Good afternoon. Uh, welcome to our work
session. Today is Monday, February 23rd,
2026. It's approximately 100 p.m. I am
Mayor Eric Enriquez. We'll start with a
moment of silence.
Yeah, if you'll join me in a moment of
silence for our military personnel, our
police and fire that protect us locally
and to all our city employees that
provide the service they do for our
city.
If you'll join me in the pledge. I
pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the
republic for which it stands, one nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
Okay, we'll go ahead and get started
with our work session. Item number one
on the agenda is Los Cusus Public
Schools Community Schools Partnership
Report.
All right,
whenever you're ready, K.
Yes. Good uh good afternoon. Uh I am not
seeing the presentations on the screen,
so I'm just going to pull it up real
quick unless I'm missing something.
What's that?
Usually I can see them.
Sorry,
I thought I was going to have to go to
the city managers, but see, usually when
I pull them up, I can see there
because you're in the wrong.
There we go. Okay, great.
Thank you very much.
All right. Good afternoon, mayor and
city council. Carol Bray, director of
the quality of life department. And uh I
am here, we are bringing actually two
partnerships to you today that uh of
organizations that we work very closely
with. And first is the uh Los Cusus
public schools community schools
partnership that we participate in. Uh
very pleased to uh I have been
participating in these meetings as a
partner. Uh we talk about what's
happening with the community schools all
their wonderful programs and services
and how we contribute through our museum
and library programs that we do jointly
with them as well. Uh want to recognize
that councelor Mccclure is going to be
the incoming vice chair. I believe
probably next month if all goes well and
uh [laughter]
also we want to thank councelor Harris
for his participation uh on the
partnership board and Mayor Enriquez has
appointed himself to the partnership
board and we're very happy about that as
well. Uh I am pleased to introduce
Johnny Rivera who's the community
schools manager and uh has been
wonderful to work with over this past
what year and a half or so that you've
had the position and uh he agreed to
come and talk about give you an update
on what's happening with the community
schools partnership and all the
wonderful things they're doing. So, I
will turn things over to Johnny and uh
you can just forward the
you know. Yes, it should work.
Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon,
city manager, mayor, city council
members. Thank you for having me. Um
it's a pleasure to be here and report
out what's going on with our our
partnership that we've had over the last
few years. Um before I get started, I
just want to say thank you to our first
responders, to Chief Story, uh and Chief
McD Daniels. Thank you, gentlemen, for
your service. We appreciate you all and
all the hard work you all do.
So our meeting today, we will discuss
community schools.
Uh purpose today really just want to
give an education on what is a community
school and the origin story. We'll talk
about the history of community schools,
how many school sites we have, along
with the outputs and outcomes that we've
identified as priorities for community
schools, how we've been able to capture
that information and data and talk about
it in a practical sense on top of
strategic planning for the future of
community schools.
What is a community school? in a
community school is a whole child
comprehensive approach and how we
address the whole child um with
supporting their learning outcomes,
developing healthy um relationships at a
campus, but also supporting the staff
and the family members that are part of
our community schools. In addition to
providing those academic components, we
also want to provide uh resources and
support systems for our families and for
people of the community um in case they
need any types of supports or needs that
they need addressed from the community
that's not closely available to them in
proximity and provide them to the
campuses that they're a part of.
So what makes up a community school?
Well, we have uh six key practices and
across the nation and across the state,
we have either the six key practices or
the four pillars of community schools.
Uh here in New Mexico, here locally, we
have the six key practices. And for us
to implement these six key practices, we
want to establish enabling conditions.
And the [snorts] enabling conditions we
want to build in our campuses is
developing trusting relationships with
everyone that's a part of our campus. We
also want to develop a shared vision
with everyone that's participating with
the campus actionable data to talk about
and also develop inclusive decision
decision-making platforms.
Once we've established those the climate
for community schools, we can talk about
the six key practices. And the first one
I'll talk about is powerful student and
family engagement. That piece is
transitioning from a transactional
relationship with our students and their
families and transitioning into a
co-creative space where our students and
their families can come to a space
together and develop the types of
support systems they want to see on
their campuses.
The next one is collaborative
leadership, shared power and voice. This
is truly just leaning into the
democratic processes that our families
should be a part of when we're thinking
about bringing new systems to our
campuses.
The next one is expanded culturally
enriched learning opportunities. This is
primarily our OST or out of schooltime
programming. So our afterchool time here
we have a strong partnership with 21st
century at NMSU and our students and our
families and our staff members work
together to create after school
programming that our students want to
see on our campuses. And I'll talk about
what those are here in a little bit.
Rigorous community connected classroom
instruction. That's our project-based
learning. The city of Las Cusus and
other partnerships throughout the city
have a lot of opportunities that
translate into the content that we're
talking about in the classroom. And
we'll talk about that here in a little
bit as well. The culture of belonging,
safety, and care.
We do think about the literal sense of
safety, care, and belonging. But we're
talking about the climate here in our
campus. Do our students feel comfortable
and confident to navigate tough
conversations on their campus as we
would in real world situations?
And then lastly, integrated systems of
support. What are those coordination of
support systems that are developed on
the campus? Do our students and staff
members and our families understand the
resources that are in our on our campus
and available to them? And how do we
navigate that?
So, community schools began in 2016
around Lynn Middle School. And as we all
know, Lynn Middle School lives in an
area that is highly impoverished. At the
time, there was a lot of food insecurity
um and there was also limited access to
healthcare. So a group of individuals
worked together with the campus and also
worked together with public school
leadership and developed uh and
understood what community schools meant
and what it could be at this campus. And
so this is where we developed community
schools and everything community schools
related really has developed from this
campus and now we've transitioned into
other campuses. But this is where
community schools first began in 2016.
By 2018, community schools was taking
off. It was uh developed quite robustly
with Dr. Greenberg. Um and by 2018, he
had developed a partnership with the
city of Los Cusus. And we entered into a
joint powers agreement. And the
initiative between both entities is to
support, sustain, and scale community
schools over the years.
Initially, the city of Los Cusus
contributed $100,000 on an annual basis
to support community schools, and that
funding goes towards a community school
coordinator, FTE, and that funding still
goes towards that community school
coordinator at Booker T. Washington.
The funding since then in 2022 has been
increased to $150,000 on an annual
basis, and we still use that funding to
support the community school coordinator
position.
Um, we do expect that salaries are going
to increase over the years. For the last
few years, we've seen at least a 4%
increase every year. And so those while
we're greatly appreciative of the
funding, we do see that this is becoming
a challenge to support new community
school coordinators and expanding
community schools throughout the the
city of Los Cusus.
It's a quick illustration of the growth
and scaling of community schools over
the years. Um, you could see that
essentially we've seen a campus become a
community school, one campus every year
since 2016 to 2025 become a community
school.
And so we see a larger population of
community schools on the west side of
town versus the east side of Los Cusus.
Um, but we now have Sunrise Elementary
as the uh the only campus on the east
side of town that is a community school.
These are our school sites and I'll just
talk through them real quick. Lynn
Community Middle School which began in
2017. We also have Booker T. Washington
that was developed in 2019. We have
MacArthur and Doniana Elementary School
that were developed in 2020. Alama
Elementary in 2021, Msia Park in 2022,
Connley Elementary in 2023, and then
Sunrise being the newest community
school.
As far as resources, we have a strong
partnership with Linica the Familia.
They operate as a spoke site or a hub
site at our campuses. And the difference
is a hub site is physical infrastructure
at these school sites that provide
medical and mental health resources on a
regular basis at these school sites in a
physical sense. And then we also have
spoke sites which function in a
teleaalth virtual setting. So if someone
is sick, they can check in with a
virtual PA or a physician and describe
what their um their symptoms are and
they can be diagnosed for whatever
they're being seen for. and receive
treatment for whatever resources they
need to seek out.
During the year of 2025, from January 1
to 1231 of 2025, there were over 2,000
patients that were seen at these these
sites. So, it's been quite successful
over the last couple of years.
NMSU STEM outreach, which is 21st
century, this is our OST programming.
This content was co-created by students,
staff members, and families through
surveys, through anecdotal
conversations. Um, students wanted to
see Dungeons and Dragons as a class.
They wanted to see math or literacy
courses available to them. Um, also arts
and crafts, how to ride a bike. We have
after school programming with the city
of Los Cusus that gets students
connected to soccer, to basketball,
youth recreational programs that are
usually not available to students that
can't afford it. Um, so this has been a
challenge for a lot of our students at
some of our campuses like MacArthur
Elementary, Alama Elementary, Connley
Elementary, and the rest of our
community schools, but these three
campuses um are the ones that really
lean into the opportunities through
grant funding right now to ensure that
our students have the opportunity to
participate in these resources.
Additional partnerships that we have uh
honorable mentions are Donana Community
College dental programs. We have two
campuses where our hygiene hygiene
students from these programs at DACC
come to these campuses and provide
hygiene care and hygiene education to
our students and their siblings. Kasa de
Malma which provides medical I'm sorry
mental health resources that kind of
fill the gaps that clinicia the familia
doesn't have the capacity to fill with
the frequency of students that need
those supports.
Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers and
Big Sisters provide OST support for
mentorship programming for the students
that need that kind of support in the
after school hours. And the Lions Club
provide glasses for those students that
tend to lose them. Their dog takes their
glasses, they step on them, they break
them, they lose them, it falls between
the cracks of the car. Um, this is just
another opportunity to help support our
students in the way they need.
Los Cusus public schools. Part of the
strategic plan is to decrease chronic
absenteeism by 50%. Um, of course, you
know, we only have eight community
schools that can help that area, but we
have seen a sizable decrease, a
mentionable decrease in chronic
absenteeism. Um, since 2021 during the
pandemic and then exiting out of the
pandemic, we continue to see uh a
general decrease in chronic absenteeism.
At the beginning of 2021, our chronic
absenteeism rate on average was
approximately 35 36%. And as we get
closer to 2026, we see it trending down
closer to that 30% mark. Of course, each
each campus is very different. We're
going to see an eb and flow. Things are
very different for each campus. There's
rhymes and reasons for all of that. Um
but building a culture around positive
relationships and ling to the resources
that we have available to these students
and their families have had a positive
effect on chronic ab on chronic
absenteeism over an extended period of
time.
Some of the outcomes that I think are
worth mentioning um again are positive
culture,
inclusive decision-m, social emotional
support strategies, and incentivizing uh
attendance being at our campuses. So
once our students realize that it's
we're not just here for handouts, we're
not just here for a discount at at a
local restaurant or receiving a a free
slice of pizza. We're here for positive
relationships. Um we're here for meaning
meaningful relationships. We're here to
learn how to navigate tough
conversations and we're here to
obviously get an education and thrive
beyond our educational system. And
community schools has been able to do
that over time.
