Public Safety Committee
Tue, Feb 17, 2026 · Public Safety Committee 
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/1148

== Executive Summary ==
The Public Safety Committee meeting covered a wide range of topics, including the launch of a new emergency information platform, discussions about police oversight, and detailed reports on police and fire department operations. The new "Ready Santa Fe" platform, presented by the Director of Emergency Management, aims to provide real-time public safety information and warnings through an interactive web-based system. This platform was well-received, with committee members emphasizing the importance of community engagement and leveraging schools for wider communication.

A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to exploring the role and future of the Citizens Police Incident Review Board (CPIRB) and its potential integration with the Public Safety Committee. Members debated the necessity of a citizen review board, its authority, and whether it would be redundant given existing internal police review processes. The committee expressed a desire to move beyond a purely advisory role and gain more legislative authority, with plans to invite the Mayor to a future meeting to discuss his vision for the committee's role. The committee also received detailed reports on police use of force statistics, staffing levels, and the performance of the EMS division and Alternative Response Units (ARUs), with some debate arising over the optimal staffing for ARUs.

== Key Decisions ==
- Approved the agenda via roll call vote (Yes: Chavez, Piltchure, Crawford, Robertson, Martinez)
- Approved the minutes via roll call vote (Yes: Chavez, Piltchure, Crawford, Robertson, Martinez)
- Unanimously approved the four-year software contract renewal for EMS and fire incident reporting via roll call vote (Chavez, Finger, Boler, Wheeler, Piltshire, Crawford, Robertson, Martinez, Liswood all voted "Aye")

== Motions & Votes ==
- Approval of Agenda — Passed (Yes: Chavez, Piltchure, Crawford, Robertson, Martinez)
- Approval of Minutes — Passed (Yes: Chavez, Piltchure, Crawford, Robertson, Martinez)
- Approval of four-year software contract renewal for EMS and fire incident reporting — Passed Unanimously (Chavez, Finger, Boler, Wheeler, Piltshire, Crawford, Robertson, Martinez, Liswood all voted "Aye")

== Public Comment ==
Public comments and committee discussions highlighted several themes: appreciation for the new "Ready Santa Fe" platform and its potential for community engagement; concerns about the effectiveness and "teeth" of the existing Citizens Police Incident Review Board; a desire for the Public Safety Committee to have more legislative authority and less of a "rubber stamp" role; questions about the redundancy of a new citizen review board given existing internal police oversight; and discussions about the optimal staffing and oversight for Alternative Response Units (ARUs). There was also praise for the police department's transparency and thoroughness in reviewing use of force incidents, and acknowledgment of the emotional toll on traffic officers investigating fatal crashes. A committee member offered assistance to the 911 Dispatch Center Director in filling vacancies.

== Topics ==
- Ready Santa Fe Platform
- Emergency Management Updates
- ARU Program Discussion
- RECCC Staffing and Recruitment
- Meeting Procedures
- Public Safety Committee Meeting
- 911 Call Statistics
- Wildfire Preparedness
- Inter-Agency Coordination
- Budget and Staffing Requests

== Full Transcript ==
Do we have our committee members connected on Zoom? I'm here, Amanda.
Oh, great. Thank you.
I see Cameron on here as well.
All right. So, we will be doing roll call votes for everything just because we do have individuals online, and we make sure that we capture their votes and their thoughts. If it's set up a little bit differently, like I don't have you guys in front of me, so please just unmute and chime in if I am not seeing that you want to comment. Okay.
Perfect.
All right. So, we're going to get started. I call to order the Public Safety Committee meeting. It is February 17th, Tuesday, and it is 4:00 p.m. Could I get a roll call, please?
Chavez, here. Member Finger, Member Boler.
On his way.
Member Wheeler, excused.
Member Piltchure.
Here.
Member Crawford.
Here.
Member Robertson.
Member Martinez.
Here.
Member Liswood.
We have a quorum.
Thank you. Next is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes from staff? No changes. Could I get a motion, please? I have a motion and I have a second. Could I get a roll call vote, please?
Travis.
Yes. Member Finger, Member Piltshire.
Yes.
Crawford.
Yes.
Member Robertson.
Yes.
Member Martinez.
Yes.
Member Lisswoods. All right, that passes. We'll move on to approval of the minutes. Are there any changes from staff or committee members on the minutes? All right. Could I get a roll call vote?
Chavez.
Yes.
Finger. Member Piltchure.
Yes.
Member Crawford.
Yes.
Member Robertson.
Yes.
Member Martinez.
Yes. Member Liswood.
Okay. Moving on to presentations. We have Director Morgan up first with Ready Santa Fe Emergency Public Information Platform presentation. So, it's all yours, Kyle. Thank you.
Madam Chair and members of the community committee.
Thank you. Is it on, Kyle?
Check. Check.
There you go.
Just so that everyone is aware, we have to really use mics. I know sometimes we don't, but we have to use mics because everyone online will not hear what we say. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Kyle. And thank you for letting us bump you to this meeting. I know you were ready to go last time.
Not a problem. I've reviewed the slides and remember what I'm talking about. My name is Kyle Morgan. I'm the Director of Emergency Management here for the city. Thank you all for being here to hear me out about an exciting new addition to our ability to deliver timely public information and warning here in the city. So, I'm talking about Ready Santa Fe. This is a new initiative that the Office of Emergency Management, and really the whole city, launched over the last few weeks and months. You may have started to see this pop up, especially in PD public safety notifications. So, at a high level, what is this? What does it do? So, it's a website, that's all it is. It's ready.fifanm.gov. So, an easy to remember, easy bookmarkable spot online that doesn't require an account or any login. And this main page, the landing page that you get to when you first get there, is a map. It's a dashboard showing locations of active incidents when they're occurring. That includes emergency road closures as well as public safety notifications. It looks a little different if you're looking on a phone versus a web browser, but it's the same information. And then other pages link to some valuable spatially enabledness information. So, why is this actually important? It's immensely helpful for communicating steady-state activity that we would already be communicating over Alert Santa Fe about, like major transportation disruptions or general notifications to avoid certain areas due to police or other hazardous materials activity. That's great and something that the community has routinely asked for. That's our number one feedback we get on Alert Santa Fe alerts is people asking, "Where is this?" Now we can show them. So, importantly to emergency management, this is a tool that scales up immediately for disasters, which we're going to get to in a later slide, and I'll show you some examples. So, we'll talk a little bit about how we approached this and provide some context for other communities that use similar tools. So, what we're working with here is an EZRI-based platform. These are tools that are used daily by larger agencies, both government agencies like FEMA or Caloes, as well as whole community partners such as the Red Cross and Team Rubicon. Those are great that they use those, but often they're not utilized by the public until there is a large disaster. Our approach here is to build systems that work every day and then scale up for disaster response. It provides daily operational value to the community while giving us an immensely valuable tool to use during legitimate crisis. Like I said, it's a web-based platform. Doesn't require a download or a sign-up. You can look at it on a phone or a desktop computer. This was developed by emergency management staff as well as EZRI professional services through a grant-funded project. So, one thing I'll highlight up front is that this is a new tool. We're it is public. We're and people may have seen it already, but we're continuously training on this and improving how we use it and where exactly it fits in our workflow for daily operations. So, to get there, the development team, which was myself and our partners from EZRI, met with, in particular, SFPD to discuss current capabilities, current priorities, and we developed this whole ecosystem with that in mind. Once we developed the system, we went through a multi-week training program with SFPD command staff, which provided them with weekly scenarios to build muscle memory before we deployed this publicly. At the time that I developed this presentation, we had already used this for three different police incidents as well as one mass care and sheltering operation. We've since, in the last month, used it several more times. These dynamic capabilities mean that notices and closures may be changed by either PD or OEM as incidents evolve. If something starts big and starts and then contracts, we can just change the shape of a polygon. Super simple. Or if we're dealing with an incident that is expanding in its scope and geographic spread, we can make it bigger. We can increase severity. We can add additional emergency protective measures to the map. So, those last few slides I was showing what the public view looks like. That's, you know, what the end user that clicks on a link from either a police department Facebook page or directly out of an Alert Santa Fe alert sees. This platform also has huge value on the back end and is why we developed it this way. I'm just going to run through a few quick screenshots here. These are from an exercise scenario that we did. This is not a real incident. But you can see here the advanced situational awareness that we're able to provide to both leadership and first responders. When we use these tools, we're able to see in-depth demographic analysis. We're able to manage evacuation zones and evacuation routes. We're able to establish shelters and points of distribution. This helps the EOC establish a common operating picture between field staff, executive leadership, and our mutual aid partners. Here's a quick example of an evacuation scenario in here. Again, not a real incident. We can simply just draw the way we want you to drive on a map. This way we're able to make these decisions in real time based on the hazards that are observed, not based on what we think might happen. And then the next two slides are even higher level leadership views. These are really intended for executive leadership to provide them a quick snapshot. This replaces a situation report. Same thing. This would be a bad day if this was actually going on. This is a look at community lifelines and how they're impacted by a disaster. So, every steady state, everything here is like blue. Nothing's red. So, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have an ask. This is one way that we communicate with the public during emergencies, but it's not everything. Constituents should go on our website and sign up for Alert Santa Fe. And if they're already signed up, they should log in and make sure that their settings are appropriate for where they live and what types of notifications they want to receive. While doing that, log into your phone or any other mobile device and make sure that you have government alerts enabled. This enables us to send you wireless emergency alerts during major disasters and crisis. And also bookmark ready.fanm.gov. We're leaning forward with this project. We want to continue building this out. We anticipate doing some integrations with both Apple Maps and Google Maps to get our traffic closures into those platforms so that however you're digesting spatial data, you're able to see our information. We're also working on trying to establish integrations with third-party apps like Watchd Duty, which are specific to wildfire evacuations. And we'd like to grow this into other areas including special events management for pre-planned closures as well as emergency utility notifications related to water disruptions and similar events. Thank you.
Thank you, Kyle. Are there any questions?
Yeah.
Wheeler. Sorry, Paul.
Does this tie in, I mean, is it dynamic? Does it tie in like with Hazmat stuff for plume, you know, for clouds and plumes and with weather? I mean, will it change as the weather changes? Yep. Yeah. So, if you go on ready.fanm.gov right now, you'll see some active National Weather Service alerts. So, those are pulling directly off of the Weather Service API. If there is a Hazmat incident, we can absolutely add in shelter in place notifications here. And in the same ecosystem on the back end, to have the ability to do plume modeling and things of that nature.
Go ahead.
Member Lisa, you could go.
Thank you very much for this. How many people are currently registered in these various?
Sure. Alert Santa Fe is our opt-in portal, and right now this is a countywide system. Our opt-in rate is around 20,000 out of the county's total population. From my research, that's actually pretty good. Unless people are living in like a nuclear isolation zone or something similar, getting much higher percentage of people to opt into a system, especially in 2026 where we're all getting text messages about all kinds of stuff, is challenging. So, we always want people to sign up. But I don't want to say that we've hit our ceiling. It's just that increased subscriber base has been a little bit challenging the last few years. With that said, we also have the ability to alert people through wireless emergency alerts. Those come into your phone looking like an Amber Alert. So, unless you've opted out of government alerts, you're going to get those. So, if it's a major, major, major emergency, that's how we're going to.
Metrics for success will be what percentage of the population is either signed up, the bookmark ready. How do you look at the metrics for this?
Sure. So, we can see the metrics on the back end. I haven't looked today, but on average the website has about 200 views per day. It's super jumpy though. We get our most views out of this when it's actively being used during an emergency. So, we've had five or six use cases of the system now. And, you know, those page views will go into the thousands in a single hour.
Right. Member Finger, are you did you Okay, great. Member Finger.
Yeah. I'm just curious, have you put it out on like Nextdoor that this is available because I haven't seen it?

I have not, we're not active on there. I know that PD has been doing a really good job linking to this when they've been using it, and they may, I don't want to speak for them, they may have a more active presence on Nextdoor or Santa Fe Bulletin Board.

