oh
[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone welcome to
our work session of las cruces city
council today is monday january 10th
2022 it's approximately 1 pm
before we begin if you please join me in
the pledge of allegiance please
thank you
okay now we're going to have our pet of
the week and jennifer martinez who we
haven't seen for since last year
is going to
give our
introduction
good afternoon mayor and council i am
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office and today i would
like to introduce you to our pets of the
week and i am going to start with our
cat
whose name is silver
let's see here
there we go okay
silver is just under a year old he does
come from a family of five brothers and
sisters he is a little more independent
and likes to be alone sometimes but he
does love getting pet and getting
attention
and then we have our dog of the week and
this is oolock
this two-year-old guy is a little shy at
first but he likes to play when he's
warmed up a little bit he loves to go on
walks and explore so if you do have a
yard for him to play and run around in
you want to make sure that it is secured
that he doesn't get bored because he is
up for an adventure at any time and he
could be tempted to explore past his
designated boundaries
if you're looking for a forever pet and
have room to grow with love and
attention look no further than silver or
oolock you can call the ascmv at
382-0018 to make an appointment to visit
with either of these two guys and if you
have time this weekend you can visit the
ascmv they are having a pet parade on
saturday from 9 a.m to 11 30.
and also if you have room to grow in
your home to foster
please consider big dogs the ascmv has a
welcome package for big dog fosters and
of course fostering helps to free up
space in the shelter and you can also
help teach dogs how to live in a home
you can find more details on the ascmv
facebook page thank you mayor
okay thank you thank you jennifer
okay next is going to be our jobs of the
week
and i see dr payandes coming forward
afternoon mr mayor members of the city
council
good
afternoon today's jobs of the week we're
going to be having an administrative
assistant position available at the city
of las cruces and this position is going
to be closing on the 12th of january of
this year we will also be having a
warehouse worker and this is with monger
water services incorporated and this
position will be closing on the 27th of
january of this year
as well as that we have a physical
therapist assistant this is with earnest
healthcare and this position will be
closing on march 28th of this same year
we also have a business services
consultant this is available with ecw's
workforce solutions and this position
will be closing on the 28th of january
of this year and we also have a position
available with food service worker this
is with keith commissary network llc and
this will be closing on april the 3rd of
this same year
additionally for a full list of jobs
internships and volunteer opportunities
remember that the the web page is
employeenim.com and for the city of las
cruces positions is at government jobs
dot com forward slash careers forward
slash las cruces an additional
announcement that we have for today is
that tomorrow there's going to be a
rapid hire event for the state of new
mexico at the new mexico workforce
connections office in 226 south south
alameda boulevard
they're encouraging the community to go
between 2 p.m to 7 p.m and there's going
to be positions for family assistance
analysts child support legal assistance
number one and child support legal
assistance number two they're
encouraging to bring copies of their
updated resumes as well as proof of work
in the united states
and again the connections through the
new mexico warfare connections office is
located at 226 south of alameda
boulevard and their phone number is
575-524-6250
thank you mr mayor
thank you dr payalis
okay next is going to be the covid 19
update by assistant city manager eric
enriquez
good afternoon mayor and council eric
enriquez assistant city manager to give
a cobit 19 update
here in dona ana county we still see the
cases the positive cases continue to
climb
with the variants that are
amongst us and
in the country in the state and in our
county those cases still are rising
you know we are seeing some progress
it's slowly but the vaccinations are
still in progress and still continuing
to grow
as
as we've gotten up into the
92 percent
with one dose so moving into that 90s
and still in the 80s and then also with
the boosters continues to grow where
we're at 33 percent of the adult and
vaccinations i'll give some more updates
on some of the things that are going on
also in our community
uh the hospital data due to the increase
in cases are seeing more cases
um a positive in our community and new
hospital admissions
but the good thing what we're seeing is
a reduction or going down somewhat is
those beds that are for covet 19
patients and also icu has dropped down
0.7 percent but it is a decrease from
what we've seen last month
so vaccinations still remain the best
way to avoid serious illness and death
83.6 percent of hospitalizations in new
mexico
are those that are unvaccinated
and 88.1 percent of deaths are among
those that are unvaccinated again we
cannot stress enough to get people
vaccinated in our community
pmg private company continues to
vaccinate on mondays and tuesdays at the
farm and ranch and they're at
the county government complex on
wednesdays
they'll also be back in full operation
at the public schools as school begins
and they will be also running the test
to stay in school as well
female vaccination bus will be in santa
teresa in anthony and then coming back
to the east mesa and at young park
the following week
january 17th is a mask up event that
we'll be holding here at fringer park
there's 1500 mass that will be available
to distribute sleeve up campaign to in
english and spanish to encourage those
to get vaccinated as we saw the data
that you know the vaccine really helps
to prevent the serious illness and death
this event is a joint venture with nmsu
office and the experimental learning
community engagement and outreach
program that's a big kudos to our
quality of life volunteer program
coordinator scott rogers who is heading
this up
also we're looking at trying to
implement a test site there and also
vaccines as well on that day it's from
11am to 1pm but we're looking to expand
those hours for the vaccinations and
testing
that's all i have at this time thank you
thank you eric
no questions okay
all right so next we're gonna go we have
two items on the agenda the first one is
the oir group which is the police
auditor that was recently hired to uh
to look into things that we've which we
started several years ago
and i believe it's done every six months
and so this will be the first time and i
think viola pedea
will be starting this off
and i believe the consultants are in as
well yes sir
good afternoon mr mayor councillors
viola perea city auditor today we have
the oir group which is our police
auditor here today to do their first
semi-annual presentation for council
and we have both mr michael janako and
miss teresa magula here to do the
presentation
i know viola just mentioned your names
but if you don't mind stating your names
again when you
start speaking please
thank you
good afternoon mr mayor um
city council
mr city manager my name is michael
janaco
and i am part of or group one of the
principals
as ms
pereira said
um teresa magula is with me
and she's a member of our mayor i'm
sorry excuse me can you help talk a
little closer to or raise the mic a
little there's a button there that you
can raise the
closer to your
is that better better thank you
great
um
i have to apologize is the first time
i've been in person in a long time been
doing zoom calls forever and
this is a new experience or getting used
to an older experience
thank you
um but i want to be heard so i think is
that better
i think so anyway it's our privilege to
be with you um this afternoon
uh we are los angeles based
but since um
march we have been working
as the independent police auditor for
the city we had a chance to meet with
some of you in may
of last year when we were first getting
started but i see some new faces that
we look forward to engaging with this
afternoon
what we're here to do this afternoon is
to present the findings of our first
report
as the independent police auditor
for you all
and
we just have some very high level
observations that we wanted to make
based on our first experience with
the police department and we'll present
those and then obviously be available
should there be any questions with
regard to anything in our report
mr janako let me just state a couple
things one we did have an election and
counselor vasquez chose not to run again
and
counselor graham over here to my left i
mean my right is replacing him
as well as counselor sorg chose not to
run either ran for different office and
that's councillor quran over here to my
right as well
counselor beta stevie happens to be out
of town and counselor flores is out of
the country so it looks like yeah so the
only one that is familiar on those three
is counselor ben cuomo and then she
happens to be wearing glasses today
which she normally doesn't wear so
yeah
there you go so that mr mayor i really
appreciate uh the lineup yeah because
you're wondering what the heck yeah
what's going on what's going on here
but um i appreciate the uh the the
lineup um that you've presented and sure
it's great to meet you for the first
time
in any event we have been doing this
work for um
over 17 years as independent police
auditors
we are the independent police auditor
for a number of jurisdictions it's a
growing trend particularly in california
which is where we're based
to have
an independent set of eyes and ears to
evaluate assess
and comment on police practices
particularly since the george floyd
murder it's increased in
in interest particularly in our home
state so
we are the independent police auditor
for about eight different agencies
mostly based in california this is the
only assignment we have in the great
state of new mexico
but we have found it to be a
very worthwhile experience in the six
months that we've been able to do this
work
so as i said we started
in march of last year
and
this report that we are presenting today
is the accumulation of six months of
work and our scope of work
will be that
twice a year we will be making similar
presentations to this body on
on what we are presented with
what we think of
the way in which the police department
holds its people accountable the
strength of its investigations
and whether or not the outcomes make
sense based on
based on evidence which is what we like
to see
it's really obviously a critical point
responsibility of policing to ensure
that when there is an allegation of
misconduct or impropriety
that there is a thorough investigation a
fair investigation and then a principled
outcome and that's all we can ask for
and this um
review
is an accumulation of our observations
with regard to those metrics
our first three months
we got to learn learn the department we
became familiar with the policies and
procedures protocols and expectations of
the police department
we started to evaluate and review the
policy manual which is extensive these
days policing is a complex business with
a lot of expectations
and
then on may
may 1 we started receiving actual
investigations
and
ins to just to be
completely um
understanding of this
when i say we received investigations we
received the investigations and by that
i mean not only do we receive the
investigative reports but we receive any
of the underlying materials that
accompany those reports so it's full
unfettered access to confidential
information that we have been receiving
for these past six months
and
in our view without the ability to
access the underlying material
we wouldn't be able to fairly do our job
in evaluating the work of the police
department
this is really though to just to try to
be
specific
this is really more about evaluating how
the command staff and leadership of the
police department is doing we're not so
much focused on the actual misconduct of
the officers or the employees that's
important but what we're really trying
to do is
when there is an allegation of
misconduct how well is your police
department
investigating those allegations how
fairly are they investigating the
allegations
and how completely and
are they investigating the allegations
timeliness is important that's another
metric we look at and then with regard
to the outcome whether the outcome is
based on the information or
like in some jurisdictions unfortunately
what we see is that
whether a case is sustained against an
officer or not will sometimes depend on
whether or not
the chief or leadership like the officer
or don't like the officer and that's not
what you want to see you want to see an
evidence-based result
i think i will now turn it over to my
colleague for the next set of slides
okay
thank you very much
i'll be moving that down is that okay to
hear me
all right
thanks mike for that introduction my
name is theresa magula and i am also
part of oir group
i'm going to get you into the weeds of
our audit now
and our scope of audit as mike said for
this particular period
were those cases that were received
starting on may 1.