Some of the other outpetss um worth
highlighting after school programming
when you combine all of our community
schools together we are close to 1500
students of all of our community schools
and for OST programming we have close to
1300 students that are participating in
after school program after school
programs so we have close to almost 100%
students that are participating in the
OST programs and as far as wraparound
services medical mental health resources
food bank distributions, dental hygiene
programs, and other family engagement
events that provide some sort of service
to our families and to our students. We
have close to 2,000 students and
families that connect with those
resources.
Family engagement is also a piece that
the Los Cusa Public School District is
focusing on. And we have close to 4,000
participants on an annual basis
participating with these events, not to
just promote transactional things and um
getting stuff to parents and to family
members, but also building those strong
relationships, which is obviously
important.
Strategic planning.
So, as we all know, government funding
is is quite volatile right now. Um, we
have support obviously through the city
of Los Cusus. We also have support from
the Department of Education full service
community school grant and we also have
federal uh funding from the state of New
Mexico through New Mexico public
education department. And while this
funding is obviously very beneficial and
it supports what we're trying to do and
continue the work that we're doing, it
becomes a challenge because we were not
very certain with what funding is going
to look like in the next year or two. Um
last year during February there was a
moratorum that went out to all of the
federal schools that are funded by the
department of education. That funding
was going to halt and that was obviously
altered by the Supreme Court um later
that day. And so the environment that we
live in right now is there's a lot of
uncertainty and so we've had to sidestep
and think creatively and do a lot of
asset mapping throughout the community.
And one asset that we have that is
glaring at us is our partnership with
the Mexico State University.
The College of Hest is a strong
partnership that we have with Dr. Rick
Marlet. Um, one opportunity that we see
together is building an internship
opportunity to have interns come into
our campuses, support our community
school coordinators in the campus and
our community school coordinators that
are funded currently. We can transition
them into growing campuses and continue
to grow the community schools initiative
throughout the city of Los Cruus. Um,
but to do that, we need to build a
strong system with our partnership with
NMSU first.
Outside of that, we'll continue to
expand our partnerships and seek out
other grants, of course, throughout the
community, uh, locally, regionally, on a
national level. Um, and so I want to
thank you all for the support that you
all have generously offered to us over
the years. Um, I would open up an
opportunity later in the future to
discuss future funding to support
community schools. Um it it is going to
be a challenge in the years to come to
support and continue to support our
community school coordinators over time.
Um but as of today, I just want to say
thank you for all the hard work you all
do for us and supporting us. Greatly
appreciated. Um but that is all I have
if anyone has any questions. I'll remain
standing and answer any of those
questions or concerns.
Thank you so much, Johnny. And we'll
stand for any questions.
Okay. Thank you. Um, Councelor McClur,
thank you, Mayor. Um, I'm still new to
the gig, so I'm going to ask this
question. Um, how do you work with our
parks and recck department for some of
the out of school time?
Thank you. Good question. Uh, city
manager, mayor, and council member Clar.
Um, one of those ways is really just a a
direct relationship with them. Um, one
of the neighbors, one of my neighbors
used to work for Parks and Rec, and I
would just go knock on his door and say,
"Hey, listen. Can we have can we do this
partnership with you all? We have this
after school program idea. can we do
this? And it's as simple as that. It's
just calling somebody directly. Um, and
I'm not familiar with staffing right
now. Um, but our coordinators do that.
Our community school coordinators is
that direct contact with people
throughout city government and they
reach out to the parks and rec
department, explain what they would like
to see and try to make it happen.
Thank you. I I'm just curious if we can
support them with more funding. I know
what our budget looks like right now,
but that 4% might be something we could
talk about in future. But I'm also
thinking about the swim program that we
had that we asked for support at the
legislature and it didn't actually come
through. But if it's something that we
could kind of merge together and give
kids an opportunity to learn how to swim
and give that support also financially,
I think that would be a great
collaboration, especially with our great
pool. So, thank you.
Thank you, ma'am.
Thank you. Uh, council mention
I I I think it's so vitally important
because of of the emphasis we need to
give on youth programs. And so this is
excellent. And again, thank you Carol
and the library for the partnership and
the other partnerships. I'm trying to
look at the next two years that I sit on
this city council is
the impact. In other words, when when
you spend a million dollars, how many
people are you reaching? Or you spend
150,000? You're reaching thousands
thousands of of of children. And
sometimes we spend,
you know, 20 $30 million and maybe it
only impacts 50 or 60 people.
And that makes for a very tight budget.
Whereas when you spend on the library,
you spend on youth programs, you spend
it on public safety, you spend it on
roads, you're reaching thousands of
people. You're you're making their lives
better in a large volume. And so I
really support any anything we can take
from our budget and give to this
program. I I really uh support it
wholeheartedly and and thanks for your
effort and both of you and thanks for
the presentation. Thank you, councelor.
Thanks, Councelor Harris.
Um, thanks, Mayor. So, I'm excited to be
um on the advisory board and and to
learn more and help out going um going
forward in the future. There's two
community schools in District 3 and um
they're they're great resources for for
the people who live there. I like that
Lynn started kicked it all off. Um, and
something that stood out to me that in
one of our previous conversations when I
was getting introduced was that,
you know, the interaction with the
students and getting their thoughts on
specifically safety around their school.
And what struck me about what about that
conversation was that they seem to have
different thoughts than all of the rest
of us um might have expressed in the
past. And so that's very interesting and
I look forward to that kind of
engagement um you know at that level.
Um, and then another thing that I wanted
to mention, uh, when we were in Santa
Fe, we were talking about after school
programs, community schools, the whole
the whole general idea. And something
that one of the legislators brought up,
um, was
that we need to have activities,
actually specifically not activities,
but facilities that are open to kids to
just be there. So, we talk a lot about
having after school programs and arts
and crafts activities and sports and um
you know, things for them to do, but
they you know what what this
conversation was about is we need to
also recognize that some kids just need
a place to go and exist. and maybe
they're scrolling on their phone or
whatever and sitting in the corner and
not talking to somebody, but um you know
they're there and that's helpful and if
they want to engage later, they can
engage. Um so I just want to make sure
that when we're discussing activities
and and and I think I was talking about
this at the board meeting too with some
people afterwards and and I think
they're on it but you know just be open
to not everything has to be an activity.
we don't have to gather data from a
survey from every kid um right at the
outset. Um otherwise, yeah, I absolutely
in support. I think this is a great
program. I think it's really thinking
outside the box on um how we do
community engagement. You know, back in
the past, the schoolhouse was like one
of the centers of the community. Um and
and I like that we're bringing that
back.
Thank you, Councelor Harris.
Council
Brink Como.
Hi. Thank you so much for joining us
today. That was really um informative
informative presentation. I just have a
couple of follow-up questions for you on
the abs absenteeism chart you showed us
that I thought that was really powerful
information. I'm curious if you all have
further data on that. I'm just honestly
I'm just very curious about what are the
kinds of things leading to absenteeism.
if you have those sort of in categories
recorded.
I can talk about that right now.
That'd be great. Yeah,
sure. Okay. City manager C uh Mayor
Council Muo um one of the projects that
we've done and I think it's important to
point out with community schools that is
inherent to only community schools is
the ability to connect with students on
a more intimate level on a on a more
grounded level. Um, one of the research
items that we did with Lynn Middle
School was we asked a group of students
why they're not coming to school, why
they are coming to school, and what
resources they would need, what
resources they would need to stay at
school. So, the reasons they were not
coming to school was violence. The
reason they were not coming to school is
because of separation uh within the
household, um, death in families either
to violence, but also to co at the time
of the pandemic. Um, but also the need
for mental health resources to support
them. And so when we talked about why
they were coming to school, they were
talking about positive relationships at
the campus. Um they have a teacher that
they're just really close to or friends,
a strong circle, a strong social circle
on the campus that they feel supported
on their campus. And then also they felt
safe on the campus. This was the one
space like Mr. Councelor Harris touched
on, this was a space that one space that
they can come to and not have to worry
about anything other than just being at
school. Um and so when I asked about
other resources to help support them, we
talked about all of the resources that
we provide as a community school. And so
we realized like, hey, maybe we should
just educate them a little bit more
about the resources and this might help
out with our chronic absenteeism rate.
Um, but this is something that
translates with all of our campuses
across our community schools at least.
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. And
when you say violence, it was violence
at home, not violence at school.
Yeah. Clarify your question for sure.
Um, thank you, Council Como. Um, one of
them is gun violence. Um, gun violence
in the community. We had a student that
was um in ISS and I went and poked my
head in there and talked to him and
asked him why he was in ISS and found
out that really the root cause wasn't
that he was just acting out to act out.
Um he had lost a cousin due to gun
violence in the community and he didn't
know how to manage his emotions for that
instance and ended up acting out in a
way that ended up in ISS. Um so we
connected him with other resources to
ensure that he feels supported on the
campus. Um, and then obviously we have
other instances near the campus that
have taken place since then, Youngs
Park. Um, and so connecting with those
students in a group session and just
giving them that time and space to
connect with them and to let them know,
hey, we want to hear what your thoughts
are. And all they said to us really was,
we just want to know what's going on
and that was it. Um, and so for me,
that's that's where we should start is
just giving them a platform to talk and
speak and to be treated like people. And
they are and we treat them as people.
Um, but I think community schools is
that um that function where we can make
those changes and have those
conversations with students.
Wow. Thank you. I literally perfect se
segue literally my second question was
going to be about gun violence
education. And I'm curious if I think
community schools would be such a
perfect place to engage in that kind of
work. Right. I know that the newly
revamped DARE program is out there. I am
curious about what kind of gun violence
or violence diversion education is
happening at community schools or if
you'd be open to those kinds of
partnerships in the future.
Council m absolutely we'd be open to it.
I think community schools as I mentioned
earlier is a democratic platform. um our
traditional schools, we have student
government and when you think about a
high school and how many members are
involved, you might have 50 members in a
city council uh student government and
that's not representative of 5% of the
student population. When we talk about
community schools, we pull out more
students. It's a different committees
and we have a stronger engagement with
our students and give them a platform so
they can truly talk about what they feel
comfortable talking about. and something
as delicate as gun violence, I think
it's very important to have that strong
relationship and bond with our students
before we could tackle something um that
heavy.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's really important, I
think, given the trends we've the
alarming trends we've been seeing in the
last year certainly. But um you know,
again, I just I think it's so important
and I'm really glad that we have this
partnership with you all. I think
community schools are um really vital to
our community and um the success of our
kids. So, thank you so much. I
appreciate it.