I've seen other people post it there, so it gets posted around once it's out there.

Thank you. And the nice thing is, because it's dynamic, whenever you click on the link, that's the most up-to-date information about the spatial extent of whatever the situation.

All right, Member Martinez.

Thank you again for this. Kyle, this is awesome. I actually love Esri, so this has been pretty fun to watch. I have a question about mutual aid partners. Who are your mutual aid partners right now? I know police. Who else?

Internal to the city, I mean, we work with everybody. We had an executive leadership training about disaster preparedness today with every single city department.

Did that answer your question?

Yeah, I think that's great. Thank you. I can imagine how useful this is going to be. Thank you.

Any other questions? Cam, are you good?

He's good.

Yes.

Okay. And I just have a few comments when we're talking about, and I always say this because we forget that they're a great source of communication, utilizing districts, charters, and private schools and having, because right now they communicate directly to families. So it doesn't even have to go through students. But we see increase in surveys, we see increase in participation in every aspect when we use them as that net to get people to sign up, and they want to know what's going on in their neighborhoods. They want to be alerted. They want to be able to track their kids are at home alone a lot of times. So I feel like really targeting or working collaboratively with our schools, like I said, public, charter, and private, to widen usage would probably have a significant impact. But yeah, I think it's important. So really, your ask is great, right? We want to increase enrollment in this, but I think that would be a great avenue to use. And our communication is great. Communications is great at drafting things to go through the schools to target our family populations.

Yeah. Any other questions, comments? All right. Thank you for the info, Kyle. All right. Next we have, and just so everyone knows, my computer does not allow me to open any attachments from Civic Clerk. So I have to use my phone to look at attachments. I just wanted to explain that. It's a problem I cannot fix for some reason. But our next presentation is review Citizens Police Incident Review Board and possible Public Safety Committee changes, presented by Marcy Ianino, Palmer Anderson, and myself. And they are so kind to be here today to share this information. I just wanted their brains to be present because they are the ones that are helping me kind of explore our proposals that we did within our work session. Now, when we did, when we started these conversations, what came up was the Citizens Police Incident Review Board, right? That exists in city ordinance. And so we talked about a possibility because we know there's interest here. We know there are some city councilors that want something like this to exist, some committee members. We know the mayor is very interested as well. Now, does that mean that we transform to meet the role of this board? Not necessarily. But it could mean that we have an opportunity here to combine the role of the Citizens Police Incident Review Board and the role that we want for ourselves, and so that we are accomplishing two things for the city of Santa Fe. So I am just going to call them up and they can share anything they feel should be shared, and then we could have a discussion. I'll be taking notes because I'll be working behind the scenes with them to get this complete. Turn it over to you guys.

Thank you, Chair Chavez. Members of the committee. My name is Marcy Ianino. I'm the manager of the Legislation and Policy Office, and this is Palmer Anderson, and he is our policy analyst. Anything about yourself? Hi, I'm Palmer Anderson, and I'm the policy analyst for the Office of Legislation and Policy Innovation. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

And they are the ones, just so that you all know, that literally do all of the legwork and making every policy or anything that comes in front of the governing body for vote possible. So, they do the research, they draft, they work with the city attorney to make sure it's ready to go. They do all that work. So, I would be perfectly happy to answer questions, and I think one thing that Palmer and I are wondering is what your goal is. What do you think your main goal is? And then we can maybe work backwards from there or some of the ideas that you're having. Maybe you don't know what your goal is yet. But I guess I would stand for questions around your thoughts about what your goals are and what's possible. I even wonder if it would be helpful. I could put my computer on and we could look at that section of code if you all wanted to see that. I know you all have already looked at the resolution that is your enabling legislation. So, we could talk through some logistics if you were going to decide to make this body sort of live in that section of code instead of your enabling legislation being under this resolution. So any questions that you guys have about that would be, I'd be happy to answer, and Palmer too, and we're happy to be here.

Thank you. I think you projecting on the screen would be helpful. Just so you know what's included in the packet are minutes. So when the board was established, you can see very clearly in the minutes that they had conversation about meeting less. So I think that was, that's significant, and the fact that that's when we can come in as a committee to fill in those gaps. So because we are having a lot more that we discuss here, I think that we're building something, and then to put on or to include the role of the review board to a certain extent would, I think, be a great combination. When I talked to them about goals, I talked about goals that we kind of documented in our work sessions, which included, you know, us really expediting the process for public safety and approval for some of their items that come through. I talked about us just increasing, like really utilizing the minds that we have here and the experience to build more than what we have in the past, which is possible without a change. So those are some of the things that I have highlighted, but yes, I'm going to turn it over to you because you actually have the team that's going to make this possible here. So go ahead and you could start. Actually, just more of a historical question. Remind us what happened to this committee. Did it just die for lack of interest or?

Thank you for the question, Mr. Piltshire, is that correct? So the best I can tell, it looks like the city passed an ordinance in the 1990s to put this body into place. You're nodding because it looks like you were remembering. And I, as far as I can tell, I don't think it was ever stood up. I think maybe we got the ordinance passed, and then as far as I can tell, it looks like you all may have answers among yourselves.

Yeah. All right. Go ahead. Committee Member Willer. So, I probably have more historical information in regards to the creation of this than probably anybody else in this room, just because I was there. I was probably a, I had joined, I've been a member of the police department for maybe six months. And we had a shooting in front of St. Anne's Church where an individual by the name of Poncho Ortega was shot and killed by the Santa Fe Police Department. Happened to be working that night. I was a rookie assigned to my field training officer. The political and public outcry that came from that, especially at those particular times, because Santa Fe never had officer-involved shootings. That was just something that was not commonplace by any way, shape or form. Steered a lot of things that took place in the political environment in the city of Santa Fe at that time. We had the election of Mayor Debbie Haramo, who, you know, many people felt was not a huge fan of the police department based on what was taking place at that particular time. And it steered the police department in a certain direction, and that's where this all came from. I want to say mid-90s. I joined the police department in 1993. So it was probably right around that timeframe, shortly thereafter. That's why this was created. They wanted some oversight. They wanted individuals actually evaluating what police were doing, why they were doing what they were doing. So that's where it all kind of came from at that particular time. I don't remember as I developed through the police department it ever having any serious teeth. I know that there was a number of individuals, you know, obviously we passed through a number of different chiefs. If I remember correctly looking at these minutes, Lieutenant Nigel Bridger was the administration of Chief Beverly Lennon at that particular time. So, there was incentives to make it happen and to have that oversight. Some of the major problems, and I've talked about this on this committee before, is understanding what police do and why they do it. I remember we did a number of different public interactions where we showed what's called the Tuler drill. I don't even know if the Tuler drill is still applicable today, where you talk about, you know, reaction times and what police have to do within a reaction time. It was specific discussing as to the Poncho Ortega incident. He was armed with a knife. He started to close distance on police officers and why the actions were taken. I mean, things that have evolved dramatically over the years. And now we have body cameras that are assigned to all of our officers that are out there. We have vehicle cameras that are reviewed by supervisors, my understanding, on a regular basis. So that's where we're at now in regards to understanding that policy from back then and probably applying some of the checks and balances that are already in place from the police department's perspective. And so now I'm going to jump off of that, and I'm going to, as a committee member, some of the things that we've discussed and what I like for us to see is acknowledging some of those things that our police department already does to influence those checks and balances. And I had a number of conversations with Chief Joy when this first came up. There was discussion about, you know, recreating this or re-implementing this committee to determine how we have that oversight, but also understanding what's already in place with our police department. Because I was a police chief, I understand that we have, you know, operational complaints and we have administrative complaints. And for you guys on the committee, you know, just to educate you very often, we get a lot of operational complaints. And when we have internal investigations, IA, that is a separate entity of the police department. So they receive these complaints and usually, and I was assigned to internal affairs for a period of time, you look at the complaint and you determine, is it something administrative that we need to look in further and we have to have a full-blown administrative investigation? And I know that Chief Grundler is familiar because he worked in that capacity as well. And you also determine whether it's an operational complaint. If it's an operational complaint, you know, somebody said that the officer cussed at them, it's going to go back to the operational side of the police department. It'll go back to the supervisor. The supervisor can review at that particular time when I was, where it was strictly vehicle cameras and body belt recorders.

We didn't have body cams as we do now. So, we would review that information and make a determination. Was there disciplinary action that needed to be looked into along those lines? Now, again, and just reiterating, I know from my conversations with the police chief and the other members of the Police Department that we have a number of these things that are already in place.

So, I think when you look at this committee as us the whole, and what was created back then, things have evolved significantly. And so we need to make sure that what we're looking at now is we're acknowledging what is already in place by our Police Department and maybe even understanding what internal affairs and even operational complaints are being handled with. I know there's software that they actually use on a regular basis, and I'll defer to Chief Grenler to expand on that. But I think it's important for us just to acknowledge that, and as we move forward, recognize that that's where our role is. I believe that we look at those things that are not being handled by them, and maybe we have a voice or an evaluation. I know we've talked about looking at what training needs to be implemented for the Police Department as well, and how we can assist in that. But again, acknowledging that they have a number of different things in place that acknowledge, well, where do we need to start training? Where do we need to do extra things that are benefiting our officers and benefiting the public?

Thank you. Anyone else want to comment or question?

Oh, yeah. Do you want to go over that? I think they were going to just take questions and comments based on what's in the packet. Just so we're clear, the only evidence we have of this board ever convening were two times in '01 based on minutes. So, it was established, I believe, in '92. Was that when the ordinance was passed, '92?

Chair Chavez, this is, you can always tell when a section of code was last touched based on these little deeds right here, and it looks like it's 1997.

Yeah. So, yeah, I'm going to ask you to use your mic just because we have people online. Thank you.

Yes, just by reading the minutes of that one meeting, it seems a little contentious at that point, just reading the minutes, a little back and forth about if they should really be meeting or the purview and the scope of what they were doing. I mean, that's what I got out of reading those minutes. And I remember Nigel Real Well and Kim Kamola, they mention all the people that worked under Bev Lennon when she was chief. But as someone who spent over 20 years working in public safety in the city, it sounds like maybe the administration changed and they just kind of said, "Let's not do that anymore," because that's, I mean,

Yeah, it seems like it was definitely a pattern of being pushed by politics.

And that's probably why it met when it did. Administration, if the administration doesn't follow through on policy and enforce, I think we forget that's the mayor's,

The mayor and city manager's main job is to enforce the policies of the city, and if they choose to do it or not do it is really, and it's politics.

Absolutely, I agree. I will say that I think it's very clear our mayor has made very vocal to all of us that this is something he would like to have present. I believe he shared that with the committee when he was, when I was not there one of the times. But I do think that if anyone should create a role that exists anywhere in this space, it should come from our committee because we do have a good relationship with our public safety providers, and we do now understand the process of checks and balances, right? We get that, we get a summary of checks and balances and how that looks every single time we have public safety. And we've already made suggestions like the survey data that police collect, you know, when DC Valdez is here, we're like, "Okay, then what do we do?" Right? It's great that we're asking questions, but what do we do next? And so that's the kind of stuff that we would bring forward, but the information, the data, and the increase of checks and balances within the department itself exists. And that changes very much why this was established in the first place. I do think out of respect for the new administration, we do explore if there is a level of oversight, what is realistic and beneficial to the community because that's who we're serving, and that's why we would be doing reviews of any sort. What does that look like with the information we have available to us, and what level is it necessary? So, I think that's what we have to explore a little bit online. Aurora or Cam, do you guys have any comments or questions?

