Public Safety Council Committee

Municipal Center City of Jonesboro 300 S. Church Street Jonesboro, AR 72401 Meeting Minutes Public Safety Council Committee Tuesday, September 17, 2024 5:00 PM Municipal Center, 300 S. Church 1. CALL TO ORDER 2. ROLL CALL (ELECTRONIC ATTENDANCE) CONFIRMED BY CITY CLERK APRIL LEGGETT Present 5 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison;Janice Porter and LJ Bryant Absent 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson 3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES MIN-24:080 MINUTES OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY COUNCIL COMMITTEE MEETING ON AUGUST 20, 2024 Attachments: Public Safety Minutes 08202024 A motion was made by David McClain, seconded by Chris Moore, that this matter be Passed . The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson 4. NEW BUSINESS ORDINANCES TO BE INTRODUCED ORD-24:028 AN ORDINANCE TO THE CITY OF JONESBORO TO PLACE VARIOUS TRAFFIC SIGNS AT DESIGNATED LOCATIONS AS DETERMINED BY THE TRAFFIC CONTROL COMMITTEE Sponsors: Engineering A motion was made by Chris Moore, seconded by Brian Emison, that this matter be Recommended to Council . The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson ORD-24:029 AN ORDINANCE INCREASING THE DEATH BENEFIT AMOUNT PAYABLE TO AN ELIGIBLE SURVIVOR OF A DECEASED MEMBER OF THE JONESBORO LOCAL POLICE PENSION FUND City of Jonesboro Page 1 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 Sponsors: Mayor's Office, Police Department, Human Resources and Finance Attachments: Local Police and Fire Retirement System Councilmember David McClain said, I have one and the only reason I have one is because I was reading the LOPFI letter, and it said increase death benefit from the current $6,500 to $10,000, that’s $20,332 a month, this is an increase of $531 per month in Local Plan employer contribution rate. I was just trying to understand the math on this if somebody could help me. So that’s going to cost us an additional $20,332 a month to do that? Finance Department Director Steve Purtee approached the podium and said, it cost an additional $531 a month, about $6,300. Currently, we’re paying about $19,388 a month, I’m going by recall on that. So, it’ll increase to $20,332. Councilmember David McClain said, ok, I’ve gotcha. Director Steve Purtee said, so in theory, we’ll have the opportunity, and appreciation goes to our local trustee on the LOPFI Board, retired Captain Scott Baxter. He was instrumentally helping us look at this analysis. So, we’ll increase the death benefit about over 50% for about $6,300 a year. Councilmember Brian Emison said, Mr. Chairman I just have a comment. I would just like to say that I’m glad we decided to revisit this, and to raise the benefit that’s out there on that side of it. My father, who we lost in 2018, was a, of course, retired Jonesboro police officer. And, you know the cost of the average funeral these days, it’s continuing to go up well above $6,500. So, I think it’s the least we can do to take care of the people that have taken care of us for all these years. I really do appreciate us revisiting this. Director Steve Purtee said, thank you and we agree, as well. City Clerk April Leggett said, I would ask that we voice vote for the remainder. I’m having some issues with the software. Chairman LJ Bryant said, gotcha. A motion was made by Chris Moore, seconded by Brian Emison, that this matter be Recommended to Council . The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson RESOLUTIONS TO BE INTRODUCED RES-24:108 RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF JONESBORO, ARKANSAS TO CONDEMN PROPERTY LOCATED AT: 1101 French St. Jonesboro, AR 7240; Parcel # 01-144073-12300; OWNER: Christopher B. Posey Sponsors: Code Enforcement City of Jonesboro Page 2 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 Attachments: 1101 French Inspection Report 1101 French Map 1101 French Pre-Condemnation Notice Affidavit 1101 French Pre-Condemnation Returned Certified Letter WIN_20220524_12_10_35_Pro WIN_20220524_12_11_33_Pro WIN_20220524_12_12_08_Pro WIN_20220524_12_12_34_Pro WIN_20220524_12_13_09_Pro A motion was made by Chris Moore, seconded by Brian Emison, that this matter be Recommended to Council . The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson RES-24:115 RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF JONESBORO, ARKANSAS TO CONDEMN PROPERTY LOCATED AT: 1500 Danny Dr. Jonesboro, AR 72401; Parcel # 01-144214-10600; OWNER: Kevin Lyles Sponsors: Code Enforcement Attachments: 1500 Danny Board & Secure Affidavit 1500 Danny Board & Secure Returned Certified Letter 1500 Danny Inspection Report 1500 Danny Pre-Condemnation Notice Affidavit 1500 Danny Pre-Condemnation