Thank you, counselor,
Mayor Prom.
Thank you, Mayor, City Council, um
Carol and uh Meta. Thank you very much
for the information and the partnership.
Truly appreciate it. and I appreciate
the work that you're doing. So there's
about 130035
students in the cultural enrichment
program. Um there's roughly 24,000 maybe
25,000 students um districtwide I would
I would say. Um and you may you may or
may not have the answer now, but I would
love to hear what initiatives or what
ideas you have to expand that. How can
we work together um between um the city
of Los Curus and our public school
system to uh increase our net
for stu you know student services with
the afterchool program. Thank you, city
manager, mayor, mayor prom, uh, and city
council members.
To answer the question, after school
programming has been also in the climate
of volatility when it comes to grant
funding. And so with our partnership
with NMSU, there has been a year-to-year
basis over the last couple of years on
what our funding is going to look like.
Um, I do think that we need to find
sustainable ways to fund these programs
because for example at one of our
campuses, we have 33 programs and if we
lost her funding and we lost all those,
we lost 33 programs, we could do the
math of 33 times about approximately 20
students. It's a lot of students that
now don't really have anywhere to go and
then they also don't have the programs
that they designed and so we lose that
ownership and buyin from our students
and giving them that space that they
deserve. Um, as far as expanding at a
district level, that is a question for
Dr. Wendy Miller Tomlinson, who I'd be
glad to sit down and talk with. But I do
think that the conversations begin at
our community schools partnership board
meeting. Um, and it's great to have the
council members that we have here and
now the mayor's going to be joining us
to have those discussions and that's
where it begins. Sir,
thank you.
I'd like to add something. Uh, Carol
Bray, director of the quality of life
department, mayor, mayor prom. What I'd
like to add from the city's perspective
is that I attend all the partnership
board meetings and so do several of my
staff. We have um at any monthly meeting
we have one or two people from the
museums and from the library outreach
teams. Uh currently our museums are
doing uh programs in the schools
already. Uh I believe is it second grade
right now that they're working with.
Yeah. So they have a curriculum they've
developed for second graders. um our
libraries come to many of the community
school outreach events that they'll have
and we're looking at ways um internally
across our department that we can do
more to provide afterchool programming
and certainly we'll consult with with
Johnny and with his team about how we
could do that in a way that would be
useful um to the community and to the
schools as well. Thanks.
Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.
All right. Well, thank you. Thank you
for the presentation. Thank you for the
update. I look forward to serving on the
board and being a part of, you know,
throughout uh the United States. There's
different charters and different ways of
doing things. There's some areas where
the schools are under the city and the
mayor and the council, and there's
others that are run by the state as we
are. Um, a lot of times we feel that
there's nothing we can do about it
because it's not under our purview. But
the truth of the matter is working
together, being a community. So, it's
fitting that they're community schools
so that we can work together as a
community and take care of our
community. This is this is great. This
is a great step forward and we need to
get NMSU involved as well. As you said,
building that relationship for our
community is what's going to make it
succeed. So, thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
Appreciate it. Thank you again, Johnny.
We appreciate you.
Next on the agenda is item 1.2, Amador
Hotel update and Amadore Hotel
Foundation report. I know we have
Garland that'll be or Carol starting it
off. And I know we have some members of
the public in the Amadore Association,
Miss Pard, that would like to probably
say a few words, but we also have in
attendance today, we have Senator Hemma,
and feel free u when when you'd like to
say a few words. I know you've been a
big advocate for it, and we appreciate
it. So, we didn't start out, but we
wanted to recognize you and say thank
you for being here. And uh and we also
have former counselor Greg Smith here,
uh also a part. So, thank you for
joining us.
All right. Good afternoon again, mayor
and council. Uh, Carol Brag, quality of
life director for the record. Uh, and we
are here to give you an update on the
Amador Hotel progress. Uh, this has been
a major uh, renovation and restoration
of this historic hotel. And uh as the
mayor mentioned, I do have Garland
Courts here with me who's a deputy
director for museums who is working with
me and with the Amodore Hotel Foundation
as well as uh the public works
department on this project. It's been
it's getting very exciting now that we
actually have some additional funding to
make this project happen and we'll talk
about that during this presentation.
Also, uh of course um the mayor rec
recognized Senator Hamlin who's here. uh
she has been a major proponent of this
project. But I also want to introduce
Heather Pard who's the president of the
Amador Hotel Foundation
as well as Deb Dennis who works with us,
meets with us monthly uh for our Amodore
Hotel Foundation meetings. So, and we
have kind of a cast of dozens as you
mentioned here uh supporting the Amodore
Hotel who have been interested in the
project over the decades that we've been
working on it.
[clears throat]
So, I'm going to give a little bit of
background on this project. There is way
more, maybe more than you ever dreamed
of in your in the packet in the council
packet, but we wanted to let you know
just how much work has gone into
determining uh what to do with the
Amadore Hotel. Um, this uh building
belonged to the Amadore family
[clears throat] and over a century ago,
probably about 1882, uh, Martin Amadore
remodled what was then, excuse me, a
one-story building and at the corner of
Water Street in Amadore Avenue to serve
as uh the first post office for Los
Cru's jail and temporary courthouse. So,
a lot was happening in that structure.
Uh once the permanent county courthouse
was completed, then uh Amidor remodeled
his building again in 1885 to be a
two-story hotel and theater. And it
operated that way for the next 83 years
until 1968. This building shows the
facility in about 1936, this particular
picture. Um and then, you know, time
took its toll on the facility. It was
sold, remodeled, and reopened as
Citizens Bank in 1970.
uh later served as the Donana Countyy's
manager complex after the bank moved in
1983. Uh but then uh by 2006 the
property had really fallen silent and
there was not a plan for it at the time.
Um however the city acquired it from the
county and uh we uh relatively soon
after that we began talking about what
we might do with this uh historic hotel.
And so in uh 2009 there was a lot of
work on a reuse plan uh that was um
completed by Kels and Craig Architects
uh in November of 2009 and that led to a
council resolution in December 2009 uh
that uh called for um these aspects of
the hotel that it's a uniquely important
cultural and historic icon. anchors main
street uh serves as a gateway to a
revitalized downtown that of course
we're still working on uh provides a
social destination which it was quite
the social place in its heyday uh also
will foster economic development through
heritage tourism and uh I want to
mention also uh that throughout all
these years we've worked closely with
the Amodore Hotel Foundation back then
they were called the Amodore Museum
uh foundation and uh there is going to
be an important museum aspect to this
project. So, I'm going to pass the mic
to Garland now so that he can talk a
little bit about the vision for the
Amidor Hotel.
Uh good afternoon, Garland Courts, uh
deputy director for quality of life, uh
mayor and city council. Good to speak to
you. Um just going to talk to you a
little bit about our vision for once uh
it's completed and uh restoration is
completed. What we're looking at and
we're basing almost all of this on the
2009 re reuse plan that Carol had
mentioned. Um we're looking at the 1930s
period. get it to a a a good place in
history where um we can really showcase
the strong points of the building and
how it was used by um the city. Uh
different things that we could do within
the the building that will reflect the
uh um the history or we can have some of
the a couple of the rooms could be
changed into um period pieces to show
what it looked like, what one of the
rooms would look like. It'll actually uh
have some um we can have some
interactives in there that can show uh
interpretation of the building, how the
family [clears throat] used it and also
how people that came to visit uh Los
Cruuses uh saw the building.
[clears throat]
So as we uh use it in future, it could
be an an event center. It will have room
for office spaces. Uh, and with the
event center, you could host dignitaries
that come into town for special events,
um, important announcements, things like
that. I mean, if you look at our
downtown, we've got an awesome, you
know, city hall here. It's it's new. It
it shows what we can do in the future,
how we how we support the city now. But
on the other end of of Main Street,
you've got a wonderful historic
establishment that that shows that the
city cares about its history. it it
understands where it comes from and uh
just reflects how this the the city
really takes pride in itself. [snorts]
Um so uh the other uh point was for the
museum space and interpretation. We um
we have current staff that can work on
on decorating or re rehabbing the a
couple of rooms and really uh kind of
showcase what uh Los Cruus is all about.
I think that's it.
Thank you, Garland. And uh I want to
just give a little update on the
construction. Uh we are not the experts
on that, but we've been working closely
with public works on the construction.
And uh we're preparing to go out for bid
now for uh the remainder of phase two of
the construction, which you can see um
this photo actually shows the banner
that's on the uh west wall of the
Amodore Hotel right now. If you are
driving down Amodore towards the hotel,
you'll see this banner has our website
there and there's an update on the
website that we keep current in terms of
what's happening with the project. And
uh so for phase two, which is scheduled
to begin in May of 2026, we're looking
at restoration and associated structural
repairs of the remaining exterior walls,
uh we currently have finished the walls
on the east side, and those look very
nice. You can get an idea of what that
looks like if you go by the building. Um
and then also we have reconstruction of
the territorial period portico at the
main entrance as well as the hotel sign.
And if we go back to this uh rendering,
you can see the the sign was was quite
iconic up here on top of the building.
And that sign will come back. So, we're
excited about that. Uh this is our
project schedule essentially for the
remainder of the uh construction first,
as I mentioned, phase two uh beginning
in May roughly uh once we complete the
RFP process to bring a contractor on
board. Um likely finishing around
November 2026. Uh, as I mentioned, this
includes the portico, the signage, some
work on the roof, other historical
features, repairing the exterior walls,
and structural work. And then phase
three uh will begin roughly November or
December 2026. Um, we're saying right
now to November 2027, but we're hoping
it might be a little sooner than that
because the grant we received, which
I'll talk about in a minute, is a
two-year grant. Uh phase three though
will include uh improving the first
floor interior, building the catering
kitchen, some landscaping, and what's
exciting about this is we did not have
the funding for phase three, but now we
do. And uh so I'll talk about that in
this next slide. I just want to mention
first of all that phase 4 is not yet
funded. That will be for improving the
second floor spaces of the interior. So
we'll be working on that next. Um, but
we received, as I think you've all been
informed, the capital development
program fund grant for 4.8 million and
some change. This allows us to renovate
the first floor interior. Uh, this scene
you're seeing here is a rendering from
the uh from the west where that banner I
showed you now hangs. Um, this shows uh
where the patio will be. Um, that's
going to be a really lovely space and
sort of evocative of the patio that used
to be at the Amador Hotel. We even have
one of the original tables and chairs
from the old patio, so we can replicate
those and and make it look like it did
back in the day. Um, but this grant also
allows us to combine some aspects of
phases two and three, which will save us
some funding and so, uh, will allow us
to open the Phil facility a little
earlier than we anticipated and also to
the public for the first time in many
years. So, we have a picture we'll show
you of uh a big um gathering there in
2012, but it's been some years since the
facility was open to the public. All
right. And in fact, there's the photo
right there. And I'm going to turn
things over to uh Heather Pard, who is
the president of the Amadore Hotel
Foundation.