but the cases themselves were initiated
investigated and closed by the police
department from january 1st to november
30th so we're looking from the start of
the year
until about a few months ago
and as mike said we are determining
whether those cases were complete
objective and thorough and that the
actions taken were appropriate so
outcomes
such as the discipline that an officer
may or may not have received and then of
course as i'm going to do today i'm
going to report on those key
demographics that we may have found
during the course of our review
okay so in this period we had a total of
12 ia cases ia internal affairs cases
and that included five formal citizen
complaints a citizen complaint would be
when a member of the public files a
complaint with the las cruces police
department of alleged misconduct of
department personnel
using the public complaint process
we also saw two internal investigation
cases
those are cases where the department
becomes aware of misconduct and will
initiate a case internally so that
doesn't come from an external source
member of the public typically it's
coming from inside the department they
become aware of it
we saw two supervisor matters and those
are complaints of misconduct that are
investigated at the supervisor level so
rather than being investigated by the
internal affairs unit they are
investigated by that officer's
chain of command supervisor
we saw two vehicle pursuit cases
and one case that actually came in from
the las cruces ethics hotline complaint
hotline
and that case involved some las cruces
police officers and so it was directed
to the department for their internal
review
we also saw litigation that was closed
between may and november so those were
six cases that were closed in that time
frame
some of those cases date back to 2017
and so they have just recently been
closed
and what we saw is that
overall
the department is responding with
appropriate practices and outcomes so we
saw that the investigations generally
were complete objective and thorough in
the best practices that we have seen in
our work
the actions taken were very appropriate
and show a real commitment to
accountability
and it wouldn't be doing our job if we
didn't find some room for improvement
and so we did find some room for
improvement in ia practices
and mike is going to speak to those in
more detail after i proceed with the
demographics
so what we saw in this particular period
and this is very common is that the
incidents are initiated mostly from
calls for service
so of the 12 cases that we saw nine of
those came from a direct call for
service
one was a result of a traffic accident
so it was the conduct of an officer who
responded to that traffic accident
one was a traffic stop and in fact it
was the officer himself who was stopped
for a traffic stop
and that
one over on the right is our community
outreach that is
from the
ethics hotline complaint
some of you might be interested about
where these are occurring given that you
are representing specific districts and
so we saw that six of those cases that
we saw this period are from eight eight
zero zero one
three of the cases were eight eight zero
zero five
and two of the cases came from eight
eight zero one two
so you might be wondering if that's
within your own jurisdiction um and
districts and we saw one case was
anonymous that was the hotline complaint
so that did not have a location
we also noted that if the complainant's
race was known three of them were
hispanic one was black and one was white
two of the cases those internal
investigations that i spoke of won't
have a
race for the complainant because it's
initiated within the department the
hotline complaint obviously anonymous
i'll give you some officer demographics
of who was involved
we had 18 named
las cruces police department employees
and those are across the ranks as you
can see here
officer race of course the department
keeps records on that 10 of those are
hispanic four were black and four are
white
and one thing i want to highlight is
that as we continue our work over the
course of time
we'll start to look a little bit at any
trends that we're seeing in demographics
that will be both on the complainant
location and officer side so if we're
starting to see something that looks
like it's a significant trend any
outliers would certainly report to this
body about that
okay so here's where we get good
it's outcome and discipline
and before i jump into kind of the final
stage which is the discipline that is
involved
i want to give you a little bit of kind
of a primer on the complaint process in
case that's not something you're
immediately familiar with so a
complainant or the department becomes
aware of misconduct
a complainant calls it in and reports it
or the department becomes aware
the department will then do what's
called a preliminary investigation
and in the course of that investigation
the internal affairs depart unit will
determine if there is potential
misconduct in this case
they will frame the allegations
of alleged misconduct
in this period we saw that there were 32
allegations framed
the
individual allegations are then
investigated and then they will
determine if misconduct actually
occurred
as a result of
the
investigation of misconduct they can
come with over about five different
categories of results so it is sustained
if they determine that the allegation
did in fact occur misconduct occurred
unfounded if they determined that it
actually did not occur
the officer can be exonerated which
means it actually occurred but it was
well within
the scope of work the policies the law
of the police department
another category is not sustained
which would mean that there is
insufficient evidence to prove or
disprove if something actually occurred
and so in this period we saw that 19 of
those allegations were sustained and
that happened against 11 of the officers
that were named
and for those that were sustained the
discipline ranged from something that's
known as a verbal reprimand which could
be a counseling session with a
department supervisor
all the way to a 10-day suspension and
in some cases termination
we outline in our formal report
which cases aligned with which
discipline outcomes
and so we have those charts within our
report themselves should we want to dig
in deeper and see what those looked like
finally we saw that the preliminary
investigation what happens at the onset
of a complaint being filed
had a no finding category and mike will
discuss a little bit about where we had
some trouble with that and where the
department has course corrected
and so here you just see the different
allegation dispositions and the
percentage of cases that fell into that
all right
okay so turn it back to mike for the
recommendations that we had related to
both process and operational
improvements
okay thank you very much
the
the report itself is over 100 pages so
we're not going to get into detail of
all of the cases or even any of them but
are certainly able to answer any
questions that you will
one of our goals in our work as
independent police auditor is to provide
transparency balanced with the interests
of confidentiality so you won't see any
named officers or employees in the
report but you will see a very detailed
story about what transpired what the
evidence showed and how the department
came to its conclusion about outcomes
we feel that that is critical in order
for you all and for your public
and your communities to evaluate
how well the department is holding its
its employees accountable
and but what i'm going to talk about in
the next few slides and then stop for
any questions i'm a trained attorney so
i can go on all day and i promise i
won't go on all day
but
these are some of the systemic
recommendations we made coming out of
our review of the cases the first one
change complaint intake verbiage just to
to be a little more clear on what
that's intended to convey
is that
the department has a complaint form
that has been around for a long time
and so if somebody
wishes to complain a complaint against a
member of
the department
they can
provide information anyway any sorts of
ways the hotline is one example
anonymous complaints are received
they can show up at the police station
or they can fill out a form
in which
they set out the allegations which is
then referred to
a supervisor in the department for an
investigation
when we looked at the forms
that were in use
uh and being distributed to the
community whenever a complaint
complainant wanted a form we saw a
couple things in the forms that seemed
to be outdated and even inconsistent
with current policy
and so one of the recommendations we
made to the chief was to revise those
forms so that they more carefully
correspond to expectations
as set out in policy so just as an
example and this is on our report just
as an example
the form that was being handed out
was advising
[Music]
complainants
that they might be subject to a
polygraph exam which is like a lie
detector test
if in fact the department
was concerned about the truthfulness of
the complainant
while that practice hasn't been in place
for years
for some reason the advisory to that
effect on the form still existed
another example on the form that was
outdated information
was there was an advisory on the forum
that said
please be advised i'm paraphrasing here
but essentially please be advised that
if you make a false statement against an
officer you could be subject to
penalties for making false statements
for officers again that has never been
done
but the problem with that kind of
statement
is it could
chill
or provide a disincentive to
complainants to even complain
recognizing that they could be in
trouble if in fact the department found
that their allegations were not truthful
so
we had the discussion with the
leadership of the department and my
understanding is the leadership of
department accepted this recommendation
has revised their forms
accordingly
the second bullet had to do with formal
findings and i think teresa
already alluded to this but what we like
to see is findings for every
investigation
and
under the
system that we initially looked at
some cases
the department was not making formal
findings about
there were lower level cases but in our
view we think best practice is that the
department ought to be making a finding
of one sort no matter what the level of
concern is or what the um
the level of of
uh uh the issues
in our view all these cases should come
to a formal finding
in a couple cases we saw that the
investigation was taking uh longer than
best practices
and so in those cases we recommended
that the department do all it could in
order to make sure that these
investigations were completed in a
timely fashion timeliness is important
for a whole lot of reasons
one is that
obviously the complainant is interested
in ensuring that
the allegation be swiftly and timely
considered and completed
it also is important for the officer
who's named
or the involved officer to have a timely
resolution because
in addition to the
potential
impact
that a current ongoing investigation
against an officer might have on the
career path or promotional opportunities
or assignment opportunities for that
officer while they're under
investigation
the mere emotional
toll that it would take to have an
officer under investigation for weeks if
not months without without no without
any outcome can have significant
implications for that officer and the
health of the organization as well
so
we like to see
investigations completed in a timely
fashion
sometimes that's not possible sometimes
a a witness or an employee may not be
available and some sometimes there will
be necessary delays
in those outcomes
but in our view that should be the
exception and not the norm to get these
investigations timely completed
and then finally
the supervisory matter while we do find
that there are times in which there are
allegations that are relatively
minor in comparison to some of the
larger allegations
where a supervisory matter kind of
investigation could be appropriate we
saw a couple times where the allegations
seemed more serious than a minor
allegation of misconduct and we felt
that
that kind of
allegation should go to a more formal
investigation and perhaps even be
conducted by
the internal affairs lieutenant instead
of a sergeant so
every case is case specific but we did
make recommendations about changing that
and by the way all these four
were
fairly considered by leadership of
the organization of your police
department and my understanding is we're
on the same page with regard to these
recommendations and the police
department
there are a few other recommendations
that we had made in this in this um
in this report
one is ensure training a company's
verbal reprimand so verbal reprimands is
the lowest level of intervention
that the department has to remediate its
employees
and
in our view
because these aren't documented they're
not written they're verbal
um
reprimands
we wanted to make sure that there was
more process and more formality to the
nature of those reprimands
and and and consistency about the nature
of the reprimand so what am i saying
about insure training what are we saying
about ensure training a company's verbal
reprimands
what we're saying is instead of just