I was just going to mention, I kind of lost my train of thought now. What's the mayor's vision? Does the mayor want to sunset this and merge these, because right now it's two different things that we have. So, I know when he came into our meeting, does he want this kind of merged into one committee? Because there's a lot of, I want to say he said something like 30, something like 30 committees right now that the city has, and I think he was looking at kind of streamlining some of that. So, what's the intent? I mean, part of the, you know, what I've said is this, since the Public Safety Committee first was enacted, it's really had no teeth at all. We're basically a rubber stamp. So, it's like, why are we bothering? There's times where I feel like, why am I going just because I'm going to hear a presentation on monthly stats? There's no real inputting that much into policy direction or stuff like that. And I don't know if the committee agrees with me or not. I mean, there's certain things, I mean, I'm going to give the Planning Commission an example. There's a lot of things they pass that never go to council, and it just moves on. There are certain things that I think this board could do the same, you know, like with regards to when they declare drought for fireworks or approving a fireworks permit. It seems silly to me that, you know, the fire marshal and the Fire Department should have to go to three different city meetings to do something that typically they should be able to do administratively. So, it's those types of things where I think there's certain things we should be reviewing, you know, from the, and you know, a lot of times they talk about police oversight. You know, we could be looking, you know, there's things that the Fire Department does that maybe we should be looking at, too. I mean, there are cases there where, I mean, we've had cases, I don't want to, there have been cases in the last year or so, let's just say, of things that have happened where things hit the paper and we get questioned about those types of issues. And I think that's, I mean, not just, and not just fire police. It should also be if we're going to, I'm not sure with the whole reorganization they're kind of talking about moving code enforcement. There's a lot of code enforcement aspects that are directly, you know, public safety issues. So, I think, I mean, if this is going to be a feasible committee, and you know, it seems sometimes I think I'm wasting, you know, their time for, they just show up and do presentations for us.

They love hanging out with us.

I just want to give it back to Marcy because everything you said we have discussed a little bit. And I just want to say real fast, the City Attorney's office has been amazing in being like, "Well, maybe public safety and their reorganization will help us figure out what committees and boards are actually necessary and which aren't." So, it's kind of leading that work because we're saying, "Hey, like we're more than what's here, and we want to redefine our role, and we want to serve a bigger purpose." And it's like, "Okay, well, that should be the same for all other committees and boards." So, I'll turn it over to you, Marcy.

Chair Chavez, Member Ballader, I think that I'm here today to sort of outline for you all sort of the context that we're living in with committees and their authority levels, and maybe discuss any options that you guys are sort of thinking about. If you're correct, the Planning Commission has a special, sorry about that, I think that's my, the Planning Commission has a special level of authority, and it is established in ordinance and in code. And so what we were sort of discussing the other day is that, you know, this section of code here exists. It was established in 1997. And you all, it is potential that this could be revamped. It doesn't have to do what this says it does. It would just mean that there would need to be a bill initiated. And that's what a bill is. A bill amends, you know, this current city code that's here, and that hasn't been touched since 1997. And I, and you all could look and see what's under the purview currently under the Police Department, just like Member Wheeler was saying, and then look at what's not, and look at what you would want your purview to be, and then you can establish that. And then, of course, the bill would get introduced, and it would go through its legislative process, and it would either be adopted or it wouldn't be. So, that is what we would need to do though if you all wanted to have, you know, that sort of binding authority that you're describing that a body like the Planning Commission has. So, you would do that. Currently, you all are established as what we would call an advisory committee, and I'm going to ask my colleague Palmer to talk for a moment about some of his research on committees in general that we've come across because this is actually a hot topic at the city because we use these terms very much interchangeably. Your enabling legislation is really interesting. It's a, it's a, it's a, well, actually, you had a 1984 resolution, and then it was updated in 2000. And so that 2000 one that I think you guys have all seen, right, it establishes your current roles, responsibilities, your powers that you have now that you are free to exercise. It calls you a standing committee, which is fascinating because there are standing committees in code right now. And there is a little definition for what a standing committee is, but the standing committees are also established as being council-led committees. We've got Public Works and Utilities, Quality of Life, Finance, and I'm forgetting there's one more that, oh, just a, that's thinking of governing body actually. Anyway, but, but anyway, so there's three standing committees. But if you want authority past an advisory committee, you would want to establish that authority in code. And we thought this section might be a good one to look at. And then Palmer, will you talk about a little bit about some of your research about what you're finding?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, members of the committee. So, in also anecdotally, it also in code refers to this committee as a task force as well, which is, I think, not technically accurate either. But what you find in code overall is that the term commission, committee, board, and council are all kind of used interchangeably and haphazardly at different times. One discussion I've had with other decision-makers in, at the city in the past is, sorry, is how we can more kind of clearly define what the purpose of these different advisory bodies is, and whether or not they all sunset or don't, or whether or not there are specific provisions defining what a commission is and what its purpose is, what a committee is and what its purpose is, because right now that is not particularly clearly defined in city code.

And I guess I'm happy to answer other questions regarding that as well. Or any questions, comments?

Yes.

So it appears that we could only find the two meeting minutes. They were 25 years ago. It begs the question, what's the current need for this function to occur? Unless there's, I'm unaware if there's people out there clamoring for it. Thank you, Member Pilcher. So it's interesting because a lot of what I've been hearing is a question of policy redundancy and the question of whether or not these policies, as it was previously mentioned, already exist in public safety bodies in the city. So for my part as an analyst, what I look at from there is what internal policies actually do exist within the Police Department, broader public safety bodies, and how necessary is it for an advisory committee to carry out these things if they're already being carried out by an official body at the city. So I would concur with that question.

Then if I may, may I add something? Oh, we had another question. Just to finish a quick comment about, if Member Pilcher, if your question was about the Citizens Review Board and what its purpose was. I mean, the purpose in code is fairly broad, and I wonder if a body like this might get better traction if some of these things were a little more clearly defined. Another interesting piece about this is that it says, how do these bodies come together? It's another good question to always ask. And it's saying that the review board shall be composed of five members, and at least one member shall be selected and appointed from each district by the mayor and with approval of the City Council. So I would think that you'd want to look and see how you want it to come together, what kind of authority you want it to have, what authority do you want it to have over what things you want it to actually have purview over. So yeah, I don't want to overtalk.

No, you're great. And what it is too, is this could be the avenue that we use to define this committee because it's already an ordinance. So that's the whole reason about bringing this forward. It's not saying that we want to become this. We might want part of the rule to include something about reviewing data or we could specify. But what this is, is definitely an avenue to say we're going to put a bill in to amend an ordinance to include fire and emergency services with police in this role doing these things. And it could include stuff like this would be a final stop for policy that includes this, right? If we need money to move quickly for police or fire. So of course, that has to go through, and research has to be done, and our city attorney has to sign on it. But this is just could be a great starting point for us to start building or revising in order to better define our committee and the role it should have that would be best for the community. And I'll turn it over, I'm sorry, to you.

Thank you. This is very interesting to me. I think I need a little clarification, perhaps your comments and your comment also saying that there is already a city process in place to review internal affairs investigations outside of the Internal Affairs Department. I heard you say that there is now much more sophisticated review, and I understand that within the Internal Affairs and with the use of more technology, et cetera. But is there an outside body, not the Internal Affairs Committee for investigation?

Don't they typically use a different, you guys use a state police chief? That would be helpful.

Yes, state police typically does it, I think. But we'll turn it over to the expert. Sorry. Typically for internal affairs investigations, it goes to Internal Affairs. Once it goes through a review process for the chief, before it even goes to the chief, it goes to legal. So we have a dedicated assistant city attorney who basically, that's all they do. He deals specifically with public safety. The reason being is every time we get a new one, it takes kind of years to get them schooled up on public safety because it's very specific. And what they'll do is they'll look through the investigation. They're extremely thorough. They will send it back in a heartbeat and ask, was this explored? This line of questioning, why did it stop here? What did they do here? How did you come to this? Why? And if they do, if they have serious questions about whether or not they agree or disagree with a finding, they'll pick it out. And what happens is basically if it goes to legal, if legal has questions, if they're questioning certain things, it'll go back to the investigator to answer those questions and then again go back to legal again. And if legal ends up signing off on it, at that point it goes to the chief, and then the chief does his own review. I myself did three years in Internal Affairs. So when I get one to review, I pick it apart. So that is the process within, if you're talking about officer-involved shootings, that is anytime we have an officer-involved shooting, New Mexico State Police actually investigate that outside.

Thank you. I spent four years with the Metro Transit Police Review Board, and we were external to Internal Affairs, external to the Legal Department, external to the police chief, with similar kinds of conclusions, concurring, disagreeing, not supported, incomplete evidence, et cetera, which is the criteria one would look at this kind of thing. For not just under use of force, but other things which I found fascinating in this review board because it included use of force, false arrest, racial, sexual insults, slurs, gestures, et cetera, et cetera, quite broad actually in this mandate. So I guess, Chair, the question in my mind is, would you think, would the mayor think that the city attorney is a sufficient outside entity, outside of the Police Department or Fire, to review these issues independent of the entity that is affecting? Do we think that that's adequate? Because that's what I'm, is there anyone else who's doing anything because you mentioned that there was sufficient review, or maybe I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Member Liswood, thank you for that question. I don't believe, I could be remembering it incorrectly as well, but I don't believe I mentioned sufficient review. But I was just pointing to the fact that if there is sufficient capacity in public safety bodies, then it's a question of whether or not a review board like this is redundant or not. I'm not entirely or particularly familiar with the internal review process at the Police Department though. All right.

And I, you know, I don't know what the priorities. So, you know, like I said, I know that there's a city councilor and our mayor that has been, has voiced wanting something along these lines. I don't know if they're experts though, because what we, so we had a public safety task force. They failed to ask questions to the people that were doing the work, right? So, and I think we keep having these like, yes, we need to have review boards and we need to do this, and it's because they don't realize that we already have a bunch of public-facing information that can be reviewed. That is why, you know, we end up in legal situations. That's why all these things occur is all this information is there already. Everything becomes a public record. We have survey data coming forward. We have stats coming forward. We have all of this coming forward. So I think oftentimes, and want for this might be communicated based on a lack of information because I have publicly communicated, I was not, I respect the task force, but I really had a huge issue with the fact that they didn't have conversations and did not dig in to the work of our actual Police and Fire Department when they did. So they did a bunch of things that they wanted them to do, which they already had in place. That's how much of a disconnect was there. So yeah, I think we could bring the mayor to the table when I work with the city attorney and just kind of let them know or make sure that there's an understanding as to a need. But I don't know where their want for something like this is coming from. I don't agree that it's needed. That's my personal opinion, but you know, we're a committee and I want us to explore that together. But that's what we could do is bring those individuals with the opinion for a want or a need so we could truly understand where that's coming from.

I could ask to clarify.

Absolutely.

So you said that a lot of this now is public information, and yet, and correct me if I'm wrong, Chief, that internal affairs files are confidential.

Until they're finalized. Correct.

Or closed, I guess.

They are. They are confidential. The findings aren't typically made public, but they are available to the people that make the initial complaints. So if somebody makes a complaint that instigates an internal affairs investigation, they will get a copy of the findings.

Which would be your complaint is found is.

It's either, it's either sustained, exonerated, or unfounded.

But, right. So it doesn't sound like it's fully public.

Yeah.

No, they're not fully public. And if it's, and if anything's active, that's not public as well. I think that's been where my issue, it makes me uncomfortable about the review board. But I also don't have a deep understanding of how that works. And I think, Committee Member Wheeler, but after you're done, you still have the floor. I'd like to hear.

I think that's where I come from, and because of my background, and I've had conversations again with former Chief Joy, Chief Grundler, with other members of the Police Department, is there is no profession in this United States that is reviewed by an outside source of individuals that have no subject matter expertise in the field.

So if I'm a plumber, being very simple, and I need somebody to come and review my work as a plumber, I don't hire police officers or firefighters to come and look at my work. As the director of the RECC, I'm on the RECC board, and I technically am a supervisor of the director, but I don't review what he does as far as what his operations within the center are because I'm not a subject matter expert in that field. And that's where I come from. And I, I apologize because I feel very strongly about this. I think our role truly is to provide the resources necessary for public safety, to review what they need to make them better at their jobs, and also to look at any type of trends that may be out there that are critical to us address as well. If we see a rise in burglaries, we need to address that. If we see a rise in incidents involving abuse on police officers, we need to address that. And that's where I see this role is, and I think that what was created back then in that review committee, it had maybe right intentions based on what the political environment was, but it definitely did not benefit the citizens of the city of Santa Fe in my opinion. I think another role, just because I don't know if you're capturing all these ideas of roles as well, but is building a relationship and an understanding, I think about public safety with the community. And we've talked about that, like we don't say enough, we're the, Santa Fe Police is really great at saying the work they're doing, the community work they're doing, but I think really building that understanding of the work, the operation, the transparency, which they've already began, is really important. Like how do we support them in building the relationships and with the community members they serve?

