The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-10-21
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (22,596 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Community and Public Safety Committee met on Tuesday, October 21, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., with roll call confirming attendance. The meeting opened with a mayoral proclamation recognizing Diwali, the Festival of Lights, including remarks on its cultural significance and Portland's South Asian community. The committee approved minutes covering August 12 through September 23 by unanimous consent, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. A presentation on Domestic Violence Awareness Month featured representatives from Rose City Self-Defense, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office, and the Multnomah County Domestic Violence Crisis Response Unit, describing prevention programming, prosecution efforts, survivor-centered deflection, and crisis response services; figures on victimization reduction and program staffing were presented. The committee then received an update on the public safety call allocation study, covering proposed changes to call types including death calls, alarm calls, and welfare checks, along with a planned 45-day pilot program beginning November 1 to gather data on welfare check calls involving weapons or safety concerns. Extensive discussion addressed alternative responders, including Portland Street Response, PS3 community safety officers, and park rangers, as well as concerns about a separate Portland Street Response phone number. A final presentation covered Portland Police Bureau overtime categories, staffing and trainee pipeline data, and requests for more detailed future reporting. The next meeting was scheduled for November 4.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good afternoon. Call the meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, October 21st at 2:30 p.m. Diana, will you please call the roll?
1 Zimmerman here. Smith here.
2 Morillo here. Novick here.
3 Canal here. Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?
4 Welcome to the meeting of the community and public safety committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance. The committee agenda at ww. Gov. Agenda slash community and public safety committee. Or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at that link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Thank you.
5 Thank you, christopher and diana. So today's meeting, we have four items on the agenda and an additional item that will be right up front. So on our agenda we have approving the committee minutes for August 12th through September 23rd, we'll receive a presentation and recognition of domestic violence awareness month and highlight some of the resources available. We'll receive a presentation that will provide updates on a recently concluded public safety call allocation study, and discuss efforts regarding 911 call diversion to improve emergency response times. And finally, we'll receive a presentation regarding police overtime and time allocation as it relates to a budget note from June. Before we get to that, though, I am going to we're going to have a brief proclamation here today, and I'm going to invite up paul as well as krishna anand, if you'd like to, to come up, I think I'm not sure if you're. Yeah. So yesterday, officially October 20th is the volley, which is a holiday you're going to hear about in just a moment from from dc paul. And we have a proclamation from the mayor here. We're going to read in just a minute. But first, I would love to pass it over to dc paul to introduce the item and talk about it. Thanks.
6 Great. Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. I am priya dhanapal dc for public works and today I'm here to talk about diwali as we celebrate diwali this week, which is also known around the world as the festival of lights. I want to begin by acknowledging that this celebration carries different meanings across different faiths, cultures and countries. For some, it marks the victory of good over evil, or others it marks wisdom over ignorance, hope over despair, despair, or light over darkness. But no matter where or how, it is celebrated across south asia, southeast asia, the caribbean or communities across the world, including right here in the united states, diwali is ultimately about the same universal idea that each of us have a light within us, powerful enough to dispel even the deepest darkness. And as we celebrate diwali this week in Portland, we join millions around the world hindus, sikhs, jains, buddhists who pass to reflect and begin anew. And over the five days of diwali, families made light diaz or small lamps and decorate their homes and share sweets and traditional meals, wear new clothes and illuminate their homes with string lights and the night with fireworks. At its heart, it's all about bringing light literally and symbolically into lives and communities. And I also want to take a moment to acknowledge what this feels like for first and second generation immigrants. Diwali also carries a quiet ache the memory of home, family and family celebrations that feel far away. And yet, even with that homesickness, people find ways to celebrate on weekends, after work or after school, keeping traditions alive across time zones and generations. And in doing so, they remind themselves and all of us, that belonging can exist in more than one place. And as an immigrant myself, I feel the privilege of being here today. While diwali celebrated by millions across the united states and also by more than a billion people across the world, and for those of us who celebrate it from afar, where we first learned to light, there's this recognition by proclamation means something profound. It is an honor to bring this tradition into portland's council chambers, and to see our city recognized that what has always mattered deeply for so many. So today, I invite everyone to wish your neighbors, friends and colleagues our a happy diwali. Ask them about the holiday. Check in on those who are celebrating, especially those who may be far away from home. A small gesture of warmth can go a long way, and who knows, you might find yourself invited to an amazing celebration with incredible food, sweets and joy. So in that spirit, as we celebrate today as a spirit of unity, of peace and shared humanity, I'm deeply appreciative of mayor wilson for this proclamation. And of course, councilor Kanal, thank you for partnering with me to help elevate diwali to city council chambers. Thank you.
7 Thank you krishna. Please feel free to introduce yourself.
8 And hey, good afternoon, councilors of the community and public safety committee. My name is krishna anand. The office of the mayor is a true honor to be here today to speak about diwali, the festival of lights. This holiday reminds us of the message that light will always prevail over darkness and hope will always overcome despair. Growing up, there was not always a public acknowledgment of diwali. It was something celebrated quietly at home within family and community circles. That is why I'm. I'm especially grateful that the Portland city council has taken the time to give this special moment the recognition it deserves. Your acknowledgment shines a light not only on this holiday, but also on the diverse communities that make our city stronger. As we reflect on the meaning of diwali, I also want to commend our esteemed deputy city administrator for her consistent kindness, professionalism and exceptional service to our constituents. Her leadership is a guiding light for all of us. In the same spirit, I want to recognize councilor Canal for his tireless work in codifying sanctuary policy. During last week's council session. Councilor. Your actions have brought reassurance and dignity to many communities across our city. During a time when such light is deeply needed. As a proud portlander and a hindu American, I'm humbled to serve alongside each of you. Your example is not only inspiring to a young public servant like myself, but also to our community at large. So today, as we celebrate diwali together, let us carry forward its message spreading light, compassion, injustice and all that we do. Happy diwali and thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak here today. Thank you.
9 Thank you to you both for being here. I have the privilege of reading this proclamation on behalf of the mayor, and I want to thank the mayor for letting me do that. So I'll do that now. Whereas the volley known as the festival of lights is celebrated by millions worldwide, including portlanders of hindu, sikh, jain, buddhist and other traditions, as well as those of india and nepal, sri lankan, bangladeshi, fijian, malaysian and other south asian heritage. And whereas, the volley symbolizes the triumph of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance and hope over despair, values that transcend cultural and religious boundaries. And whereas the festival is observed through the lighting of dias lamps, sharing of sweets, gathering of families and friends, and the renewal of gratitude, compassion and inner reflection. And whereas Portland takes pride in being a city that embraces diversity, inclusion and belonging, values that are deeply reflected in the spirit of the valley. Whereas portland's south asian community contributes vibrantly to our city's culture, economy and civic life, enriching neighborhoods, small businesses and public service through their creativity, food, music, ideas and perspectives. And whereas, in 2024, portlanders elected the first indian American to city council and the city appointed its first deputy city administrator of indian heritage. And whereas portland's diwali celebrations bring communities together through cultural performances, art displays and festive gatherings that strengthen intercultural understanding and showcase the beauty of south asian traditions. And whereas, in celebrating the valley, we affirm our shared belief in light as a universal symbol of goodness, unity and renewal and extend warm wishes to all who celebrate. Now, therefore, I, keith wilson, mayor of the city of Portland, Oregon, the city of roses, do hereby proclaim October 20th, 2025 to be diwali, the festival of lights in the city of Portland, and encourage all portlanders to join in celebrating the spirit of light, hope and community that diwali represents. Thank you. I will just add one last piece from myself, which is I'm grateful I got a chance to light a candle. Fire is not normally okay and here I don't think. But to light a dia that I brought from from my parents house here today and I'm grateful for the opportunity once again. So thank you for that. We will move into the next part of our agenda now, our first part. Dana, will you please read the first item.
10 Item 1st August 12th, 2025 to September 23rd, 2025. Community and public safety committee minutes.
11 Thank you. So the first item of business is to approve our committee minutes. These minutes can be viewed as at the link posted on the committee agenda. Minutes are approved by unanimous consent. Is there any opposition at this time to approving the minutes? All right. Without opposition, the minutes are approved. Diana, will you please read the next item?
12 Item two domestic violence awareness, prevention, response and services.
13 Thank you. And as our presenters are coming up, I just wanted to introduce the item by saying we're here to today to elevate the lived experiences and amplify the voices of those who've been impacted by domestic violence. Survivors need resources, support and safe shelter, as well as noting here that too many domestic violence survivors experience homelessness. As we go through this item, we want to signify our support for understanding the drivers of violence, investing in prevention, early intervention and response, and supporting the healing and reclamation of power of those who are survivors. I'll pass it to sarah avery, m.e. Please. I don't know who's going to start, actually.