simply saying
don't do that again
or we don't like the way you performed
that day
we would think that it would be helpful
to have
an explanation to the employee to ensure
that the employee understands why
they're being counseled so a training
component a debriefing component a more
extensive conversation
between the employee and the supervisor
we think would be more appropriate
to ensure that the employee understands
what it is that she or he did
that caused them to get crossways with
the department
with regard to hotline complaints
this is pretty straightforward but again
we think that more formality needs to be
placed on these complaints
and that they should go
and
they should essentially be treated like
any other investigation that's received
by the department
and um
and finally um
coming out of the lawsuits or the claims
[Music]
what we'd like to see is that the way we
see it is that a lawsuit or a claim
is essentially
the same as if
an individual gone to the police station
and filed a complaint it's the same
thing it's a complaint about conduct of
an employee
but the only addition is there's a
potential price tag attached to the
complaint right because a claim has a
claim for
compensation for being harmed by the
allegation the same is true with a
lawsuit so
our our
recommendation here is there be a more
formal review of any claim or lawsuit
that comes in by the police department
for a couple reasons one is to
help provide the city attorney with
information about whether or not there
is any credence
to the claim or lawsuit
but the second reason is to also have an
independent assurance that if there is
an allegation that's being received by
the city that those allegations are also
looked at with regard to
whether or not
the employee violated policy
that gave rise to the claimant lawsuit
we had
recommendations with regard to
expectations for non-sworn personnel
as you all know there are a number a
couple departments that
can that
are not officers not sworn officers but
our civilian employees but they come
within the umbrella of the police
department
and if you
have had a chance to look at our report
there were a couple cases involving one
officer who worked for animal control
for example and
when we looked at those investigations
we found that you know the appropriate
action was taken by the department with
regard to these cases but
at least according to this particular
employee
his one of his arguments was that he
didn't realize
that the policies of the police
department applied to civilian
employees
and so our recommendation is to make
sure that non-sworn personnel understand
that that manual that is primarily
written for police officers is not
exclusively written for police officers
and that the general precepts the code
of ethics
the code of conduct is all applicable to
civilian employees as well
we saw a couple cases in which there was
apparent confusion
with regard to
domestic standby and welfare checks with
regard to what the law is and what the
expectations of the police department is
with regard to how
officers should handle
these kinds of cases
and so
in order to avoid
future confusion
since we saw in a couple cases that we
thought the whole department would
benefit from training
on how to perform
consistent with the law and expectations
of the department with regard to
domestic standbys
and that is a situation that is always
potentially dynamic
in which an officer is called
when there's a transfer of children by
parents who are
estranged or divorced
as well as welfare checks which again
some basic understanding and getting
everyone on the same page in our view
will eliminate future allegations if
everyone understands what the process
should be
body worn camera video um is obviously
and you all have um
and your department has been outfitted
with body worn cameras for quite a while
now way ahead of many other
organizations and many other police
agencies in the state in the country and
i think it's worked to the advantage of
the department that certainly is a game
changer for us as your auditor because
instead of just having
the allegation
and then the officer's version of what
happened
we almost always will have a recorded
version of what has happened
that we can then look at and either
corroborate the allegation or refute the
allegation in the same way that the
police department can do the same
the problem is
is that there are times in which
that information doesn't exist
because of a
a delinquency
or tardiness in activating the body-worn
cameras and so
in those cases we don't have the
information the department has an
expectations clear in policy that
whenever there's going to be
officer
civilian contact
that by and large those
contacts are to be recorded but we saw a
couple cases in which there was either
delay or no recording by the officer
sometimes there were explainable reasons
for that it wasn't there was no evidence
that was intentional but nonetheless
it's so important and their expectations
are now
in your city that there will be a
recording of these events so
we wanted our recommendation is for the
office for the department to make sure
that
that this becomes a
expectation
and that when officers do not live up to
that expectation that they be held
accountable for it
um the other thing that we recommended
is sort of a technological fix which is
new and new iteration newer iterations
of body worn cameras
have an automatic activation feature
that many
agencies are starting to go to by
automatic activation what i mean is for
example
there are new body-worn cameras where
if one officer in a group of responding
officers
activates
their body-worn camera all the body-worn
cameras in the immediate vicinity will
also become activated automatically
that's the kind of technological fix
we're talking about another example is
there are now body-worn cameras that
will activate automatically
whenever an officer turns on his or her
lights and sirens so once they start
code free driving
that automatically activates the
body-worn camera which eliminates the
human factor and automatically gives us
a
a rendition of what occurred
the final piece has to do with tactical
training on contact and cover
tactics are something we're always
looking at in seeing how officers
respond to an event
and the concept of contact and cover
means to approach a situation that
might have risk i think every traffic
stop has some level of risk but for
those that are potentially high risk
that officers be safe in how they
approach
use
contact which means getting help calling
for backup if you have time
and also
taking a position of cover if you're
concerned that the individual you're
dealing with might have a weapon or or
might take action against you cover is
just simply approaching more carefully
felony stops staying behind your
your car behind your car door and
ordering the person coming back to you
those are the kinds of tactical things
that will keep officers safe and reduce
the likelihood that deadly force or any
force ends up being used by the officer
and that is my wrap up again we had
obviously a lot of material in this
presentation
it's dense
we hope that the actual case summaries
tell a helpful story so you have an idea
of
what it is
that
that the police department is
investigating what kinds of allegations
are coming to the police department's
attention with regard to the performance
of its officers and how the department
is dealing with it and i will just end
with how i started which is we've only
been at this six months six months as a
blink of an eye when it comes to the
length of time of any police
organization
but i have to say we are
optimistic
about the performance of your police
department at least over this six-month
period for a couple reasons
one is that there was a
willingness extreme willingness to
cooperate collaborate
consult with us
by the head of internal affairs who are
as our most frequent contact lieutenant
gutierrez and by the chief himself
with regard to
structural systemic recommendations and
they were very receptive to our
recommendations
we didn't feel any defensiveness we
didn't feel any hostility and we didn't
feel any pushback in any significant way
we had conversations
and
i think
there's a recognition by your leadership
that um
we are really here just to try to
improve the organization we're not here
to play gotcha we're not here to
neces unnecessarily criticize for
criticism's sake but we're really
intended to try and improve the
organization and i think that
that messaging has been well received by
your leadership of your department
and and and such the other thing is
i just wanted to end with and that is
how much we appreciated the support of
the larger city family in our work so
whether is the
information provided by your city
attorney
or by
or the information and helpfulness
provided by viola perea or your city
manager they've been very much involved
and engaged in a very helpful way in our
work and so this is only six months
it's only the beginning but um
and and i'm pleased to say this that
that over all
um
we find um
that the department uh is doing its
important work in in accountability
it's not perfect
and as i was telling the
the chief earlier today
so long as the
police department is required to hire
from the human race
there are going to be people who abuse
that authority that is given to them or
misuse that authority or don't
understand that authority in a way that
creates implications for your community
and what the most important thing is
recognizing that these things will occur
is how well the department responds to
that
do they
take accountability seriously or not
and so far
we can say that in our view based on the
information and it's all an
information-based determination based on
the information
our assessment is that at least for this
cycle
the department does take accountability
seriously and is on the right path to
ensuring that
your community gets the service and
public safety that it's entitled
so i will end here and certainly theresa
and i are available for any questions
you all might have so appreciate your
patience and
allowing us to walk through what we
found
but certainly available for any
particular questions you might have
thank you
thank you mr gennako i have to tell you
that
we probably started this back in
2011 2010 in that ballpark
this is one of the best reports i've
seen um from even from your previous
predecessors it's extremely
impressive and very
we i have some questions later but i'm
going to ask the council so i'll start
with i'll start from my all the way to
the right counselor graham then
counselor ben cuomo and mayor pro tem
okay
thank you mayor and thank you so much it
was an elegant presentation as the mayor
mentioned
my first question if we could step back
a couple of slides to the pie graphic
that
illustrated the findings or the outcomes
i think i went in the wrong direction
that's all right
yes
yes thanks just a quick clarification
can you explain the difference between
unfounded and not sustained yeah
so when we are seeing the not sustained
that means that there was insufficient
evidence in the package that was
collected to determine whether something
happened or did not happen okay so it is
considered to be not sustained
um when we're seeing unfounded
that category are the complaints where
the act did not occur in the manner in
which the complainant alleged that they
occurred
okay thank you for that clarification
and in regard to the hotline when when
someone calls the hotline do they speak
to
a live person
is it something like you leave a
voicemail or recording do you have any
insight into how that process unfolds
yeah i have insight in so far as the
case that we reviewed i don't know if
it's the general practice and that might
be a question
for sit for the city manager
my understanding is that the hotline is
a live individual who you speak to in
particular for this case it was and the
the individual
who took the call got as much
information as the
complainant was willing to provide at
that time okay so with the person who is
personing the hotline manning the
hotline
do they have a
questionnaire that they're filling out
can't speak to that okay yeah good to
know thank you
i think uh ifo you wanted to answer that
well i'm sorry jennifer
thank you mayor and council this is
jennifer vega your city attorney um our
hotline is is managed by a outside third
party called navex
it is a completely anonymous system when
somebody can either call in or they can
submit a complaint online through a
link on our city website
there are a series of questions that
they are asked
and then the person taking in the
information answers the questions and
then the questions are i'm sorry the
the complaint itself is sent directly to
the hotline committee which includes the
city auditor
the assistant city managers and the city
attorney and we review that to see if it
is a personnel matter that will get
forward to hr or if it's a different
type of matter then we will look into it
a different way
i don't know if ms pereira has anything
else to add but
that has been our system for a couple of
years now
you
thank you thanks jennifer
okay thank you counselor bin cuomo thank
you mayor and thank you both so much i'm
going to call you michael and teresa i