I would like us to work on as well, and also understanding what is in place already. I talked about that earlier about body cam footage. That's part of my job. That's what I do now as an investigator. I ask for body cam footage all the time. I review body cam footage all the time to see what has actually taken place on an incident that I'm investigating for my personal business now. So I understand that dynamic. Same thing, I reach out to the RECC and I ask them for 911 tapes. I ask them to give me the information that was relayed back and forth to the police officers. So I'm very familiar with it. It's second nature to me, but I don't think the general public understands that on a regular basis sometimes.

Member Finger, did you have a comment or question?

A little bit. My background was close to 30 years in training. So, the fact that you're going to have a committee reviewing police or fire critical incidents without the knowledge is crazy. I used to review use of force incidents as I was a training director, and I'm sure the training department gets involved in the department's investigation. So, I think things are in place, especially if you have an external attorney reviewing it all, that's unique.

No kidding.

Thank you.

Thank you, Member Finger. Member Martinez. Sorry about the delay there. I'm also wondering what it is that the Mayor and the other City Councilor are looking for in this Citizens Review Board. In most cases, there are a few around the US that do policy oversight for Citizens Review Boards. I'm concerned about, and I agree with Member Wheeler on this same issue, there are some things that I think can misrepresent if somebody doesn't understand the logistics going on behind the scenes. If they've never been involved in investigations or police tactical operations, I think it can be misconstrued to the public. So, I guess I'm just wondering what exactly is the Mayor looking for in this so that way we can better figure out how we're going to do a Citizens Review Board because in other cities they review policy and they recommend policy. I guess I'm just also concerned because the public doesn't always understand what goes on behind the scenes. That's all I had to say.

Thank you for your feedback. I think what I'm hearing is we probably, at our next meeting, maybe we could invite the Mayor to kind of just discuss the wants of our committee and get a better idea. I did have a question for moving forward because now that you all are aware of this ordinance and the fact that we may, we're going to use it as an avenue to build an ordinance that better defines us, whether that is to get rid of it and just kind of redraft it to define our role, whatever that may be, and we'll get more information. But since I have you guys here, and it's okay if you don't have the answer and you have to go to City Attorney Martinez, but can we bring pieces of what we draft forward for their approval along the way? Because I really want to make sure that I'm capturing everything correctly as we kind of transform and redefine. Is that allowed? Do you know? And like I said, if you need to talk to Marcos, that's fine, but I'm just curious.

Chair Chavez, are you asking whether we can draft legislation and bring it to this body for discussion as it moves along?

Yeah. My current understanding is that yes, you can do that, but we can double check.

And even pieces of it, right? So we don't, even if we...

Yeah, just so that it's a constant conversation and we're catching things. We all have a common understanding because I think that's really important and it'll build something that's solid if we're building it with a common understanding. I think if I may.

Please.

I think that the reason why, and it looks like we have a question.

Oh, sorry.

But I'll just say very quickly, the reason why we brought this section of code up at all is because it's not happening right now. There is no goal with it because no one has ever put this body together since it was last happening. And so it is an option to just repeal and replace this with something else. We could take the resolution that establishes you all. If you like pieces of that, it can live in code. It's like we could, I mean, I just think it's interesting that we already have a spot existing in code that could be revised if that's what...

No, I think that's a great process we could take advantage of. I didn't want anyone to think that my office was recommending that you all become a Citizens Review Board. I'm just saying.

No, they've just been helping me and trying to brainstorm how to best do this.

Code needs to be dusted off and cleaned up and decided what...

And I think building it so it's not just like, it's not like we're, I want to build something so it's sustained through different administrations. Because it seems like we've had, this has actually been great. I think this is the most consistent membership we've had because we had a lot of seats empty off and on there for a while. So I want us to build something that's very clear, that people join this board knowing what they're going to accomplish, which a lot of people are in committees and boards and they're like, "I don't even know what I'm doing there," which is kind of where we were at with a lot of members here. So I really want us to build something because I think that this has a purpose. I think that it's very important, especially around public safety, that our community, there's community members that are really looking at this information. But we just have to be very intentional about it so that we continue to have the success in membership and in work and in progress. Cam,

Thank you, Chair Chavez. I definitely appreciate some of the perspectives that have been shared so far. Personally, I look at things from the standpoint of, we should be, I don't think you should need to be a subject matter expert in order to be involved in a review process. I think that when it comes to every city committee, the bare minimum is having an interest in it. And I think the purpose of something like a police oversight board is to ensure that there is an outside accountable process that would prevent any conflicts of interest. If we're having internal investigations and so the police department's investigating itself, obviously naturally there's going to be concerns about conflicts of interest. I do think that we don't necessarily need to become a police oversight board. I just think that there's certain elements that we could take from and then incorporate it into our purview. But I definitely agree that there should be some kind of limitation on what exactly we're able to adjudicate. But having said that, I think that being a regular citizen, I think that there's a lot of power in that, and allowing regular citizens to have a decision in the process of adjudicating some of these things is actually really valuable.

Great. Thank you. Committee Member Crawford, yes. Condiswood.

I'd like to elaborate on what Cam was talking about. Let me also clarify that the review board that I was on, it wasn't called the Citizens Review Board. And four of the eight members had to be lieutenant and above, active duty of different agencies, not Metrans. So it had to be, I think it was DC Metro Police, it was Virginia State Police. I can't remember everyone. So getting over some of this concern of the knowledge base, my feeling is that I think this committee should at minimum allow itself to have the option to do reviews, and we can decide how we want to exercise that option. And perhaps as part of the amending of what this committee does, that it does call upon active duty members of other agencies that are not internal to the police department here. So I hear people saying they don't want to do any oversight. I'm of the opinion that we should have some capacity to do oversight. Thank you.

Yeah, I agree. Me and Eric have been buddies for a long time, but I kind of disagree with the plumber analogy because if you do something as a plumber that's wrong, there's always a book, a national book that's, and I think law enforcement is one of the only professions that doesn't have a national code that you have to follow across the board. Whereas like the fire code, if someone is violating the fire code, it's spelled out across the country what something should look like, or the plumbing code. I mean, I'm just using that analogy. And I think there are, having other members from other agencies, I think that's a really good idea. I don't know if you would want it to all the time, because there are certain, only when you're actually hearing something that would be a case. But I think police, we should be involved in policy and policy decisions. And like I know currently there's, I've seen issues on social media where people, the alternative response unit should have certain kind of staffing and certain things like that that maybe should, there are people up here that have subject matter. I mean, I know a lot more about how the fire department operates than anyone on the City Council, but all the decisions that have to do with the fire department kind of bypass us and go to the City Council. So, I think there are areas and there's certain things that, you know, he ran the police department for years. So, and worked there for over 20 years. He understands that organization more. He would be better suited to help make policy decisions for PD along with this committee, I think, than sometimes the, you know, because when you get to the level of the City Council, then it becomes real political. See, that's when I brought up the whole fireworks case. As a fire marshal, we never brought fireworks permits to the City Council. Why? Because it opens it up to be a public hearing. Do we want every single person in Santa Fe who doesn't like fireworks because it hurts their dog's ears or cat's ears coming up and giving them three minutes so we have a meeting till 3:00 in the morning, or let a policy board like this decide? There are certain things that I think should be the Planning Commission. When people dog the Planning Commission, it's made up of subject experts. Everyone on the Planning Commission, for the most part, is an architect, an engineer, a historical, all these different aspects where they're better inclined with subject matter than the people, the politicians that's going to. And I think sometimes they should make those decisions or make the strong recommendation. And once you know, it's like there are certain things that are decided by the city. I don't know if everyone understands what the consent calendar is, but I think most of the stuff that we would do once we approve it should just go right on this consent calendar. So, that's kind of my whole feeling on the issue.

Thank you, Committee Member. Yeah, and I agree with Ted in regards to that, is, you know, there's definitely things that should be, and I talked about this in some of our other meetings, things should be flushed out at this level. I mean, in all reality, that's what we should be here for, and the majority of those things should go to consent calendar based on the discussions that we have here because we do have individuals that have a varied amount of experience that understand things probably better than the general public do.

I still believe when we're talking about this whole piece of review, it's one thing to have a bunch of outside agency experts. If you have lieutenants from other agencies, that's great. I think the other part of this, and I've talked about this before as well, is every member of this committee, in my opinion, should work with the police department, attend the Citizens Academy, myself included. I haven't been sitting out in the streets for the last 15 years. There's no reason why I shouldn't be attending the Citizens Academy to be understanding what is taking place from them. Along those same lines is that every single one of us should probably do a ride-along with ARU and see what they're interacting with and seeing what takes place at the fire station. I have been a big proponent that everybody should sit in dispatch for a couple hours at least and see what takes place behind one of those consoles when a 911 call comes in because I guarantee you your eyes will be this big when you leave. So those are the things that I talk about in understanding so that you at least know how the system works, know how things take place so that we're not having any individuals, myself included or anybody else that sits back in a chair and passes judgment or makes decisions without understanding what's taking place on a daily basis.

Thank you, committee member. I'm just going to say, because I am late on leaving, I am going to leave. I will be turning over to our Vice Chair. Aurora, we will get your comments. I just wanted to thank Marcy and Palmer. Since I'm stepping out, I will be following up on all this. I think we have some good information and direction. So I will be following up on the comments here. In regards to our next presentation item, I just want to say if there are questions that come up with that, it was, and not to skip, I just want to capture things. There was an article, I don't remember the date, there was an article on this. But I do want to say that we're bringing these statistics. If there are concerns, then we can of course discuss them. I'll follow up with Chief Grenler. I'll follow up with Vice Chair Balter. If you have direct questions for me or you want more presentation, you want more information of any kind, please email me so that we could request that information from our Chief. So I just wanted to say that, and I'll be turning it over to you after I give the floor to Committee Member Martinez.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say I agree with both Wheeler and member or Vice Chair Buller. I do believe that both can be done. I think there's a compromise in all of this, as well as member Crawford. Citizens, yes, do need to be involved in transparency in some of this. I just think that right now, the board that we have right now, we have all had experience in one way or another involving first response. We understand investigation or fire or codes and compliance. I think this is a really amazing safety committee, and we all have experience in some ways and so forth. I do think that it would be helpful to sit with the ARU unit or to also dispatch. It's been a while since I've done such like that, but we are all citizens at this point, and I do think that there are some things that we do need to address at a citizen's level. So I think that pulling this all together by talking about this, I think it's coming to a really good standpoint where we can find a common ground where we can do all of this. I think that there are policies that we should be able to prove at this level without having it to go on above. I think with us having the level of expertise behind us is what makes this committee able to do that. So I'm just saying that I agree with everybody on some level on all of this. I just think we're on that path.

Anyone else have anything they want to add to this discussion? Are you done with your presentation, or I mean, what's next? Do we, do you take some of this input we've given you and start looking at areas we can tweak the code, or I mean, because you're the experts in the code, right?

Vice Voler, I would not call myself an expert on the entire code. No, but it becomes our job to become an expert in the section that we're working on. There's a lot of sections.

Well, it's not land use, so it can't be anything like that.

I don't want to talk about land use.