14 Yeah.
15 Please introduce yourself as you go forward.
16 Sarah kay johnson, thank you for having me here today. I'm represent rose city self-defense, which is an empowerment based self-defense program. We offer trauma informed public classes for adults and youth, as well as private workshops and personal safety, safety and self-defense and de-escalation. All of our programing is free or, as we like to say, taxpayer supported. With the exception of self-defense. In 1979. As we've researched, we are the only city entity in the country that has this structure of two city employees, and we staff over 40 volunteer self-defense instructors that teach all of our classes. So what I wanted to share with you today is the framework for our classes. Our framework is prevention, survival, and healing. Under the prevention framework, we teach the following domestic and dating violence awareness dynamics of abusive relationships. Negotiating consent, assertive communication and boundary setting, as well as de-escalation skills. As we move into survival, we teach options for escape for participants, including moving away and the hard part of leaving an abusive relationship. We can use our voice with verbal defense that can be loud or quiet, negotiating or yelling, waiting as an option for folks that are not able to leave an abusive relationship safely. And finally, as a last resort, we do offer physical self-defense skills. Finally, we discuss the importance of healing from trauma, abuse, or any type of violence. Our classes create a trauma informed empowerment community of allies and supporters, and we encourage all our participants to start their healing journey. Upon completing our class. Finally, I wanted to share with you a powerful statistic over 40 years of research. I can confidently say that completing an empowerment self-defense course reduces victimization by 50%. And that's what I wanted to end on. So thank you so much for having me today.
17 Thank you. Councilors. My name is robin skarstedt. I'm with the Multnomah county district attorney's office. I supervise the domestic violence unit in that office. We are comprised of eight attorneys, two interns and two investigators that are embedded in our office. And our primary goal is to prosecute crimes of domestic violence all the way from violation of restraining orders and contempt cases all the way through ballot measure 11, complex assault and sexual assault cases. And we are staffed to address the needs that that survivors have at at each of those levels. I think one of the programs that we are are particularly proud of at at the moment that I would like to share with you, is a survivor centered deflection program. Many times in the domestic violence cycle, we come across an instance in which someone who is actually a victim of domestic violence is the one who finds themselves incarcerated. We have in Oregon, as you know, a mandatory arrest law, which means that in the in the throes of a domestic dispute, someone is taken to jail. And it's not always the person who is at fault. Sometimes it is the individual who has endured incident after incident after incident. And this program initially started through a grant that is is no longer funded, is one that we have committed to continuing to examine each case and make the determination as to whether an individual is actually a survivor of long term domestic violence, and then they are referred to our community partner, the bradley angle house, which provides them with housing support, counseling, all the the resources needed to get themselves out of that relationship and break the cycle. And we've had a wonderful opportunity to work directly with them and make referrals to their office, and then dismiss the case and not proceed criminally. Those are the kinds of opportunities that we're looking for to make a real impact on on survivors and to critically think about every case that we have in front of us. I appreciate the opportunity to work in this area and to present it to you, and would be happy to follow up with anyone who has any questions. Thank you.
18 Thank you.
19 Good afternoon. My name is emmy martinez. I'm the program coordinator for the Multnomah county domestic violence crisis response unit.
20 And good afternoon. My name is avery sage and I am the program coordinator with our domestic violence crisis response unit. We call ourselves the dv crew. And we do have a presentation to share alongside what we're going to share with you all today, a little bit about our program. So our mission is to provide immediate crisis response to survivors of domestic violence in order to increase survivor safety, connect offenders to systems of accountability, interrupt patterns of abuse, and to provide a comprehensive bridge to services in Multnomah county.
21 So just a little breakdown of what our program does. We are county employees. We are co-located with law enforcement, in particular Portland police bureau. We also work very closely with Multnomah county sheriff's office and hospitals. So we are located in the gateway campus. We share the same campus as the gateway center, and we are available seven days a week. So we have advocates that can help assist survivors of domestic violence from 7 a.m. To 12 midnight, and then Monday through Friday, and then 1 p.m. To midnight on the weekends. So the dv crew is comprised of four different programs with different specialties. But overall, our services are trauma informed and survivor led. We have immediate on scene crisis response availability. We do lots of safety planning, whatever that may look like. It could involve a security camera or just planning out the next step. We also do a lot of emotional support, culturally specific referrals to other community based agencies. We help with protective orders, help with system navigation and support. As we know, it's very complex to go through all those different systems. So we really do want to help support somebody going through them, and we collaborate a lot with a lot of system based and community based agencies. Creating a multidisciplinary team to staff cases of domestic violence.
22 So a little bit more about the breakdown of our team. We are a very small but mighty team. We've got emmy as the program supervisor and myself as the coordinator. We are more the admin staff and then our advocates. We have one in our divert program, which is our domestic violence enhanced response team. Those are going to be high lethality domestic violence cases. These come as referrals from law enforcement and also from community based partners. And that person works daytime hours. They also specifically work the intimate partner violence cases. And then we have six divas. Those are domestic violence response advocates. Those are our advocates that are going on scene with law enforcement or on scene to the hospital, wherever they need to be, to help a survivor get out of a crisis. And those are going to be folks that are working 7 a.m. To midnight on Monday through Friday. And then we have weekend folks from 1 p.m. To midnight, and they are servicing folks who are experiencing both intimate partner violence and intimate partner violence. So familial cases of abuse as well. We also have a special victims unit advocate who is embedded and on the floor with our detectives and officers doing a lot of follow up and medium to long term case management around dv cases that require just a little bit of extra support. And then our elder and vulnerable adult advocate program, this is also one daytime advocate, and a lot of that caseload is going to be familial violence. So a lot of adult children abusing their elderly parents. And this little flow chart shows how those cases come to us. And the differences between the programs.
23 And then this is us. This is a photo of our team and our advocates. And then the flier next to it is a flier that we give out to the precincts. So we want to make sure that law enforcement is aware of our hours of availability. They know how to page us. They know what services we provide and during our off hours. There's also an email address that they can email cases, and we will follow up as soon as we are able to.
24 Then we included quite a few resources and we want to be mindful of time. So the next few slides are just resources for any type of future research you might want to do. There's a lot of dv resources here in Multnomah county. We oftentimes lean on culturally specific agencies and our da partners. And so those are some of the resources here.
25 And then this is just our contact information. We're always willing to do case consultations and answer any questions that you all may have.
26 And we did provide some materials that you all have regarding our referral process and a little bit more about our programing. And then also the fcc resource list, which is a lot of comprehensive dv resources here in Multnomah county.
27 Great. Thank you all so much for the presentation. Colleagues, if you'd like to ask a question, please just jump in the queue or you can make comments as well. I'll go start with councilor Zimmerman.
28 Thanks, chair. No questions. Just, you know, councilor Smith and I have spent a long time working at Multnomah county. And when you're on that side of the river, this topic folds its way into a lot of our work over there. I think just that last slide or the second to last slide, if you see how many places dv work comes into the county fabric and it interacts with a lot of the providers, nonprofit partners in the community is great. I will also say, after many years of experience over there, I have come to understand that dv resources when it comes to budget time is an area where we often see small shavings of a program across 10 or 12 different areas of the county business, to all of them seeming small but in impact is actually significant. And that's been the the course for for many, many decades, if not probably the existence of dv resources. And so I bring that up because it's not something that the city council that we talk about a lot, because we're not as often in the social services side of things, but we are certainly a partner. We heard today that partnership with Portland police and the impact on our residents who are experiencing this are part of this is significant, and we have so many connection points. So I just appreciate you all being here today. I highlight my own experience at Multnomah county, being where we had to make those decisions. And I do keep that in mind on this side of the river in my work now, and that even a small shave of a program that's already been watered down across a continuum is significant. And so to each of you and what you shared today for the programs you work for, whether they be nonprofit, private or or government, I just appreciate the work that you're doing and that I expect you will continue to have to fight for the little existence that goes a long way for the person who calls at 10:00 at night. And so thanks for your thanks for your work.
29 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Morillo.
30 Thank you, chair. Thank you all so much for being here today. It really means a lot to hear from you and all the work that you're doing. I think we know that domestic violence impacts everybody in our community, but particularly fors that the home is the number one place where we incite violence with our domestic partner. So I just appreciate the work that you're doing and that sort of invisible violence that happens in our community that we don't talk about because it's happening behind closed doors. I had a question with regards to if there's a situation where someone is calling for a domestic violence incident, but they don't necessarily feel comfortable with police or want a police response, how does your group handle that? Or what resources would you offer to that person?