Okay.
Thank you, Mayor and Council. I think
I'm here to really thank so many people
and this is a very emotional time. It's
been 20 years and there are so many
people in this room that has have really
helped us. David Sado, thank you so
much. Um I um it is my my honor to be
the president of the Amador Foundation.
Um it it's been an experience to be a
part of this amazing project. I'd like
to introduce some of the uh board
members who are present and I'm not sure
who all has walked in but uh Dr. Deb
Dennis, uh Patrick Lamb, Monica Guzman,
uh Greg Smith, Jean Fulton, Peggy Smith,
Phyllis Franzoy,
um Dr. Dennis, Dr. Sonia Cooper, and
Jean Fulton have worked tirelessly for
two decades on this project. Um, this
was the dream when we opened Main Street
and I think many of you know that. Um, I
was very involved with the opening of
Main Street and I believe um, Mayor
Matise, were you involved in in the when
I don't want to go back that many years,
but yes, I was.
Well, we partnered together for for many
many years. Um, at this point too, um, I
I have to recognize Senator Mary Kay
Pen.
Mary Kay, would you stand up, please?
Um, I have worked with Senator Pen for
the past 30 years, starting with
building Lacassa,
opening Main Street, the Rio Grand
Theater, the Plaza. um she has been my
mentor, my teacher, and um I think we
have been honored in our community to
have this woman serve, and she's
continuing to serve on the Taylor site,
and it's wonderful to work with her
again.
Um,
so, um, I'd like to thank Carol Bray and
her quality of life staff. Um, Rebecca
Slaughter, Garland Courts, Shri, I see
Shri is in the back. Um,
as I say, this is a pretty emotional
time, 20 years. There were many times
when we really did not believe this was
going to happen. And it was always part
of our dream that this building would um
anchor the downtown and we would have
school children coming through um and
and walking over to the plaza and being
part of that and then walking down to
the Branigan Cultural Center and the
museums and I felt like I was probably
not ever going to see this happen. Um
because um as years went by, I thought,
well, maybe they'll just put my ashes on
Main Street and we won't get the Amador
Hotel open. But I think this is going to
be a dream for all of us. I really do
want to thank Carol Bright. Quality of
life has adopted us. Um we would invite
uh those of you who have not been in the
Amar Hotel to take a guided tour. Dr.
Dennis is a wonderful tour guide. Um,
so I think um did you want to open for
questions, Carol
or I can answer any questions? Um, one
more question.
Right.
Yes, we just have one more slide and
that's uh next steps. Carol Bray again
for the record. Uh, for the hotel, as I
mentioned, we're working on constructing
phase two starting in May. We are f
finalizing a memorandum of understanding
with the foundation which we haven't had
in some time and that is just about
finished with the help of our legal
department. Uh we'll be implementing the
community or the capital development
program fund grant for phase three and
seeking funding for phase 4. And at this
point we are looking at potentially uh
opening the facility by I would say FY
2029. So, uh, we'll be thinking about
that in terms of budget and what we'll
need to operate it. Uh, we have, as
Garland mentioned, a lot of talented
staff in the museums. This will probably
be part of the museum portfolio since
they're the ones that are so
knowledgeable about historic buildings
and and museum exhibits. So, uh, we want
to stand for questions, but I also
understand that Senator Hamlin would
like to address the council. So, uh,
mayor, if that's possible.
Oh, she says no.
Okay. work.
All right. All right. So, Heather has
one more thing to say. Go ahead,
Heather. Um last year when we really
were in sort of despair, we went to
Senator Hamlin and said, "What can we do
about the um the building?" And um she
guided us to uh a grant that we were not
aware of and so with the help of the
city grants department and uh so and uh
Jean Fulton and Deb Dennis it we keep
Carol and I keep saying it's a miracle.
We can't really believe it. Um, and it
it is it's truly been a miracle. So, uh,
Senator Hamlin, thank you so very much.
[applause]
All right, Mayor, that is the end of our
presentation. We will now stand for any
questions you and the council might
have.
All right. Thank you, Carol. Council,
thanks, Mayor. Um, thank you both for
the lovely presentation. I just have a
couple of questions regarding funding.
Carol, do you have the numbers for total
the total amount of public funds that
have been invested to date?
We have spent approximately 7 million I
believe at this time. Um the phase we're
getting into now, finishing up phase two
is another three million and then we
have the 4.8 million for phase um three
and then I believe phase four is going
to be another three million. So is that
about 10 21 million altogether? it'll be
right. So, or no, not quite 17 17
million. So, um and that number
fluctuates because of course it's a very
old building and as we get in there, we
sometimes find that we need more than we
thought we needed for certain aspects.
Um I know that uh we have discussed this
quite a bit with public works and Shri
Debbie Moan Raj is here. I don't know if
she wants to add anything uh to that,
but that's where we are right now. I
think
so. So far,
we've spent about 7 million, a little
over 7 million,
and then we're adding the 3 million that
we already have. Then most of that's
come from TID funding uh to uh do the
remainder of phase two. So that puts us
at about 10. We've got this additional
4.8. So that's almost 15 plus three for
the remainder of phase uh what would be
phase four. So that's about 18 million.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you, Carol. And then current
for the phases you have planned out, how
much currently do you have secured?
So as I said, we have enough to that
should get us through most of phase
three. Enough to open the facility to
the public.
Okay.
At this point and that'll be the
basically that'll be 14.8 million that
we will have spent then once we spend
that money and then we'll really just be
looking for the remaining funding for
the second floor interior. And that's
what that's all we lack. And we can open
the facility. A lot of what is to is
needed on the second floor. Um I believe
it's going to be um you know a lot of
drywall and and paint. I think they're
doing some of the structural work as
part of phase two.
Okay. So
So 4.8 million from a grant which
congratulations. That's excellent. And
then the other three million that you
noted is additional TID money.
Is mostly TID money. Yes. Okay. Yes.
Thank you. There was some additional
legislative funding we got for this, but
that's been spent on. Yeah.
And then have you all come up with a
plan or an approximate proposal for
operational funding and what that will
be per year?
We're we're working on that now given
that we've got three years probably
before we'll be able to open. We have a
little time, but we'll want to have it
ready obviously by fiscal year 2028 so
that we are ready to roll that into our
budget proposal. But what we're doing
right now, Garland and I have been
talking about uh who from the museums
could uh serve as a liaison to this
project beyond us because you know we're
not always as available as when they
might need someone. Um and then we also
with our museum's team and all across
the department you know once we are
operational we are very skilled at
holding events and holding programs and
conducting tours and knowing as he
mentioned how to create a museum exhibit
space. So we're going to be able to rely
a lot on the team we already have within
the quality of life department. We only
envision a staff I would say of three to
four people most likely.
Okay. Thank you Carol for that
information. You know I I have to be
very honest. I think that I hope that
the remaining funds for the remaining
portion the phases that are not secured
yet that I hope they do come from
grants. Um I feel like given the state
of the budget and given the state of the
infrastructure emergency that we
currently have in this city with
firehouses and municipal court and those
kinds of things. um that
we should definitely be focusing our
investments on some of those
emergencies. And you know, I think at
this point, you know, we're nearing
about $15 million of public public
dollars. Um and I'm not saying it's not
important. I'm just saying that I really
hope that, you know, the foundation and
all of the folks are are prepared to,
you know, go try to find those kinds of
more grants to in order to support this
project and in order to supplement um
the investment that the city has already
made. That's just at least my
perspective and where I'm coming from
given um
given what I hope we are funding in the
future and how we are I hope we are
addressing the infrastructure emergency
that we currently have in the city. So
thank you
councelor Harris.
Uh thanks mayor. So I I also
echo some of the budget concern. Um, I
think it's a great and important
project. Um, I'm new. All this happened
way before my time. Um, so I appreciate
that. I I look forward to going and
seeing the building. Um, I drive past it
every day and I see the progress and it
looks exciting and and I'm excited for
what it can become and and be this
anchor to downtown. Um, so to that end,
um, I was wondering what what does this
look like as like an everyday
integration to the space? You know, I
saw the courtyard and it looks like
there's cool plans there. This it's
I'm struggling a little to visualize it
in my head how it dovetales with um with
the visit building and and the Amidor
live. Um, but you know, is is this
envisioned to be open every day that
people can go? Like there'll be a little
cafe or something that you can to draw
people in that's not necessarily, you
know, just event based. Um, so can you
speak a little more towards that plan? I
know it's, you know, not for another
four years, but
Right. Yeah. Uh, Mayor and Councelor
Harris, uh, some of that I can re I can
respond to. Some of that we don't have
the plan for yet. You know, we don't
have a plan for a cafe, per se. There is
a plan for a catering kitchen. Um the
plan is to uh yes hold events there but
you know we also have talked a lot and I
believe the Amador Hotel Foundation is
in agreement with us about um basically
making sure we have the museum space
that we have space that explains how
important this uh this space is to Los
Cusus. you know that we can bring um the
many students that tour our museums now,
bring them there, help them understand
one of the earliest important historic
spaces in our city that still exists,
right? And what Los Cusus was like back
then. We've talked about having
moonlight at the Amador like we have
Moonlight at the museum so that we can
have adult uh events there. We've talked
about also um recreating the days when
um apparently and I've heard um Irene
Oliver Lewis talk about this, our our
local actress, semi-retired actress
perhaps um talk about as a child
remembering going and being in that
parlor and there were singing and
dancing and performances going on and
you know with the talent we have locally
here we could recreate that as you know
sort of a parlor space which I think is
very exciting for our community. So, uh,
you know, there's a lot of possibilities
and in fact that Craig and, um, Kels and
Craig plan does outline some of that.
Um, we I we don't think we'll need to
focus as much on the event space aspect
of it because but but it would be
available for rental for events as well.
Okay. Um, yeah, that's that's great. I
like that we're looking um to kind of
bring bring more mass and density of
museums and and I like the the thinking
that you can make a whole day out of
your field trip by taking kids there and
then working your way down um down Main
Street. That's that's a fun idea.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. Look looking forward to to
getting it finished and getting some
events.
All right. Thanks,
Anyone
else? Senator Hamlin, you come on up.
Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor and
Council. And I've been talking a lot
lately and wasn't really intending on on
doing that, but I wanted to give a
little bit of background about the $48
million grant um that was received. The
Department of Finance and Administration
has five new people on staff now that
their sole job is to find these pockets
of money that are going to projects like
this. And so I do want to give credit to
my assistant uh my district legislative
aid Andre Gonzalez who was instrumental
in really working with the Amadore
Foundation and the FA to try and find
that money and I recognize councelor Ben
Ko's concerns and councelor Harris's
concerns about where are we putting this
money and understand the challenges that
you have as a city government. So, I I
wanted to just make sure to commit to
you that that's what Andre will continue
to do is to help find those those
pockets of money to help do this because
um I recognize there are other things
that that really need to take priority
when we talk about public safety. Um but
I also feel that this is the last cog in
downtown especially since you all were
successful in that eyesore of a building
getting leveled. um that when we look at
downtown and really the vibrancy that we
are able to have with downtown, I feel
that this is the last piece. So that is
why I feel it's something that's really
important. And so Andre will continue to
work with the foundation to try and find
those monies to try and do that so that
you can put your budget money to where
it really is needed. So I do appreciate
you all considering that and thank you
very much for all the hard work uh from
city staff and from the Amador
Foundation for really trying to get this
gem. Um, I do strongly encourage to try
and go and see it. Just the history
there. My brother's mother-in-law stayed
there in the 50s when they were coming
down to start their life uh while he was
while her husband was working at Whit
Sands. And so they had fond memories of
that hotel and I know that there are
many people who are still in our
communities who have very fond memories.
So I appreciate all the efforts and
thank you all for very much for your
support on this. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you, Senator Hamlin. We appreciate
all your efforts and your work in uh
helping the foundation out.
[snorts]
Okay. Well, thank you and and and I also
I want to say we we we all up here have
that challenge of where's the funding
coming from and we're always looking at
those things. But this is something when
when we look at return on investment, we
can also look at the return on value.
the value, the the intangable
part that it offers the city of Los
Cusus and the history that's so valuable
to many of us here in Los Cusus and
that's what it provides. So, Miss Pard,
thank you for all your work and for
continuing over 20 years uh to to help
this project and the Amador Hotel
continue and to to open up its doors
again. So, thank you all.
Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Councel.
Next, Viola.
Next on the agendum is item 1.3, the 9th
semianual police audit report presented
by the OIR group. Um, Biola, whenever
you're ready.
Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, counselors.
Uh my name is Viola Perea, city auditor,
and today we have the OIR group with us
to present their ninth semianual police
audit report. So I'd like to introduce
our presenters today. We have Miss
Terresa Mula and Mr. Steven Connelly.
Right. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, city
manager, some new faces
this afternoon. My name is Terresa
Maggula. I am with OIR Group. I have my
colleague Stephen Connley with me today.
Um, we have been presenting before this
body uh for the past five years and
we're grateful to be back uh for our
ninth semianual report. I'm going to
kick it over to Steve who will do some
introductions of the work that we do uh
both in your city and uh nationwide to
give you a perspective of where we come
from and then we'll dive into our
semianual report and our findings
50/50 chance.
There we go.
Good afternoon everybody and and thank
you for having us. Uh Steve Connley of
OIR Group. Um and as Teresa said, we're
we're very happy to be back in touch um
in in Los Cusus uh for for one of our u
periodic visits to your city. So
particularly for the the u audience
members or or uh our our new counselors,
Mayor Prom, uh I want to talk a little
bit about us very briefly. uh OIR group
is based out of Southern California. Uh
we have a core group of of four folks,
but Teresa and I are the are the leads
here in Los Cusus. And uh we have a
number of years of of work in the field
of police practices. We work do we do a
lot of work in California but several
other states as well and we perform a
variety of functions just depending on
how the oversight models are are set up
in the particular jurisdictions. So this
is our fifth year. We're coming up on on
five full years here in Los Cusus and
this is the ninth report that we've had
the opportunity to present to your
council. Uh and the report is obviously
the report is about 30 pages long and
it's got some very lengthy appendices as
far as the individual case memos which
is one of the distinctive features of
the model here in Los Cusus. Uh we have
written up summaries and analyses of
every single complaint case that crosses
our desk in in the the period of time
that that the audit is covering. So, uh,
this report, excuse me, this this
presentation is really just meant to be
a a supplement to the the written report
that is publicly available. So, we
welcome the public to read it and it's
obviously an opportunity to engage with
you folks in person as well, which we're
happy to do.
So uh in terms of the scope of the audit
and and our uh our scope of work a
little bit more generally the material
in this particular report is covering uh
completed cases into allegations of
potential officer misconduct that were
investigated and then closed by uh Los
Cru's Police Department. So they conduct
the investigations. It's their internal
affairs process. And when those cases
are done, we are notified and we have
the opportunity to review the
department's investigative memo and and
just as importantly, all of the evidence
that went into the department's
decisionmaking for the particular case.
So under our relationship with the city,
we have access to all the body worn
camera recordings, all the police
reports, documentation, photographs, any
interviews that took place and are
recorded. We have the opportunity to
review those. And the goal is to
basically assess the the quality of the
department's investigation. Is it
objective? Is it fair? Is it thorough?
Are they covering all the allegations?
and are they reaching outcomes that are
reasonable and and supported by the
evidence? And so we have the opportunity
to kind of weigh in after the fact on
the department's process and also
importantly to make recommendations
based on what we are seeing in the
individual cases and and encourage the
department to make adjustments either in
terms of its processes or if we see
something substantive from the case
itself we might make a recommendation to
the department about the underlying
conduct and encourage the department to
address it in a new way. So along with
the the uh misconduct cases that are
kind of the meat and potatoes of our
work, I also just want to briefly touch
on a couple of other things that are
part of our scope. One of them being
closed litigation. That's something that
we also report on when a a case alleging
um you know some sort of lawsuit claimer
lawsuit against the city has made it
through the litigation process and is
finished. we have an opportunity to
review that incident to uh assess the
department's response to it and if there
are any lessons to be learned,
accountability, adjustments to policies
or procedures, we're going to be looking
at that whole thing from kind of a a a
different perspective to see if the
department has responded to the the
litigation and the issues raised by the
litigation uh in a in a constructive
way. As it happens, there were not any
closed litigation cases during this
particular period. So, we don't have any
of those reports in in this particular
installment of our of our work here. And
then the other thing that the city has
asked us to do dating back to 2021 is to
take a look at some of the demographic
issues. So, the the report contains some
specific statistics on the the
demographic background of both
complainants and involved officers.
There's also information shared about
the zip codes, the origins of the
particular complaints. And the idea
behind that five years ago was just to
say, "Hey, this is a this is something
that we can count and we can evaluate it
from the city's perspective and
obviously in terms of our work and look
to see if there are any disparities that
are jumping out at us that a group is is
seems to be over represented or there's
a a an oddly uh you know significant
proportion of of one demographic
background versus another. Is there
anything to be gleaned from that? As we
have said pretty much every time um and
and this is again our ninth report, we
take a look at that question very
seriously because obviously the the
issue of of disparities, in particular,
racial disparities in policing has been
a a nationwide concern and
understandably so for many years. here
in Los Cusus, the the complaints are
obviously a pretty narrow window in
order to evaluate policing and disparity
sorts of issues. Uh the the the number
of complaints compared to the number of
police contacts is a tiny tiny fraction.
So the sample size is truly small.
Having said that, we can also tell you
that that in each of our individual nine
reports, we have not found any
statistically significant noteworthy um
takeaways I guess from from the
statistical analysis that we have done.
But as I say, the particulars and and
the the specific counting is is
something that we absolutely will do and
continue to do and it's featured in the
report itself.
So as far as the the cases that we
looked at during this time period, we
looked at a total of of 12 internal
investigations and that means these were
generated by department management
itself as opposed to being started by a
complaint from a member of the public.
Here there were 12 cases which was the
the majority of the work that we we did
during this six-month stretch. One of
the cases involved an officer involved
shooting that that and again that not
necessarily an implication of of
misconduct here or an allegation of
misconduct as we see in in most of the
the complaints and and cases that we
look at. But with the officer involved
shootings that those are automatically
going to be subjected to a higher level
of internal review and the department is
going to look at those things
administratively to assess officer
performance along with the criminal
investigation that occurs into the
legality of the officer's actions. The
department's also going to look at it
and say are these people following our
policies? Are they following our
training? And it's conceivable that a
particular incident could be legally
justified and there's no criminal
implications, but the department says
you we have a a policy related concern
and we're going to remediate the officer
accordingly. So, uh, Teresa will talk
about that case a little bit later in
the presentation. Three of the incidents
that we looked at involved offduty
allegations of misconduct. And this is
always a significant part of of uh I
guess police accountability in the sense
that that the the police officers are
police officers 24 hours a day. And so
even when they're off duty, there are
certain behavioral expectations and
standards that the department holds them
to as part of its administrative
process. And three of the cases that we
looked at arose from conduct that that
occurred when the officers were off
duty. Two of the cases we looked at were
were uh arose from vehicle pursuits. The
department we were talk met with the
department this morning and talked about
just statistically how many pursuits
they have in a in a given year and what
the standards are and how those get
reviewed. As I'm sure you all know, New
Mexico is pretty distinctive in terms of
its state statutes and the pretty
restrictive standards to which it holds
all law enforcement in the state before
uh the the authorization the legal
authorization of vehicle pursuits given
their inherent danger. Two of the cases
from this period involved began as
vehicle pursuits that the department
wanted to take a second or third look at
based on concerns that it had and and
there were some sustained violations
that came out of those cases. There were
two other cases involving force that
that the department had concerns and it
has every use of force is going to be
subjected to a certain level of
supervisory review just to ensure that
the policy that the force was justified
the force was in policy that the
officers are performing consistent with
how they're being trained and what the
department's expectations are out of the
many many uses of force that that that
um arise in in a given period of time as
just a regular part of policing. There
were two cases where the department
said, "Hey, we have concerns about what
was done here and we want to forward
this on for further investigation." So,
internal affairs takes it from there and
and we look at those cases. And then
four cases, the the the other four had
to do with a range of things that were
more administrative in nature and a
couple of cases involving investigative
issues and and the effectiveness or
thoroughess of investigative work that
was being done by the department.
Uh so along with the 12 internally
generated cases, we had three cases that
began as complaints from members of the
public. Uh those again ranged in terms
of what the the the particular concerns
were and uh so various allegations of
misconduct were explored by the
department in conjunction with that. And
importantly in that that second item uh
on this slide, one of the things that we
have encouraged since the beginning of
our time here and and I think the
department has gotten to be very good at
is to not just stop at the four corners
of the the the complaint from the member
of the public. But once they get into a
particular issue and they are reviewing
it, if they discover something that that
well the the the member of the public
didn't bring this up, but as as we are
scrutinizing this, we're seeing somebody
who is not complying with what our
expectations are and we'll go ahead and
open what they call an ancillary
investigation issue and pursue that and
again oftentimes find some
accountability uh for for the involved
officers as a result of that. So that
willingness to kind of go beyond the
complaint and to take it as an
opportunity to to really look at at
officer accountability in a
comprehensive way is something that I
think is is uh important and a and a
good sign.