Notice Returned Sig Card 1500 Danny WIN_20230418_15_53_41_Pro WIN_20230418_15_53_43_Pro WIN_20230418_15_56_37_Pro WIN_20230418_15_56_53_Pro WIN_20230418_15_57_07_Pro WIN_20230418_15_57_18_Pro WIN_20230418_15_57_20_Pro A motion was made by Chris Moore, seconded by Brian Emison, that this matter be Recommended to Council . The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson 5. PENDING ITEMS RES-24:091 RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF JONESBORO, ARKANSAS TO CONDEMN PROPERTY LOCATED AT: 1104 Pratt Circle, Jonesboro, AR 72401: Parcel # 01-144082-12300 City of Jonesboro Page 3 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 Sponsors: Code Enforcement Attachments: 1104 Pratt B&S Returned Reg and Cert Letters 1104 Pratt Boarding and Securing Affidavit 1104 Pratt Inspection Report 1104 Pratt Map 1104 Pratt Pre-Condemnation Notice Affidavit 1104 Pratt Pre-Condemnation Notice Returned Cert Letter Councilmember Chris Moore said, Mr. Chair, can you tell me why that’s a pending item and not on the regular list because I wasn’t at the last meeting. Was that something. Chairman LJ Bryant said, Mr. Roper. Code Enforcement Director Scott Roper approached the podium and said, we had been in contact with the homeowner’s family that was trying to get together to take ownership of the property. And so, we wanted to give them that opportunity, and they’ve stopped answering calls so. Councilmember Chris Moore said, gotcha. A motion was made by Chris Moore, seconded by Brian Emison, that this matter be Recommended to Council . The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson 6. OTHER BUSINESS COM-24:042 VECTOR MOSQUITO CONTROL REPORT FOR JULY 2024 Attachments: Jonesboro July, 2024 Filed COM-24:047 VECTOR MOSQUITO CONTROL REPORT FOR AUGUST 2024 Attachments: Jonesboro Aug2024 Councilmember David McClain said, do we know if and when Mr. Starks will come and give us an actual in-person report and let us ask questions about these? Chief Administrative Officer Brian Richardson approached the podium and said, I can certainly see if he can come to the next Public Safety meeting since it is mosquito season. Of course, if you read from the reports, it’s obviously trended down this month. So, maybe he can come in and give a year-end recap at the next Public Safety meeting. We can definitely contact him about that. Filed COM-24:048 CRIME STATISTICS UPDATE BY POLICE CHIEF RICK ELLIOTT Sponsors: Police Department Attachments: Crime Statistics 09172024 Chairman LJ Bryant said, I think for other business, I know Chief Elliot had a few City of Jonesboro Page 4 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 matters. The Entertainment District and crime stats he wanted to share with us. I believe he left us some information on our desk, as well, for his presentation. Police Department Chief Rick Elliot approached the podium and said, thank you Mr. Chair, members of the council, if you would, I’ll just take a few minutes, kind of update you first on the Entertainment District. We’ve had two events downtown in the Entertainment District. Paint the Town Red and then Local Fest this past weekend. I am pleased to report there are no alcohol related incidents in both events. This past weekend, there were a couple of arrest, but it was drug related not alcohol. Did not have any complaints of people leaving the Entertainment District with alcohol in their hands or possession. So, from officers working those events, no issues these first two events. I told the council that as these events go on I would kind of give an update where we’re at, so we can kind of keep a progress if it’s going to be problematic or not. So far, not a problem. We’ll have a better feel of this after the BBQ Fest here in a couple weeks. Moving on from there, I did leave a copy of out 10-year crimes stats on your desk. We’ll be publishing these tomorrow. They’re published on our website. We’ll do a Facebook deal tomorrow with the stats. I just think it’s important for you, as the council, and our community to look at the numbers. A lot of times people get to talking on social media about things going on. Get to comparing us to Memphis and other high crime areas. It’s like, for one, there’s really no comparison to Memphis, St. Louis, and Little Rock. I hate those comparisons. We just start looking at crime at West Memphis, other cities around us that are half our population, and a lot of them have more crime than we do. Which is interesting. I will caution you and anybody else that’s listening in, any stats that you get for crime that’s on internet. Those are all 2022 numbers. The FBI has not posted any 2023 numbers, and they certainly don’t have access to 2024, because that’s still a