31 So we are a survivor led. We will work with somebody regardless of whether or not they want to pursue something criminally. The important thing is to give them all the information that's available so that they can make an informed decision. They are the experts in their life. You know, we don't want to increase the risk factor or make it unsafe for them. So we really do meet people where they are at. Our advocates are skillful and equipped to meet people whether or not they want to pursue. If they just want a one time phone call. It's really a wide range of services that we provide. But all you know, we are there are all survivor led. We never want to push anybody to do something that they don't want to do or that is unsafe.
32 Thank you so much. I appreciate that a lot. And I think anyone who's listening to that would feel very cared for by your program. So thank you for everything you do for our community.
33 Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Smith.
34 Yes.
35 Thank you so much for coming. And in talking about your program, I think, you know, when we think about domestic violence, it we oftentimes think about other people, but it's not other people. It is it is happening in our own homes. As councilor Morillo says. And I think the important thing is that we have information and education. And the question that I wanted to ask was. Are there more resources for other programs like a size, a city, size of Portland? Are people doing other things that we should be and could be doing? And any one of you can answer that question.
36 I don't know.
37 And that's okay if you if you don't know the answer to that. And the reason why I'm asking, because if we can identify other resources. It would be great and helpful. I do know that all the the crime statistics there on the Portland police website and you can look at those things, but I'm just I was just talking more about resources and and programing because that's what we all are always trying to identify, you know, where are the additional resources and or if there are additional approaches on how we approach the subject of domestic violence, are there ways that people are showing up in a way that we have not been showing up, and that that makes a difference in how you can help to save someone's life?
38 I think that collaboration and working together is really important. We really value the partnerships that we have created and fostered with our community based and system based providers. We also work closely together. So I think that that just collaboration and connection is important because we can't do it all ourselves. So we have to lean on others that have those resources available. And I think that in Multnomah county, we really do try to do that the best that we can.
39 Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it.
40 Thank you, councilor Smith. I'll just add two things for myself. And one is just I appreciate learning about the county side. I think one of the things that that I think our whole council has been trying to prioritize is exchanging information as, as broadly as possible, both for folks who might be watching this but not watch a county commission meeting, or vice versa. And I personally learned a lot and appreciate it. And then it's always good to see rose city self-defense here. I think one of my favorite events since being sworn in is, was on March 12th, where I got to see the graduation of many of those who were being trained and now are leading classes, and to to hear the stories that they shared, to get to be present and hand out certificates and not talk was great to get to hear them. So I appreciate that a lot. And, and to to hear about some of the ways in which that statistic of 50% is actually operationalized in their individual lives. So I really appreciate you being here and continue to to be grateful to the mayor for making it not a political football in the budget process this year, and we'll make sure that it's not ever again. So thank you.
41 Thank you.
42 Diana, will you please read the next item.
43 Item three update on public safety call allocation study. Call diversion initiatives and emergency response time improvements.
44 Colleagues, this is we have about an hour on this item, maybe a little less. And then we'll move on to into the other item that has some of the same presenters. But we'll be handing it over here to nathan lima and I think is going to get us started.
45 Yeah.
46 Thanks so much for being here.
47 Hi there.
48 For the record, my name is nathan leamy. I manage the team that does budget strategic planning and performance management for the public safety service area. We are here today to present on two of our quarterly reports for budget notes. The first up is around the call allocation study. So I'll hand it off my colleagues.
49 Thanks. Nick mcdonald performance analyst with budget performance team I've been working for the last couple of years on after. Andre miller's work setting this program up on the call allocation allocation study aftermath. So this is looking at the way in which we allocate 911 calls to send the appropriate responder to to the right call. So a work group was formed in after 2022 that began looking primarily at police call types because there was already an existing initiative within fire. This has been a really time consuming and difficult piece of cat herding, right? The number of groups who have been involved in this project is really a lot. It's everyone who uses the boec services. Everyone who has an opinion on this has chimed in, and that has led this project to run over. And I take responsibility for for choosing to let it run rather than push towards getting recommendations that I feel would have been as solid earlier on. And with that, I want to pass over to sherry and lieutenant russell from boec and pb to talk about the details of our recommendations.
50 Okay. Thanks, nick. I'm alicia russell, I'm a lieutenant with the bureau, and I currently am assigned to the chief's office. So as we've gone through this project, we've, as nick said, we've looked at every single call type, which is about 123 call types. You know, some of those we didn't spend a lot of time on because there wasn't there wasn't any necessary changes. Some we've spent a significant amount of time on and we'll touch on those today. And so what you're seeing is, like I said some we made some really minor changes to one example. These are all in the report, but I'll just use one example is a disturbance in progress call. That's a call maybe that there's a disturbance going down the freeway. We're most likely not going to catch up to that car. So after about 15 minutes that's going to be set up as a district call. If that car is registered in Portland and then we'll go. We'll set that up for the district officer to go make contact. So that's just one minor change in one example to those changes we made, we discontinued for we're recommending recommending discontinuing four different call types. That's the party call the prowl in progress. Call the juvenile call and the juvenile in progress call. Those calls can all be lumped under a noise call a disturbance call. So those just weren't they were seldomly used. And so we just were recommending removal of those. And then we also identified some training opportunities for dispatchers and for officers. One example right now I know sherry and the dispatchers are going through some training regarding domestic violence and how to, you know, understand that better, what qualifies as domestic violence and get that call type out there in the beginning. Another example on our end is, you know, we have volunteer chaplains and but they're volunteer. We can't guarantee how often they're going to be out in the precincts. And so just giving our officers better training on how to deliver those difficult messages to families if that call comes up. So that's another thing we identified as additional training for our officers. Those are just a couple examples. Like I said, that more are in the report. And then we'll what we wanted to talk about today was a couple of call types that needed more significant revision. And one of those was the death call. You can see there's a lot of info on this slide I know. But you can see the, you know, almost 8000 hours were spent. Officer time was spent on these calls last year. That's a significant amount of time. So our recommendations for that is well let me back up. So we had an officer that was part of that smaller committee group really dive into this call type. Looked at the ors, worked with our policy team. And we also had the medical examiners come to a couple of our meetings to discuss our recommendations. And we what we learned from them is they've made a lot of improvements on their response time to calls as well. So that was good information to have that interaction with them. And so that's and then also our policy team, they were revising this policy at the same time that we were doing this project. So the recommendations obviously we will still police will still be sent. If clearly if there's a criminal element that's suspected or is present, clearly if the scene is unsafe or if the medical examiner arrives on that call and they request us to be there, we will head to that call. Or if there's no authorized person present, and that is, you know, if this is at a medical facility where a medical person professional is present, medical staff or ems or fire, you know, if they're present, we will not be going to that call. But if they're not there, we will go. The only other responder that we identified to go to death calls is fire. Is Portland fire fire bureau. Although when we were talking to them about this, they were only stay on scene for about 30 minutes before they need to be clear. So that was the only other person that we identified as an alternate responder to death calls. So do we want to take questions about the specifics now, or wait till the end of after the next call type?
51 I think it might make sense to get through the full group of yeah.
52 Okay. The next one that we dove into was alarm calls. Again, a lot of info on this slide. We spent a lot of hours on these calls last year. And the number that's not on there, we we took 14,188 alarm calls in the city last year. And as you can see, 94% of those were false alarms. So what we're recommending is not responding to non-permitted alarms or no response if it is a permitted alarm, not responding after the third false alarm. Enforce fines for false alarms. And this is difficult. I mean, this will bring revenue to the city, but it is difficult. We have one alarm coordinator and I think she said there's about 40,000 alarm permits in the city, plus looking at 14,000 alarm calls. That's a lot of work for one person. Enforcing that fine. Makes sense. Like I said, to bring revenue to the city, but it's difficult for one person to handle that job and then eliminate officer discretion to waive the fines for false alarms. And what that means is getting rid of that exempt clearance code and just moving on in, in providing different clearance codes for officers and getting rid of the exempt. Unfortunately, when we were looking through this, we didn't identify any other responders to go to alarm calls. It just kind of came back to police responding to those calls. So that's what I have. Go ahead. Thank you.