All right, I'm going to turn it over to
Teresa to get into the kind of the
specifics of the of the various cases
that we looked at.
Before I get into this slide, I wanted
to just highlight that um we're grateful
that uh we are in the process of
renewing our contract with your city. So
um hopefully that process um will move
forward and we'll be able to continue
our work here. One of the changes that
um is going to be in the next sort of
contract iteration scope of work um is
that something that we heard voiced both
from from this um body as well as from
members of the public which was concern
that we perhaps were not seeing all of
the investigations um that LCPD was
receiving. and that was most
specifically around external complaints.
Um so the department has three
classification types and you may have
heard me say uh speak about these before
but in the scope of work as it was in
our first the first iteration of our
contract we were receiving those um
external complaints that rose to the
level of possible misconduct and
received a formal investigation by the
department. There were two other
complaint classifications
um and those still remain in the
department uh and those will now become
part of our scope of work for review.
Those two other types one is category
two in which the member of the public
who made the complaint determined after
a conversation with a supervisor or with
someone in internal affairs that he or
she wished to withdraw their complaint.
So the department categorizes and
classifies that. it counts it but it
does not reach the level of a formal
investigation. We will now receive
those. The third type would be something
that the department upon review of the
cursory review of either a supervisor or
internal affairs determined that the
complaint was without merit. In other
words, they watched the body worn camera
and said that is dispositive. We don't
need to do further investigation. We've
cleared that case. that category three
complaint will now come to us as well.
So there was some concern that we
weren't seeing the full breadth of
complaints from members of the public
that the numbers were relatively small
and what was the department potentially
hiding? Was there something we weren't
seeing that we should be aware of and
that is now being remedied in the course
of this next contract iteration. So just
for information of of this body as well
as members of the public um the voices
were heard and the contract was amended
accordingly. So thank you for those who
voiced those concerns and challenges.
So let's jump into allegations. Steve
spoke about kind of the high level of
what we saw. There were 49 total
allegations across the uh breadth of 15
cases. As he mentioned, the majority of
these related to what the department and
other law enforcement agencies call the
code of conduct. So, the type of conduct
that is expected of a law enforcement
officer. That's professionalism. That's
use of uh uh professional language and
not profanity. That's courtesy, so no
discourtesy in the course of their
engagement. And so on um trustworthiness
and so on. So the code of conduct tends
to be a kind of an umbrella uh for a
variety of different performance
deficiencies that the department framed
allegations around. We of course saw
some excessive or unnecessary use of
force um allegations as Steve spoke to.
These are the category that we really
want to take a look at closely and the
department has several layers of review
for that. There were some allegations of
violations of the pursuit policy. And
then as Steve mentioned in those
ancillary issues, those were things like
deficiencies in the report writing. Did
the officer complete a robust report? Um
did it have anything missing in it? Was
the body worn camera activated
appropriately, in a timely way, and for
the duration of the call. Uh did the
officer communicate using his or her
radio according to policy and
procedures? So those are the things that
the department identified. And then we
saw some offduty uh potential misconduct
um uh driving while under the influence
um and other uh occurrences offduty uh
that the department framed and
highlighted.
I skip one
I did. All right. So outcomes there were
of these allegations 35 sustained. And
the interesting piece of this is that
the majority of the cases that we
reviewed were already initiated by the
department. So to have a large
percentage sustained is not surprising
to us. This is something that the
department has already identified may be
potential misconduct. They raise it to
internal affairs for further review and
they find that in fact what they thought
was potential misconduct really was and
so they sustained that allegation
appropriately.
Seven of these were exonerated. six were
not sustained and one was unfounded. And
across all of these, we found that the
outcomes were evidence-based except for
one where we found that the evidence was
not quite as dispositive. So the
investigation uh found uh in the
department's occurrence that the
allegation was exonerated, which means
that it happened, but it did not violate
policy. And in our review of the case,
we found that it was maybe more
appropriate to have found it to be not
sustained, which means that there wasn't
sufficient evidence either way. Now,
that's a distinction a little bit at the
margins. Um, in that case, the officer
was still held accountable for his
actions. And so, we found that overall
that appropriate outcome was received if
we disagreed on that particular nuance
of the case. But we wouldn't be doing
our job if we didn't find some areas of
improvement. And that was one of them.
Officer demographics. 22 LCPD employees
named in the course of these
investigations. 15 of them were
officers, three sergeants, two
detectives, and two nonsworn.
And again, in our report, uh, we list
out the employees that are related to
every case. So, if you go through the
report, there are some charts that show
this case had two officers, this one had
a sergeant and an officer, and so on. So
if there's interest in digging deeper,
that information is provided in our
report.
Discipline is always of uh paramount
importance. Of course, if you find that
there is something that needs to be
corrected, uh the department is
correcting those. The sustained
allegations had discipline that ranged
from what's called a verbal reprimand uh
to suspension, which means that the
officers received days off for his or
her sustained misconduct. and there was
one case that resulted in termination.
These all included a debrief or a
training irrespective of the finding. So
if a case came to the attention of
internal affairs in any way, those
officers received some sort of
counseling information session, some
kind of remediation so that they were
both aware of what happened and any
corrective action uh that they may have
to take. And that's really responsive we
feel in the system. And as we say here,
the goal is correction with an eye
towards performance in the future.
Critical incidents of course of
importance both to members of the
community as well as to officer safety.
Um we have seen a lot of progress in the
department's response to these. It used
to be the case that the administrative
review would come three, four, sometimes
five years after the incident occurred.
That's highly unsatisfactory both from a
transparency perspective, but also from
a corrective action perspective. Right
now, this individual is outdoing his or
her job and where is the administrative
accountability. Um, in this last cycle,
we saw that they completed their
critical incident review in six months.
That in our experience having done this
you know throughout various
jurisdictions is a wonderful timeline.
So we will definitely commend the
department for that. We look forward to
that progress going forward. One of the
things I've talked about before at
length is the force review cadre. Uh
they are a group of subject matter
experts in the department that evaluates
critical incidents. We have highlighted
their work before because it is
extremely thorough. It is very well
documented and it locates and identifies
a lot of ancillary issues that can be
raised, equipment, training, things that
officers need in the field and so on.
They are very comprehensive. Um the
department does have other systems in
place to conduct similar investigations.
Uh for example, they have a training
debrief that looks at a critical
incident and says, "Do we need more
training after this? Do people need to
learn, you know, x, y, or z as a result
of this?" We have found that those are
not as holistic. Right? So the force
review cadre is looking at all of the
things together. Um unfortunately their
extraordinary success is also their
downfall because they are very in very
high demand. So these are subject matter
experts that have other ancillary
duties. Um they the department has told
us cannot evaluate every single use of
force incident. Uh we would like to see
a world in which their use is more
frequent. um and more regular. And so
what we've recommended is that they be
reviewing every critical incident at the
very least. So we'd like to see that
progress in the next cycles.
Uh, one of the findings that we continue
to see be a challenge and this is not
unique to Los Cusus or its department.
Um,
respective to framing allegations um
with the individual types of misconduct
that might be raised during a course of
an investigation. Um, we kind of get the
department coming and going. At some
points we say you have framed too many
allegations and they're too nuanced and
detailed. and at other times we say
you've missed some allegations and we'd
like to see you uh find all of them and
potentially frame all of them. So again,
it's one of these nuances that we'll
just continue to iterate with the
department on. Um we found that two
cases in this period kind of missed the
mark in terms of framing. Um in one
there was a missed opportunity to hold
some supervisors accountable for their
behavior. Um and so we'd like to see
that you know all levels uh of the rank
uh the chain of command um are held
accountable. Um and in the other we
noted that the force review cadre's
review was very robust and comprehensive
and then the IIA investigation did not
necessarily frame each of those
components that the force review cadre
had identified. So just an opportunity
to have that certainty and um progress
throughout uh all of the administrative
functions.
Back to Steve.
No, just kidding. Still me.
Performance challenges. We brought this
up in our last uh reporting cycle when
we were here last in which we were
identifying what we're calling
performance challenges or enforcement
errors and um trying to quantify these
and or or qualify these in in a phrase
is difficult. Um but overall these are
things that we found officers were
making mistakes in the field is what it
boils down to. One case that was
particularly striking, officer had
someone detained, put them in the rear
of a police vehicle, didn't lock the
door, and that person decided they were
free to leave. So that to us falls into
this category of enforcement error um in
which the department identified and rose
that to the level of an internal
investigation that officer was
appropriately uh held accountable for
that behavior.
What we are most struck by though of
course in our work is looking for
patterns or systemic deficiencies. Is it
the same officer over and over again? Is
it the same unit? Is it the same shift?
Is it the same area? And we haven't
found a pattern to say this is a
systemic deficiency. This is officers
having an extremely taxing job and
having perhaps bad days and making
mistakes. Um officers are obviously held
to a much higher standard than many
professions. Um and their mistakes can
sometimes rise to the level of um you
know compromising public safety. So the
department is appropriately holding them
accountable for those types of uh
misconduct issues.
Now to Steve
it's going to talk about vehicle
procedure.
Okay. I knew I had one more slide in
here somewhere. So, uh, I got this one.
Vehicle pursuits happened. There were
two cases, both of of which happened to
be mine in this cycle. So, I I I'm the,
uh, resident authority for the time
being. Um,
the vehicle pursuit
review process, I think, is a really
important one in any organization just
because of the risks associated with
that activity. It was interesting in
meeting with the department this
morning. We were just kind of going over
some year-over-year statistics and the
number of pursuits initiated by the
department in a given year has uh
dropped significantly in response to the
the very restrictive new standards based
on the New Mexico uh state statute.
Having said that, of the of the pursuits
that did occur last year, I think there
were maybe seven or eight of them in in
the the last cycle, two of them were
referred on to internal affairs for
possible violations of policy. The
department has a number of very very
specific kind of complicated
policies that relate to various aspects
of the pursuit and and they really do
impose a lot of significant expectations
on officers in terms of of initiating
the pursuit, keeping supervision
informed, when to stop, how to follow.