working document. So, any crime statistics that’s you go and research today, on the internet, on crime, you’re looking at 2022 numbers. Now here on our sheet, we have 2023 and 2024 numbers as of yesterday. So, you start at the very top of the sheet. The first category is major crimes against persons, it’s in that blue bar, but right above that you’ve got the population. In 2015 we had a population of 73,712, today we’re about 81,246, according to the internet. So that’s about a 7,500 increase in our population over the past 10 years. If you look at your sheet, you’ll see the highlighted yellow boxes. Those are the peak years in the last 10 years of crime in that particular category. So, if you look at 2020, that was a peak year for homicides in the city. We had 11. Moving down the categories, very violent year compared to the others, the left and right of that category. As we move forward to 2021, 2022, 2023, and even today. That number has trended down. So, population numbers up, crime has trended down. So, people can infer what they wish about crime based on numbers on the internet, but I think it’s important to put the actual numbers in people’s hands, as we speak here today. The second part of the sheet is crimes against property, and you can see the subcategories on that. Again, you can see the changes from where we were at, some of the peak years, compared to what we’re at currently today. So, I will say that when you get your monthly report, these top two categories are condensed to major crimes against persons category and all these subcategories are lumped into that, so when you see that one number it combines all of those on that monthly report. The same thing with crimes against property. All of those subcategories are lumped into that one number. So, that one number that you see on the monthly, is a combination of all of those, into that number. So, I know that gets confusing sometimes, and if you have any questions after this or another time, please feel free to reach out to me so we can further explain. Because I think people being properly educated on what they’re looking at, and what we’re looking at is very important. Especially when they start talking about our city as we’re trying to City of Jonesboro Page 5 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 develop the city, move the city forward, we want the people to have the right information. And certainly, the people that wish to look at our city to move here and develop here, we want them to have the right information as they come to the city. So, that’s why we think it’s important that we put this information out there, not only for you but the public to take a look at it. So, I do have a board, a larger board, of kind of what you’re looking at. I’ll post it over on the easel, and in between meetings if you would like to take a look at it or after the meetings it will be there for your viewing pleasure. One last note about what we’re looking at on our crime stats. I had our Real-Time Crime Center run a number, and it’s interesting to note that 30% of the crime committed in Jonesboro is from people that do not live here. 30%. So, I took that 30% and we took their address where they put down they lived at the time of arrest, and I took a map of the United States and put a pin dot on what state they lived in when they were arrested here in Jonesboro. So, as you can see on the map, which you probably can’t from your distance, but there is a concentrated effort around Jonesboro, from Memphis, Little Rock, kind of in our area. But across the whole United States, we got arrestees from Washington State, California, states out west, states out east and Hawaii, did not make the map, but we even had an arrest from Hawaii. So, those numbers are spread out, that’s part of that 30%, and that’s just from 2023. I’m not talking about 10-year study, I’m talking about 2023 arrest. That’s what those numbers look like. That’s our percentage, around 30%, non-Jonesboro residents committed crime here in Jonesboro. So, we contribute that to, hey Jonesboro’s a large thriving community, we have a lot going on here, a lot of business, medical facilities. Other areas around us are not as fortunate. People come here to do good business, people come here, also, to do bad business. We recognize that, that’s why we take a very proactive way in the way we deal with this. Our Real-Time Crime Center has certainly increased our solvability rate. In the amount of crimes that we’re seeding and arrests and solvability rate has gone up. Overall, think what we’re doing, is having a positive effect and keeping the crime at a number. These numbers are available to go, we can go 20 years back and you look historically even at 20, 25 