Police Commission

LACONIA POLICE COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES FEBRUARY 23, 2022 3:00 P.M. 2/23/2022 - Minutes 1. CALL TO ORDER Chairman Whittum called the meeting to Order at the above date and time. 2. SALUTE TO THE FLAG Chairman Whittum lead the Pledge of Allegiance. 3. RECORDING SECRETARY Executive Assistant Lori Marsh. 4. ROLL CALL 4.A. Chairman Whittum recognized Commissioners present - Chairman Douglas Whittum, Commissioner Frank Mello and Commissioner Scott Davis. 4.B. Chairman Whittum recognized Staff present - Chief Matthew Canfield. 4.C. Chairman Whittum recognized a quorum has been established and there are three Commission members present. 5. PERSONNEL MATTERS 5.A. Commendations & Awards No discussion. 5.B. Resignations/Retirement No discussion. 5.C. Promotions/Classification Change No discussion. 6. COMMAND STAFF REPORTS Chief Canfield invited Lieutenant Chris Noyes to the podium to introduce Officer Sandro Bosnjak, who was just hired by the department and will be sworn in at this meeting. Lieutenant Noyes introduced Sandro Bosnjak, who immigrated to Laconia with his family from 6. COMMAND STAFF REPORTS Chief Canfield invited Lieutenant Chris Noyes to the podium to introduce Officer Sandro Bosnjak, who was just hired by the department and will be sworn in at this meeting. Lieutenant Noyes introduced Sandro Bosnjak, who immigrated to Laconia with his family from Bosnia in 2001, just before 9-11. He has attended school since he was two years old in Laconia and then attended Plymouth State University, where he majored in Criminal Justice and minored in Cyber Security. Officer Bosnjak was sworn in by Acting City Clerk Stacy Anders. 6.A. Chief - Support Division Chief Canfield advised the following: All of the new cars are on line, except for one due to an issue with some minor equipment, but that one should be on line by the end of the day. These are the cars that were ordered last March. We received a De-Escalation Grant from the Department of Justice. This covers de- escalation and ethics training for law enforcement. We recognize that being an accredited agency, we have always done a great deal of training in this area, but as part of the Governor's Law Enforcement Accountability Commission that he developed a couple of years ago, in response to what took place in Minneapolis, this became a very thing that hit our State as well. It is going to be part of the curriculum in our police academy, being mandatory training next year, so we're ahead of the current. As part of that, we applied for this grant to allow for some training equipment and also certify some of the officers in de- escalation, which is basically a way to talk with people differently in an attempt to de- escalate them; along with creating four verbal judo instructor positions to be able to teach the department. . As part of that, we have been searching for ways to obtain some type of interactive use-of-force equipment to utilize during our use-of-force training and this grant will cover that. We are currently looking at a product called virtual reality training, which consists of a headset that you wear and it has a screen where you interact with the scenario. This kind of puts you into the victim's or suspect's shoes. One of the scenarios puts you in this virtual reality scenario where you go up on an elevator to a roof top and walk to the edge of the building like you are that person. So you see the scenario from the victim's or suspect's viewpoint and are approached by the officer. It kind of gives you that "other" viewpoint. We have a demonstration by Axon coming up on March 10th. Axon is the company that provides us with our body cameras and tasers. We are looking to move forward with that, which will be covered by the grant. We had a preliminary meeting with the City Manager regarding out budget proposal for next year. 6.A.i. Orders & Bulletins No discussion. 6.A.ii. 2021 Attrition Summary Chief Canfield advised last year we had three people leave, two sworn positions and one civilian position. Officer Bosnjak replaces one of those positions, so we currently have one vacancy. That vacancy is being held for our Community Resource Officer, who has worked here for two years and graduates from college in May. His background is currently being done, so that when he graduates we will be able to hire him right away. Therefore, that last vacancy is essentially filled.  Chief Canfield advised last year we had three people leave, two sworn positions and one civilian position. Officer Bosnjak replaces one of those positions, so we currently have one vacancy. That vacancy is being held for our Community Resource Officer, who has worked here for two years and graduates from college in May. His background is currently being done, so that when he graduates we will be able to hire him right away. Therefore, that last vacancy is essentially filled. 6.A.iii. 2021 IPC Summary Chief Canfield indicated the vast majority of the complaints on the 2021 IPC Summary are internally generated. There were three that went to full internal affairs investigations and the rest were dealt with either oral reprimands, letters of reprimand or they were unfounded. We do a very good job of policing ourselves when it comes to complaints and we essentially generate the complaints internally way more than what we receive externally. Commissioner Davis inquired when a complaint would rise to the level that it needs to be reported to the State. Chief Canfield advised it would be reported to the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Council when an officer is suspended or arrested. 