All of those things are pretty carefully
regulated. uh and the department is
going to every time there's a pursuit
the department is going to go through a
firstlevel review process of its own. In
two of the cases uh they went ahead and
referred those on to internal affairs
because they they thought they were
possible uh policy violations in terms
of how the pursuit was conducted. Uh,
and interestingly enough, the the in one
of them, the the internal affairs folks
did a deeper dive into the the
allegations, and they determined that
one of the things that that the
department had initially been concerned
about, the officer actually had a a a
very plausible and persuasive
justification for when he was
interviewed a little bit more
specifically and thoroughly. he provided
some information that was was missing
from their understanding and and they
determined that he was exonerated for
that piece of it. And then again, as we
saw in in other cases, they that same
case resulted in a a couple of sustained
findings. One for officers related to
their body camera activation, their
failure to activate when they were
expected to at a certain phase of the of
the whole encounter. and two uh the a
third officer who got involved in the
pursuit without authorization was also
found that he had violated policy and
and received a consequence accordingly.
So we were just impressed with the some
of the nuance of it and again the deep
dive that the department was was willing
to take. And in the second case it
involved a supervisor who had initiated
the the the pursuit himself mistakenly
as it turned out. I think he was a
little um unclear on some of the the the
specific parameters of of the
department's evolving policy that was
particularly significant obviously in
and of itself but because it was a
supervisor also and so again the
department did a a good job of exploring
that holding the the relevant supervisor
accountable and making sure that any
training or other kinds of of uh
remedial measures for him and other
officers were were getting implemented
so that people are understanding on a
going forward basis uh what the rules of
engagement are.
And then the last thing I want to talk
about really relates to this concept of
offduty conduct. We've we've talked
about it before earlier today and we've
mentioned it in the past. It is again
pretty distinctive to policing that
offduty conduct issues are subject to
the the review and scrutiny and the
accountability measures of the employer
in this case the the city and the police
department. We have noticed that the
department's willingness to engage in
these issues. We've seen more examples
of it as we've gone along. And I don't
think that's necessarily a sign that the
officers are are acting out off duty to
a greater extent, but the department is
more more locked in on the issue and
more willing to bring people to account
when things come to the department's
attention. And as the slide says,
importantly, we're not we're also not
seeing a trend lines in terms of wow, we
have a lot of instances of of uh driving
under the influence, for example, and is
there something that the department
needs to be doing more systemically or
across the agency to address this this
particular issue? we're not seeing uh a
a a through line in in some of the
conduct that is being scrutinized to the
point where it it's suggesting a greater
level of or a broader level of
remediation than whatever is being done
for that officer. And last but not
least, that whole idea of support
mechanisms as well. As we've said on a
number of occasions, a very very small
percentage of of these internal affairs
cases, these misconduct investigations,
a tiny percentage of even the sustained
ones result in the officer being
separated from the department. That has
happened. It does happen. We've seen it
happen in Los Cusus since we have
started working here. There have been
officers that have been let go because
the nature of their conduct is is so
egregious. But the overwhelming majority
of the time, it's it's hey, you're still
going to be our employee when this is
over. So the object of the game is is
not to punish you in this process. It's
to educate you, adjust your behavior,
correct your behavior, and make sure
that you understand on a going forward
basis what our expectations are so that
this doesn't recur. And when it comes to
offduty conduct, obviously there are a
lot of causes for people to to get into
um inappropriate situations off duty.
And the department is has gotten to I
think they've taken a very effective
approach at looking at these things
holistically and making sure that if
there are potential uh emotional, mental
health, behavioral, substance, whatever
the case may be, that they are not just
responding by making sure that the
person is being held accountable and
given a week-long suspension or
something, but also that they're getting
access to the support that they might
need that gave rise to the conduct in
the first place.
And
uh last but not least, community
outreach was added to our scope of work
two or three years ago as a as a an
additional component. We've had I think
three sessions that that um two of them
were here and I think one of them was
out at a at a neighborhood location and
in all three instances there's a pretty
good turnout of people certainly
compared to what we see in other places
uh where we do this same kind of work we
were kind of struck by the level of
engagement and a lot of it turned into
Q&A sorts of things that were were very
useful feedback for us. So that concept
of community outreach is continuing for
us in in the next contract. We are going
to uh pilot a a new concept that we've
done in some other places. Uh we'll try
it within the next couple of weeks and
see how it lands here in Los Cusus. If
it doesn't take, we'll just kind of go
back to the drawing board. But we have
had success in other places offering
virtual sessions where we're obviously
in our location but people can can kind
of dial in or webinar sort of format
zoom whatever the platform might be and
participate in that way and we have seen
in some of our our jurisdictions that it
increases the turnout people it's a lot
more convenient for somebody to just go
into their you know den and and turn
this on for a half hour rather than
trying to get down to city hall at a
particular place in time and it's it's
an opportunity for us to engage with
people in a new way. So, we were meeting
with the city this morning about the
some of the mechanisms of that. And
again, we're we're hopeful that this
this pilot program will be a success.
It's not going to be every time. We're
certainly going to have our in-person
community outreach sessions uh in the
future as well, but we're we're just
experimenting with some different things
as as we try to uh uh continue to get
community feedback and and the the
sessions that we've had so far have been
helpful to us.
And I think that's all that we have, but
certainly obviously we're we're happy to
uh to answer any questions that you
folks might have. And once again, we
thank you for having us.
Oh, and then I'm sorry. The last thing
I'll say is ju just to be sure, one of
the things that you know in the
different jurisdictions that we work at
or or with,
one of the concerns that elected
officials or members of the public will
sometimes have is, you know, what's the
level of of cooperation from the the
department itself? Is it this
adversarial thing where it's pulling
teeth to get the information that we
need to do our job? And I think we've
said this before and we're happy to to
note it again. The department has
certainly held up its end of the bargain
since we started this process. They're
very good about notifying us, providing
us with everything we need. And I would
say the majority of the time we will
have a follow-up question or concern.
We'll want clarification about
something. And the the department is
very very responsive in terms of making
sure that we have everything that we
need to to do our job. they they may not
agree with us 100% of the time in terms
of our perspective or insights or
recommendations, but the engagement is
always I I think very open-minded and we
it's it's a good dialogue and if we very
occasionally agree to disagree, it's
it's at least coming from a place of
understanding. So, thank you. And again,
any questions you have, we're happy to
answer.
Thank you, Councelor Harris.
Thanks, Mayor. So, um, yeah, thanks for
the presentation. Um, I read through,
um, at least scanned through most of the
report. Um, it's very thorough, so I
look I'm going to dive much deeper into
it and get to know things that happened
before my time here. Um, and I I would
also like to to thank the police
department for cooperating so fully and
and for being um
at least compared to a lot of other
departments that we all read about in
the news. Um, you know, I I think
they're taking this stuff seriously and
and really trying to instigate some
change. Um, obviously there are
improvements that could be made. Um, but
I do appreciate the, you know, the
willingness to to go along with this
process. Um, so I have a few questions
and comments. Um, one, I I agree with
your finding and recommendation that
critical incident reviews should be
completed for every single incident. I
think that that is
not negotiable. I mean to me um in any
other industry in in industrial safety
in aviation u medical
every single incident gets reviewed um
and if we don't have the resources to do
it we need to make the we need to get
the resources make them available um
every single one needs to be reviewed
and reviewed quickly um and in a way you
know obviously internally we're trying
to make things better um not necessarily
place blame on any one person and then
seek to discipline them. Um, this is a
big theme in industrial safety in
particular and and aviation is that
we're not trying to find the person who
didn't tighten the bolt. It's we're
trying to find why did the system allow
the bolt to not be tightened. Um,
and um,
let's see. So, there's that. Um, and and
I'll also, you know, echo the the
thought that, yeah, police officers are
held to a high standard and they have to
be. Um, if I have a bad day at my job,
that sucks. Maybe maybe I get fired.
Maybe I, you know, piss somebody off.
Um, but I don't carry a gun and interact
with the public. And so, you know,
really, yes, held to a high standard.
You have to be your bad day could be
somebody's last today, right?
um that that's just the reality of
things. And
um so I'm curious, I guess with that in
mind, um have you seen so over the last
nine years, you know, we've been
implementing new policies and things.
Have you seen
changes in how the report in in how
these incidents have
I guess maybe not necessarily been
addressed but like the types of
incidents we have. So 9 years ago we had
x number of incidents and they had some
severity
through all of the things that you've
been recommending over the last nine
years like have we been implementing
these policies?
um have they been resulting in real
change? Um and I'll I'll let you speak
to that and I have a couple follow-ups.
So, Mr. Mayor and Council Member Harris,
thank you so much for the questions. I
wanted to just clarify um on critical
incidents um just a point of
clarification that all incidents are
reviewed. um they do receive several
levels. Different uh groups within the
department will review them. Um and they
ultimately all result in an internal
investigation. So an IIA internal
affairs investigation. Um what the
nuance that we're suggesting
recommending is that it is this force
review cadre which is a specialized unit
conduct yet another layer of review. Um
so just for clarification that all
critical incidents are receiving at
least some level of fairly rigorous
review. Um so I just wanted to clarify
that. Um as to your um last question you
know I think that there are there's two
two sides of it. One is we are looking
at individual officer performance and
conduct and the extent that we are
tracking the types of the names and and
the actual personalities that are coming
across our desk. Um you know we are
gratified to see that we're not seeing a
lot of recurring offenders. There's not
a lot of trends in terms of boy we see
this guy every quarter. Um, so as far as
remediation working uh on the individual
level, you know, I can't say whether
it's because of that process or this
process that he or she shifted behavior,
but certainly it it's implied um and any
training that was received on a systemic
level. The department u for the most
part agrees with our recommendations. um
where they go from there. We've seen
changes in terms of the process, the
administrative process, um spinning up
reviews for this type of offduty
conduct. We weren't seeing that, you
know, 5 years ago, uh prior to Chief
Story's tenure. And so, we're seeing
that the department is holding officers
more frequently accountable through
these internal mechanisms than we have
in the past.
Okay, that's that's great to know. Um,
have you
and and I don't know if this is maybe a
a comment about our specific department
or just kind of more I think this is
more a question for your experience in
general. Um, but are there certain
certain disciplinary actions that you
have seen us take that are better than
other departments do or um worse than
other departments do? And do you provide
specific guidance on, you know, in this
instance, we think that this behavior
warranted a different kind of
punishment? I specifically I read a
couple um individual reports from last
year, maybe. And between them, it kind
of struck me as one of these is worse
than the other, but the one that was
less worse in my mind like warranted a
demotion. and and I was like, you know,
this seems disproportionate. Um,
so there I I'll say a couple things. One
is it is absolutely something that we
look at if if there are sustained
allegations. We are certainly curious to
know what the department's response is
and does it seem commenurate with the
severity of the allegation? it can be uh
we keep our description of it in terms
of public reporting at a pretty high
level in as opposed to getting to the
weeds. [clears throat] We will
occasionally talk to the department and
have the same reaction you do. Not
necessarily why this seemed worse than
this and and why did this get a
different lesser punishment.