hope you don't mind because i keep
hearing your last names differently so
michael and teresa appreciate that
absolutely um thank you for coming all
the way down here i really appreciate
the thoroughness of your presentation um
i do have a couple questions since we're
in this slide actually i wanted to just
find ask a question about the no finding
was that in relation to
your second bulletproof recommendation
just because you said you were going to
circle back and i wasn't exactly clear
where that
was right so
at the onset of an investigation when
the department receives that initial
allegation they conduct a preliminary
inquiry when we first started looking at
these
if the department in the course of that
preliminary inquiry determined that no
misconduct occurred based on the
evidence that they received they were
closing out that case with a category
called no finding so essentially they
were saying
this is done no misconduct has occurred
we're going to close that out what we
recommend is that those cases be closed
out formally right so that even if you
find in the course of this preliminary
investigation that no misconduct has
occurred that you still complete and
close that loop and you provide a formal
finding related to that
okay thank you for that
and then can you just clarify for me
um
a couple numbers that you threw out so
you had 12 ia cases um but what did you
review did you review 32 allegations
right so those 12 ia cases within them
contained a total of 32 allegations i
see okay thank you
i wanted to circle back with you on
one of the recommendations around
let me go back let me find it so that i
can oh this one yes limit use of
supervisory matter for serious matters
um i'm assuming that when you meet with
chief
that you lay out specifically where you
saw this happen more than once and
perhaps you're not telling us due to
confidentiality matters or
that type of situation
right so we saw
we received two cases during this
period that were classified as
supervisory matters so that's a
classification within the case
management system that the department is
using
in one instance it was classified as
supervisory matter
but it was actually investigated at the
internal affairs level
in another we saw that it was sent to
the supervisor for
the supervisor's investigation and
review we felt that the matter was too
serious to have
gone that route and so if you
look in our the case memos directly the
two that are called sm supervisory
matter would be the two that we're
referring to with this particular
recommendation okay that's helpful
and
in order to prevent that in the future
what kind
i feel like this i i hear you and this
is a good recommendation but what kind
of
um tangible
pieces can be implemented for that to no
longer happen
i think one as i mentioned one of them
was reviewed initially classified as a
supervisory matter and then determined
you know this is too serious to send off
let's keep this in-house in internal
affairs
and so i think the department is already
engaging in that preliminary
investigation to ensure that these more
formal matters don't go to the
supervisory matter level
in other cases it might be a question of
perhaps
um
conducting a
more in-depth investigation at the ia
level before sending that forward
tradition in the cases that we reviewed
we only received two of them so i would
want to speak perhaps in the next
session if we see
more supervisory matters to see how the
department is doing related to those yes
that makes sense and also if we can make
requests for the next session if you
could
i would love to see
wonderful i i would also like to see
just another
um update on the body worn camera and
the usage and the training on all of
that if that that would be helpful
because obviously you said you you know
trends but six months that's not gonna
be enough time for trends so that would
be helpful for me and then in terms of
the two
um
technologies that you mentioned are
those technologies that you know i don't
know if there's a question for perhaps
ifo or the chief or you might know
already since you're getting to know
them so well
if we have looked into these
technologies
to improve
the use of usage of body worn cameras
good afternoon everybody absolutely
dominguez for the record mayor concert
cuomo we have looked into it we're
currently pursuing uh that technology uh
takes a while to find the
uh
modules and things of that nature that
work with the body cameras that we have
so we don't have to go purchase a whole
new system so but we are looking into
okay thank you chief i appreciate your
response to that and then maybe actually
maybe chief if you stay up here i'm
i am um since you're there
i'm curious about your plan to
to ensure that these recommendations and
the findings and the report really
trickle down right to every single
person and in the department and what
that looks like how are you thinking
about that
mayor councilor ben cuomo
before
actually at the beginning of the year of
2021 we
we had a meeting with with internal
investigations and and created a
position called the compliance uh
sergeant as a matter of fact he's
sitting here with us
to make sure that we're going through
any any um
any finding that the auditor has and
makes recommendations we we look at
immediately some of the domestic
standbys for example
we uh
we took the recommendation and the
training has already been held uh
through target solutions we're also
implementing it through our biennium
training that happens every other year
to make sure that we're
consistent with that type of training
but any any recommendation that we look
for or with that that is made by the
auditor we
we act upon it immediately see if we can
uh implement the training right then and
there or implement it into our our
training as as we go throughout the year
i will say that the the compliance
sergeant also looks at any trends things
of that nature we're seeing
a couple of you know uh complaints or
issues that come up through their
investigations that we need to address
immediately
well we do it on our own uh
put the training out immediately before
it becomes a major issue especially with
with critical incidents and things of
that nature thank you chief i appreciate
that thorough answer
that's it for you
um at least for me actually that might
be my last question for now when will
the full report be available to us and
the public
i believe the full report is available
now oh wonderful okay i it wasn't
included in our material so i wondered
if it was
did you want to state when that would be
available
excuse me mr mayor councillors the
report has been completed and it has
been made available so we'll make sure
you all get a copy after the council
meeting today wonderful and it'll be
online somewhere for the public to see
as well
yes ma'am we certainly can do that okay
thank you so much i really appreciate
everyone's
input on this
thank you councillor mayor potem thank
you mayor thank you teresa and
michael i appreciate your presentation
and your work on this
past council approved deliverables very
specific to this contract i would ask
for you to remind me what those
deliverables are i didn't see a copy of
the contract in the
packet that was sent to us so that would
be very helpful to me
do you have a copy of the contract per
chance i imagine that she does because
she's very thorough but to my
understanding this semi-annual report is
one of the deliverables and in the
course of the semi-annual report we are
to provide council information about the
cases that we reviewed including the
demographic categories that i went
through
and then we are also to provide
information about the different outcomes
and the process improvements as we
outlined today but
does she nail it viola
[Laughter]
mr mayor counselors thank you give me
just a moment to flip to the stage where
the deliverables are listed
and also while i'm doing this i wanted
to add a little bit to counselor
bencomo's comment
in the contract we do have it included
where we can ask the oir group to
perform
follow-up audits so if there are any
particulars within any of the reports
that we would like to just ensure that
the corrective actions have been taken
and things are working as indicated we
can ask the oir group to come back and
perform a follow-up audit on that
particular
investigation
so to outline a little bit the the
services that we contracted with the oir
group include
audit of the complaint process which
will include all formal citizen and
internally initiated complaints
any complaints against law enforcement
received from the city's anonymous
hotline system
and they will again as indicated in the
presentation ensure that those are
excuse me take out my glasses here
are
complete objective thorough and fair and
that findings and actions taken in
response to the investigations are
appropriate
in addition
less formal the eic3 complaints those
can also those are the non-serious
complaints that may be initiated
those also can be
presented to the oir group for
investigation upon request from council
or city management
additionally we're asking for audits of
police operations
and we're asking that the oir group
review policies procedures and training
issues that grow from these complaint
investigations
additionally we ask that they evaluate
all tort claim notices and or civil
action noticed civil actions
and we like for them to include
demographics on offenders and victims
location of incidents
criminal charges associated with those
incidents and the disposition of those
cases in addition to any policy
violations and dispositions and officer
demographics
and as mentioned it would include
excuse me follow-up audits as requested
by management
statistical and trend analysis and all
of the reports that they're uh
conducting or investigations that
they're completing for us
uh comparative analysis which would
compare all the data up to that point in
the demographics to both current and
historical trends and then lastly would
be on-site presentations twice a year to
do a semi-annual report to council
viola i'm glad that
counselor ben gomez asked a question
about the 100-page report
when can we expect that and in the
future could we have that prior to
this
council meeting or semi-annual or annual
evaluation it would be helpful to have
that i i
i'd love to read it and and base a lot
of my questions on what i'm reading so
how are you recommending once we read it
and we have questions then do we fill
those questions through epho to
the
group or
have direct communication with you i
mean how are we
going to really get to you know the
specifics of that report in the event we
have questions
and you need clarity thank you for that
question mr mayor counselor candidate we
meet with our oversight committee next
week so what we'll be able to do is
present that report to the oversight
committee for review and comment
and in time for the next semi-annual
review we'll ensure that the report
comes in prior and is reviewed by our
oversight
with enough time to come to council in
advance to allow you an opportunity to
review the report and then frame any
questions that you might have for
presentation when the oif group is here
in person perfect thank you i'd
appreciate that so
i guess i had a question about the
oversight committee it hasn't gone to
them yet
and
once it does they'll make
recommendations and in what form will
those recommendations come back to
counsel for us to
um
you know i guess deliberate and
determine if it's the best course of
action moving forward
mr mayor counselors the normal process
with the oversight committee on a
general audit report is it's still in
draft form after it gets reviewed by the
city manager for comment those comments
go to the oversight committee then they
have the opportunity to review and
comment as well
if they do have comments those comments
are included in our general audit
reports
so they're actually part of the report
that will come to council when completed
for the oir group what we'll do since
this report has already been completed
by the oir group we can attach a
supplemental memo if there are any
comments from the oversight committee
and have that accompany the over uh oir
groups report as well so you'll get both
the report and any comments that the
oversight committee might have
appreciate it viola thank you um
in terms of those 12
cases that that were reviewed how many
were specific to pd codes and the civil
side of things are you aware
do you know what those are yes ma'am mr
mayor councillor ganda all 12 reports um
well i'll take a step back i believe the
majority and don't quote me on the
numbers exactly i would say at least
nine to 10 were lcpd officers okay i
believe two maybe three i know for sure
two but maybe three related to codes
enforcement
um
and i'm sorry what's your other question
the civil side the civil side none of
those 12 were civil cases there were six
additional closed litigation cases that
were submitted outside of those 12 um pd
related investigations conducted by ia
you nice segue i was going to ask you
about the six litigated cases so you
reviewed those and what did you find
are you looking for specific things um
to the deliverables i guess i wasn't
clear and needed more clarity or more
specifics about those litigated cases
