had their own services for shuttling, and different churches pitched in. It was a group effort. Chairman Shahid asked how people were becoming aware of the shelters. Mr. Wilbert said it was incredible. They heard through the TV Station and the Public Safety employees. About 160 of the 270 seeking shelter were at the One80 Place on a more permanent basis. Chairman Shahid said that the other people were people that they didn’t know about. Mr. Wilbert said he wouldn’t say that, the system did know about the majority of them. One80 Place was trying to identify the outliers. Mayor Tecklenburg said they were people that were living on the street and they were in tent city two years ago. Now, they were scattered throughout the City because they didn’t allow folks to stay in one place for more than 48 hours. About 20 of those at One80 Place were there because of the cold weather. There were about 140-150 that if they engaged in a new effort to find housing, they could make a dent in the homeless population. Unfortunately, the numbers grow back again. Chairman Shahid said that 160 were regulars at One80 Place, with an additional 150 out there who were not regular clients. They were there somewhere. That was a sizeable number. Mr. Wilbert said that the Police Department and Fire Department knew the people in their area and beat. They were looking after them and so he felt much more  comfortable now than he did starting the season. The Homeless Coalition folks knew just about where everyone was. They were after the outliers. Unfortunately, he was told at One80 Place that if they didn’t get them in the first 18 months, they tended to want to stay on the streets. He was worrying about them getting someplace warm. Chairman Shahid said that he knew this was a top priority for the City, of having something within the City to take care of the residents, so that they didn’t have to be transported outside of the City. It concerned him to not have something local to address the residents when the crises came up. Mr. Wilbert said that they would be doing a hot wash on the most recent winter storm. The big takeaway was that they needed the right resources to do the job. The region just wasn’t equipped the way it needed to be. They had just kicked off their first meeting for the bridge run. He wasn’t sure if that had always gotten visibility in terms of the resources that it pulled from all City Departments to push that through. It was a world class event and took about the entire Police Department and Fire Department, as well as many other departments. It took a lot of time from people in the City. Chairman Shahid said it was a security nightmare. Councilmember Seekings said it wasn’t a nightmare and that was because of Mr. Wilbert. When they were up and running at Command Central, it was worth going to see. It was an amazing event of people that were working under the leadership of Charleston. It was also a good training ground for other events of its kind. Councilmember Seeking left at 5:15 p.m. Mr. Wilbert said he was bringing the Mutual Aid Agreement to their attention and it would have to go before Council for approval. There were very few changes. This was about money for how they got resources. They would either spend or make money. This had been through Legal review and they had the question with the language ‘shall render assistance’. This was the responding entity that made the determination on whether they had the resources. They sent people elsewhere when needed, and in 2014 they sent a team to Dorchester and had gotten fully reimbursed. This was a tool in their tool bag for events where they needed to do debris pick-up and clear after a disaster. He was recommending that they continue to be a signatory to it. Approval of the State of South Carolina Statewide Mutual Aid Agreement for Emergency and Disaster Response/Recovery The Committee took no action on this item. Having no further business, the Committee adjourned at 5:19 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary