Police Commission

LACONIA POLICE COMMISSION MEETING AUGUST 23, 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 8/23/2023 - 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. Swearing in of Patrol Officer Shannon Hubacher 5.A. Chief Canfield introduced Patrol Officer Shannon Hubacher. Shannon grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, the second of four children. After graduating from California University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor's Degree in Education/Athletic Training, she joined the Marine Corps, following in her father's footsteps. . After twenty-five years of service, with experience in Air Defense, Operations, Logistics and much more, she retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. During that time, while stationed in Parris Island, South Carolina, she met and married her husband Dwight Hubacher. They have five terrific children - Rachel, Elizabeth, David, Philip and Levi. Shannon has taught her children to ski and that is their favorite sport to all do together as a family, along with hiking. They have recently summited Mount Washington and Mount Katahdin. She enjoys watching her children play volleyball, football, hockey and golf. They are excited to be here in New Hampshire, having recently moved from South Dakota. Chief Canfield advised we are very pleased to have her here and present her to the Commission to be sworn in. City Clerk Katie Gargano conducted the swearing in of Officer Shannon Hubacher.  volleyball, football, hockey and golf. They are excited to be here in New Hampshire, having recently moved from South Dakota. Chief Canfield advised we are very pleased to have her here and present her to the Commission to be sworn in. City Clerk Katie Gargano conducted the swearing in of Officer Shannon Hubacher. 5.B. Introduction of Part Time Dispatcher Karry Arsenault Chief Canfield introduced Karry Arsenault, our newest Part Time Dispatcher. Karry was born and raised in New Hampshire, mostly the Concord area. After graduating high school, she started police dispatching in the early 1990's for the Bow Police Department, which encompassed the communities of Bow, Pembroke, Dunbarton and Allenstown. After a few years, she left dispatching to pursue her dream of a career in education. Karry graduated from Plymouth State College in 1999 with her Bachelor's degree in Education and has been teaching in New Hampshire for the past twenty-four years. She currently teaches fifth grade at Woodland Heights Elementary School here in Laconia. In 2019, Karry moved to Laconia with her daughter Meredith, now twenty years old, and son Kyle, who is eighteen years old. In her free time, she likes to spend time with family and friends. She can usually be found down in Florida or at a beach. Karry also loves to travel and explore new places. Her most exciting trip was to Romania in 2019, where she helped run a summer camp for children in a local orphanage. Chief Canfield advised we are very happy to have Karry here, especially with all of her combined experience. 5.C. Commendations & Awards No discussion. 5.D. Resignations/Retirement No discussion. 5.E. Promotions/Classification Change No discussion. 6. COMMAND STAFF REPORTS 6.A. Chief - Support Division Chief Canfield reported the following: They have been very busy maintaining a number of different grants. They recently submitted a grant application for Community Engagement Vehicle Block Grant that will fund community service projects. The other application was for the Justice Assistance Grant ((Burn JAG Grant), which will be in the amount of approximately $11,000.00 toward equipment. Those are in the process for review. There was a lot of time on the part of the Support Division in planning and organizing, including set-up and tear-down, for the National Night Out, which took place earlier this month. That is a very big community policing event and the amount of planning and effort that went into that was incredible. They have been busy with a number of different things this summer. 6.A.i. Orders and Bulletins 6.B. Chief - Operations Division  They have been busy with a number of different things this summer. 6.A.i. Orders and Bulletins 6.B. Chief - Operations Division Chief Canfield reported the following: Operating has been busy, as you would expect, with summer time. The fall schedule has been put out for bid and is currently posted. Recruitment remains challenging. We currently have two people in field training. We are looking forward to one finishing field training very soon, which will greatly supplement the patrol ranks. One officer is out on FMLA and the summer has been busy dealing with many quality of life issues. To speak a little about how busy they have been, this past weekend we responded to priority calls and priority investigations. They had an officer downtown who dealt with several different homeless concerns, as well as traffic concerns. Over the weekend from noon time on Friday to Sunday night, there were a total of 173 calls for service and 288 log entries. That is for a sixty hour period. During that sixty hour period, they made a total of nine criminal arrests; investigated one overdose death; one to two other drug overdoses; investigated seven motor vehicle crashes (one of which was a serious injury motorcycle crash); went to a domestic disturbance where the suspect ended up being tased; investigated an assault at the Tower Hill Tavern; went to a significant disturbance call where a neighbor was threatening to shoot the caller and his girlfriend; amongst many other disturbance calls. That is just a quick overview of what this past weekend was like, but certainly this summer has been busy like that all throughout. Chairman Whittum inquired about the status of hiring. Chief Canfield responded that we currently have four open positions. We have one background in progress and we're hopeful that we will be able to fill the other three within the year. We are participating in a big recruiting event at Foxborough Stadium in a few weeks which will hopefully net some results. Certainly hiring has been tough, but we're doing better than most agencies. 7. COMMISSION ACTION 7.A. Acceptance of minutes from previous meeting On a Motion by Commissioner Davis, seconded by Commissioner Mello, and passed unanimously, the meeting minutes of July 12, 2023 were accepted as distributed. 7.B. Out-of-State School(s) Chief Canfield advised there is one training request to send Captain Allan Graton and Officer Eric Cote to the 2023 Pennsylvania State Police Crash Reconstruction Seminar being held at the Erie Bayfront Convention Center in Erie, Pennsylvania. It is a three-day school, which includes on-going and refresher training. Certainly in the area of accident reconstruction it is a specific expertise that requires in-service training on a periodic basis and this is a school that members of our department have typically attended as far as their recertification for the TAR Team. The cost of the school is $1,489.24. On a Motion by Commissioner Davis, seconded by Commissioner Mello, and passed unanimously, the above training request was approved. 8. REVIEW OF MONTHLY ACTIVITY REPORTS 8.A. Department Monthly Activity Highlights  unanimously, the above training request was approved. 8. REVIEW OF MONTHLY ACTIVITY REPORTS 8.A. Department Monthly Activity Highlights Chief Canfield reviewed the Department Monthly Highlights. Chairman Whittum requested an update on the homeless. Chief Canfield advised we have spent a considerable amount of time dealing with these issues. We received an email this morning about a complaint of them being downtown. We have to operate within the constraints of the law, so some of the complaints we can't do anything about. The areas where we can do something about the situation that are within the confines of the law, we do address. Most of those include loitering and drinking in public, so we do continue to work on that. As far as homeless encampments, if they are on public property we work to move them along. We've addressed a number of encampments, whether on the WOW Trail, Bond Beach Road or Davis Place, but they tend to disperse and then regather. It's an ongoing effort. 8.B. Criminal Investigative Unit Monthly Activity Report Chief Canfield reviewed the Criminal Investigative Unit Monthly Activity Report. No further discussion. 8.C. Monthly Traffic Report Chief Canfield reviewed the Monthly Traffic Report. Chairman Whittum noted North Main Street continues to be high on the list and inquired if that is because of the factory traffic. Chief Canfield advised it is just one of the busier roads in the City, both North Main Street and Union Avenue being two of the more heavily traveled roads, so that is why we are seeing those percentages. 8.D. Monthly Fleet Report No discussion. 9. CHIEF'S REPORT Chief Canfield reported the following: He attended a very good meeting a few weeks ago with the Superintendent of Schools, the new Principals for the high school and middle school, as well as their Assistant Principals and the School Resource Officers. The leadership staff at both the high school and middle school are new, so it was great to connect with them and continue the philosophy and he believes they will fit in very well and continue the teamwork environment. We had a meeting of the School Emergency Planning Committee on July 11, 2023 to discuss a recent school security assessment, as well as additional areas of planning in the area of school safety. Each school underwent a security assessment by the Department of Homeland Security, which we were involved in. It was great to sit down and recognize some of the weaknesses to those physical buildings and ways to make improvements. He attended a New Hampshire Chiefs of Police meeting in Concord on