Um but in an individual case we might
say we we would have expected the
consequence for this to be more
significant and then just have that
conversation. The other piece of it is
that there are some different variables
that can account besides the specific
policy violation is are you a repeat
offender? Are you a supervisor who
should have known better or a brand new
officer? And I think the biggest key to
your point about about actually fixing
or correcting as opposed to just, you
know, giving somebody two days off and
teaching them a lesson, I think the idea
of that the department has really leaned
into I it's really almost every case
that that is sustained and some that
aren't even sustained, the department is
going to follow up and and in an outside
of the discipline process address the
underlying behavior performance issue
and really try to give the officer the
tools to make sure it doesn't happen
again. So I think there is an evolution
in that respect.
Okay. Um
yeah and and I appreciate the mention in
the presentation also that there were
incidents where you found that like
supervisors should have been been paying
attention to this cuz yeah the
leadership really does come from the top
um all and and flow down. Uh the last uh
question slash comment I have is I was
reading the report and there was a note
that
the zip code sample was kind of iffy and
the main reason is that most of the
reports originated from internal affairs
which is in zip code 88001 shockingly.
Um so I don't know do you have any
recommendations on different ways that
we could geographically map these
things? um by patrol routes or council
districts or you know I don't know other
other things statistics that we might be
interested in.
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things
that we've tried to do more recently is
look at the underlying police report. So
not rely on the memo that says, you
know, the the complainant is the police
department in 88001. So we look at who
was involved, where was it happening,
and we're using that zip code more
regularly. Um, and what I think we need
to do is go back over the course of five
years and input that data instead. Um,
so certainly we'll be able to to have a
little more mapping um, in the future.
We'll go back and do that work.
Cool. Yeah, that would be appreciated.
And um, the zip codes in particular and
Cusus are
weird and mixed. Yes. Uh, mixed to say
the least. So I don't know if we might
have better geographic descriptors.
That's a question for other um to go on.
But um yeah, I think that's it. Thank
you very much for uh for the
presentation and entertaining all my
questions.
And as you're digesting previous
reports, if there's any questions, do
feel free to reach out to us and we'll
be able to to respond.
Yeah.
Thank you, Mayor. I notice there's two
red lights. Shall we give it to the the
lady first?
Oh, I was waiting. Councelor Harris, are
you done?
Oh, yes, I am. Thank you.
Yeah. Uh, councelor Karan, go.
Thank you. Sorry, I it's a brief one, so
don't worry. I I'll give you a chance.
You're always brief. [laughter]
Um, thank you for your presentation and
thank you to LCPD for continuing this
ongoing work. And again, forgive me as
my day job is as a professor, so I'm a
little sensitive on this topic. But you
mentioned in two separate reports and I
noticed these when they were coming
through earlier um that the use of
generative AI to write reports is
maybe leading to some problematic things
andor at least not allowing for a clear
narration of what people experienced in
that that might be problematic in
understanding the implications of
whatever happens. Um I'm wondering if
you can talk a little bit about um if
what you're seeing other departments do
departments do in this context andor if
LCPD I think this has come up within
about the last year since we started
using this new technology and I
understand report writing is terrible
but I also don't want us to miss things
or have things be glazed over by AI
because it's rosy or whatever the
situation is which seems like might have
been the case in some of those things.
Yeah, thank you very much for that
question. Um, you know, we're at the
cusp of something new at like every
morning. So, um, this is a work in
progress, I think, for agencies
nationwide and certainly there's that
balance because report writing takes an
extraordinary amount of time and
officers are often tied to that desk
writing a report um, versus being in the
field. Supervisors, same thing, tied to
the desk reviewing, checking that
report. Um, and so I think this is one
of those Pandora box that we opened and
officers have access to it and if we
were to take it away, they would
probably not be very happy to have to go
back to the type of report writing they
were doing. Um,
I think the important part is to have
really really strict guard rails and
very close review. Um, and so we're
really leaning or departments are really
leaning on supervisors to be doing
thorough reviews of those reports.
Does this make sense? Is it something
that uh is comprehensive? And so on. Um
Axon, which is the main vendor of this
of this report writing software,
although there are various um but Axon
is the one most frequently used. It's
packaged in with the bodywn camera
contract typically. And uh they have a
lot of safeguards in place um in order
to kind of test the officer and the
supervisor to make sure that they've
reviewed the report. They'll put in
things that are completely wild and, you
know, out of left field to make sure
that those are reviewed. Um, they have
been developing safeguards over the
course of the year. As new things come
up, they're putting up something to help
remediate it. But certainly, it's
something that we just have to keep
looking at. Um, and I think this is just
the new world that we live in, not just
for law enforcement, but you know, all
all around. So, we'll keep looking at
it.
Thank you. No, this is one of those
situations where I don't trust the
people that made the problem to fix the
problem. So, like I feel a little like I
So, I hope that we can both
be [laughter] very proactive in thinking
about this because I don't want it I I
don't want I'm not proposing that we get
rid of it. Even though I tell my
students, you get dumber when you use
it. Um [laughter]
that I I I understand the context that
it's in and the value that it has. I
just don't want it to be something that
interferes with your work with with our
understanding of accountability and can
actually help make things better for for
the force. So, thank you and um I look
forward to hearing any other interesting
updates um that might come around
related to that.
Absolutely. Thank you,
Council Matis.
Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Uh you represent
quite a lot of cities and different
police departments. So this question uh
you touched on a very important segment
several times and that is making a
police force better that is training
equipment and tools and it was
throughout your entire presentation. So
my question to you and recommendation
maybe from you because you are experts
we're thinking of a uh developing and
building a new training center. Do you
see that uh the correlation? Do you work
with police departments and other cities
where they build a state-of-the-art
modern training center that it's an
improvement in the quality and the
recruiting of the policemen? It's a
tough question for you to answer, but I
just wanted your opinion.
So, thank you for the question. I would
say broadly speaking it absolutely makes
a difference in in so many ways. Uh I
think just in terms of morale it is is
uh very affirming and a source of
enthusiasm for officers to have a place
to go for training that that is of of a
a really high quality. And I think there
are a lot of dividends that that can
arise from it. And as you noted and and
we appreciate that, we are huge uh
proponents of of looking at these things
holistically and you can unpack what
happened on this specific day and did
this person, you know, do this instead
of that. But that's all you you have to
look at the broader context of of how
these people are being trained, how
effective the training is, and what
tools are they being given. And I think
the the a robust training program is is
absolutely essential to an agency that's
operating at the highest potential
level. And to your point, more
specifically, uh a a
quality training facility absolutely is
a a positive factor in that whole
process.
Thank you,
Mayor Pro Tim.
Thanks, Mayor. And this may be more of a
question for our city manager. I'm
curious if we're able to talk about the
new contract. Um, and if we are, I'm
just curious about is anything changing
in it that you can discuss now and when
do we expect it to come to council?
And if we can't talk about it right now,
that that's okay, too. Just curious.
Hello, Mayor Mayor PM city council, city
manager. That's not on the agenda,
unfortunately. So, we can't talk, but
thank you for asking.
Okay. Okay. Well, I'll ask you later, I
guess. Thank you,
Mayor Proton.
Thank you, Mayor City Councilors. Um,
and thank you,
Mr. Colony, and Ms. Magula for the uh
presentation, and thank you to the
police department for cooperating with
the u the review. I have a I have a a
question and um a request. So, Viola or
Christine um when will this be available
for public review or consumption or will
it be this report? Um Christina Viola
would be Thank you.
Mr. Mayor, mayor promos. Uh, as soon as
we finish today's council meeting, I'll
have Christine post it on our
transparency page.
Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it. The
other piece, uh, I' I'd like to add a
little more science or a little more
math to the, uh, to the presentation. I
I haven't read the contract, so I'm not
sure if this is within scope or not. And
maybe um, DC would end. That's that's
probably us uh as a police department
and the city. But um so I would just
like some comparative data. So police
has about 158,000 calls per year or so
give or take. Um and um so in six sigma
we call this um defects um so or or
errors or anomalies, right? And so what
I would like to do is just look, you
know, how did we do this year versus
last year versus 5 years ago? Um how are
we doing in comparison to cities our
size? So if that's within your scope and
you can provide that, I would love to
see the the progress of regress and um
you know if not maybe we could figure
something internally to to look at data
like that.
Yeah, Mayor Prom, I really appreciate
that. Um I think one of the challenges
in framing it that way although we
absolutely can do that um and we've
looked over the past years as well to
see you know relative to calls for
service what is the percentage of
complaints. Um, one of the one of the
things that is challenging about it is
that as a system becomes more effective,
we might see an increase and we have
seen an increase in the uh number going
up. Right? So over time and in
particular over the past two years uh
we've seen an increase in internal
investigations being launched. Why is
that? Are officers actually engaged in
more misconduct or is the department now
taking the view that these issues need
to be documented, formally investigated,
formally addressed? Right? So sometimes
when we see those increases, it is not
necessarily indicative of something
happening worse or going south or being
more deficient. Um but just a sign of a
healthy system. Um so but we can
certainly provide those figures. I I do
like math much to Steve's
disappointment.
Thank you. Thank you, mayor.
Anyone else?
Okay. Again, thank you. Thank you for
being here. Thank you for the
presentation. I just want to add that uh
anytime that you raise your right hand
and you take an oath, you're held to a
higher standard. and anything that you
say, how you behave, how you conduct
yourself is always going to be
scrutinized. So I I I thank Chief Story,
the deputy chiefs, the police department
for being willing to cooperate and and
give in order to get better because as a
law enforcer, as a code enforcer, it's
always hard to be audited and and to
embrace it. It really takes a lot of I
would say professionalism, maturity to
say what is it that we're doing wrong?
How can we do it better? And you still
uh keep adding to it. So that's good
from external to the categories to the
cleared cases so that we can review
everything and and get better because
that's what we want is the best public
safety we can get in the best department
that the the outcome can come out. So
again, thank you for all that you do and
we look forward to seeing how we can get
better.
Thank you.
Okay, I'll look for a motion to adjurnn.
Motion to second.
This is on a motion to adjourn the work
session. Councelor Mccclure.
Yes. Councelor Matise.
Yes.
Councelor Harris.
Yes.
Councelor Beno.
Yes.
Councelor Karan.
Yes.
Councelor Munoz.
Yes.
And mayor.
Yes.