53 Thank you. Councilors I'm sherri coss, interim operations manager at boec. Happy to be here with you today. The call type restructuring group I know is important to all of us, and we have spent numerous sessions and hours discussing discussing welfare checks. In particular, we've hosted meetings with psr, ps3, we've talked with behavioral health professionals and really tried to think outside of the box. We all agree that we should be sending the appropriate responder at the appropriate response level to these calls. Unfortunately, as we progress, it became quickly apparent that we needed more data. We were asking questions, we were having conversations, and we couldn't answer the questions because the welfare check is just so broad. So to continue the conversation, evaluate options and have be able to make appropriate and. Credible recommendations for these calls, we need a little bit more time. So let's if we can go to the next slide. Thank you. I want to give you just a quick review of welfare checks as a summary for some of those who may be watching or here who haven't heard this before, the welfare check encompasses again many different types of scenarios. It could be someone who hasn't been heard from in a while. Their mail is piling up, or maybe they talk to their daughter every single day at noon and they haven't answered the phone for several days, which is unusual. That would be a welfare check. Somebody missed a medical appointment. Maybe they're going for dialysis three days a week, and they've missed two dialysis appointments, which could be a very impactful and have serious health implications. Someone down on the sidewalk who's conscious but appears unable to care for themselves. This is going to be the person that a passer by stops and checks. Are you okay? And they ask the question. Maybe the person isn't able to communicate what their needs are and whether they're okay or not. And so that community member calls in and asks for help. Someone who's down and not been checked by the caller. We often see this when cars are driving by. They see somebody on the street and they'll call it in, but they haven't stopped to actually say, are you okay? Do you need help? So that's another one. And then somebody who appears unable to care for themselves, this could be several different things. Somebody slumped over the wheel of a car. Maybe it's sitting in the turn Lane and the vehicle's running. Maybe it's in a parking lot, but we don't really know what's going on with them. They're in a vehicle. It could also be the person who's walking in and out of traffic. Maybe they're yelling randomly. Maybe they're yelling at cars. We don't really know what's going on with them, but it's unsafe for them to be in traffic. And so that would be coded as a welfare check. Well, these scenarios are great. They don't paint the whole picture. So how do we determine who should respond and what are we going to do next? What the appropriate response is and who is the appropriate responder is what we need to determine. Currently, psr responds to welfare checks when they're available and psr criteria is met. I know a couple of weeks ago, council heard directly from psr project respond and the PPB behavioral health unit talking about how they're currently working together to provide service, the best possible service for a community. Ppb is also responding to welfare checks when psr is not available or when certain criteria is met. And this is where we start to see what is the full picture. Were there weapons seen or accessible to the person that is exhibiting the need for welfare? Check? Is the person reported to be violent toward other people? Are they suicidal? Are they in a non publicly accessible place like their personal home? Are they obstructing traffic? Are they on the freeway? Or as I stated earlier, are they slumped over in a vehicle somewhere in any of these? If any of these conditions exist, police are currently being dispatched to these calls in order to continue the discussion and make credible recommendations, which is important. We don't want to go fast. We want to make sure we're making the right recommendations. We need more information to quantify these calls. So PPB and boec have spent quite a bit of time working together to develop a 45 day pilot. We are currently in the phase where we are providing training for PPB officers and boec call takers, so that they will know what their expectations are and what we need them to do during this 40 day pilot, 45 day pilot, the next step would be to implement the pilot. As I said, it's a 45 day pilot. We're going to run it November 1st through December 15th. This timeframe is short enough that it will help drive high compliance with both officers and dispatchers and call takers, but it was also be long enough to provide statistically excuse me, statistically relevant amount of data that we can evaluate. Evaluation will be the third phase of the pilot is going to take place December 16th through January 15th. Four weeks seems a little bit long, but we're keeping in mind that we do have the holidays built in there, and we wanted to make sure that we gave a time frame that was something that we could meet. Boec and pb are going to collaborate, analyze the data that we've gathered, and then we're going to reconvene our workgroup, and we're going to talk about what we found, presenting our findings, looking at what our next steps. And we're going to start to have conversations again. We're going to invite psr, ps3, maybe some other first responders that we have yet to identify or alternative responders we have yet to identify and start talking about what can we do with these calls? Where is the appropriate response now that we know how many are falling into these various buckets? How many are safety concerns? How many might involve weapons? We can start talking about who is the appropriate responder. Is a co-response appropriate. We need more data to decide that the workgroup is going to meet again mid to late January through March. We've committed to providing the dca and this committee our recommendations by April. That gives us two months as a workgroup to start meeting with the other alternative responders, having those really deep conversations and really starting to evaluate what can we do, what can we do, and also what would need to happen for that, for that change to actually be accepted, not just recommended. Once those recommendations are made, we're going to have to have continuing conversations. Bhr will need to get involved. At that point. There are going to be bargaining implications to some of these, or potentially going to be bargaining implications to some of these recommendations. So bhr labor relations and our union representatives will need to be brought into the conversation. Once changes are approved, we'll need to develop the implementation plans. So that is all work to be done. But we're excited to get back to it, get this pilot started and be able to bring this committee the recommendations that we've guaranteed, well, guaranteed committed to by April 2026. And that's all I have. Thank you.
54 Thank you all. We have several colleagues in line for for questions and comments. So if you I think it may make sense to start with your questions for each of the colleagues that are going through. And I'll start with councilor. Morillo.
55 Hi. Thank you so much for presenting today. I was just and I know you stated a bit of this earlier, but I was a bit confused about why welfare checks, welfare checks, and unwanted person or suspicious persons were not part of the redistribution of alternative responses. I think that was the recommendation in 2023 and that has shifted. And I know you said that maybe there is issues with boec not being able to collect that information, given how complex it is, but other cities have been able to collect that data. So what is the barrier for us in collecting that information?
56 Yeah. Thank you for the question. We we did attempt to dive into these welfare check calls. We didn't just set them aside and say we're not going to work on them. We brought psr to the table. We brought ps3, we brought in other alternative responders and started having conversations with them. What we couldn't quantify is how many welfare check calls involve a weapon. How many involve somebody in the middle of the road where it might not be safe for an unarmed responder to singularly respond because, well, we only have two call types welfare check and welfare check p that encompasses all of those varying scenarios. There was no way for us to actually quantify it. So we kept meeting and kept meeting. And we finally all agreed. Both PPB boec nick was involved in the conversation and our alternative responders that we needed to do something to gather more data. Unfortunately, when we finally got to that point where we weren't making any progress in conversation, we were heading into summer. And so we can't add new things in summer and be successful. Unfortunately, with call volume and some of our highest call volume of the year in boec. And so the decision was made to do this pilot in the fall, we took October. We used October intentionally to roll it out because boec has in-service in October. So it's an opportunity for us to actually train everybody in person and make sure they have the information they need so that we could be successful.
57 So in other cities, you're saying that they are taking they have like more specific data sets that they're using, like it'll be an un person with a mental health crisis and then subsection with a weapon, or is that what they're doing? What are we what are they doing that we're not doing?
58 Unfortunately, I can't speak to what other cities are doing. I don't have that information. I can only speak to what we're doing. And for boec, we've got just those two specific call types. We do have other call types where some calls have been moved out of the welfare check category, like the exit calls. The calls that are going to psr currently are moved out when they're available and meet criteria. But when they don't meet criteria, psr aren't available and not an exit call. We're left with just two call types for this broad spectrum of calls. So we're trying to narrow that down so that we know exactly what we're dealing with and bring everybody back to the table and make solid recommendations.
59 Yeah, I think, you know, that's a little bit hard to hear because when we talk about policing, we use comparisons for other cities all the time as part of best practices. But when we're talking about restructuring our call types, for some reason, we're not looking at best practices in other cities. And I just think we cannot ignore that 80,000 of our calls were for welfare checks, unwanted and suspicious persons. When we're having slow 911 response times, 80,000 calls is massive. So the answer that we just simply don't have that data, I, I just want to really push for that information later because we as a council need that data to make decisions about what needs to happen moving forward. And, you know, as we're talking about the restructuring of call types, too, this is maybe more of a comment that I think is tangentially related, but applicable as well, is that Portland street response now has a different phone number. They're not going through the 911 system, and most people are not going to know that phone number off the top of their head. That was a decision that was made without city council. It was made by the executive. And I fear that the the way that these calls are being talked about, the way the data is being gathered, the number of calls that are going through either 911 or not going through that phone number that nobody knows about, are going to impact how we make decisions moving forward. So we we do need to understand best practices in other cities. And 80,000 calls is too, too many calls to not have clear answers for. So I appreciate everything you're doing. And I would just push for that data for us as councilor So that we can do our best on our end, too. Thank you.
60 Understood. And if I can just clarify, I know there's a lot of confusion around the psr phone number, and I understand that I'm not going to speak to how they're going to roll out their their campaign to get that number out to the public. But that number is answered at 911. It is not separate from the 901 system. It is the same people answering the phones. It just is not getting answered. 911 now it's getting answered. Portland street response dispatch.