Okay. Yeah. No one wants to talk about. I'm just joking. I think that a great next step might be to create a table, and I imagine my office may even be able to help with this, that established what it was that you all wanted oversight over because as I'm listening, it's not yet clear to me what your committee, what I am hearing is that you all want more authority than being just an advisory committee. It sounds like you all have reviewed your powers and duties that were established in your resolution, and that you want more authority than just performing the role of giving advice and advising the governing body. So the next step really would be what do you want to have purview over? So like, you know, the Planning Commission exists in chapter in the chapter in the code, and there's a table in chapter 14 that says what they actually review and what their role really is. So it sounds to me like, just listening, and I could be wrong about this, but you all are still a little bit in some brainstorming, and I actually know that you all have done a lot of work already about different models and what the pros and cons of those models are. But what we would do is literally decide what it was that you wanted to propose that you be, have more authority over. So yeah, I think that's our next step.

Well, it sounds like we need another work session, and that's something I don't know, you know, we'll talk, I'll talk with Councilor Chavez about that, but I mean, that's what it sounds like the next step is because it obviously, and then there's questions we don't even have, you know, answers to. I know part of the, you know, part of what we were waiting on is what does the, does the Mayor want this kind of phased into what we're doing as far as a review or just redo what the Public Safety Committee does, you know? But I can tell you, we talked about recruiting. Part of the reason why they lost so many people was they just got disenfranchised, and it was like, I'm just here to see, you know, presentation once a month, and that was it. And it was hard to get new members for a long time. So I don't want that to happen to this committee. Yes, Council.

And along those lines, and I've talked about it before, but I think that's where our role as Public Safety Committee members is not just to come to this meeting, is to actually go out to these different events that are put on by the Fire Department, put on by the Police Department. I believe on the 27th, it's Coffee with a Cop at Java Joe's, and listen to what the community is saying. I truly believe, and I've attended a number, especially when we were suffering with severe crime issues, and we had a number of former forums at various places, and even we just had one, and I know Cam was there as well, in regards to juvenile justice, going out into the community, listening to what is being discussed by the members of the City of Santa Fe community, and bringing that back to our committee because I think that's where it becomes key for us to have those discussions and processing that information and maybe recognizing what legislation we can bring forward. I mean, that was my discussion when I first came onto this committee with Councilor Chavis, is I looked at it from that perspective, is we're a committee similar to what we have going on at the Capitol at the Roundhouse right now, right? A legislative committee. They meet, they discuss, they propose it, they process it, and then that eventually comes to the governing body for some type of legislation.

And that's what I would like, right? Unless it gets killed.

Unless it's tabled at committee, yeah, we wouldn't have.

But at least if we had that information and we're bringing that information, and that's where my expertise obviously is talking to the Chief, talking to the members of the Police Department, talking to the RECCC, and finding out, "Okay, guys, what are you seeing?" And I ask all the time. I reach out to them and I say, "Well, what's going on? What's what's happening?" And not just the administration aspect of it. I talk to line officers all the time, and I say, "Guys, what's going on? You know, when we did the radio transition, and we had problems with the radio, I was talking to guys that were traffic officers, and they're explaining to me, 'Hey, we have crappy radio reception at this location, blah, blah, blah, whatever the case may be.'" Bringing that information back so that we can push that forward. That's where I see us moving forward as a committee. And that's where policy is developed that benefits not only these entities in public safety, but it also benefits our community members as well.

She's got a response to that.

Okay. Member Wheeler, I think it's important to say that the advisory committee, the resolution that you all have that establishes your powers and duties, can also be revised. There are a couple of committees that bring legislation forward, and they're at the advisory level. So I'm not here to advise you all on what the path is forward. My job, the role of my office, is to respond to governing body members as they generate legislation or ask us to research policy models. But there are committees that draft legislation. We would just have to change your roles and responsibilities.

And I think that's what you already have, and what I think would be, if I may, if I was to have an opinion, and if it mattered.

No, you're, yeah, please.

I just, I sometimes do wonder, you're not the only advisory committee that has had these frustrations with saying, "We have no teeth." But I sometimes wonder if the committees are not flexing, they're, what they're not exercising the powers that they already have. I don't see any reason why this committee can't do what Member Wheeler was just saying already. So, you know, there's that, too. It's getting smart about how you use the authorities that you already possess. But that's just me.

Two points. One, someone brought up, which I thought was excellent, we should hear from the Mayor. You know, if we're going to do a work,

He popped in the last meeting. We, he, work session just for a few seconds.

Perhaps we could give him a more sustained role in discussing it in work session. So that's point one because it's clearly he must have a framework of why he's suggesting this. Second point is that I think it behooves us, and I agree completely that, you know, as members of this committee, we should be out there talking to citizens, talking to officers, talking incidents, et cetera. I think that's an excellent way of gathering information. But we should not leave information on the table not explored. That is the information that is gleaned from the internal affairs files, which as if we did some sort of oversight, we would have opportunity to review that, and that would also show patterns and practices that would also show challenges that training needs. I'm not sure that I really understand what legislation, nor do I am I comfortable yet saying we should have a legislative role, but perhaps that option is one, but for me to help the department be its best at its highest and best, reviewing all the inform.

ation at our disposal to suggest and recommend trainings to perhaps help. My view of this is this is a role of helping the chief. Now, maybe the chief doesn't want this help, which I can certainly understand, but that's to me, we have that obligation. So I agree with you that you talked about gathering certain information. I'm just saying there's another whole pot of information that is there that we should have confidential access to. Is there anyone else?

Just one more quick thing I just wanted to ask you about, and I'm going to ask Ammen if we can possibly get the mayor here at the next meeting. The Quality of Life Committee, what's the makeup of that and what are kind of their? Because from my understanding, the Quality of Life Committee came up after I retired for the most part. It wasn't something we had when we were still working for the city. And from what I understand, everything has to go through Quality of Life now for the most part, except for like Chapter 14 types of planning and land use issues. But it seems like, what is their makeup and what is kind of their

>> roles and responsibilities?

>> Council Member Ballader, the Quality of Life Committee is, as you say, it's one of the three standing committees, and it is comprised of city councilors.

>> So it's made up of all the city councilors then?

>> Correct. And the mayor appoints their seats.

>> Okay.

>> It's just like, so it's like Finance.

>> Correct. It's the same, the same model as the Finance Committee.

>> Exactly. And then what they hear, like what types of matters they hear?

>> Is established in city code. So, and I was going to pull it up and it's not up quickly, but I can definitely tell you what they, but like when we send legislation, for example, they don't just review legislation, they review all kinds of different things. But if we send legislation to them, it's because it falls under their purview. It'll be just like we'll say, you know, a bill or a resolution that has to do with public works and utilities, it'll go to Public

>> Public Works or anything that has a

>> financial

>> financial impact goes to Finance.

>> Correct.

>> But then everything goes to Quality of Life for the most part, right? Or no?

>> I don't know if we, I, okay. And the other

>> from my office. And the last thing is, and this is probably another question for the mayor, I don't know if it's in your purview, what is there anything going on with the Health and Safety Department? As far as I know, there had been discussions now that Fire and Police had been moved back under the city manager. Are there any departments, are they doing any kind of reorganization in Health and Safety? I've heard whispers of different things, so that's why

>> Council Member Ballader, I am not at liberty to speak about that at this exact moment.

>> Okay.

>> I would say stay tuned.

>> Okay.

>> No.

>> All right. Well, thank you.

>> Yeah. I guess that's all we've got for this subject. Next, we're going to have a presentation by Chief Gundler on use of force update.

Vice Chair, committee members, I was asked to put together a presentation for Santa Fe Police Department use of force statistics going back from 2021 to 2024, which was the last full year that we provided statistics. And I do have something going up, but it's not going up. All right. I believe in your package you have the printout anyway, so we can go ahead and go forward with that.

So, in 2021, we had a total of 77,239 calls for service. Of those calls, 19,461 were self-initiated. And as you can tell, every successive year after that, it goes up in terms of total calls for service. And with the exception of 2022, so do the self-initiated calls for service.

And looking at the use of force incidents in 2021 through 2024, in 2021 we had 79 incidents. And that's approximately 1.02 incidents per 1,000 calls for service. Now, there aren't an agreed average per use of force calls per 10,000. And when I say that, I mean that the IACP, the International Chiefs of Police Association, has a national average. It's different than the national average put out by the FBI. And that's different from the national average put out by the Public Safety Council. So the lowest one is actually through the FBI. And I use that because that's the most conservative number to put against us, which means that that's the best-case scenario. So by putting our numbers against what the FBI is reporting for national average, which is 1.2 incidents per 1,000 calls for service, that is basically the highest average I can place us against, which would be better than say IACP, which is 1.7, which we'd be underneath the entire time. So it'd be easy to say that we're just under the national average.

So in 2022, we also, which was strangely enough, had exactly 79 incidents of use of force. That year, it was approximately 1.03 incidents per 10,000 calls for service. Again, that's under the national average reported by the FBI of 1.2 incidents. And then in 2023, we had 103 incidents of use of force. And that was, that put us at 1.27 incidents per 10,000 calls for service, putting us just over the national average. And then in 2024 was the big jump, 131 incidents. And that puts us at approximately 1.57 incidents per 10,000 calls for service. Seems like a lot, doesn't it? Just jumped up so significantly. The thing is, is even at 1.57 incidents, or roughly what was that year? That year was 84,411 calls. That means that 99.85% of all the calls for service that year didn't result in use of force. Okay, that's, and I hate to say it, this national average, honestly, it's even bigger than that. And what that does, it kind of puts it into perspective. Now, was there a jump? Yes. What could be driving that? That's kind of a bigger question. Why was there a jump?

So on the next slide, you'll see in 2021 the two highest incidences for use of force were domestic violence at 19 and disorderly conducts at 10. And what that means is those were the most common calls which had a use of force. Everything else were one-sy, two-sies here and there. So those were the biggest groups of calls in 2021. And then in 2022, you see a shift. Shoplifting. We had 23 use of incidences or use of forces. And then disorderly conducts. Disorderly conducts, I'm going to tell you right now, that remains constant in terms of the two always one of the two highest groups for use of force. And that should be self-explanatory. Most of the time a disorderly conduct is a fight. So, and if those numbers have gone up, it's because our response times have gotten better. Meaning, we get there while it's still happening and not after the fact, which also can drive your use of force numbers. Get there after the fact, a lot of times the people are gone and you don't have anybody to arrest. So, that's one of the things, but the shoplifting is kind of interesting. And the reason why is in 2022, the New Mexico Organized Retail Crime Association put forth state law which now you can take a myriad of shoplifting crimes, put them together to create a felony crime. So it's retail organized crime. So the same thing is they use the RICO statute for federal crimes, and to show that it's an ongoing criminal organization. They've done the same thing with retail organized crime because it's become such a systemic problem throughout the state. And what was happening was these, everybody's shoplifting. Why not? You're out the same day. You get before a judge and they say, "That's naughty. Don't do it again." And they're back out. So they didn't, they didn't care. They were getting caught all the time. And if they got caught, oh well, bummer. I'll get out of jail. If they did, if they didn't get caught, then they were successful. Well, the big change in 2022 as we started implementing the organized retail crime laws, and because of that, now they're getting time. Now getting caught becomes a bigger deal. So whereas shoplifting before people weren't fighting because they knew they were going to be out, now they're fighting because now they could be facing some serious time, especially if they're prolific shoplifters, which many of them are. So in 2022, you start seeing the shoplifting. It's always one of the two highest in the groups. And also again, our response times have gone down. Our staffing levels have gone up. And what that means is we have more officers on the streets. We have more proactive activity going on and we have lower response times, which means our officers are getting there when the crime's happening, when the fight is on. And it's good, but unfortunately you are going to see a result of that and it's going to be a higher use of force. And that's only because again, for our shoplifters, they don't want to go to jail for long periods of time. And for our disorderly conduct people, if they're still in the middle of a fight, sometimes they're going to swing on the person who grabs them first and they don't realize it's a police officer until it's too late.

So again, speaking to our vacancies, in 2021, we had 33. In 2022, we had 38 vacancies. In 2023, we had 22. And then 2024 we had 13. As of today, we have four. Our vacancy rate is has gone way down. Just did four cadet interviews today. So we may not have any positions soon. We may be asking for positions. So again, staffing and response times plays a great deal into use of force. When our officers are getting there way after the fact, there's nobody to get into a fight with. Everybody's gone. When our officers are getting there in the middle of something, unfortunately, sometimes that ends up in a use of force.

