Police Commission

LACONIA POLICE COMMISSION MEETING MAY 17, 2023 Meeting took place at 3:00 p.m. in the Armand A. Bolduc City Council Chamber, Laconia City Hall, 45 Beacon Street East, Laconia, New Hampshire 1. CALL TO ORDER T 5/17/2023 - Minutes F Chairman Whittum called the meeting to Order at the above date and time. 2. SALUTE TO THE FLAG A Chairman Whittum lead the Pledge of Allegiance. 3. RECORDING SECRETARY R Executive Assistant Lori Marsh. 4. ROLL CALL 4.A. Chairman Whittum recognized Commissioners present - Chairman Douglas Whittum, D Commissioner Frank Mello and Commissioner Scott Davis. 4.B. Chairman Whittum recognized Staff present - Chief Matthew Canfield. 4.C. Chairman Whittum recognized a quorom has been established and there are three Commissioner members present. 5. PERSONNEL MATTERS 5.A. Commendations & Awards No discussion. 5.B. Resignations/Retirement Chief Canfield advised we received (3) resignations in the past two months. Officer Holly Callanan took a job at New Hampshire Police Standards and Training. Officer Karlyn Brown took a job with Concord PD. Animal Control Officer Michele King took a job with another entity. Chairman Whittum noted it is important to recognize that none of the above employees were dissatisfied with the department. They left for personal reasons. Chief Canfield advised that is correct and that he met with each employee and all three were sad to be  Animal Control Officer Michele King took a job with another entity. Chairman Whittum noted it is important to recognize that none of the above employees were dissatisfied with the department. They left for personal reasons. Chief Canfield advised that is correct and that he met with each employee and all three were sad to be leaving and they are losses for us. 5.C. Promotions/Classification Change No discussion. 6. COMMAND STAFF REPORTS T 6.A. Chief - Support Division Chief Canfield advised the following: F They are working on end of year budget wrap up. Captain Graton had a meeting with the City Finance Director to compare notes on our budget. It is close, but on track. They are doing a lot of grant maintenance, which is taking a lot of their time. A Detectives have done a lot of active shooter presentations for community groups, including all of the City employees at City Hall. The fence project is still on track at the police department. The company is very slow, but R should be wrapping it up soon. 6.A.i. Orders and Bulletins No discussion. D 6.A.ii. 2022 Attrition Summary No discussion. 6.A.iii. 2022 IPC Summary No discussion. 6.A.iv. 2022 Use of Force Summary Commissioner Davis advised this is a great summary, clear and broken down well, and inquired if it was done for a particular reason. Chief Canfield advised it is done every year and is a accreditation requirement. It's also done so we take a look at all of our uses of force for the year and determine if there are training needs or there are any training deficiencies to be corrected. Our uses of force are very reasonable and we use the least amount of force necessary. The training is a big part of that. 6.B. Chief - Operations Division Chief Canfield advised the following: This is a really busy time of year as far as summer scheduling and final tweaks to the Motorcycle Week planning and preparations. We had a meeting this morning with all of our partners for Motorcycle Week as our final meeting before the event. We are looking forward to policing the 100th anniversary and maintaining a safe event.  This is a really busy time of year as far as summer scheduling and final tweaks to the Motorcycle Week planning and preparations. We had a meeting this morning with all of our partners for Motorcycle Week as our final meeting before the event. We are looking forward to policing the 100th anniversary and maintaining a safe event. 6.B.i. Hirings Officers Larsen, Sullivan and Hendricks recently graduated from the Police Academy after almost a year of being employed with us and are almost at the point of being released on their own. Chairman Whittum inquired if there are any prospective candidates and Chief Canfield advised T we have several backgrounds in the process, so we hope to put someone on during the middle or third week of July. One candidate came home on leave from the Marine Corps and will be discharged the beginning of July and have started his background. We also have one other background in progress. F 7. COMMISSION ACTION 7.A. Acceptance of minutes from previous meeting On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed A unanimously, the meeting minutes of March 15, 2023 were accepted as distributed. 7.B. Out-of-State School(s) Chief Canfield reviewed two schools: R The first is a Human Trafficking in Narcotics Investigations at NEHIDTA, which stands for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Association, located in Methuen, Massachusetts. This is a one day training class for Detective Sergeant Ben Black, Detective Kendra Neri and Detective Erik Benoit. There is no cost for the school and fully funded by NEHIDTA. D The second request is to send Detective Howe and Detective Neri to the Drone Assessment and Response Tactics that is being put on by National Homeland Security in Playa, New Mexico. There is no cost to us and is fully funded by the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, the above Out-of-State schools were approved. 