years. There’s not just a gigantic increase across the board. And I think that says a lot for the community, that we recognize crime, we recognize there’s problems in our area and in our state. In the state of Arkansas it’s deemed, statically speaking, as a high crime state compared to others and our poverty level in the state is high compared to others across the country. So, that’s some of the things we have to deal with, our education may not be as good as some across the country, but that’s what we have to deal with and live with, among some other things. But I think as a community, the community working with us, we have a pretty good handle on things. It’s not a perfect world, but we are trying to make a positive impact and keep Jonesboro as safe as possible. Entertain any questions. Councilmember David McClain said, I have a question to you. Just sitting here thinking about, you said 30% of crime is from outside of Jonesboro. I know a few years ago we had some issues, and we were having some gang problems. What percentage or how are we, how much of the crime, that is from people in Jonesboro, gang related? What are we doing to address it? Chief Rick Elliot said, that’s a good question. Yeah, several years ago. One, we know we have a gang problem. Mostly youth, young adult, because some of them over the past years have become in adulthood. And, that problem still exists. In fact, they’re recruiting kids of younger ages now. You know, 9, 10, 11 year old to go out and commit criminal acts. So, working together with the juvenile, Sheriff’s Department, and our Federal Task Force officers. The habitual offenders, we try to recognize and if we get a federal case on them, I’d get them off the streets that way, because federal time, you’re going to do day for day. It’s not like out here, the state system where you may get a fraction of time. On federal level, it’s day for day, so that’s why that federal partnership is important for us. Working with our City of Jonesboro Page 6 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 youth, that’s why I’m a big advocate for our city youth ministries, any after school programs, because there’s so many kids out there that are on their own until bedtime, and they’re not getting anything. So, any kind of program whether it’s church or any kind of after school program, I think we need more of them and need to advocate and support those as a city and as a community. I know there’s several that’s in place. They are beneficial. Can we do more? Absolutely, we need to do more. The kids in schools, our SRO’s, we get intelligence on these kids, and these young gang members, they’re driving a lot of this violent crime up. This aggravated assault level, that’s kids, 13 years old, running around with Glock pistols, and shooting up, just because they’re mad at somebody, they go by and shoot up somebody’s house. And the reality is, I’ve got three or four kids out in the county jail now, that’s been charged as an adult, because of the violent crimes they have committed in our community. My only solution is, they only do adult things, treat them like an adult. So, whether they’re 14, 15 years old, whatever, I think that’s the punishment they need, Now, the downside to that is, they have to be housed separate from juveniles and adult population out there. Does create a bigger strain out there on the jail. But we have to send a message that, you know, we take this serious. The other part is, we got the same kids, some of these Glock pistols, they’re coming up with these selector switches that makes that pistol fully auto. So, a 30-round mag, they’re shooting off 30 rounds in two seconds. So, if I’m pointing a gun at you and I pull the trigger, two seconds I’ve discharged 30-rounds. Where did those 30-rounds go? Who knows. So, that’s what’s scary on our end because we’re the ones having to face this day in and day out. So far this year, we’re about three selector switches recovered. And I’ve got evidence room full of guns that we’ve taken off the streets, so a lot of the stuff, we see stupid things, we’re intercepting it before it gets catastrophic. But again, that goes back to, good intel, good working relationship with the community, good working relationship with our schools, and our SROs in the schools. So, we recognize the problems there, we don’t want ugly to break out in the schools, obviously that’s always a big concern. But I think the schools working with us and our SRO’s, we’ve curtailed a lot of things. Now, things still happen in schools, don’t get me wrong, but we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got to work with. So, to answer your question, short answer is, we understand the juvenile problem and that gang issue. We do work with West Memphis on gang issue, we work with Memphis PD on gang, because it’s all intertwined. So, everything you see on that board, these numbers, we get gang members from Little Rock, West Memphis, Memphis. It’s all back and forth, when you’re talking about drugs, money, and crime, it’s all hand in hand. The illegal drug is the catalyst for the biggest part of our violent crime. 