Now, in terms of total arrests, in 2021, we had 2,762. 2022, we had 3,665. And then in 2023 we had 5,228 and then again 5,065 in 2024. That is a direct correlation to staffing. You see the staffing numbers go down or the vacancies go down, you see the arrests go up. Okay? And no, we can't arrest our way out of a problem. Again, if we're showing up on scene and we're able to respond timely, that's going to be a natural byproduct of what's going on is the ability to respond quickly and with proper staffing.

So, I did get the one thing is when I put this together, I didn't have the 2025 numbers. But a very good lieutenant of mine was able to crunch the numbers, pull them off some of the other reports, and I was able to get some other numbers. So, in 2025, let me find all my information here. Where is it? Okay. In 2025, we had 83,034 calls for service. So, this is the first time that it's gone slightly down. But that being said, we had more initiated calls for service or more self-initiated or proactive work than we've ever had. Calls for service coming from the public to 911 are down. That's good. If we have more proactivity, we're getting less people calling for emergencies. That's what we're looking for. That's a good thing. We also only had 106 uses of force for 2025. And coincidentally, 2025 was the first year we did not have an officer-involved shooting in the last five years. That's a big one. The year before was a tough year. So that's, that's again something to look at and it goes towards our processes. We have both a use of force committee. It's made up of use of force instructors, supervisors. Also we have some civilian personnel that sit on that committee. It meets once a quarter and it goes through every single use of force that happens in that quarter. I can tell you right now we get, we get some that are sent back, meaning that the supervisor at the time looked at it in Blue Team, which is a supervisory software we use to track all of this.

They sent it. For whatever reason, the supervisor reviewed the video, looked at the statements from the officer, and went, "Okay, it's good." Signed off on it. It went to the Use of Force Committee, and they said, "Wait a minute." And between the people around that table, they said, "Yeah, I think the sergeant got it wrong." Then it went back and it gets addressed. And in terms of "gets addressed," I don't care if it's three months later, four months later, if it was found to be excessive or unwarranted, it goes back to the supervisor. It usually goes back to the supervisor of the supervisor who basically made the bad call or misunderstood it. And they address that. And then they also address the sergeant, whether it be training, remedial training when it comes to reviewing use of force, whatever the case may be. And that happens both with use of force and also with our crash and pursuit committee. And then it's made up of the same kind of people: driving instructors, civilian personnel, usually lieutenants, sergeants, officers, things of that nature. And again, they sit around that table and they'll look at every single crash, every single pursuit that happens in that quarter, and they'll make determinations. And it's either, "Yep, the sergeant got it right. They looked at it. It looks good. It's good to go," or they say, "No, this needs to be sent back and reevaluated."

You had a question.

I had a quick question as maybe other people on the committee or members. Who initiates a use of force complaint? Is it the suspect, or how does the whole initiation process start?

It initiates by the officer themselves. So basically, when they have a use of force, they document it in the report. It's documented. It has to be documented, in which case then the sergeant looks at it. If it's listed as a use of force, it has to go through and get reviewed by committee every quarter. So every quarter, some quarters they have 30 things to look at, whether it's between crash and pursuit or use of force.

So this is just, it's another, I'm familiar with NIFRS, which is a national fire reporting. So I'm guessing this is just part of your reporting system that goes on to the FBI and national.

Yes. So and Blue Team has a red flag system also. So what it'll do is it'll look at, yes, and if a particular officer all of a sudden is having too many uses of force, or what it considers a higher number than average, it will red flag them and bring it to the attention of the administrators, and they'll be like, "Oh, we need to look at that." We've never had it go off yet. And part of the reason, I think, is because our Use of Force Committee and our Crash and Pursuit Committee also has training involved. So if they start seeing trends, training immediately knows, and then they're in contact with policy review. And if we're not adhering to policy, then we start putting out training in terms of, "Okay, looks like we need some remedial training in pursuit. Looks like we need some remedial training in use of force." If it's a policy deficiency, same thing, like, "Hey, this policy needs to be updated," in which case again, the policy and review sergeant will take a look at it and be like, "Yeah, this hasn't been looked at since 2004, we need to update it." So it just depends, but yes, there's a lot of checks and balances there.

And the only other question I had real quick was when you gave us that 106 number for 2025, did the lieutenant figure out what that percentage was? Did that bring you below 1%?

No, it was still, even before, it was below 1%. But yes, it did drive it up. I think we went from 99.85 to 99.87. So it's a fraction.

Yeah, it's less than one point.

When you're talking tens of thousands of calls, and 106 to 131, it's small, but we're still well within line of national standards or national averages. So it just depends on how you want to look at it.

Is there any, I'm sorry, I interrupted. I didn't know if you were almost done, but I had a question.

No, absolutely. I can stand for questions. And again, our biggest thing was trying to look to see what's driving it, because even a little jump, we should look at it. We should always be looking at it. I was like, "What's driving that?" And just looking at the types of calls, our staffing levels, our response times, these are the big takeaways I got when I was looking at it, and when I had the lieutenant, and when the lieutenant was double-checking the numbers, he kind of came to the same conclusion. So there's a lot of intangibles that you can't necessarily equate to why one thing happens or another, but these are the most obvious to us.

Well, just, well done. First thing I want to ask, in regards to shoplifting, I know the feedback that I got from officers and also from the big box stores is they seem to have more of a hands-off approach. So those days of when I was working at Dillard's and we had to chase the guy down and wrestle him, the reality now, and I'm just looking to that where it started to see that we're seeing more shoplifting use of force connection, is it seems to me that the officers are the ones who are having to deal with those guys versus the loss prevention staff. If I'm correct,

You are correct. So they are, there is much more of a hands-off approach in terms of loss prevention. The interesting thing is they are working with our detectives for the New Mexico Organized Retail Crime. So they're doing a lot of very proactive things in terms of, yeah, they're letting them go, but guess what? They've got pictures. They've got 4K video. They're identifying these people. They're linking them to multiple crimes. Most of the stores know the big players now. So a lot of this is happening. And so even though they're not so much tackling them at the doors, so to speak, like they used to, they're doing something even better. They're getting that intelligence for us to build these cases. So these people do some real time. Awesome. I appreciate it, and I appreciate the work that you put into this, Chief. To me, the numbers look really phenomenal, and understanding that you are looking at those things to see what those trends are make a big impact to the community. So I appreciate it.

Any other?

Thank you, member.

Question.

Mr. Chief, you mentioned there's a non-sworn citizen on that committee. They're hired by the police department. They're usually already part of the staff. We have, how many civilian staff, Chris? 50. So we have a lot. They can be part of the, they can be evidence techs, they could be PSAs, they could be secretaries, they could be...

Special knowledge for the situation.

Basically, it's just a non-sworn position. And so basically, they're not a police officer, but they can work in some form or fashion with the police department. It's easier. We don't really have anybody on the outside only because these committees, when they have them, it's an all-day affair. They're there from 9:00 in the morning. They usually buy lunch and bring it in, and then they're there until 3:00, 4:00 in the afternoon. It takes quite a while to get through everything. So, most of them, because this is a self-instituted committee within the department, we can pay them to do it. Most people can't take off in a day and do that kind of thing. So,

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief. I really appreciate the in-depth look at use of force and how you're really, it seems to me that you're really looking very deeply into that, and then the training that's required after that. So this is a little off-kilter to that, because how do you track and then how do you follow up in the same manner with perhaps allegations of racial discrimination or allegations of, in this particular case, it's got ethical violations, false arrests, high-speed chases. What, describe to me that process, because you're so thorough with this use of force process.

No, not a problem. It basically falls into the same software. So all of these complaints get logged into our software, whether it be for racial discrimination, whether it be for, you know, pretextual stops, whatever your pleasure, it gets logged. So a lot of times, same thing, the software will detect, like, "Oh, we're seeing a high instance of this." Even say if the officer was looked at and exonerated, exonerated, exonerated, if it's coming up over and over again, the system will still flag, "We need to take another look at this," or a second or third look at this, whatever the case may be. So it still gets looked at. Every complaint, one of the things about Internal Affairs, when I was in Internal Affairs, I got a new lieutenant who came in, and he had to, he wanted to sit in for me to take a, I was taking a complaint, and I knew this one individual who was coming in. I had taken his complaint before, and I was like, "This would be a good one for you to sit in." And he came in, he sat in. An hour and a half later, he goes, "I don't know how you do this." And I was like, "Because you have to, because every complaint's important." And the reason why he said that is because this person was very much out of his mind. The story that he came up with was extremely convoluted, fanciful, involved dead presidents and all kinds and UFOs and secret government agencies. But the fact is, is I told him, I was like, "Here's the problem is in that hour and a half of incoherency, he did mention an officer. He did mention a date, and he did mention an incident. We can look into that." And he made a, and so in all of that, he did make a complaint. Turned out to be completely unfounded. But the thing is, is I told him, I was like, "You don't have the luxury of saying this guy's crazy and then just ignoring everything he says. You have to listen to the whole thing, and you have to make a determination of, is there something in there?" And we try, we try very hard in Internal Affairs to say, "I really need you to get to the point." Problem is, is if you do that, sometimes you chase them away. So that's the hard part. And the thing is, is because of that, I very much, we take every complaint. I don't care what it is. And yes, it might be, you know, completely off in left field, but sometimes you will get an actual complaint in the midst of the noise. So the fact is, is we take every complaint. Every complaint is looked at. If it's more of an operational complaint, we'll do exactly that. We tag it with an OC number. It's assigned to a lieutenant. They have 30 days to investigate, complete the investigation, get it up through their chain of command. And a lot of times they'll be sent back, be like, "Hey, you didn't explore this. Why was this not, this question wasn't answered? Why not?" And not so much anymore, you get a newer lieutenant who isn't used to that kind of thing, and then you tend to send them back a little bit more. But most of our lieutenants that have been doing this a while, they investigate it thoroughly. If it's a more serious claim, then it'll stay with Internal Affairs. It'll get a number, and it will be investigated as well, and then it goes through the process much like I've already explained.

Vice Chair: Without creating undue burden on the Police Chief Department, perhaps as an analog to our discussion of the oversight responsibilities for this committee.

We could periodically, I leave that up, get statistics on some others besides the use of force and complaints.
I think that's the type of stuff that we're looking to do is what I would think. Well, and one of the things, I apologize, we do have our end-of-year report coming out soon that covers a lot of that. And the internal affairs portion of that end-of-year review covers the amount of complaints, what were the highest complaints, things of that nature. So, it is covered. But yes, anytime you guys want a certain something, let me know. We can pull it up if I have enough time. Bruce, did you have some? Thank you.