8. REVIEW OF MONTHLY ACTIVITY REPORTS 8.A. Department Monthly Activity Highlights Chief Canfield reviewed the Department Monthly Activity Highlights. Chairman Whittum noted the calls for service for the size of this City are remarkable. Chief Canfield agreed and noted we certainly have our challenges. It depends on what you pull a call for service for. You can pull a call for service for washing your cruiser or stopping to move a trash barrel out of the road, but it's not really a police call for service. We record true calls for service and it is busy. 8.B. Criminal Investigative Unit Monthly Activity Report Chief Canfield reviewed the Criminal Investigative Unit Monthly Activity Report. Commissioner Mello advised he went through the list and can't believe the amount of work that is being done with it being done efficiently with the manpower we have. He noted the  8.B. Criminal Investigative Unit Monthly Activity Report Chief Canfield reviewed the Criminal Investigative Unit Monthly Activity Report. Commissioner Mello advised he went through the list and can't believe the amount of work that is being done with it being done efficiently with the manpower we have. He noted the employees should be notified they are doing a wonderful job. Chief Canfield agreed that they work hard. Commissioner Davis inquired if there is someone responsible for the electronic cyber investigations. Chief Canfield advised primarily Detective John Howe and Detective Erik Benoit have quite a bit of expertise in that area and have been to quite of bit of training. We have a Celebrite machine and Grayshift, which gives us the ability to extract T information from cell phones. We are one of three agencies in the State who have the Grayshift technology. The other three are the State Laboratory, Manchester Police Department and Grafton County. There is a level of expertise that needs to be achieved to get that training, but also to be able to extract from cell phones or computers. Commissioner Davis inquired if they can do that if the phone is locked and Chief Canfield F advised generally speaking iPhones are much more difficult, but the Grayshift can access that sometimes. It's all pursuant to search warrants. 8.C. Budget Reports A Chairman Whittum noted it appears under, but close to where we should be. Chief Canfield advised the overall budget looks good. Out overtime costs are higher than they've been, not by choice, but by necessity. The more people you have in training, like the three officers who graduated the Police Academy, they have been in training for the year they have worked here and being paid their salaries, so we are down those positions R and we have to fill them. Even though we go to minimum manning, we still have to fill those with overtime, so then we are at two and a half times the cost for those positions, which is a challenge this year. We look forward to them getting out of training and back on the streets. D 8.D. Monthly Traffic Report Chief Canfield reviewed the Monthly Traffic Report. 8.E. Monthly Fleet Report Chief Canfield advised the last car is coming on line. Due to equipment shortages, getting them on line was delayed, but will be shortly. 9. CORRESPONDENCE TO/FROM THE DEPARTMENT Chief Canfield advised we received the following: We received a nice thank you letter from a woman thanking us for investigating graffiti that was found at the State School property. Another nice thank you letter was received for Sergeant Cardinal for the time she spent at an incident at their house. They said she was very kind and took the time to solve the problem. There was a thank you note thanking Chief Canfield for a presentation he did for a veterans group at the Knights of Columbus. And a thank you letter from the President of Temple B'Nai Israel thanking Tony Horan and Ben Black for an active shooter presentation and security risk assessment.  There was a thank you note thanking Chief Canfield for a presentation he did for a veterans group at the Knights of Columbus. And a thank you letter from the President of Temple B'Nai Israel thanking Tony Horan and Ben Black for an active shooter presentation and security risk assessment. 