99% of it. The murders, 99% of our murders is the drugs are the catalyst. About that 1%, it’s domestic related. We have had some domestic over the course of several years, but most of its drug related. You see breaking news of something in the middle of the night, there’s generally a nexus that drugs are involved in some shape, form or fashion. So, getting back to the root of that evil, of getting the drugs off the streets, is just as important. So, again I go back to, having these Federal Task Force officers with FBI, Homeland Security, DEA, US Marshal Service. We’re making cases and interrupting the flow of dope before it even gets to Jonesboro. And these people are getting charged on a federal level. So, it’s working with these federal partners, not only in our area, but across country, and intercepting dope before it gets here. So that’s what’s making a difference. Now, does it still get here? Absolutely. We’re up to over 10 fentanyl deaths so far this year here in Jonesboro. That’s scary. Fentanyl’s bad on the streets. And fentanyl laced marijuana is a big problem all over the state right now. There’s a lot of concerns out there, but as soon as we recognize the concern, we take every proactive approach to try to address that by one means or another. Whether it’s on the local level, state level or federal level. So, we have a big communication with all of our federal partners, state partners, in solving our problems and working our problems. It takes that effort and the City of Jonesboro Page 7 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 community’s effort, all together, to be successful. I think we’ve made a dent. Again, not a perfect place, not going to be perfect, but it’s better than most. Councilmember Janice Porter said, I have a question. Concerning the Entertainment District, do you have any thoughts yet about the staffing levels that are going to be required, and can you tell us what expenditures you’ve made so far? Chief Rick Elliot said, so far zero expenditures. Let me back up, we did, Local Fest provided funding for that. We did provide funding for Paint the Town Red, four officers. So, BBQ Fest, they’ll pay for security at that event, so anything beyond that will be negotiated between the event organizer and the city. Generally, if you’re putting on an event then the security is on you. Now, if the city is sponsored event, like the Christmas Parade, then we’ll get our reserves to come in, and for the most part they’ll cover that. It’ll take all 20 plus of them to work the Christmas Parade. And the fair that’s coming up next week. So, don’t know if that forecast, expenditures forecast looks like. It all depends on the problems that we have, or we think we’re going to have, as this thing moves forward. So, coming in the winter months, I really don’t see a whole lot of problem, but again, I have officers walking through, and I have plain clothed officers walking through. Which is kind of, listen to what the people have to say any complaints then we’ll just take it each week at a time. Again, I’ll be glad to come back and give you reports on where we’re at with this, and if we need to do something different, I’ll be the first one to say we need to do something different. Councilmember Chris Moore said, Chief, I met with Brian Richardson a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about, this is kind of off subject but not really to far. Like Ms. Porter is worried about downtown, I was worried about the number of calls that were taken to some of the apartment complexes in Jonesboro. And Brian may correct me, but I think we have one apartment complex that had 800 calls for service in a year. Chief Rick Elliot said, right. Councilmember Chris Moore said, so when we’re talking about no calls for service, Downtown Entertainment District, but yet we’re not discussing the fact that we have one apartment complex that had 800 calls for service. And that same apartment complex has sister complexes that are equally. So, within three apartment complexes we had 1,700 calls for service. What can we do about that? I mean, to me that was astonishing. That we’re going 1,700 times. Chief Rick Elliot said, it is. Those two complexes turned into Section 8 housing, for the most part. A lot of problems that we had in former other areas, like 1800 block of Cedar