61 So if I call 911 and I ask for Portland street response.
62 We're going to take your call. The 911 line. We take those calls on the on the line that they're received. We're not transferring people off to that psr phone number.
63 So what is the utility of the psr phone number that no one knows about because it hasn't been advertised?
64 Yeah, it's a better question for psr. I can give you the limited information I have, which they had. They had community members directly say they didn't want to be calling 911. They wanted a separate number where they could reach out to them in situations where there wasn't an emergency. And this was their way to be able to provide a way for them to do that.
65 Okay. But it's basically a fake number because it will still go to 911 and you could still have a police triage. So it's giving people the false impression that they could not get a police response, but maybe they will. I see stephanie howard has her hand up and she's on line.
66 Thanks for.
67 Go for stephanie. Sorry.
68 Thank you for giving. No, I'm sorry. I think that's a valid point. I think that the the point, though, that's missing from here is that that number is not triaged at the same level as a 911 call. So it does receive a reduced triage for, to accommodate for the situations where somebody is not feeling like it's an emergency, but it is being assessed in the same way. And I don't think there's I think the communication is, you know, is rolling out slowly. We do have plans for that. And working with the communications teams on how to raise awareness about the number, but we do intend to be transparent about that as well, that it is not a guarantee that it won't be triaged, you know, to a different responder, but it is a way to call a non 911 number and have it triaged at a less urgent rate than a 911 call.
69 I appreciate that clarification, stephanie. And maybe you and I need to have a conversation offline, because when I was here, when Portland street response was created, it was created as an emergency response system for emergency mental health crisis calls because our police officers killed too many of our residents who had a mental health crisis. That was the point of Portland street response, and now it's being used as a catch all for welfare checks, because we're not doing things to actually house people or give them treatment services that they need. So I would just say I'm a little worried about mission creep and veering away from what Portland street response was originally intended to do. And this is, you know, we're veering away from the whole topic, but I think it ties in together with how we end up counting these calls and how they're triaged and all of the above. So thanks for letting me let me rant a little bit, chair. I will stop ranting now.
70 Thank you. Councilor Morillo pass the councilor Novick.
71 Thank you, mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to say that I'm impressed at the by the speed of the schedule you're working under. I'm impressed to hear that you're working to deal with the death calls, which is an issue that I wasn't aware of. And with the alarm calls, which is an issue that I was aware of. And it seems like there's substantial potential time savings in dealing with those issues. I wanted to follow up on the welfare checks discussion, following up a bit on what councilor Morillo said. And I'm not saying there's necessarily an inconsistency here, but sherry, you and I talked in may, and at that point I thought you had a pretty good idea of how many calls were in each of those categories, like we talked about it and occupant welfare check. We understand that, you know, that that psr doesn't want to break into a house where god knows what's going on. But you said there weren't many calls like that and there weren't many missed medical appointment calls. And there were very few psychiatric review board revocation calls, which, again, could be a dangerous situation. So the impression I got was that the overwhelming majority of them are these person down calls. And I talked with stephanie howard and she said, yeah, theoretically when we're available we can take those. And the question I was asking of chief day is, couldn't the ps3's just take over these person down calls? So one question I have is, I mean, I understand maybe when you might sort of know that off the top of your head, but maybe working with your partners, they want to be assured what the data is. You're spending six weeks or whatever is to gather data. But it still seems to me that based on what I think you knew in may, we should be able to assume that most of these welfare check calls can go to somebody other than police officers. And it worries me that there's not a conversation with the ps3 starting until January, because it seems to me you should have we should have started having that conversation, you know, in July, like, hey, we know that most most of these welfare check calls are person down. And unless somebody called in and said it's a person down with a machete, why shouldn't the ps3's go to them? So I don't know if this question is really properly addressed to you or to dc bob cozzie, but I guess my question for you is like, do you still believe that it's really true that the vast majority of these calls are the person down calls, and is there what reason are you aware of that the ps3's haven't already been drawn into the conversation about how to deal with those.
72 Thank you for the question and for the opportunity to clarify. We did speak in may and you are correct. When we were talking about you gave three very specific examples there. The port, the psychiatric review board, very few of those calls. The medical. Can we switch to that slide or thank you. The medical appointments. Very few of those calls where where we can't say we do get a lot of person calls. We also get a lot of person in traffic calls. We get a lot of person is just unable to care for themselves. Those calls and even the three where you and I discussed, they're very few. I can't quantify them. I'm giving you anecdotal. They're very few, and I'm confident in the anecdote, but I don't have the numbers to back them up. When we look at the rest of those categories, all of those calls, the person could have a weapon next to them within reach. Maybe they're not actively using it. They're down on the ground and there's a weapon laying next to them. We can't we haven't been able to quantify those calls. And that's what we're trying to do. We're we want to make sure that whatever responder we recommend is going to be safe in both the community and the responder are going to be approached in the safest manner possible. And we can't do that without concrete numbers.
73 Okay, okay.
74 But I mean, maybe I'm dense, but it seems to me that the reaction to that should be okay. When somebody calls in with a person down call, call boec immediately asks, do you see a weapon? And if they say yes, then you send the cops and if they say no, then you send somebody else. So why is it that just sort of a policy decision as opposed to something you need to gather data on?
75 That is something that's happening. But those calls are ending up in welfare check because the primary concern is I'm concerned for their welfare check or for their welfare. And by the way, there's a knife laying next to them. It's not in play, but I want you to know that it's there. So the call type is still welfare check. It's not something different. And police are responding on it because we've set it up as a welfare check. So if for example, if if psr is available, it's their hours of service. And that call came in, we would not make that a psr call. We would make that a police call for service that is happening today. If it's simply psr available and there's no weapon in play, it's somebody down on the sidewalk. We've stopped, we've checked on them, or maybe we haven't checked on them, but there's no safety concerns and psr is available. We are dispatching psr to those calls today.
76 Okay. Again, that leads me to the question why? If you're already doing that, you're not you're not sending the police. If there's no weapon involved, why do you need to do a study to determine the numbers? Why isn't it just enough to say, all right, we've set things up so that if it's a welfare check, all the weapon we send the police. If it's a welfare check without a weapon, then we send somebody else.
77 Yeah. I don't know if you want to jump in. We had we brought psr to the table, we brought to the table. And as we talked about this, they had a lot of concerns about these things. If I'm going to take these calls on, how do I know that my people are going to be safe? And until we can put numbers around them, we can't really give them data about how many calls may or may not be involved.
78 But wait a minute. I mean, it seems like the way you said they're safe is that if you if boec is asking, does the person have a weapon and then you don't send the psr as a ps3? If there is a weapon, then maybe psr and ps3 is like, no, I need to be extra certain, sure that there's not a weapon, but I mean, I don't see how you ever satisfy them if you can tell them, hey, we're asking if there's a weapon we're only sending you if there's not, isn't that all? Isn't that all we need?
79 Respectfully, I don't think so. Because could there be a situation where there's a weapon laying next to somebody, and we want to send a police officer, but we also maybe want to send a behavioral health clinician or a psr representative as a co-response. And so as we have those conversations, the question then becomes, well, how many calls are you talking about? Well, we don't quite know. And so that's what we're trying to figure out.
80 Okay. But but do you know now how many calls do involve a weapon.
81 I don't, which is why we're going to do that pilot study starting November 1st.
82 Perhaps a little bit of interpretation as a first responder and somebody who's a little bit more on the lay side, it feels like some of the disconnect here may be how structured boec wants to be when responding to call types. We have 180 call types. That is what things get coded as. They don't get coded with an extra tag of there may be a weapon nearby until we create those additional codes. So there's a need for a process to go to say, you know, are there going to be five? We currently have one thing called welfare check or two if we include welfare check. P maybe there's going to be ten at the end of this or maybe only five. And what are those categories? That's what this process is going to be identifying. And intel those categories have been identified. They couldn't tell you what those numbers are besides the sort of general feel okay.
83 But I again it's I mean and obviously I'm not a I don't have any specialized knowledge here, but I just want you to know that to a layperson, they I think that I'm, I think that I'm sort of like a very ordinary layperson, which has very ordinary reactions to things. I mean, my reaction is, okay, isn't it a simple operational thing to do when you've got a you create a category of welfare check called person down that separated from the other things, and you ask for that category does is there a weapon there? And if there's not, then you have a category of person down without weapon. And then you can send all of those to people other than police. Why isn't it? Why isn't it that simple?
84 I think at the risk of speaking out of turn, because I would like psr to be here. If we're talking about this, one of the reasons why we've wanted to spend more time rather than less getting this right, is that every time we change boec is really difficult, right? You've got to retrain people who are working very stressful jobs, and you've got to get them really, really crisp instructions, or else we risk things going wrong in really bad ways and nobody wants that. So we want to make the right change. We also realize that right now, psr doesn't really have very much more capacity to take on more calls. It's operating at beyond its capacity right now. And until it scales, all of this is rather academic.