10. CHIEF'S REPORT Chief Canfield advised the following: The new SPIDR notification technology is active and the implementation went flawlessly. He receives a daily report, but he is working on a way to print the results for the Commission. The current report is very difficult to read, so we are looking for a different format. The survey rate is T approximately 26% from people who receive the survey link, which is incredibly high according to the company. To get a 26% response rate is really good. About 98% of those are positive feedback on officers and dispatchers. It does rank us on a scale of 1-5 and we are consistently at 4.85-4.90% area. F On April 15th we held a Full Scale Active Shooter Exercise at the Pleasant Street School. It was three different training evolutions with all of our law enforcement partners and fire/EMS as a warm zone EMS. Each training evolution had a debrief with it and then there was an overall after-action debrief, followed up by an after-action report. There were some learning take- A aways, but certainly very good training funded by Homeland Security. This is National Police Week. Last Saturday we held bicycle and skateboard safety event in collaboration with Kiwanis at R Opechee Park. It was very well attended and we gave out over 70 bicycle helmets. We are working with Homeland Security Emergency Management to conduct safety school assessments of all of the schools in the City. He participated in National FBI partners call regarding hoax active shooter calls last month, D which had some really good take-aways. He participated in an IACP Terrorism Committee virtual meeting, which he will be doing some work on a sub-group with them. We are participating in the Special Olympics torch run on May 30th and then assisting with the Special Olympic games at the end of that same week at the University of New Hampshire. Officer Bassett is very involved with this and volunteers a lot of his own time with the organization and brings a lot of good stuff to them. Our budget presentation is scheduled for June 5th at 7pm at City Hall. He reviewed the overdose statistics. Line of duty deaths are at 42 across the Nation. 11. OLD BUSINESS Commissioner Davis advised there was a WOW board meeting the other day and the question came up about purchasing an ebike at one point and where does that stand. Chief Canfield advised it is in the works. We applied for a micro-grant for it, which we did not receive. We worked with the County Commission to get some ARPA funds from them. They decided not to do that and Mayor Hosmer was involved in trying re-approach that request. The WOW Trail Association has donated $5000.00 toward one bicycle, but we need about $30,000.00. We do look forward to implementing that program, as the activity on the WOW trail needs to be policed.  Commissioner Davis advised there was a WOW board meeting the other day and the question came up about purchasing an ebike at one point and where does that stand. Chief Canfield advised it is in the works. We applied for a micro-grant for it, which we did not receive. We worked with the County Commission to get some ARPA funds from them. They decided not to do that and Mayor Hosmer was involved in trying re-approach that request. The WOW Trail Association has donated $5000.00 toward one bicycle, but we need about $30,000.00. We do look forward to implementing that program, as the activity on the WOW trail needs to be policed. The ebikes are way more efficient and would be a benefit to police the WOW trail particularly. 12. NEW BUSINESS No discussion. T 13. OTHER BUSINESS Chairman Whittum inquired about the 21st move out of Spruce Street and how that will be done. Chief Canfield advised he has a meeting tomorrow afternoon to discuss logistics and how that F is going to be done. He advised there are several different thoughts on how, but there needs to be a well formulated plan with an operational plan, as well as the need for services to be provided when people leave and a method for those who refuse to leave. And then the subsequent clean up afterwards. A Chairman Whittum inquired how many people are currently in the came and Chief Canfield advised 50+. Commissioner Mello inquired if that is private or City property and Chief Canfield responded it is owned by the City. R 14. CITIZEN COMMENTS No citizen comments. 15. CONFIRMATION OF NEXT MEETING DATE D The next Regular meeting date of June 21, 2023 was confirmed. 16. NON-PUBLIC SESSION (According To RSA 91-A:3, II (A) RSA 91-A:3II(a) - The dismissal, promotion or compensation of any public employee, or the disciplining of such employee, or the investigation of any charges against him/her, unless the employee affected (1) ha the right to a meeting, and (2) requests that the meeting be open, in which case the request shall be granted. On a Motion by Commissioner Davis, seconded by Commissioner Mello, and passed unanimously, in accordance with RSA 91-A:3II(a), the Laconia Police Commissioner entered into Non-Public Session at 3:26 pm. Roll Call Vote to enter Non-Public Session: Chairman Douglas Whittum Yes Commissioner Frank Mello Yes Commissioner Davis Yes At 3:54 pm, the Non-Public Session ended on a Motion by Commissioner Davis, seconded by Commissioner Mello, with a unanimous vote, and Public Session reconvened.  Commissioner Davis Yes At 3:54 pm, the Non-Public Session ended on a Motion by Commissioner Davis, seconded by Commissioner Mello, with a unanimous vote, and Public Session reconvened. 17. ADJOURNMENT On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, the meeting was adjourned at 3:55 pm. F T R A D