Heights, has shifted to one condensed area. So, a lot of the problems have shifted with it, drug activity. When you get that big of a shift and those kinds of problems, you know, you’ve got domestic, not all of them are drug related. Of course, you’ve got, domestics, fights, shots fired, but you’re right there is a lot of call volume. Somebody had brought up; well can we abate those apartments? And the whole issue with abatements, is now under attack from Department of Justice. They’ve sent out some things on fair housing and on what we can do and what we can not do. I sent that to Carol, and I think we got it sent off to AML for another legal opinion, and I’m sure Attorney General is going to weigh in and National League of Cities is going to weigh in. So, some of the tools that we use to use to rid some of our problems in our housing, I can’t use anymore. You know, if you’re caught committing a crime, you live in Section 8 housing, they made you move out. I can’t even do that anymore. So, some of those old tools are being taken away from us and that creates another problem. I do know the Links; they have a new manager. I did have a discussion with her here while back. Her and her manager above her, do have plans for better lighting, coming in to clean the place up and adding cameras. So, that is on their agenda, I don’t know where the time frame is on seeing those improvements. That’s a conversation I plan on having with her. The same thing with Garden Manor right behind Parker Park. They’ve been without a manager for the past several months and the call volume out there has gone up substantially. A City of Jonesboro Page 8 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 good manager, in any facility, makes a huge difference. When you have a good manager, at Garden Manor, our call volume is zero, then tenants feel safe. So, I think that’s where the Links, I think that’s where they want to get back to so you can attract people to come and rent and feel safe living there. We’re in that talking working relationship with them, I just need them to work a little quicker on solving those problems. Councilmember Chris Moore said, it just seems like we’re using an extraordinary amount of our resources for one or two businesses. Carol is the Chief correct in the fact there’s absolutely nothing we can do as far as sanctions against the business? City Attorney Carol Duncan said, I mean, we’ve looked at, I don’t think abatement is completely off the table as far as how we used it on Cedar Heights Drive and some individual homes. Because I think that’s different, I think the problem that you run into is when you’re dealing with apartment complexes specifically. And I think that we, compared to other cities, have not used the nuisance abatement statutes in the same way. What the DOJ seems to be coming down on is, using it for total calls of service where you’re lumping domestic crime victim that’s calls for help into the same category as a drug arrest. And that’s not fair to the people at the property, and that’s where fair housing comes in. So, we’ve never done that on any of our nuisance abatements, we have strictly filed those based strictly upon criminal activity at the property. Where police made arrests on the property multiple times for drugs and related things such as that. We’ve never included the call volume that had to do with a victim calling for service or anything like that. And I think that’s where some cities were getting crossways with the DOJ. So, as far as our existing nuisance abatement properties, I think we’re ok. Cedar Heights, even though people think of that as an apartment complex, those are all individually owned condominiums. Even though many are owned by the same person, they are all technically separate residences. So that’s not the same thing as an apartment complex. But I do think you have to tread carefully when you’re talking about an apartment complex, especially one that is receiving federal funding. I think the DOJ is easing their way toward saying it’s a fair housing violation. I don’t know how far they will go with that, but it does seem to cause us some concerns. Councilmember Chris Moore said, it seems to me that if LJ owned an apartment complex, and we were over there five times a day, we would come to a conclusion, there’s something we can do to LJ to punish him. And make him either evict the tenants that are causing the problems or change their policies and procedures. City Attorney Carol Duncan said, you may remember that we attempted that down on Nettleton several years ago and fought a court battle that lasted for two years. And the judge wasn’t willing to say what happens in this apartment should cause the person in this