What I'd like to ask of you, Chief, is I think it would be best for the education of this committee if you could actually have a member of your staff bring forward an actual Blue Team example and kind of walk through it. I think it would be beneficial to the members of the committee to understand exactly how that goes through.
All the fields that it captures, just to understand when you receive something along those lines, this is how it's processed through Blue Team. This is the type of thing that would go to IIA and there would be a full-blown IIA investigation. This is something that's more operational that would go back to the lieutenant for them to, you know, just for education purposes. I would appreciate that.
It shouldn't be too difficult. The other thing we're doing is it's being incorporated now into our Axon software. So, it's going to be self-contained. So, right now we're in this transitional stage, but it shouldn't be a problem to find an old one that has either already been adjudicated, looked at, whatever the case may be, redact some of the names and show you what the process is. That's not a problem.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Do you have anything else you want to add or?
Well, not on this, but obviously...
Oh, yeah, you're further down.
I'll be presenting the stats here in just a second.
All right, thanks. Next, we have, I think we're going into action items, and it's a request for approval of General Services Contract Service Software Agreement with Image Trend for incident call reporting software, a total of $400,660 or $5849 including GRT, a four-year term. Acting Chief Outerbridge.
Yes, sir. This contract is our software contract for all our reporting for EMS and fire incidents. This contract is just due. It's up and we're putting it back through committees and that's our four-year contract.
So it's an existing vendor, no new vendor, no new...
No new vendor, no new stuff. It's just a renewal of a contract. Yeah.
What are the wishes of the committee to approve? Motion. Do I have a motion or?
Yes, to approve.
I'll second it.
So we had a motion. Okay. All those in favor signify by saying "Aye."
Aye.
Any opposed? No. Is it a roll call?
Okay, because it's finance. Chavez. Member Finger, member Boler.
Yes.
Member Wheeler.
Yes.
Member Piltshire.
Yes.
Member Crawford.
Yes.
Member Robertson, member Martinez.
Yes.
Member Liswood.
All righty. Sounds like we have a unanimous approval. So, the next thing we have are discussion items. Back to Chief Gundler. Matters from the Police Chief.
Don't worry, I'll make this quick. It's January, so we only got one month of staff to get through. So, in 2025, we had 1,881 self-initiated calls for service. In 2026, we had 2,529. So, that's an increase of 34.4% for self-initiated proactive activity. That's a good thing. We like that. For calls for service in 2025, we had 4,892. In 2026, for this month or for this last month, we had 4,093. That is down 16.3%. We like that too. Less people are calling for emergencies, that's a good thing. And then total calls for service were 6,823 in 2025 and 6,071 in 2026. And that's down 1.8% for total calls for service. Again, that's a good thing because most of the, almost all of that is because of less calls for service. Almost, well, about 800 less calls for service for the month. So, real quick, I think I already covered this. We got four sworn vacancies as of today, but we also did some interviews, so we shall see where that goes. We have six cadets that are in the background phase for July Academy. We have one lateral in background phase right now and two are scheduled to test. We have five laterals that are scheduled to test out of field training and that's actually been updated. We actually just tested out three of the five laterals. So, they are now on the streets serving our community. And then we have eight cadets that are actually in the academy. They just finished week three and very proud of that. If anybody knows anything about the academy, first couple of weeks are really tough. They try to weed them out. Basically say if you're weak, you're gone. And for all eight that have gone in and they're still there, that's very promising. So we're very happy about that. Now, we got 16 civilian vacancies as of today, but we also made six offers to candidates who recently interviewed and so with any luck, we'll start filling some of those positions as well. So, real quick, I got Lieutenant Larmy, Charles Larmy. He is our day shift commander. He'll be presenting the case of the month for patrol.
Okay. Just real quick, did Cam, did you have a question?
No, sir. I was just, I do have another meeting in three minutes, so I do have to go ahead and hop off. I apologize.
Okay. We still have a quorum, right? Okay. Thank you, Cam.
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Lieutenant Larmy, Department for Captain Montano tonight, with the patrol case of the month. I'm not sure if you guys are aware that we posted a very successful pit maneuver a couple weeks ago for an armed robbery attempt. That is what I'll be discussing tonight. The primary officer was Officer Antonio Valdez. The officers that were involved were Sergeant Richard Hildebrand, Officer Andreas Sanchez, Officer Derek Arn, Officer Damen Lopez, and Officer Caesar Granados. Our suspects were Du Hood and Heather Martinez. On Wednesday, January 28th of 2026, at approximately 5:45 p.m., officers were called about a possible robbery at the location of the Love's ETA on Cerrillos Road. When officers arrived, they were informed that the suspects had gone into the store, attempted to purchase items with a possible fraudulent card. They put the items on the counter, but the store's policies state anything over $300, they have to show ID. The suspects did not want to show ID. Suspects then grabbed the items and ran out the door. In this process, the neighboring business owner came out, tried to stop them. At that point, the suspects did draw a handgun from their waistband, pointed it at the person trying to stop them. Also, as the suspects were trying to get away, the owner was pinched between two vehicles and dragged underneath the car. Thankfully, not life-threatening injuries. The officers on scene then gave out the description of the vehicle with the license plate. Other officers who were in the area located the vehicle at the Santa Fe Place Mall and tried to initiate a traffic stop. The vehicle did not stop. The officers then decided to use the pit maneuver and it was successful. The vehicle did spin 180 degrees. The officers converged on the vehicle, gave commands, suspects came out without further incident.
Anyone?
Yeah, I saw the, I saw the thing on social media, so I've already seen the whole thing.
Go ahead. I just want to comment on, you know, back in the day, pit was a bad word and only state police could pit vehicles and they didn't allow, you know, us in inside the city jurisdiction or the sheriff's department even for that matter to use pit maneuver. And thankfully the research and the data has shown how effective it is and how it actually eliminates risks to the community when we're able to do a successful pit maneuver. So, I'm proud that you guys were able to do that and make this apprehension of these individuals. So, good work. Great. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And thankfully when he initiated it, he avoided a trash dumpster that was right after it. So, we were happy that no one got hurt. All right. Anyone else have any? Well, thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you, committee.
Next up, I'll be asking Captain Patrio to come up. Doesn't have a case of the month, but he wants to recognize his section for the hard work they're doing right now.
So, Vice Chair and committee members, we just kind of want to put some perspective out there and hopefully we can go home and tell our family members and whoever else to wear their seatbelts. So between January 18th and February 3rd, and we just had another one over the weekend, we had three fatal motor vehicle crashes, and all these had the same thing in common, people not wearing their seatbelts. On the January 18th crash, it was a single vehicle crash. Driver driving down I-25 South right at the 282. Went off the road, hit a guardrail, rolled, and was ejected. So that's one of them. You know, our fatal team was called out. They went out there and keep this in mind, there's four primary traffic officers and they are responsible for responding to every fatal motor vehicle crash. So, you know, they responded to three of them in about a little under two weeks. Like I said, there was two more in December. So, it was an ending to a bad year, bad ending to a year, and then we've already started with four this year. On January 21st, there was another one. You guys probably saw the media release on Calle Rio. That young lady was traveling above the posted speed limit, lost control, and unfortunately the vehicle she collided with was much larger than hers, a large utility truck. Once again, not wearing her seatbelt. I'm not saying she would have survived if she were wearing her seatbelt, but we don't know. The third one was I-25. The exact same mile marker, just one was north of the mile marker, one was south of the mile marker. Same thing. Young man traveling down I-25, once again went off the road, hit a guard rail, rolled his vehicle, was ejected, and was struck by another vehicle. So, we just need to remind everybody, please wear your seatbelts. Airbags are there, but they're not going to work if you're not in the car. So, the other part of it is to highlight that once again, there's only four traffic officers and they respond to every fatal that there is. Maybe not all four of them at the same time, maybe only one or two, but they still respond and they have to see the aftermath of the crash and sit there with it. You know, Vice Chair Boler and Chief Wheeler, they know all too well what we see at these crashes. So, please remind your families, your loved ones, your friends to wear your seatbelts.
We had another one, motorcycle this weekend, right? Right near my, on Osage, right?
Yes, sir. Fria and Osage.
Yeah.
Traveling down our Fria. It's still an ongoing investigation. Very close to his destination.
Helmet.
I don't know if he was wearing a helmet or not.
He was wearing a helmet, but it came off during the crash. So...
Yeah.
I just want to comment and follow up, Captain, in regards to your comment of the four traffic officers and, you know, one of them is very close to me and I know that the investigation doesn't end that night. The investigation and, and even though some of these are single car crashes, some people say, "Oh, yeah, well, we know who was at fault, right?"

"We know who was involved in the crash, and we don't need to pursue all this." That's not the case in these fatals. These officers have to go through every single detail because it follows now to the civil action that's going to take place. So, I appreciate their detail and the time and energy that goes into these investigations. And yes, the trauma that's affected by these officers, in addition to the fact that these four guys, one of them's on call one day out of one weekend out of the month. They've got to be available to come out. So that means whatever they're doing with their family is now subject to them being called out. And so I think we forget about that sometimes. And so I appreciate them, and I appreciate everything they're doing. And I know that it's a long, drawn-out process. I know that they're still working on those fatals from the beginning of the month up until today currently. So I appreciate that.

I just had a question, and I think I know the answer, but on all these for these fatal officers, do they all go through a PTSD type of critical incident? I know in the fire department we have what's called critical incident stress debriefings. I was an arson investigator. I did eight fatal fires in my career, and I can still tell you the names of each of those eight people. So I know what they go through, and all of these cumulative things give you PTSD, whether you really... I don't know if you guys have the same kind of mechanism. Whenever there's something a big fatal, the fire department typically those crews go through a debriefing with a counselor sometimes.

Vice Chair Voler: Yes, there is. We do have a peer officer support team, and they set up the critical incident debriefs. In this case, there is one being set up. We were planning it for this coming week for the fatal on I-25 where the young man was hit by another vehicle. The big reason for that is not only the trauma of the crash, but a lot of the members of the police department actually knew this person. It's a close-knit community, and some of the members went to high school with him.

Thank you for that and for the discussion. They appreciate the challenges of a specialized unit. And so, that brings a question to my mind, Chief. You have very little vacancy at this point. Is that the case across all the specialized units?

Yes, we're getting pretty close to filling all our specialized units. But at the same time, traffic officers for a city our size, I'd like to double it at least. So there are some needs we want to address, and that's part of the reason why we've been pushing so hard to try to get these vacancies down because in reality, we should be bigger than what we are. So, we should have more than the allotted officers we have. And if I have my way and if I'm still in this position, I'll be advocating for expanding that. Thank you.

Thank you, Captain. Next on the agenda, did we already have the Survey 90 results? That was part of the...

I was going to say, they're in your packets. So, I was going to say you guys go ahead and look at them as you will because we're getting pretty long in the tooth.

Yeah. A real quick question, a little random. Have you been contacted, Santa Fe Police Department, by ICE?

So no. What we try to do, because trust me, this is an ongoing conversation between our city leadership, ourselves, and our federal partners. They don't really tell us what they're doing, and they're not going to. To be blunt and to be as accurate as possible, they don't have to, and they're not going to. I have cultivated a relationship with the AOD, which is the person who's the field director for ICE in New Mexico. He's been willing to let me know after an operation has happened if they've taken anybody and what days they conducted the operation within the city of Santa Fe. But most of these instances where people have been reporting in Santa Fe bulletin board or on Facebook that, "Hey, there's ICE here and there," it's almost exclusively been our officers working operations.

One of the things I was going to say was our Captain Montoya here is our investigations captain, and he really wasn't going to say much because the fact is they're running lots of prolific operations both for various units, and just stuff we can't really talk about because unfortunately it gives it away. So the fact is that they're doing a lot of proactive stuff out there right now, and half the time they're being identified as ICE. It's our guys, and they're clearly marked, but people are taking a fuzzy picture 200 feet away and saying, "ICE is here." So, but to answer, the short answer to your question is no, not really. I've been forced to try to contact them because obviously the constituency puts stuff out there online. They're making inquiries to the mayor, who's asking questions, who in turn is asking questions of me, and I'm trying very hard to keep a good working relationship between the AFO for ICE for the state of New Mexico and us. But it's a tenuous thing. If I push too much, they could close it down completely and not talk to us at all. So, it just depends.

Thank you, Chief Outer Kirk.

Thank you. Good evening, members of the committee. So, just a couple items. We were asked to bring a few numbers forward. A number of years back, we noticed that we had a need within our department. We had one medical officer at the time. Over the last several years, we've been able to bolster that EMS division, and now we have four EMS captains that work within that department. Part of the purposes with these EMS captains is to help have some oversight with our paramedicine and our EMTs and help provide feedback and training and quality management and quality assurance with the medical care that we're giving to the individuals in the city and with the ARU. They've also been helping with the ARU and getting them up and running.

At this point, we've noticed that the ARU has been running fairly well over the last several years that they've been going. And we've moved that EMS captain off that unit to let them kind of operate within their wheelhouse. What we've seen over this last year is the ARU has ran approximately or exactly 827 calls for 2025 over this last year, and they're working Monday through Friday, roughly 8 to 5 or 7 to 6, depending on some of their schedules. We haven't seen that change too much over the last several weeks with this change. They're still running about the average same amount of calls that they have been on each day.