85 Well, but unless you start using ps3's instead.
86 You could do that. We don't really have a huge surfeit of those either, though.
87 Well, and the issue with ps3's as well, I mean, that's going to have to go into there, into bargaining with them, into their contract. So that's that's the issue with ps3's. And what we realized doing this project is they boec doesn't dispatch ps3's. They have a queue of calls they respond to, but they have they're not dispatched. I don't know if that has changed yet, but I know that's in discussion currently.
88 Yeah. Ps3 is currently respond only on low priority calls and boec does not dispatch pb on low priority calls. Those are self dispatch calls that they pick up in the queue as they're available. So that's something else that would need to change. And something else that's going to need to be talked through.
89 Bargaining okay. And dc because this is really to you I mean I've been talking to talking to chief dave for months and months about getting cps to do more things. And I thought that he agreed with that. And I understand that there's a bargaining issue, but to me, it seems like it's 25,000 calls that are welfare checks. And my guess is probably no more than 5000 of them fall into this. One of the specialized categories, or people having a weapon. And because the ps3's cost two thirds as much as a police officer, I it seems to me that it should be. I mean, as we're hiring more people, it should be a priority to say, okay, we're going to start sending ps3's to these welfare checks without a weapon, and we need to hire enough of them to do that.
90 Yeah. Thank you. For the record, bob cozzie dc public safety. Yeah, I've been taking a ton of notes as I've been hearing this conversation, and I think it's a really valuable conversation. You know, frankly, this conversation has been going for a number of years, and I know that we're all really frustrated by the by the slowness of the process. And I certainly understand that. And councilor Novick, I absolutely respect your idea about ps3's potentially taking some of these calls. And I've had that conversation with chief day as well. I believe he is on board, and he is trying to figure out a way to be able to work through the process, whatever that process is, to allow boec to be able to dispatch ps3's. That's not something that has been, you know, fully vetted. It's not a baked concept at this point, but I know that he and I have had that initial conversation.
91 Okay. Thank you.
92 Thank you. I'm going to pass it to counselor Smith, but I will say dc bob cozzie, you probably will be needed to stay up here.
93 Yeah.
94 Counselor Smith.
95 Thank you. Thank you. Co-chair canal. I want to go back to something that we talked about, and you kind of skipped over it fairly quickly. It's in regards to the slide about the alarm calls. One of the recommendations was to eliminate officer discretion, to waive fines for false alarms. I'm assuming that is part of the overall effort to enforce fines for false alarms. Is that correct?
96 That is correct.
97 And are there any other reasons for doing so.
98 For getting rid of that clearance code?
99 Yes.
100 No, that is the main reason for that. I mean, it helps support the permitted alarms. When somebody actually has an alarm permit. It shows like okay, these are false. And then we can, you know, gather that information on how many they've had. But a lot of officers, you know, they'll put the exempt code which is not chargeable to that person. And so if we discontinue that clearance code and they only have an option to say, yes, this is false and it's chargeable, that takes that out of play. If does that answer your question.
101 Yeah. Yeah I yeah. But I was trying to be clear that that was actually the reason. So I want to go back down to the the pilot study plan for next month. And it is a very aggressive and I commend you for attempting to do something like this fairly quickly. What are the what are you trying to solve for? What types of policy questions regarding psr and co-response have you already identified or you expect to come up with during the pilot program?
102 The pilot program is going to help us identify weapons. Is a small piece of it. Is somebody violent or aggressive towards another person? That's going to be a big one that we're going to be looking at. It's going to help us identify the number of people who are inside non publicly accessible spaces. So then we can start talking about in psr or whoever it gets brought on can start talking about, well, what can we do to get alternative responders into, into those spaces. And then the last one is people in traffic. You know, if I've got somebody that's walking in and out of traffic, obviously they're a danger to themselves. They may be a danger to the to the public in creating an accident, having having a police officer may be great to protect the scene, but maybe we also want to consider a co-responder that can actually engage with that person and figure out what they need and get them resources. So having the number of calls that fall into those categories is going to help drive those conversations.
103 Thank you, I appreciate that. And when do you all plan to come back to city council to report your findings, or are you coming back to the to our committee first to give the findings?
104 I can answer that. Most likely it will be this committee to provide an update. And that's why the deadline for this is April. I actually asked my team to because I mentioned earlier, this has been a project for a number of years. And I said, how about if we get this done by April 1st? So that's the goal. And then we can provide responses to this body. Certainly around that time frame.
105 Thank you. Okay, just one last question. What was the most surprising or unexpected thing you found during this study period over the past two years?
106 I my for me, it was I thought we were going to be able to get rid of a lot of call types and not just a handful. I thought we were going to be able to dismiss and condense it down, I guess, but that that just didn't happen because there was a reason for every call type. And so that's why we had so many meetings and unfortunately, that's why it's taken so long. That's one of the reasons it's taken so long because it's like, no, we really need to keep this call type. So that was the surprise for me.
107 I think for me, in all the meetings where we engaged other people, the medical examiners, psr, we we talked to parks, we brought all these people in the conversations we had and the concerns that they brought forward when we started talking to them about, is this something that you would be able to take on? The concerns they brought forward was probably what surprised me the most.
108 But for me, no doubt like how complicated and granular this problem space is, and just sitting over the course of 18 months in a room with people who have deep operational knowledge of these problems and listening to really, really thoughtful and sincere consideration of the reasons why we do things the way we do. And while they may not be optimal always, there are reasons why we got to where we are and the seriousness with which it's being taken of trying to get a great outcome from this. And I, you know, I would like to impress on everybody just how how impressed I've been with that workgroup and the genuine, you know, openness to really look at this from the ground up, from everybody involved.
109 And I have to say that I'm, I'm thoroughly impressed by the study and I appreciate it. Just wondering if there are any financial assessments for the key recommendations included in the executive summary of the report. For example, revising the death call type, will that reduce the amount of time that sworn officers spend responding to these calls?
110 Yes, and that's the goal obviously. Yes.
111 Okay. Thank you so much I appreciate it.
112 Thank you, counselor Smith. Counselor Zimmerman.
113 Thank you sir. Real quick. We went quickly over on the medical examiner piece. In terms of the hours that are being spent on death calls, we have paid for as a city, the hiring of district attorneys to help us have our caseloads move through. Would it make sense that we paid for the county to hire a medical examiner, so to speak, that's dedicated to Portland police calls or a way to speed this up? Because that seems like a lot of hours to me. Three, more than three, almost four full time officers working every single day only on death is what that number tells me. So maybe I'll just pose that as a to be considered. And we probably don't need an answer, but I'm just it made me think about that. Given our district attorney purchases. I'm curious how much the park rangers have been a part of this conversation. Anybody got insight into that?
114 We included them. We we had discussions with them. There are. I mean, I'll leave this to you, actually, why don't we.
115 It wasn't a lot because I don't have I mean, I don't know if that was early on. I joined the group in January, so I don't know if it happened before that. So I don't I don't have a lot.
116 There wasn't a big overlap of, of calls that we would send park rangers versus another response unit. It just the, the venn diagram of of that just wasn't very big.
117 Okay. It makes me wonder if it would be easier given the park ranger role seems quite similar to me in terms of ps three roles in specific spaces. And if the park rangers were part of the public service service area, if this couldn't be a more coherent conversation, because that seems like a significant public space that I hear about a lot, but I have never been able to get really a coherent answer about how we deal with disruption. Unwanted person, person down in the park, and why that ranger service exists when other people are getting called. So I would offer that up, as I think that right now is a gap for me in this analysis is park rangers, and perhaps they need to be in the service area.
118 So the only thing I would say about the park rangers is the statistic that stuck in my head was that they, they have a 98% success rate for not calling another service using PPB, and their take was that 98% of the time when they approach an unwanted person in a park or someone who's doing things, that's not making people very happy, saying, hey, would you mind doing this somewhere else? Or maybe not even at all? Like, that works most of the time, and there just isn't that much interaction with the number one system for the park rangers. But maybe that's something we can look further into.
119 Yeah, it's anecdotal for me, but I don't recall as a dispatcher, as a supervisor, and now in my current position, hearing a lot about calls coming directly from park rangers. When they're out in the parks, they're doing they're doing their thing, right?