August 8, 2023. Amongst many other things, there was a presentation by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati on how to streamline officer-involved shootings investigations and were looking for input from the New Hampshire Chiefs Association on ways to streamline the process while keeping investigations very thorough. It was nice to He attended a New Hampshire Chiefs of Police meeting in Concord on August 8, 2023. Amongst many other things, there was a presentation by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati on how to streamline officer-involved shootings investigations and were looking for input from the New Hampshire Chiefs Association on ways to streamline the process while keeping investigations very thorough. It was nice to hear from the Attorney General and that they were soliciting the input from Chiefs on ways to make changes in that area. On August 10, 2023 we held our National Night Out event. We were able to bring in the National Guard Blackhawk helicopter and the Dartmouth medical helicopter, as well as many other community partners. It was really well attended and well put together. Detective Adams and Detective Orton did a phenomenal job putting that event together, assisted by Captain Graton and Lieutenant Hubbard, who did a lot of legwork the day of. On August 16, 2023, he attended a National Guard open house for law enforcement. The purpose of this event was to familiarize law enforcement on what they can offer in the area of counterdrug capabilities. They have a mission under the Unites States Code to provide this support, while not directing law enforcement and more as a support function. They have a lot of assets, whether it be in the area of education or physical capabilities, with over-watch abilities. We developed a very good partnership with them out of this event and we will be looking to use them in the future. He attended a Heathfirst Consortium with Detective Orton. There will be a victims of substance abuse vigil on August 31, 2023 at 6:00 pm, where each of the victim's names who were lost due to substance abuse will be read aloud. We had a briefing yesterday on drone monitoring that we conducted during Motorcycle Week with an outside company who offered up this service free of charge. It was interesting to see the data and out of that data we are going to incorporate that into our operational plans for next year to enhance public safety. Over the course of this week we are hosting a Less Lethal/Noise Flash Diversion Device/Chemical Munitions course. This is put on by some outside instructions in conjunction with the National Tactical Officers Associations. We have two members of the department in the course and the rest of the seats were filled with members from other agencies throughout the State, New England and as far south as the Georgia area. The county ARPA funding for e-Bikes underwent the first reading of acceptance by the City Council and is due to be voted on for acceptance at the August 28th Council Meeting. This is the culmination of a lot of work to secure this funding for a very worthy project The acquisition of the e-Bike will greatly enhance our patrol of the downtown area, as well as the WOW Trail specifically. Pending acceptance by the City Council on the 28th, that project will move forward, He has spoken with Allen Beetle of the WOW Trail and he will be forming a WOW Trail safety committee, which Chief Canfield has been asked to be a part of. Beginning next month, he will be presenting to the Commission various traffic studies that we conduct around the City. He will be aiming for 2-3 traffic studies in specific areas that have traffic related problems, whether identified through us or by citizens. These studies are pretty comprehensive and will give us the number of vehicles, average speed and maximum speed traveled through those areas. As far as the Spidr Tech technology that sends text message notifications to callers, which was implemented several months ago. so far we have sent out 2490 text messages since the program began, as well as received a 19.7% completion rate for the surveys. Those numbers continue to trend very high in comparison to other agencies that use this software. To highlight two of the responses we receive, one of the questions that is asked on the survey is "How satisfied are you with the professionalism of the Laconia Police Officer with whom you interacted". The average score for this was 4.61 out of five, which is considered pretty high. The  As far as the Spidr Tech technology that sends text message notifications to callers, which was implemented several months ago. so far we have sent out 2490 text messages since the program began, as well as received a 19.7% completion rate for the surveys. Those numbers continue to trend very high in comparison to other agencies that use this software. To highlight two of the responses we