But the change that we have seen is that our EMS captains have had a lot more time. One of the things that we've tasked them to do since they were promoted is give feedback with our cardiac arrest calls, some of these high acuity calls. And that's something they've really struggled doing over the last several weeks. They've done 100% of quality assurance and management on all our cardiac arrest calls. They're able to bring... they've had the time to provide the stats to the medics. They've had the time to look at all the different parts in a cardiac arrest, to how much time lapses when we have pauses in CPR. So, we want to minimize that as much as possible, right? We want CPR going all the time. And so they're able to see how many times did you have a 10-second time when you weren't doing CPR, and those are important to see what kind of quality of CPR is being done by the crews on scene. And we've been able to track all that and be able to give this feedback back to the crews to help them better perform the duties that they've been charged to do.

Some of the other things they've been able to do with these stats is not only look at cardiac arrest, but other high acuity calls and provide feedback. They're able to look into patient outcomes and look at why some of these patients went into cardiac arrest in the first place. And so, it's been a huge success already in the last few weeks having these medics, or these EMS captains, perform these other duties that we originally wanted them to perform in the first place. And we're able to see better care given, better EMTs, better paramedics within our community. And so it looks like so far it's been a pretty big success with that small change, along with the ARU still able to fulfill all their capacities without them on that truck the whole time. Now the EMS captains and all our ambulances are still a resource to ARU as they are out there. They say, "Hey, this looks like this is not just a community health visit kind of idea, and there's an actual medical concern here." We're there within minutes, right? They initiate an ambulance to come or the EMS captain to back them up, and they're there available with them. And so, that was one of the big issues or big matters that we wanted to bring forth today. Along with our normal call volume of last month was 1,691 calls, and it's kind of on our normal target like we've been doing. So, if there's any questions, that's all the matters I have.

Anyone have... Well, I just wanted to say real quick, it's a great job you guys are doing. And you know, coming from the background I have, just every EMS captain is a paramedic. Correct. To qualify for that position, you have to be a paramedic.

You have to be a paramedic to qualify for that promotion. So even though it was well-intended, because you may hear about this because people might ask you about the ARU and stuff like that, and we've heard on this committee that we need more ARUs, which I totally agree with. But when I was talking about whispers about moving, you know, having health and safety, it's my opinion, and I think it may come as a policy that the fire department may want to initiate eventually, is that the ARU really shouldn't be under the purview of the fire department, just like I also believe animal control shouldn't be under the police department. Not to say those two are similar, but to have a paramedic captain on an ARU unit, when you look at the types of calls ARUs are going on, it's really like sending a brain surgeon to someone who needs Narcan, basically. And that's the real... I mean, that resource. So, you know, and when you look at what is involved in preparing someone to be a firefighter EMT, there's no need for that ARU to have someone who's cross-trained as a firefighter either. I think long-term they should probably have the caseworkers be required to be, say, EMT basics, but they don't... I don't believe they need to be paramedics because there's always a backup paramedic backup. They don't need to be, you know, from a management standpoint, to have a captain, someone who's a captain position, and all of that training to be sitting on an ambulance on an ARU, to me, seemed insane. So, that's just something that you may hear about in the field. I think we need more ARU units, but I think staffing them at this high of a level isn't... And that's the type of things that I think this committee, those are the type of policy things that we can lend our experience to help with that. So, I just wanted to...

I was just going to comment, I think that that's the first piece of legislation that you can start working on.

But it's not something that's in the code. I mean, it's not something in legislation. That's a direct policy, and I believe part of the whole health and safety thing we're doing.

And that goes back to the discussions with Chief Joy when he was still in that role, is trying to recognize what positions, what, you know, we were talking about red light cameras, and we're not going to even go down that path, but red light cameras, speed enforcement, it's an administrative. It's not something that really in all the years in the past when we entered these programs as a city, they fell under the police department because they thought, "Okay, here it goes." And in all reality, it's an administrative position that should be overseen by an administrator, not somebody who's gone through the police academy and has received all this training, is checking all this. So, it's the same type of perspective, and I think that's where we go back to look at some of the models. And, you know, I know Albuquerque's program isn't perfect, but they definitely have brought forward a lot of individuals that are responding to those ARU type calls and resolving some of those ARU type issues. Granted, I understand there are times when we do need a paramedic there to deal with those individuals, but I think that's probably where we start looking at that, and maybe that makes it more efficient for the fire department as well.

You're absolutely correct. And it's the same thing when this, when the program was first initiated, they did have also a PD officer that rode on the unit with them. So they had a bunch of people on this truck, and I think it was recognized right away by the police department that they said, "Hey, is this the best use of our resources with this guy that's highly trained to do certain things to be there?" He is with them, right? Or those officers are there and available to this unit whenever they're out. And this is the same for our EMS captains. They're available 24/7 whenever they need a little bit extra.

Anyone else?

Just one question. Are you able, if it might help us going forward, if there are stats on the ARU calls and how they're determined who goes, whether he goes or not?

So, ARU, they determine where they go and what they do. So, they're not dispatched to any certain call from the RECCC. They decide what calls are appropriate for them and their level that they can provide to the people that need their kind of care or that they need their expertise in managing what kind of situation they're in. And so they look at, they look at the calls from the PD CAD, they look at the calls from the fire CAD, and they say, "This is someone that could use our help, and that's where we're going to go focus our time." And they also take the referrals from the PD and fire side, and they go and follow up on those referrals and get those people help that we're referring to them as well. And so they're able, that's kind of how they produce their workload and what they're doing throughout the day.

In addition, if I may expand on it, because I deal with it from the other side because I have a mental health client, and so oftentimes I call RECCC and I say, "Hey, I need the ARU." Or if the ARU isn't available and I'm just calling it in, the ARU is monitoring that screen and they see my client's name pop up, and they already have a rapport with her. So, they automatically, they may jump the call and say, "Hey, don't send them. We're going to take it." Or they'll call me and say, "Hey, Eric, we saw that her name is on the screen. Can you give us some background on it?" So, they're very proactive in that perspective. And I'm sure I'm not the only one that uses that resource where they've identified that the ARU is useful to a mental health issue, and they may call and talk to the dispatcher and say, "Hey, we need the ARU. So and so on the ARU has an established rapport with this person. Can you send them? Are they available?" So it definitely makes a difference.

Anyone else?

Thank you, Chief. Anything else, Chief?

No, sir. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. And next we have Kyle, Emergency Management.

Vice Chair Ballader, members of the committee, thanks for being here. We've had a busy month on the planning front. We've had a hazard mitigation plan kickoff earlier this week. As we go through that process, it's like a year-long process where we start with identifying hazards and then figuring out what we want to do about it. And that's going to involve quite a bit of stakeholder engagement certainly within the city, but as well as with partners from Santa Fe County, public school system, regional hospitals, New Mexico State, et cetera. In parallel with that, we're working with the fire department's wildland division on a robust wildfire risk assessment of Santa Fe and immediate surrounding areas. This is going to be a kind of a comprehensive update to a plan that was, or an analysis that was last conducted in 2006.

On the organization front, you know, like everyone else, we're working on putting together budget requests and staffing requests for the upcoming fiscal year. Like everyone, we'll be asking for more staff and more money. We are, you know, getting ready for wildfire and the associated public safety power shut off possible challenges this spring. We've been meeting bi-weekly with the fire department and then bringing other individual stakeholders into that conversation to have very specific targeted workshop type of discussions around what we intend to do and just prepare for those hazards. And in general, we're just increasing coordination across all city departments and continuing to coordinate closely with our partners at Santa Fe County, Bernalillo County, City of Albuquerque, other whole community mutual aid partners like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

We are supporting the police department's special operations team in purchasing new special operations PPE with some FEMA funding that we have available to draw down. Along with that same grant, we're entering into a new contract with EZRI to keep building out this Ready Santa Fe platform as well as the backend that we use for a lot of our operational planning and response efforts. We've been super busy with training and exercising. Just today, as I mentioned during my presentation, we delivered an executive leadership disaster preparedness training that really focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the policy group at the highest level and what they do as far as resource authorization, supportive policy during disasters, complicated mutual aid efforts, and delegation of authority.

In the last two weeks, we also had a water distribution emergency tabletop with the water department. We just happened to be having that exercise while the county was having their own challenges in that space. And I won't give you the full list, but there's just a number of upcoming training and exercise opportunities that range from hazard specific tabletops to large-scale MCI and hazmat responses. Taken as a whole over the last year, last fiscal year, we've delivered more training and exercises than we have in the last five years combined. We've delivered 10, best estimate, and then we've participated in four as the representative for the city's emergency management function. More important than just a number, we've been exercising across every FEMA community lifeline, not just traditional public safety. We're also increasing partnerships with public works, public utilities, and public health functions while, of course, continuing to support our traditional public safety partners. And we're seeing a lot of success with that already.

Our Code Blue and winter weather responses over the last few months have been the best they've ever been. We're working with the fire department in Santa Fe County on a joint wildfire preparedness day event that'll happen this spring. And then in general, working with them and other partners on preparing for special events seasons. Talked a little bit about Code Blue the last few months. Tomorrow night, myself and the Human Services Director will be giving a presentation at Quality of Life that's specifically focused a little more in depth on how we're building this all-hazards disaster response capability through these humanitarian efforts. And one indicator of that is that we've had zero deaths and zero cold weather injuries on our Code Blue nights this year from both police department and fire department data. So things are working. I'll leave it there for questions.

Anyone have any questions? Oh, great job, Kyle. The only thing I might say is you might want to think about moving up the wildfire preparedness stuff because if we don't get any moisture at all, the season's going to start in the winter instead of early spring.

Agreed. Thank you.

Roberto, sorry you had to stay here and listen through all of this, but you're up. It's a long wait.

Thank you, members of the committee and everybody here. No, it's good information for me as well, so I'm happy to be here. Just going over our January stats, total calls received, 26,279. 911 calls received, 5,934. Our answering time for 911 calls, we answered 86% of our calls within 0 to 15 seconds. Calls referred to 988 or calls referred from 988 to our ACC, 19. We currently have staff vacancies at 10 right now. And my intent is to pursue an intense recruitment in March for staff. We recently renegotiated our collective bargaining agreement, and our staff's starting pay is now at $25.52 an hour, which is competitive, if not better, than most of the 911 dispatch centers in the state. And the supervisors can make up to $40.20 an hour depending on experience. So the pay is much better than it has been in the past few years and competitive with Bernalillo, APD, and Rio Rancho as well. So we're happy about that. That's all I have.

Anyone?

I'm just going to say, and I'll probably talk about this on Thursday, is there anything that we can do to help you, Roberto? I know that you are always looking at different ways for us to try and get more people into the dispatch center. And it's not an easy job. It is a very difficult job. It is a very high-stress job that people don't even fathom. I don't even fathom to the degree of how stressful it is. Is there anything that we can do to try and help you to get those vacancies filled?

I think that, you know, I've discussed this with former Chief Joy and Chief Moya as well, but when there is a cadet that is testing that doesn't quite meet the maybe the physical requirements of those positions, to refer them to come work with dispatch, even if it's going to take them one to two years to test again, we can definitely utilize their talent for those two years to help us out. Myself, I wanted to become a paramedic or a law enforcement officer and fell in love with dispatch and never left. So, I think that those are things that we can do as a group to recruit people and to get them to come work at RCC, even if it's for a short amount of time, it still helps us.

Thank you. As someone whose son-in-law was a dispatcher and then went to fire after several years, that's a good idea. That, I think that's a really good idea.

I dragged, I'm the one that dragged him in there.

Oh, yeah. I was in a band with his brother. So,

Oh, okay. So, you're to blame.

Yes.

Okay. Matters from the committee.

Anyone? Matters from the chair. She's gone right now, and I don't have anything to say. So, next meeting is St. Patrick's Day. It looks like that'll be fun. With that, we're adjourned. Thank you everyone for pulling a late one.