120 Right. They're doing the thing, but they're not part of the apparatus. Right? All things are the apparatus. So that that's what's interesting to me. Right? I think about some of the other security apparatus that exists out there, and they seem to be connected into the 911 system as things escalate. But we've got this one entity which is city sanctioned but is not within the apparatus. And that for me is concerning because they do have good success rates when they're, they're. Good. Point. Can somebody articulate what our expectation is of an alarm program as we listen to it? I'm trying to understand if these are auto calls like I bought an alarm system, it goes off. And this company, I pay a fee to calls you on my behalf. Or are they? I called because I'm getting a notice on my phone that an alarm is going off in my house, because I'm curious about some of this exemption, non exemption, false alarm stuff. It's not totally clear to me here.
121 Yeah it's all of the above. It's all the alarm calls. And yeah like I said I think the biggest part of this is changing that clearance code. So we don't have the discretion to say yeah this is just exempt. It's not false. It's not chargeable. If we get rid of that discretion, that's the that will be the biggest change to this. But like I said, we have a lot of alarm permits and a lot of, as you can tell, a lot of alarm calls. And we just don't have the staff. I know that's a problem with everybody. We just don't have the staff to to look at every single one of those.
122 The tenant can you can. Do you have any idea the last time Portland responded to an alarm call within 30 minutes.
123 Or within 30 minutes? Oh, well, yeah, I mean, obviously an alarm in progress call with some. Yeah. Oh yeah.
124 We do. We actually do.
125 Oh yeah.
126 I think that's news to me. Right. As somebody who's like had friends call and say called the cops 12 hours ago haven't hadn't had a response. And then I go there and on the 13th hour I actually end up as I'm coming out of their house, I see a police officer, which is is nice, but I was under the impression that a lot of these alarm calls were dealt with well after the fact. Not in the moment. And I guess in the moment for me serves a can we catch the bad guy, or can we help the person who maybe is in distress? And it wasn't clear to me that any of that was happening when we had this alarm discussion, but it sounds like maybe that is happening.
127 It does happen. It just depends on what information is given to boec is if like there is somebody there's video, right? There's somebody in this building or in this restaurant right now. Yes. I mean, that's an alarm in progress that is or burglary. And we are we're going there.
128 Okay. That's good to know. I did not realize that. I kind of thought we weren't in that weren't able to meet those anymore. Okay. Thanks for clarifying that. That helps me in the.
129 Rest of the purpose here is really to drive down the number of times these alarms go off, right? The purpose of finding people is not to generate revenue. It's to get people to take their alarms more seriously. So we we get rid of this 94% of false alarms, and we could go after the actual alarms in process more efficiently. Right? We can these officers who are not chasing the 94% false alarms can go to the 6% that are real faster.
130 Exactly.
131 Yep. Okay. So. If it's all of the above that make up the 94%, I guess I'm curious for the manually initiated calls. What is leading a person to make a manually initiated false alarm call?
132 I don't think they're meaning to make it a false alarm. It just like, you know, there's some that happen because the wind, the wind blew the door open, right? And so the alarm went off. Right. That's.
133 Yeah. I'm going I'm going past a building. There's a siren going off. I call 911. And it turns out that someone has forgotten to set it properly.
134 Exactly. We get a lot of those.
135 Somebody did it one time.
136 Yeah. That is actually she said her niece did it one time. Right. We've all seen the kid who dialed 911, and it's kind of a cute video, but it's also like it's a burden on the system. I thanks. I'm just this is an area I don't know a lot about and what our expectations are as a police force and our expectations as a community and and those types of things. This is this aspect of it. I'm mostly kind of learning from your answers here.
137 And I think a lot of them are, you know, somebody arrives at a restaurant and they don't have the proper code. I mean, I don't know how many calls. I mean, that is a very, very common call myself. So yeah, it's a huge number of them.
138 Thank you for that. I want so with respect to the unwanted person discussion, I think a lot of that because in my experience, both here in this role but also previous roles of a number of businesses, but also working with the esd's who are constantly getting called by their members to come help them with a person who is in the lobby or in the shop and won't leave, has decided to take their clothes off, has decided to smash things, whatever that is. They're they are in crisis and the staff has called for help. Sometimes it's the esd, and the esd then calls police, because the esd is kind of put themselves between the public, the person in crisis. And now we're waiting for police or first responder. I'll just use first responder interaction as we parse this out. If I'm the employee at the coffee shop who calls because there's a person in crisis in my coffee shop and I need help now. Do you see a path in this work, while well-meaning, to get the right responder to the right place, that it actually increases my time as the caller to have to sit and deal with that situation longer on my own? Versus are we giving up time to get to the right service, which is a is a lofty goal to get the right service, but are we giving up time? Am I going to have to sit in that moment of crisis longer as an individual if I've made that call, given this this body of work?
139 Yeah. I think you said a couple of things that stood out to me a little bit there. Somebody that's actively in crisis, they're acting out. They might be breaking things. That is a priority call that is going to be dispatched and sent to police immediately where the weights are coming in. Is it somebody who is sitting in a coffee shop lobby? They're not buying anything. They're not doing anything. They're just sitting there. Maybe it's cold outside and they're warm and they don't want to leave, but they're not being violent. They're not being aggressive. They're just calmly sitting there. Yeah. Those are the calls that are the lower priority calls that the officers are going to respond to as they're able to in between the higher priority calls currently.
140 Okay.
141 I'm not sure if that answered your question or not.
142 It does. It just it highlights the complicating factors here. Yeah. In terms of of trying not to over dispatch over meaning the severity of the first responder, but also not giving up. I want to go back to my colleague kind of made a point about the new number for psr. I will say I'm very happy to hear that kind of critical questioning happening over there. I have spent way too many phone calls working in this building where there's this false narrative that's in the community that if you're concerned for someone's mental health, you shouldn't call 911. And I watched that creep into moments of what I would call deeply their crisis moments, and that for whatever reason, we continue to have news stories when they cover a psr expansion of staff, they then put, oh, also, it has a new number and that has created this really unfortunate cultural dialog we have in Portland that if you want to get in touch with psr, you should call this number. And I think we need to be leading that. Any moment of crisis is still a 911 call, and they'll get dispatched. If psr is the right factor, part of that narrative, I think, has come actually from those early days of psr and when there was a struggle about will it, will it fight for its existence or will it not? I think we have to keep on, and I appreciate my colleagues up here who are also calling into question that new number, because it's very concerning to me, and I recognize that some of the deep advocates have really railed against calling 911, but I think it it confuses people in the moment. And we always have to say, if you feel unsafe or you think a person is unsafe and it's in crisis, there's only one number and it's 911, let the rest of the triage happen because I think the staff is capable of that triage. Last point I want to just kind of make. I do appreciate that we've started touching on some rps3 parts of this conversation, but. I'm I come from having worked in communities where community safety officers are a pretty significant part of the public safety apparatus in our community. We call them ps3's. They are non weapon carrying, non firearm carrying. But part of that police response force, they're not officers in the same way but highly trained capable of taking lower priority calls. And in a lot of communities they clearly visually send a signal that they are part of the public safety apparatus. But we have done something in our community that I think that makes them look more like they're driving grandpa's station wagon and doesn't really send the visual that that is part of the authority or the scene securing kind of apparatus that we have. So when a this is the city that works car pulls up that has normal paint, that could be the same thing. The mayor checks out to go to a public event, and then a person gets out of that vehicle who isn't really dressed in what we might call more of an authoritative state or any sort of branding or badging that looks like it's even related to police, I think has diminished what ps3's role in our community could be. And I say that mostly to you, the tenant and and mr. Causey. And I know that the deputy chief is also in the audience because I think we have a lot of room for growth in how we think about the future of ps3's. I think, I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about their scope of work, but it's also I think it's reasonable to have a conversation for what do they look like in our community, because part of these situations is securing the scene to a biased time. And when we can buy time with the person who's in the intersection dodging cars that may or may not be the person to interact with that person, but a vehicle pulling up with lights on can slow other traffic down to make the situation safer. And I don't think we have that apparatus right now. I will use the city of tiger to place. I used to work. Our officers drove the same police vehicles. Our officers drive here in Portland, our ps3's drove chevy silverados, but they were generally branded but a little lighter of the same kind of blue and coloring that makes it look like I know that somehow that vehicle is related to the police bureau. But we have this problem in our parks bureau with our rangers, and we have this problem with our ps3's where we haven't, I don't think, branded them in a way that tells the public that's a public safety first responder of some sort that's shown up to help. And I think we can grow a lot here when it comes to unwanted person, person in crisis, traffic situation, etc. Because these are complicated calls and I think we can put the ps3's to work, but I don't think they're set up to do it right now. That's more of a statement and a an invite for future conversations. Thanks a lot.