6.A.iv. 2021 Use of Force Summary Chief Canfield indicated we do a lot more reporting of use-of-force and some of the things we call "use-of-force" are not really uses of force. He advised that when looking at the total numbers they look really high, but our use-of-force numbers also include "display only", which we started back when we received the first version of the tasers as a way of tracking how effective the tasers were. Even though it's not a use-of-force to point a taser at someone, we report that as use-of-force. For example, we may show 100 taser displays, but we only tased 3 people and the taser is effective because we used it as a display. We also consider euthanizing an animal as use-of-force with a handgun, so in 2001 we had 9 displays of handguns, which would include if we were doing a building search and came across a suspect that might be armed, or doing a felony car stop where an officer pointed their gun at them to gain compliance that way. We had 7 displays of a rifle where it was pointed at someone, 1 display of less lethal, 9 displays of the taser, and 5 displays of the K9. If you look at the use- of-force for the actual use-of-force, we euthanized 9 animals with a handgun, we used pepper spray on 4 people, hands on control of 96, which was by far the biggest number, used the taser on 4 people, and used knee strikes on 3 people. So our actual uses of force, when we look at our overall numbers, are very minimal. That speaks to our training program and the approach our department has in speaking with people and trying to resolve situation in a better manner than going right to hands on. 6.B. Chief - Operations Division Chief Canfield advised the summer patrol shift bid went out for the summer schedule. Motorcycle Week planning is well on it's way and he met with the two Captains to discuss the road forward for this large event. The preliminary meeting with our immediately outside agencies has been set for March and we have scheduled the full briefing in May. Patrol has been very busy and the complexity of some cases has attributed to that. 6.B.i. Hirings 7. COMMISSION ACTION 7.A. Acceptance of minutes from previous meeting On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, the meeting minutes of January 26, 2022 were accepted as distributed. 7.B. Out-of-State School(s)  On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, the meeting minutes of January 26, 2022 were accepted as distributed. 7.B. Out-of-State School(s) Chief Canfield reviewed all five schools listed, as well as one addition for a Trauma - Informed Sexual Assault Investigations Training for Detective Dan Carsen, Detective John Howe and Officer Kira Goodheart. On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, all of the schools were approved. 7.B.i. Reading People: Becoming a Body Language Expert.Officer Michael Cleary 7.B.ii. Introduction to Human Dynamics and Conflict Resolution - Detective Peter Horan 7.B.iii. Deceptive Behaviors and Hidden Compartments - Officer Michael Dempsey 7.B.iv. Street Smart Cop/Pro-Active Patrol Tactics - Officer Michael Dempsey 7.B.v. Criminal M.A.P.P. Training - Officer Michael Dempsey 8. REVIEW OF MONTHLY ACTIVITY REPORTS 8.A. Department Monthly Highlights Chief Canfield reviewed the Department Monthly Highlights report. Chairman Whittum noted calls are down from last year and Chief Canfield advised they do ebb and flow, being lower in the winter. 8.B. Criminal Investigative Unit Statistics Chief Canfield reviewed the Criminal Investigative Unit Statistics. No further discussion. 8.C. Budget Reports Chief Canfield advised we are trending in the right direction. 8.D. Monthly Traffic Statistics Chief Canfield reviewed the Monthly Traffic Statistics. No further discussion. 8.E. Monthly Fleet Report No discussion. 9. CHIEF'S REPORT Chief Canfield reviewed the Drug Overdose statistics and advised the following: We recently brought back an opportunity for one detective and one patrol officer to take on a collateral duty of being an expert on gangs, whether it be outlaw motorcycle gangs or some of the street tagging that we see, to track the types of graffiti that we see, and also be more in touch with the motorcycle gangs, ultimately providing training for the department for same. We will be putting it out shortly to anyone interested.  Chief Canfield reviewed the Drug Overdose statistics and advised the following: We recently brought back an opportunity for one detective and one patrol officer to take on a collateral duty of being an expert on gangs, whether it be outlaw motorcycle gangs or some of the street tagging that we see, to track the types of graffiti that we see, and also be more in touch with the motorcycle gangs, ultimately providing training for the department for same. We will be putting it out shortly to anyone interested. We recently made the decision to add two members to the Belknap County Regional S.W.A.T. Team. We currently have three members on the team and this will bring us to five. The benefit to us is that we will bring back a lot of training to our department. We had a meeting with Congressman Chris Pappas last week, which was a roundtable discussion with Public Health about the creation of Detective Adams' position, running it State wide and his efforts in making that grant happen. We gave them a tour of the police department and it was progressive and supportive of the program. The LPRA voted today to donate $250.00 to the Robbie Mills Benefit, which is a pool tournament with the proceeds benefiting the Boys and Girls Club and Children's Auction. Yesterday we accepted a donation from the Chairman of the Trustees for the Trust Fund of Laconia on behalf of the Debbie Bieniarz Fund. They donated two separate checks of $250.00 to benefit t he D.A.R.E. Program. 10. OLD BUSINESS No discussion. 11. NEW BUSINESS No discussion. 12. OTHER BUSINESS No discussion. 13. CITIZEN COMMENTS No citizen comments. 14. CONFIRMATION OF NEXT MEETING DATE The next Regular meeting of March 16, 2022 was confirmed. 15. ADJOURNMENT On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, the meeting was adjourned at 3:30 pm.