that were closed
so according to our excuse me mr mayor
councillor ganda according to our
contract what we're asking the oir group
to do
is to evaluate tort claim notices or no
noticed civil actions and these have to
be closed so that's why as indicated
some of these cases related to an
incident from a couple of years ago that
means the case has finally been
concluded right within the system
so under that particular section the
evaluation of torque claim notices and
or notice civil actions says the
contractor shall review and report on
all tort claim notices and or notice
civil actions the information contained
in the report shall include information
related to matters that have been
litigated or disposed and are no longer
pending and shall include but not be
limited to offender and victim
demographics location of incidents
criminal charges associated with the
incidents disposition of the case
policy violations and dispositions and
police officer demographics so that'll
be specific to any litigation that does
get sent to the oir for review
thank you viola so of those then given
what you've just told me
the numbers
reflect those six
in terms of the six that you gave in
terms of
i guess i'm trying to figure out how do
those six get factored into the 12
in terms of what you're actually
identifying are issues like formal
formal citizen complaints
how many are supervisor matters how many
are right i guess i'm confused about how
that gets factored in and i don't know
if there might be an another column that
you might want to add that says
what you're trying to identify and
explain here and understand so that i
can understand it
mr councillor excuse me mr mayor
counselor candida i do not believe that
any of the six closed litigation cases
tied directly to the 12 cases that the
oir group reviewed i believe those were
all from prior to this six month period
so it is believed that at least from my
opinion that when there is a litigation
case there should be an internal affairs
investigation tied to that case but due
to the timing of the the six litigation
cases and the six-month period of the ia
reviews i believe the ia the 12 ia
reviews are newer cases
and those six litigation cases were from
the past because it does take some time
to go through the process there up to a
couple of years even so i don't think
the 12 and the six directly have a
correlation this period but we might see
that as time goes by that the cases that
are
investigated by internal affairs may
possibly turn into a litigation if they
do
take that route and that's when we're
going to see the tie-in but as far as
the 12 and the six for today's report i
do not believe there is a connection
okay that thank you for the clarity i
appreciate that but of those six based
on the deliverables that we asked what
were their findings of the six
yeah and i apologize because i was under
the understanding that the report had
been disseminated to you so i do
apologize that that was not provided to
you
and some of what i was speaking to was
assuming you had the report before you
so i'm sorry for that
i will pull out my report
um
and that's right so as miss perea said
the six cases were outside of the 12
internal affairs cases
the litigation matters may or may not
have an internal affairs case related to
the litigation right okay so in
two of the matters
there was no there were no allegations
of misconduct they were a request to
expunge records and so forth so those
would not be
it would not have an outcome in the same
way that an internal affairs
investigation might have an outcome
right
but i can give you
so of the
six that we saw
four of them were settled
one was dismissed because the claimant
did not provide sufficient information
and that uh
sixth one was that request to expunge
and seal records so something that we
did not
have any expectation that there would be
an internal affairs investigation
we saw that of the four that were
settled i believe that three of them had
a related internal affairs investigation
that the department was able to find for
us
in those cases again
apologize that it is
in the report and not before you today
but we found that
there were findings made
that ranged from a
one-day suspension
to four-day suspension across the cases
and so those were appropriately
investigated by internal affairs to the
best of our understanding
closed and
discipline was imposed to the officers
as part of our scope of work because
these were not part of that package that
was given to us the 12 in this time
frame we did not look specifically at
the investigations themselves those were
closed some time ago
and going forward if they happen to
coincide we will certainly be reviewing
those as well
thank you so much for that um
and then
how many cases violate or chief
go to ia
and
what is the six compared to the number
of cases that go to ia and tell me what
that process
looks like in terms of
of
what decision making is is done
to then move to sending these cases to
the oir group
good afternoon chief dominguez hi chief
uh mayor mayor pro-tem you're talking
about litigation
no i'm sorry i'm
channel changed now switch over to just
all the total number of ia cases that
you have in the
currently
or during this period during the period
that oir was
reviewing these cases i just want to
know
12 cases versus hundreds of cases and
what right i don't i don't know i have
no
really understanding of what's coming
your way
mayor mayor protem
every case that was been investigated
and closed out since may 1st gets sent
to oir i have lieutenant guterres here
he can give you a ballpark figure for
how many cases we have but
mayor of america approximately from may
until december out of the 12 cases that
were closed there were approximately 52
c2 cases
approximately 27 c3 cases
and on supervisory matters there was
approximately 10.
thank you
and how many employees do you have
currently at ia and how many vacancies
do you have and i'm sure that affects
how cases are right worked on and
completed and sent over to oir correct
ma'am mayor mayor pro tem i currently
have two investigators and myself in the
internal affairs department i still have
an opening for a sergeant and hopefully
we get some new investigators soon
okay
and
[Music]
i guess
what types of cases so all cases that go
to ia i'm under the impression
once complete
go to the oir group
correct
mayor mayor pro tem if they are a formal
investigation such as an iii an internal
investigation or a c1
external
complaint once they are closed then they
will go to they will go to oir for
review so these are cases that a formal
complaint has been made either
internally or externally that's correct
so
what if you have cases that you're
reviewing and you think oh
they should because i thought oh okay
all um use of force cases go to you
yes
i do a quality assurance check the use
of force is approved through the
officer's chain of command if there is a
question about it a use of force review
will be asked for from the ia department
to see if there's any possible
misconduct so do those cases go to
oir if there is a possible finding any
any
hint of it then an internal
investigation is started
then closed and then sent to oir
now will you have cases that are still
in the queue that don't meet that
certain review
the the dates that they gave i guess
january to present
may or mayor pro tem not for the uses of
force
okay
okay and um i'm i'm concerned about
um
the domestic standby and welfare checks
and what specifically you found that
give you pause or concern that needs
additional training and what
so more specificity around that and then
the kind of training chief
i'm assuming would need to be
uh coordinated with cyfd or
i guess
it gives me pause just because i come
from that area right i used to work in
that area so i i i just felt i needed to
ask that question if you give me more
specificity around that
mayor mayor pro tem the the report that
you're that you will get has the details
on the domestic standby
issues that we're seeing
it was specifically if i'm remembering
correctly it was a couple of
complaints that we received because
the complainant stated that
we the officer let
the other person take items that did not
belong to them or there was some some
question as to whether we should have
allowed that and that's the type of
training that we put forward
okay okay got it
um
yeah i i guess i'm i'm um concerned
about
those cases
as you can tell with my line of
questioning i guess related to
um
cases that go to ia or maybe you should
go to ia i'm not i'm not sure and and
should be looked at
you're assuring me chief that you as
supervisors and chiefs are looking
through these cases
and and and if there's anything that you
need to flag you are sending them to oir
mayor mayor protein absolutely
and i'd also like to key in on the
supervisory matter that that was brought
up one of the things that at
some point it was being handled within
the ia department
it was a judgment call on their side
whether or not they'd send it to a
supervisor to investigate or i would do
it
that
the the way we do it now is it comes to
my desk we have discussions on it and if
it requires an ia
it's going to get an ia most of the time
that's that's what's happening
okay all right thank you thank you mary
those are all my questions
okay thank you
so i have some questions for oir and
then also for the chief so or his team
so i'll start with oir first because it
helps it flow a little bit better
okay so in the
your report in your presentation you
talk about timely fashion and so my
question is
what are we looking at as far as the
amount of time approximately
that you would like to see these done
completed by is what i'm trying to get
at
yeah yeah mr janako would say well they
need to be done in a timely fashion and
that's true
now we know a 100 can all be done within
a certain amount of months but maybe
eighty percent ninety percent can be
done in a certain amount of time i'm
looking for that amount of time well
it's a it's a very um important question
because if an investigation is not
timely it's not going to be um
consistent with industry standards um
it's
unlike wine
investigation let me just stop you right
there when you said industry standards
so when you go and get your car repaired
the mechanic likes to pull out certain
things saying hey you know what this is
what we did and this is what this is how
much i need to charge you for even
though it took him a lot less but you
know they charge it more
is there such a thing so you do have
industry standards as far as what should
be done
yes we do um i think that you know if i
had to quote the industry standard some
cases are more complex and as i
indicated some cases do take longer
because of
unforeseen situations like
unavailability of witnesses
the officer being out there are other
reasons for the delay but ordinarily
what we like to see is an investigation
without any of those hindrances
conducted within at least 90 to 120 days
of receipt
okay perfect thank you
you also talked about non-sworn
personnel could you give us some
examples as to what some of the
complaints were
just some generalities sure
the department has responsibility for
programs that are outside of policing
but are connected to policing like
zoning issues
animal control issues
and those mostly involve people who are
not sworn police officers they're
civilians
and so as i was
my point that i was making in my early
remarks mr mayor was that
when we looked those cases
a partial defense uttered by the
involved employee was
gee i didn't know that i that this
manual of policy and procedure that
applies to officers and sergeants and
lieutenants applied to me
our simple request of the department in
that regard was to make sure that all
employees understood these policy
requirements to the degree that they are
applicable to civilians apply to you
so they've got
not only they have the city requirements
that all city employees are responsible
for understanding
but they also have this subset of
other expectations that are included in
the police policy and procedures
okay also
does a sworn officer have to does it
have to be a sworn officer to review
police body cameras it's like like for
example
maybe there may be a policy that uh once
a week someone reviews the different
officers cameras to make sure there's no
you know that they were using them what
percent of time do they use them
why did they just shut it off
automatically at a particular time and
such does it have to be a sworn officer
to do it or can it be some a non-sworn
personnel matter person to conduct that
audit is your question no just to watch
just to be able to say you know let's
just say someone was
that's not a sworn officer
is reviewing it
and they work for the police department
and then they come up with something and
they go to their supervisor whether it's
the lieutenant or the deputy chief or
the chief can they do that or does it
have to be a sworn officer i do not
believe that there's a require in fact i
know there's no requirement that it be a
sworn officer
there are some confidentiality issues
obviously in that kind of review so it
would have to be a trusted employee
but certainly an unsworn like
evidence technician or somebody of that
sort that has the technical know-how to