apartment to lose their home. And so, we weren’t successful in that case. Now, I think it cleaned itself up a lot just because of the litigation. Like I think they wanted it to look better when they got to court, so it made vast improvements. But once again, you had an out of state property owner that did not have a strong property manager, and they put a better manager in place. We don’t have as many problems out of those apartments as we did in the past. I don’t know the numbers, but I don’t hear about it as much as I hear about the ones that you’re talking about. Chief Rick Elliot said, they’re still at a high number, but you’ve also got to look at that number and take the CIT calls out of it. Our mental health calls have gone through the roof over the past couple of years. We spend as much time dealing with mental health issues in the city as about anything else. Those calls take an hour or so for officers to deal with. People in mental health crisis, everyday there’s multiple calls at any given time we’re having to deal with it, and now we’re having to transport. I mean, it’s an almost everyday thing that we’re transporting somebody under a court order to a facility somewhere. That’s resources and that’s fuel that I’m having to take away. Councilmember Chris Moore said, we’re pressed for time here tonight. What about if we do this, can you compile the data for the last 24 months for the Lindsey Management properties? I think that’s Park Lake, Gladiolus and Links. Just compile the data for me in some City of Jonesboro Page 9 Public Safety Council Committee Meeting Minutes September 17, 2024 table like this. I want to look at that. Chief Rick Elliot said, sure. City Attorney Carol Duncan said, I will say we’ve had success meeting with different apartment managers around town. We’ve had different ones where we had blow ups. Where all of a sudden crime seems to be worse there when it wasn’t. We’ve worked with apartment managers that were either in transition or new ones coming on and talked about things like Chief’s talking about like lighting and placement of this, having extra patrol drive through or having an on-site police officer live there at a reduced or free cost, and have made their issues ultimately disappear or go way down. And I mean that’s still an option to have that meeting. Chief and I or even sometimes Street Crimes Supervisors and I have met with various different property owners around the city and talked about what we can do to help them make their apartments a safe place to live. Chief Rick Elliot said, even the gas station on South Caraway is under new ownership, and that individual met with the mayor today and wants us to come down and do an assessment. They’re wanting to re-light, camera, kind of change the feel down there. They want people to feel safe. Again, new ownership coming in there. If we can just keep the owners and the managers motivated and hold their feet to the fire to what they said they’re going to do, I think that’s the short-term answer to this. Trying to go through legal, that’s long and drawn out. I think the short-term answer is hold their feet to the fire and clean up your property, we’re here to help. Obviously, as a Police Department and a city. City Attorney Carol Duncan said, often new managers don’t know what we can do to offer help, and that’s when these meetings have been helpful. Here’s what we can do for you. Councilmember Chris Moore said, might be that 24 months isn’t enough time for a snapshot give me 36 months, because would that be over the course of more than one manager? Chief Rick Elliot said, probably. I can run numbers either way you want to look at it. Councilmember Chris Moore said, I mean I don’t want to just take a little short snapshot and draw a conclusion. Chief Rick Elliot said, I think Claire can break it down per year. Kind of like our stat sheet. So, you just look at this year we had this many and this year we had this many. We can take the address and break it down into a five-year study. City Attorney Carol Duncan said, I think it’s important to look at calls for service where it’s a victim calling or a mental health crisis versus criminal activity. Councilmember Chris Moore said, the form you just gave us that’s city-wide, if you’ll put it in this same form because it breaks down the different types of crimes. Then I can look at it. Chief Rick Elliot said, sure, absolutely. No problem. Filed 7. PUBLIC COMMENTS 8. ADJOURNMENT A motion was made by Brian Emison, seconded by David McClain, that this meeting be Adjourned. The motion PASSED with the following vote. Aye: 4 - David McClain;Chris Moore;Brian Emison and Janice Porter Absent: 2 - Mitch Johnson and Chris Gibson City of Jonesboro Page 10