receive, one of the questions that is asked on the survey is "How satisfied are you with the professionalism of the Laconia Police Officer with whom you interacted". The average score for this was 4.61 out of five, which is considered pretty high. The second question is "Overall how satisfied were you with the Laconia Police Department" and that rates a 4.43 out of 5. So that is very high, given the fact that we deal with a number of different types of people and not everyone is going to be happy with the outcome in dealing with the police. The last question is "How safe do you feel living or being in the City of Laconia", which rates a 3.81 out of 5, so we have a little bit of work to be done there. Overdoes statistics year to date - we have had 33 overdoes with six suspected fatal overdoses. Five of those fatal overdoses have been confirmed with toxicology and the sixth is waiting on results, as it just occurred this past weekend. The year-to-date line of duty deaths are at 75 across the Nation. Commissioner Davis inquired about the drones in the Weirs and if they were our drones. Chief Canfield responded that monitored drones over crowds are typically being done over large events like Motorcycle Week, sporting events, air shows, and other such events. It picks up on drones being flown by civilians. You can't fly over people or over 400 feet and there are a lot of violations. Obviously the concern is not necessarily the violations, as it is the threat that you could have drones that carry payloads and drop something on crowds or they could certainly malfunction and just crash. Crashing from even 300 feet and landing in a crowds leaves the possibility of injuring people. 10. OLD BUSINESS No discussion. 11. NEW BUSINESS No discussion. 12. OTHER BUSINESS No discussion. 13. CITIZEN COMMENTS Councilor Cheney addressed the Commission. He advised that over the last week or so he has been corresponding with Chief Canfield due to concerns by colleagues and council and the 60- hour report he gave the Commission today was due to their conversations. He indicated he will sit with Chief Canfield in near future to talk about what needs to be done to level this all out. He also recognizes that he receives complaints about calling the police and nothing happens or they come and don't do anything. When it's suggested that more cops could be hired and taxes will go up, they don't want that. In reference to the officer who left for the Londonderry Police Department, Councilor Cheney inquired if that was due to getting paid more and if they bought out her contract. Chief Canfield responded they did not buy out her contract, which remains an issue, but she is getting paid more. Councilor Cheney advised the Commission needs to do more to try to prevent that from happening. After he sits with Chief Canfield, he's sure he will share their discussions and possible solutions and Councilor Cheney will then solicit the support of the Police Commission in speaking with the Council as a whole about the issues. He advised it is easy to think that more can be done, but it's harder to do when down four people and have people in the academy. He will be talking with his fellow councilors about some of these issues and a more widespread approach on how to get us back on track. We do have areas where we  issue, but she is getting paid more. Councilor Cheney advised the Commission needs to do more to try to prevent that from happening. After he sits with Chief Canfield, he's sure he will share their discussions and possible solutions and Councilor Cheney will then solicit the support of the Police Commission in speaking with the Council as a whole about the issues. He advised it is easy to think that more can be done, but it's harder to do when down four people and have people in the academy. He will be talking with his fellow councilors about some of these issues and a more widespread approach on how to get us back on track. We do have areas where we need to improve the level of service through no fault of Chief Canfield's or the employees of the department, and rather the fault that the council hasn't properly looked at what is needed. 14. CONFIRMATION OF NEXT MEETING DATE The next Regular meeting date of September 20, 2023 was confirmed. 15. 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 Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, in accordance with RSA 91-A:3II(a), the Laconia Police Commissioner entered into Non-Public Session at 3:31 pm. Roll Call Vote to enter Non-Public Session: Chairman Douglas Whittum Yes Commissioner Frank Mello Yes Commissioner Davis Yes At 3:51 pm, the Non-Public Session ended on a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, with a unanimous vote, and Public Session reconvened. 16. ADJOURNMENT On a Motion by Commissioner Mello, seconded by Commissioner Davis, and passed unanimously, the meeting was adjourned at 3:52 pm.