do that kind of review and understands
police policies and practices
um could be a reviewer
okay regarding
verbal reprimands
so
obviously if this was a small department
maybe just like a handful of officers
kind of like you know just two or three
it's probably easy to say hey remember i
told you not to do that but he's got a
170 or so and so is what is your
what have you seen as far as how some
departments keep records to be able to
i mean i don't want to defeat the
purpose of a verbal versus a written but
i mean if they were to say you know i
told them not to do this or explain to
them they shouldn't do this do do
officers have like a a file of some sort
that they can just say i
gave a verbal rubber man to you know
joe over here and you know
right
it's an excellent question because you
certainly want to keep track of all of
the interventions that you've done
whether it's a formal reprimand a
documented counseling or a verbal
reprimand all those things need to be
cataloged and the way they do it in the
department is they have a standalone
database that's called iapro
in which they enter that information so
mr mayor
while the
the the counseling may not show up in a
document a standalone document
the outcome will be entered into what is
called blueteam in the iapro system and
be retrievable
does the city have that software do they
use that the police department does yes
sir
okay and then the last question for you
is regarding and you kind of touch base
on it a little bit but on the lawsuits
and and it doesn't have to be on the
ones that you review but just in general
so there's times where we settle for on
behalf of the city on various
departments but let's just focus today
right now on the police department
on various lawsuits that we've settled
have you seen if the city if the pd took
any more action
toward the officer because
or or they just as well we settled it
and we're done and that's it
yes and and and this is an important
concept because some jurisdictions we
have worked with
don't communicate back and forth about
civil litigation and in our view they
should the best practice is to have that
communication
um
but as my colleague ms magula said some
cases didn't lend themselves to any kind
of
allegation of misconduct like the
expungement request which essentially i
want my record cleaned i don't want this
arrest to be on my record anymore but
some did and so as therese indicated i
think two or three of the six did result
in discipline we did not go back and
look at those cases because they're
outside of our
of our period but we were informed by
the department and we trust the
department's reporting that they did in
fact result in some accountability with
regard to i think at least three
employees
okay thank you
okay so next will be for the chief and
and or his team
so chief on the first one when they were
discussing about the verbiage about the
polygraph test and the false statements
to
uh you know when a resident
first i just want to start off by saying
i i can't tell you much we appreciate i
think it's fair to say the city council
and city las cruces we appreciate what
you and your team and your department
does it's a thankless job
it's a extremely difficult job i think
you've heard me more than once say i
probably can do it for one day and then
if i even if i did i'd be watching the
clock until i got off the clock
and you you have got to be one of the
one most open-minded willingness to work
with the city council and i just wanted
to start off by saying that
because the first one the verbiage
about the polygraph test and and the
false statements
and i know this was your first year when
you started
but when and mayor pro tem and i and
back then counselor vasquez we sit on
the public safety committee
and i know we brought this up
and and i i got the impression that it
was going to change and like i said it
was probably it was your first you just
been appointed chief and you had been
just bombarded with so many things
but can you share with me how that
slipped by
mr mayor we we had taken care of it the
complaints that they saw uh were old uh
world speak uh prior to that to your
credit you you uh
acknowledged that and and wanted it
changed and we did make that change but
the complaints that they received that
they investigated as part of the audit
process still had the old complaints
that had that that uh verbiage on there
and we we explained it to the auditor
that let in them that uh that you had
seen it wanted to change and we had
already changed it so when we had that
discussion uh the change had already
been made
well thank you for that answer chief you
know what i remember after what did we
tell you if after your 13th month your
one year's over and no more hey this is
my first year type thing
so thank you for that chief i appreciate
that
uh earlier you heard me we talked about
the verbal reprimands and
and i think
it turns out that we do have that
software that mechanism so
do you have something that
we can kind of be assured that it's
going to be documented better
mr mayor we have an early intervention
system that has different
parameters for different different types
of uh ia related materials for example a
use of force uh two uses of force with
it the same
month is going to trigger an alert to
where we look at it get the supervisor
make sure that we're looking is this uh
an issue that's a
problem with the officer or what
actually happened so we look at the
incidents we actually have meetings with
the officers make sure that there isn't
an issue any issues that are going on
ancillary uh lies with the officer to
make sure that that we're
keying in on those things as well as
not going to court for example uh we we
i'll give you an example we had officer
that had five
failure to appears
and he had a babysitting issue that's
pretty much what was going on we're able
to assist him because of that early
intervention system and that's just one
of them the many many things that we
look at through that system
very good
and then last and i know you've done
some of this because you've explained to
us in closed session when we had a we
paid on the claim
for an officer that for whatever reason
in the last see i think two years had
five auto accidents and you just said
you know what you can't drive we're just
going to take you off that but
based on what they were saying about
other lawsuits that we've settled
are you doing anything
different now are you kind of reviewing
them as well to
to or was it just you know what are you
doing if anything to those that we
settle mr mr mayor any any case that's
settled out we look at the issue that
that caused the cause the case or the
litigation
we had one with seat belts for example
and we immediately put training out put
a bulletin out make sure everybody knew
that it was a responsibility to
seat belt all presidents while in their
vehicle make sure that the supervisors
are doing it make sure that all the seat
belts are working and everything else in
all the units so we do look at it and
and have a training component with all
closed cases
okay and i think you also mentioned and
that you do your department does do this
and that is review the the body cameras
um
are you
um
and earlier i think you heard me mention
if we have to have a sworn officer to do
that
is there any plans to
maybe increase some you know to be able
to monitor it a little bit better and if
so are you needing some additional
support from the city as far as to hire
one or two people because
i would imagine
that
um
the body cameras are also part of a ipra
request and so those tend to be
want they want to look at that too so i
would think that there's a lot of a lot
of demand for that and so
is there anything that you would need
from from the city
in the future to
keep up with that as well as you know
and and also
conform to some of the uh
ideas that they had suggested
mr mayor we do have a review process so
it doesn't have to necessarily be a use
of force or an incident of concern we
have our supervisors that they're
they're mandated to check uh
periodically every week they have to
just go in and just review uh several
several videos depending on on the on
the on the week but they do have every
supervisor has to just pull up a video
and just review it just to make sure
that that our officers are using policy
and procedure being respectful things of
that nature and and they're doing their
job correctly but we also have some
emperor clerks uh that also uh before
they send out any videos and they see
anything in there they'll bring it to
our attention they'll bring it to
lieutenant gutierrez's attention and or
mine so we can look into it a little bit
further so yes we do have some civilian
staff that are trusted staff that do
review uh to answer your question on the
ask yes sir we're asking hopefully
during the budget process for uh two to
three ftes just to handle the operas
which are
growing and growing as as we speak
great
well chief that's all i have i
appreciate your
responses and
also again thank you oir for what you
all do and uh when uh no counselor como
looks like something
something just one more thing for oir
that came up and thank you chief for um
your answers to mayor's question i just
had one question in regards to the zip
code data that you provided it's
obviously not enough numbers to sort of
tell any story
but in your scope in the future are you
going to be able to
give us a deeper analysis of what those
numbers mean
so as we go forward we'll continue to
collect data like the incident location
and if we see that there's any
particular trends so one area that's
markedly higher for example we may want
to look deeper into why that's occurring
and have conversations with the
department about that great thank you
thanks mayor
just an fyi so when las cruces was a
really small city it was just eight
eight zero zero one then we started
running out of zip codes
added five
and then they put 11 for the east side
and 12 for the east mesa and then of
course three is for the university so
just the fyi yeah
well again thank you very much for that
if there's no other questions from the
city uh council i'm sorry i won't be
taking any
questions from the public
okay well thank you very much
i'm sorry yes may i address the
litigation issue thank you
um
when we drafted this rfp
we relied heavily on the notification by
the new mexico tort claims act
which requires a 90-day notice
requirement if a lawsuit's going to be
filed the statute of limitations is
still two years but we we receive notice
of a potential lawsuit within 90 days
what happens when we receive that notice
requirement is that we do an immediate
request to preserve all evidence we send
out a citywide notice if you've received
any evidence please preserve it so that
we don't get a spoileation claim later
on
the problem becomes and we might need to
rethink how we're reporting this with
the new mexico civil rights act there is
no notice requirement
so we don't know if a lawsuit's going to
be filed and the statute of limitations
is three years so it may be some time
before we even know an incident occurred
we may have already
because of our retention we may have a
problem with locating some evidence it
may be mistakenly or not intentionally
destroyed or lost so that is going to be
a bigger problem so we may need to
kind of rethink how we're reporting
these incidents to city council because
because of the time delay it's
it could be problematic so i just wanted
to let you know that we are thinking
about that and we certainly need to
think of how we're going to report to
you at least so that we know in the
shortest period of time if there's a
potential problem
thank you jennifer
yeah i was just i was just thinking
about the the claims that we settled so
they're they're pretty much done but
was there anything else uh
teresa
said was that your
i get your name right not thank you mr
mayor and council for your time
thank you and have a safe flight back
home
okay so next item is going to be the
elected official training elected
officials training by our city attorney
jennifer vega and um
oh and christine
rivera
okay good afternoon
city council my name is jennifer vega
i'm your city attorney we are providing
what is an annual training
for elected officials
it's a we we do a training for all
boards and commissions as requested or
and we certainly try to present an
updated training to city council there's
going to be a lot of information
covering many topics most of you are
quite familiar with these topics so
if i move too fast please feel free to
slow me down and ask any questions that
you need and we'll just get started
there's going to be in two parts um as
we were just kind of briefly discussing
we have an ipra law so we're going to
have our records manager re
present to you kind of completely
separate on ipra because it's such a big
and important statute that we deal with
the city derives its home rule authority
from article 10 of the new mexico
constitution
which states that a municipality which
adopts a charter may exercise all
legislative powers and perform all
functions not expressly denied by
general law or charter
the purpose of this section is to
provide for maximum local
self-government
the laws governing municipalities can be
found in nmsa chapter 3.
and nmsa 3-15-1
is the municipal charter act and as you
all know we are a home rule municipality
i'll only read one of these the
municipal corporation shall remain and
continue to be a body corporate and
public and may exercise all legislative
powers and perform all functions not
expressly denied by general law or by
this charter that's included in the las
cruces city charter
and again it just mirrors the state
statute which provides for maximum local
self-government
we are home realm a home rule
municipality
and
section 1-4 of our ordinances exercises
that right
the most common laws and issues
affecting our elected and appointed
officials
are the new mexico open meetings act
the anti-donation clause of the new
mexico constitution
and ethical considerations such as
conflicts of interest and ex parte
communications we're also going to
briefly cover
the ethics ordinance and also the
accountability and government ordinance
we'll begin with the oma
it is also known as a sunshine law it is
found in chapter 10 of the new mexico
statutes
this
is a quote from the attorney general
compliance guide they require the
sunshine laws require that public
business be conducted in full public
view that actions of public bodies be
taken openly and that deliberations of
public bodies be open to the public
what does the oma require it requires
that all meetings of a quorum of members
of any board commission administrative
adjudicatory body or other policy making
body are declared to be public meetings
open to the public unless the law
specifically allows an exception
so open meetings are required when we
are formulating public policy
developing personnel rules regulations
or ordinances
any discussion of public business
and any taking any action within the
authority of any board
boards committees and other bodies that
are delegated to formulate public policy
and make recommendations
to the city council are must also comply
with the open meetings act
the oma prohibits members of the public
body from conferring privately
during meetings by passing notes sending
emails and texts or any other means
members of the public are generally
permitted to record or videotape any
proceedings
and one important thing that the oma
does not require which we often get
complaints about but i want to make it
very clear the oma does not require the
public body to allow members of the
public to speak at its meetings that is
something that is entirely up to the
chair
meeting notices for open meetings
shall include an agenda with the list of
specific items of business to be
discussed or information on how the
public can obtain an agenda
and except in emergencies it has to be
posted within 72 hours
of the meeting
and only items on the posted agenda are
permitted to be discussed at the public
meeting
it is necessary that we
keep meeting minutes and at a minimum
the statute requires that we take the
date time and place of the meeting
names of members in attendance and those
absent
the substance of the proposals that were
considered
a record of any decisions and votes
taken that show how each member voted
minutes are subject to public inspection
and the draft minutes must be prepared
within 10 working days after the meeting
and shall be approved amended or
disapproved at the next meeting where
the quorum is present
one of one issue that we are constantly
trying to monitor and make sure that we
comply with is the roland quorum
the oma's requirement for open public
meetings applies to any discussion of
public business among a quorum of a
quorum of public bodies members
a quorum may exist even when the members
are not physically present together at
the same time and place
the attorney general gives the following
example in the compliance guide
if three members of a five-member board
discuss business in a series of phone
calls or email conversations the
discussion is a meeting of a quorum
rolling quorums are a violation because
they are not properly noticed public
meetings
as you will see when you receive email
messages that provide information to
everybody we will always usually try to
remind you please do not respond all if
you do you have created a potential
rolling quorum so we usually ask that if
we send you a large email with
information just respond individually to
the person who sent it
this is um
a very important quote from a case that
went to the new mexico supreme court
public business is the public's business
the people have the right to know
freedom of information about public
records and proceedings is their just
heritage
citizens must have the legal right to
investigate the conduct of their affairs
in another case the court recognized
that the arizona supreme court examining
a statute quite similar in language to
our section 1015-1
stated that the intent of the
legislature was to open the conduct of
the business of government to the
scrutiny of the public and to ban
decision-making in secret a meeting held
in the spirit of this enunciated policy
is a valid meeting
we'll move on to the anti-donation
clause this is something that probably
comes up if not daily almost weekly in
city government
the new mexico constitution strictly
prohibits donations to individuals by
governmental entities
the provision provides important part
neither the state nor county school
district or municipality except as
otherwise provided for in the
constitution shall directly or
indirectly lend or pledge its credit or
make any donation to or in aid of any
person association or public or private
corporation
the law makes it clear that there are
limitations on how public funds and
assets can be used
the use is provided for in the
constitution are
the care and maintenance of sick and
indigent persons
establishing a veterans scholarship
program
a loan program for students of the
healing arts
providing land buildings or facility
infrastructures to support new or
expanding businesses
and providing for affordable housing
the constitution makes no distinction as
between donations whether they be for a
good cause or a questionable one it
prohibits them all as was stated
in this court case
only donations made for public purposes
are permissible such as expenditures for
public purpose
on public property
the sick and incident exception does not
permit the state or local government to
make donations to private or non-profit
organizations that are used for
organizations operating expenses
some of the examples given by the
attorney general
the new mexico supreme court held that
it was unconstitutional legislation that
authorized counties and municipalities
provide financial aid to a nonprofit
corporation formed to promote a
statewide celebration
and there was a violation where
um contributions to an american legion
memorial
were allowed
this were not allowed the city could not
contribute 500 dollars
this section of the city charter mirrors
what the new mexico
constitution states
moving right along into our ethical
considerations
we're going to talk about conflict of
interest
as you know you just you just passed
your rules or procedure and there's an
extensive definition in a newer
definition in your rules or procedures
so i will invite you to
review that and if you ever have any
questions please let me know
as stated in our
ordinance
a conflict of interest exists when a
person is involved in multiple interests
financial otherwise and serving one
interest could involve
working against the other a conflict of
interest may exist when a personal
interest or organizational interest
might adversely affect a duty to make
decisions in the best interest of the
third party
a public official shall treat their
government position as a public trust
the public officials shall use the
powers and resources of public office
only to advance the public interest and
not to obtain personal benefits
or pursue private interests
public officials shall conduct
themselves in a manner that justifies
the confidence placed in them by the
people and maintain the integrity
and ethically discharge the high
responsibilities of public service
full disclosure of real or potential
conflicts of interest shall be a guiding
principle for determining appropriate
conduct
reasonable effort shall be made to avoid
undue influence and abuse of office in
public service
and remember that a conflict of interest
can always be waived
so the important thing is if you believe
you have a conflict of interest is to
raise it because it may be that the rest
of the city council does not believe
that you have a conflict of interest and
even if there seems to be
a minimal impact the city council can
determine as a whole
to waive that conflict so the important
thing is to just state the conflict
publicly
we will now talk about ex parte
communications
an ex-parte communication means a direct
or indirect communication with a party
or their representative
outside the presence of the other
parties about a pending matter
that deal with substantive matters or
issues on the merits of the proceedings
this includes attachments to a written
communication or document shown in
connection with the presentation that
deals with matters or issues on the
matters on the merits of the proceedings
this does not include communications
regarding the status of a pending matter
or providing administrative information
one of the things that you will
that you will see is that oftentimes
you will receive an email from a citizen
that potentially has something pending
before city council
or more likely you might receive
something from a citizen that has
something
pending before the planning and zoning
board that's something that's a little
more common just remember that that
communication could be considered ex
parte because the the appeal from any
planning and zoning decision or
administrative decision is to city
council so just be very mindful of
that potential that's probably the one
that we see the most
the city of las cruces does have an
ethics ordinance this is located in
section 2-2
the purpose is to adopt an objective and
enforceable standard of public behavior
it applies to the governing body city
manager members of boards and
commissions committees and policy
advisory bodies
it establishes a due process procedure
for investigating ethics complaints
upon declaration of candidacy election
or appointment each public official must
provide information
including professional occupation or
business licenses
membership on other city boards
committees commissions boards of
directors of public or private
corporations and associations or
organizations
the nature of the public officials
financial interest in a business as
defined in the
in the definition section of this
article
the ordinance prohibits retaliation
against a public official who filed a
complaint regarding an ethics
violation
there are other prohibitions
those include private benefits or gifts
personal representation
disclosure of confidential information
use of city services
abuse of position and interference with
or by administration
the investigation for an ethics
complaint begins with a complaint filed
with the city clerk
it is referred to our external and
external review council
if the if the complaint is without merit
it will be dismissed
otherwise the respondent will be
informed of the complaint
formal proceedings shall be initiated by
filing a specification of charges with
the ethics enforcement board
the respondent will have an opportunity
to answer specification of charges
and there will be a hearing within 30
days after
time to answer the specification of
charges
the hearing will be considered
adversarial with sworn witnesses
and external review counsel will be the
prosecutor the board chair shall preside
and board members may question witnesses
within 10 days parties may submit
findings and conclusions
and the board shall submit their own
findings and conclusions in 30 to 60
days
um since i have been here which is close
to five years i've never seen this
process utilized there have i think been
one or two ethics complaints however
they were unfounded either because the
facts as they occurred just didn't
didn't occur or because there was no
actual violation of the action claimed
um
so i guess we we don't really
this i don't think this city council has
ever had to have that that type of
hearing
the consideration
by the ethics enforcement board
the appointment of a hearing panel is
found in section 2-12
the submission of briefs or requests for
aura argument is in 2-12
and the panel will render a decision
within the 30 days after oral argument
or briefs that's in section 2-13
the recommendations will be dismissal
public reprimand or suspension
we do have an accountability and
government ordinance
the purpose of that ordinance is to
provide increased accountability
integrity and oversight of the entire
consolidated government to assist in
promoting economy efficiency approve
operations and deter and identify waste
fraud and abuse
there are ordinance objectives for
internal audit and an inspector general
the objectives are to create sufficient
independence to assure that no
interference or influence will adversely
affect investigations
they establish jurisdiction in
accordance with best practice models
and they establish professional
standards and requirements for those two
positions
it also creates a standard for reporting
we have the ordinance does create an
oversight committee which we
briefly referenced a few minutes ago
the oversight committee is a management
committee and it is not a public board
commission or committee so it is not
subject to the open meetings act
the committee is not formed to formulate
public policy
the members of the committee are subject
to the ethics ordinance
and the committee may provide the
auditor and the inspector general with
guidance priorities and protect
potential areas for investigation
the committee may also provide the city
auditor and inspector general with
recommendations for priorities and
potential areas for investigation and
audits
they may also provide technical advice
on technical issues
the oversight committee shall not
prohibit the inspector general or the
city auditor from initiating carrying
out or completing any audit
investigation or strategic review
if a majority of the committee
finds that an audit investigation or
strategic review is questionable
then the committee may issue a
cautionary statement to the ig or the
city auditor
the purpose of this is to safeguard that
the investigation has answered all
questions and has been conducted
thoroughly and completely
the committee cannot change a report but
it can provide additional information or
ask needed questions
we did reference earlier the hotline and
as i
informed the city council earlier
there are two
hotlines and i believe that these
numbers need to be updated because they
have been combined into one we don't
have two separate employee and public
and they also can be accessed online and
i can provide that information to you
it's also located on our city website
okay that was a lot of information does
anybody have any questions
i don't think so the two ladies are
extremely intelligent they got it right
figure it all out and you're ready to
roll right
just yeah there you go thumbs up
no i'm just kidding any questions for
so earlier i don't know i haven't
checked but i know that we got a
sometimes we get a
an email from a fellow by the name of
larry and he sends it to city council so
basically just just don't respond
because in fact if they're listening
members of the public they're they're
i'm starting to see this more and more
and i think i mentioned this the other
day they're just emailing all the city
counselors they don't care where you
live they just say okay well not only do
i send it to my regular counselor i'm
selling to everybody and then next thing
you know we can't they can't even
respond really
i mean
you know theoretically you could but you
know you got to leave them off sometimes
i do and of course i'll just maybe i'll
just cover uh
that's about it because they sent it to
the to all of us so yeah it's a
it's a learning curve and i know there's
a lot to go over but
i'm sure you all have access to this
information keeping a little notebook
mayor pro tem sorry mayor yes thank you
jennifer for the presentation lots of
good information i wanted to move back
to
the slide
where you speak to ex parte and our
quasi-judicial role as
things
move through p and z there might be a
there might be a time where an actual
case gets appealed and then it comes to
counsel can you talk a little more
specifically
about
ex partain
and
maybe an example where that might be the
case and if you don't have one i think i
have one
because someone tried to speak to me in
relation to a
case
that they were very concerned in um
counselor graham's area and they're like
well what good is
constant gram and you if you can't talk
to me about this and i said
can't talk specific about the case i
understand
the case is moving through that pnz
process
so jennifer can you kind of speak a
little more specifically about that
because that's where i think we have a
tendency to get tripped up
yes mayor and council
i'm not familiar with the specific case
that you're talking about but it it's
not uncommon because
you will have something that goes before
pnz and you will have a concerned
property owner who's either contesting
it or asking for some kind of change
and even if
they haven't
even if there's a ruling that's not
necessarily disfavorable
they will tend to call to talk about
what's going what's the next step and
what's going to happen with city council
you can provide them information about
the next step is this what you can't do
is talk about the specifics of the case
and what they want to happen with the
case that that would be considered an ex
parte because you are not affording
what it does is violates due process
because you're not affording the
opposing party or the other parties
involved the opportunity to hear the
information and then you're receiving
only one side of the information without
opportunity for rebuttal or argument so
you can provide information about
process
if that does occur i do recommend that
you refer
people to
larry nichols group and they can provide
the information or to the legal
department and we can provide more
information it just makes it easier so
that you don't get
involved in a conversation that maybe
was not intended to be an ex parte
communication but could turn into one
later and it's mostly
the disadvantage of course would be to
the opposing party in that action
thanks jennifer i did exactly that
and then the last thing is on ome and
the quorum
um
could you talk a little more
specifically about the process i know
that there's a quorum notice that goes
out we get invited to a lot of meetings
our ribbon-cutting events and such and
you all
christine does a really good job of
placing that but what is that process
and
and if we had a meeting that we thought
possibly
more than three of us would attend what
is the process for an individual
counselor
thank you mayor potem and mayor the
the um
notice for protect a potential quorum
notice is not anything that is required
by law it's a courtesy but it doesn't
have any legal effect it isn't a proper
notice and it does not comply with oma
standards it basically puts the city
council on notice that
there's going to be a quorum here
don't talk about city business at this
event because you might have a quorum so
if that occurs and you attend an event
like that you can attend what can't
occur is that the city council members
cannot begin to discuss city business
because it hasn't been
noticed in compliance with the lma so
just remember that the potential quorum
notice is not proper notice
it's more of a courtesy to let everybody
know
there's going to be more than three of
you there
potentially so
if that does occur
i have i haven't heard of that occurring
so
because the city council is very careful
about things like that but if it did
occur
i would just
leave the event if you can or certainly
notice the person
it could be that one of you isn't aware
that there are three other people there
so just make sure that
everybody is aware of who is there if
you were all there you can talk to each
other you just can't talk about city
business
before i get to counselor
jennifer um let me just state sometime
and i think it just got cancelled but a
lot of times the martin luther king
breakfast is very well attended
if you in a lot of times there's more
than three just make sure you sit not
together just in a different chair
setting and i think you'll be fine
if you can see if you spot
if the d is their assistant d just make
sure that they know that you're sitting
separate because they're the ones who
would then be the ones who prosecute for
the oma
that way just a little heads up mayor
protem i didn't mean to cut you off did
you have anything you want to say um no
mayor thank you that those were all my
questions yes
counselor
thank you i i actually i think uh mayor
protem was referring to something in my
in my district related to the pnz but i
just really wanted to take this
opportunity to thank you uh city
attorney vega uh
city clerk christine
they have given us an extraordinary
orientation
over the last about month um in addition
to a lot of city departments and i
really do want to give gratitude because
you actually interrupted that that i
think what what eventually went to to
mayor protem gandra um
my conversations that happened before i
was elected so you your orientations
were really really helpful and and gave
us great food for thought in advance of
this so thank you i don't know that
we're really
so smart that we could pick all this up
that quickly but but you guys have been
been incredibly kind with your time and
so i just wanted to thank you and the
other departments that have really
on-boarded as well so thank you so much
for for shepherding acidness in this
venture so and i'm sorry about that
mayor or tim that that me not responding
to something because i panicked because
i didn't want to
break a rule resulted in you getting a
call thank you
thank you mayor and i'm councillor
um
one thing that i uh mayor pro tem had
asked for us to update the procurement
code we do provide notebooks with just a
bunch of information i do have the
updated procurement code and i apologize
i should have brought it today but i
will put i'll make sure that each of you
have it in your office so that you can
add it to your notebook that you already
have
any other questions
okay so i believe that concludes our
work session i'm sorry mary it does not
we have to we have to cover ibra
there's more yes that we're not finished
my part is finished but we do have to
cover oprah okay
most much loved
good afternoon mayor
members of city council my name is lisa
herrera i'm the records manager and i'm
going to be discussing
the inspection of public records act and
how it relates to us as employees
new mexico state statute 14-2-1
is the inspection of public records act
and this gives any member of the public
the right to inspect public records
there are limited exceptions which i'll
go over shortly
it is the public policy of the state
that providing people with information
is an integral part of the routine
duties of public officers and employees
it should be noted that this act does
not require a public body to create a
public record it's for requesting
existing records
i won't read this whole definition but
this is what the definition of a public
record is by new mexico law
basically it's everything that you
create through the course of your work
as a public employee is a public record
as i mentioned before there are certain
exceptions
i'm just going to run through them
rather quickly some exceptions would be
medical records letters of reference
concerning employment licensing or
permits matters of opinion in personnel
files or student files law enforcement
records that reveal confidential sources
methods information or individuals
accused when not charged with a crime
other documents as provided by the
confidential materials act
other exceptions would be trade secrets
attorney-client privileged information
and long-range or strategic business
plans of public hospitals discussed in a
properly closed meeting
tactical response plans or procedures
protected personnel personal identifier
information that would be like a date of
birth social security number banking
account information
and other as otherwise provided by law
the procedure for requesting a public
record an oral or written request must
be made to the designated custodian of
records
we have a website that citizens can go
on and request records or they can go
into the city clerk's office and fill
out a form we also have a designated
email address
if anybody wants to submit a request
through email
a written request shall include the name
address and telephone number of the
person making the request and the
written request shall identify the
record that they want to inspect with
reasonable particularity
the person making the request does not
have to state the reason that they are
making the request
it should also be noted that the
procedures outlined in the inspection of
public records act only apply to written
requests there is no penalty for failure
to respond to an oral request
the city has designated the city clerk
as the custodian of records and the city
clerk has designated the records manager
to process all incoming public record
requests
part of the record's custodian
responsibility is if a request is not
received by the correct custodian then
the person receiving the request shall
forward the request to the correct
custodian if it's known
and shall notify the requester
the custodian must separate exempt
information from non-exempt information
and if a record is exempt from public
disclosure the custodian must inform the
requester of the reason for the
exemptions
the record must be provided as soon as
practicable but no later than 15 days
after receiving the written request
if a request is not made within three
days the custodian must explain when the
record will be available or when the
public body will respond
if the custodian determines that the
request is excessively burdensome or
broad they may be allowed additional
reasonable time to comply
as i mentioned before the city provides
an electronic method for requesting
records found on our city website
the records manager receives all
requests carefully reviews each request
and forwards the request to the city
department or employee that holds that
record
the city department turnaround provides
that record to the records manager and
the records manager then reviews those
records
to see if anything needs to be redacted
or if any of those documents need to be
reviewed by the legal department to
determine privilege or confidentiality
just some quick stats of the are ipra
numbers as you can see they've been
steadily increasing over the years there
was quite a jump from 2020 to 2021. um
we got 1085 requests in 2020
and calendar year 2021 we got a total of
1501 requests for public information
that's all i have i'll open it to
questions if you have any
thank you lisa any questions
no
okay
thank you
i i just want to point out that um
and they can concur with this i believe
it's been found that you know a lot of
times people
try to get me to do city business on my
facebook which i don't i just say listen
you got to email me and then i'll
respond
because if you start doing that on your
personal stuff i believe they can then
bring that into the fold and then all
that gets part of it so i would just
suggest my suggestion would be just say
hey you know what just email me
and so
was there another part to this that's it
well that didn't take that long
thank you that's it thank you okay
all right so if there's nothing further
then i'll entertain a motion to adjourn
move to adjourn
second
motion made by councilman cuomo second
by mayor pro tem
okay that we adjourn uh christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor aveda stevie is
absent counselor graham yes
counselor ben como yes councillor koran
yes councillor flores is absent
councillor gandara yes and mayor yes
okay we're adjourned and um
what time is it 3 11 pm
all right
thank you
okay so this is the agenda setting
meeting for our january 18 2022 city
council meeting
number one non-consent one non-consent
two non-consent two non-consent three
non-consent three non-consent for
consent for consent five non-consent
five non-consent six non-consent six
non-consent seven non-consent seven
non-consent eight consent eight consent
nine non-consent nine non-consent ten
non-consent ten non-consent eleven
non-consent 11 non-consent 12
non-consent 12 non-consent 13
non-consent 13 non-consent 14
non-consent 14 non-consent 15
non-consent 15 non-consent 16
non-consent 16 non-consent 17
non-consent 17 non-consent 18
non-consent 18 non-consent 19
non-consent 19 non-consent 20
non-consent 20 non-consent 21
non-consent 21 non-consent 22
non-consent 22 non-consent 23 9 consent
23 non-consent 24 9 consent 24
non-consent 25 consent 25 consent
i did talk to vanessa
is