143 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. I'm next in the queue. So first, thank you so much, everyone for being here. I appreciate all the information, the answers to our questions. I think, you know, I had the privilege of working a little bit on the beginning of this phase of it, and much like councilor Morillo, I also have a chief of staff who is deeply involved in it. When I worked at the and when we both worked at the public safety service area, I'm just going to give the top line real quick and then get into the details. The top line to me is that we're this process has been kept on the administrative side, as our new form of government has been created, and that that appears to be working very well on some of the minor issues. But the big takeaway I have right now is that council needs to be taking this process over from a policy perspective, because this is not conveying. Well, let me ask you the question. Is there a single type of call that has been moved from one responder to another responder since the started in 2021 or 2022? Based on this study and this restructuring project, one type of call of the 4500 nature codes.
144 I would have to go back and look at my notes. I can't recall one to top of my head. I can't think of a specific call type that all calls were moved to another responder. I know we've had conversations and moved parts of calls, but not one specific entire call.
145 Certainly some of welfare checks has been moved over, right?
146 Some of welfare checks have been moved over. Not the entire call type. Okay. The the person down with no mitigating safety factors has been moved to psr welfare checks.
147 Okay.
148 Inside a building to.
149 They can now go inside publicly accessible buildings which has been a change. So now those calls are being moved to them. But the entire breadth of welfare check calls obviously has not.
150 Yeah, I appreciate that. And that's a huge call type. So that that's it's meaningful even if it's a part that. So I do acknowledge that I think it's been disappointing to see that we're not you know, we had the study from 2023 said that the the priorities, the 24,231 welfare checks that that were in the study, 23 of those, 24,000 were priorities four, six and seven, which I know you have criteria for determining prioritization. You've already walked, you know, you've already ruled out the highest priority ones, which are probably the one where someone's down and they have a gun sitting next to them. That's probably not going to be a lower priority call, right? So you already have some systems and maybe exact numbers aren't there. And I get that. But that's that that's sufficient to know that we can be talking about the policy decision. As councilor Novick put it. I'll also note that an additional 4700 roughly unwanted person calls were priority six and seven. We have nine priorities, and we basically don't really use two of the levels much. So so we're seeing it lower on the scale already for a lot of these types of calls. These are both calls by the way, that that study said could be moved that they were eligible things. The nature codes were marked as either yes no or possibly for eligible for alternative response. And these are the ones among those who are ranked as as yes, I'll just say, and I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but it feels like it's it's there's something that's giving you pressure not to do it is how it looks to me from the outside. Because it this, this has been for years to not have any anything. My biggest concern is that having things come back in April is just going to be just too late to be part of the ppa contract negotiation, which is starting in January, for a contract that ends June 30th. Can you assure us that the things that we will get on April 1st will be part of the ppa bargaining, or are we going to be waiting five years plus another extension of a year if that happens again, before we can get this to be part of that conversation with the.
151 People, I can speak to that, even if it's not part of the larger grand scale bargaining. Any kind of change in work can be part of a demand bargain, and that's very common to deal with changes as they come and then have those conversations with the impacted union.
152 Okay.
153 So doesn't have to be part of the bigger picture okay.
154 That's fair. I think what we've been seeing come up has been a lot of the psr creation and delayed exit from pilot phase changes. That's where the welfare check conversation, that's where the entry into public spaces have come from. Psr was sort of stuck in a perpetual pilot. I want to commend you, particularly dca and on on the in his late term dca for for helping getting it unstuck from that phase. But but so that's why there's this this long separation of time between those two changes. But those are, those are both related to psr, more so than I think based on the outcomes of that study. I just wanted to flag that. I do have a bunch of questions, but I'm going to try to prioritize here. First, let me give the positive. I love the alarm change. I also think the death call type change makes a lot of sense. I had the the sort of coincidental because you never know what you're going to get on a ride along or sit along. And when I was in a sit along, I had a couple of the alarm calls come up and it was watching the the telecommunicators address, how they have to do that and just kind of explain what we have to send somebody to this. I think it makes sense. And I think you're making the right calls. Pun not intended for those and for the the four types that would be being phased out as well, as well as the the changes. As I was going through the, the notes and sort of that I took and the, the report itself, the other piece that that I wanted to ask about was about the chicken and egg aspect for psr. And what I mean by that is we hear when we talk about call type restructuring, that there's not enough capacity. Psr, I think you're right, nick. That and I by the way, I want to say I know how hard you work on this constantly and how good of a leader for this work that you've been. So I do want to to note that in terms of the development of this. We hear that there's not enough capacity for it not to be academic. I think that's correct. But then when we get to the part about do we increase the capacity, it's well, we don't have enough calls to warrant that going over there. And it just becomes this, each this, the spider-man meme of we're not ready to take this to the next step yet. And so I guess the way we kind of broke through that was mayor wilson proposed and council approved 14 additional positions. I have asked a couple times, and I have not gotten a yes or no answer to this, so please feel free to give any additional info, but I would love a yes or no. Are those 14 positions in the city's hiring freeze? Are they frozen.
155 Or are they not? They're they're exempted.
156 So they're not frozen.
157 Correct.
158 Thank you. Okay. I would love to see that. I know that there's you know, we're still waiting on the office of violence prevention manager in the same division, which I've been asking about since January 9th from this dais. And I know that that has to happen before we get a psr program manager permanently. And I know that that has to happen before we can get all the hiring done. And then there's training and all that. So I would love to help see that get unstuck as well. And so that we can get to the point of of getting out of that, that circular aspect of it, right, where we're not saying we're saying we have unmet capacity or unused capacity at psr, let's now do the job of filling it, because we have other responders that are over capacity, and we all know that. But also, I would love to see this, this process and this exercise be about what it should be. Because if you're telling us what it should be, we can work on the resourcing with the mayor. We can we can make that happen. But if it's if we don't even know that something should be with this responder because the it's based on what the capacity, structures and constraints already are, we can't fix the problem. We just live in the problem. Does that make sense?
159 Absolutely. And I think you're asking exactly the same questions that we're asking right now. We've got, I think, a 40 minute average response time for psr units in the city, which is a long time, and we need to get that driven down before we can add calls that we would send. And so the work right now and through April is to figure out exactly how many of each type of calls, in theory, could be moved either to cds or psrs, and then work on getting the capacity in those units to accept those calls. But absent knowing how many of those calls that there are, which we we don't right now, we can't make the ask of how many more people in ps3's or psr or project respond or whatever it is we need.
160 So that makes sense. And before, I don't want to go back into the circles that I think we kind of got into a little bit during councilor Novick question. No, no blame to anyone there. I just think because it did end up doing that a little bit. If if we decide that the best responder, assuming we could hypothetically make the response times equal, assuming that everybody was resourced not just with time, money, staffing everything to to an equal level, the best responder to this any type of call is ps three. If we know that, we can make that a policy goal and then get the resourcing curve it over time to get to that point. And so I think we're looking at the staff to say, can we do that and can we do that is yes, because they're the best people, whichever responder it is. But also and it would require this and I'm very, very comfortable. I mean, we just had rose city self-defense in here as a really good example, going to bat for for them or for safe blocks or for whatever to the mayor because these aren't I mean, if it's if it's a larger responder, it is a lot of money, obviously, but the changes aren't necessarily huge amount in the over time. That's over space time, not over time. But yeah. Anyway, so I think that's the the question that I or the, the request that I would have. As a side note, I know that the bulk of the actual call types that might need to get assessed for merger or change or whatever, or on fire or ems side there. I think you mentioned lieutenant 120 something call types that are within the police umbrella, but there's 4000 total. And that's because fire and ems are the majority of them, and that there's very good reasons for that, because the acuity, there's a lot of reasons. I don't need to tell you them. But so I am I am curious about that as we go. The only other thing I wanted to ask is, is psr still a call type or have we changed that yet?
161 It is still a call type. Okay. They're dispatched in our fire code. And so that is the still the one call type for them. We know that that's going to need to change moving forward. But right now while they're dispatching our fire system that is the best call type for them.
162 Okay. So yeah, I think that would be very helpful to get the data we're going to need. On the other end of it, you're talking about where it's currently at, but to get the data on the recipient potentially of some of these calls, most call types, for those who don't know, are based on what the problem is. In the case of psr, the call type is named for the responder, and that has both consolidation issues associated with it because it's just one big call type that everything goes into. But also it doesn't it doesn't allow for the same way of doing the analysis for. So I would hope that that that would be something that hopefully could be done right quite easily. And the last thing I'll mention before I pass it off and give everybody a last round on this is. That the cad data probably has all of the information in here. And so in addition to a pilot one, another option might be having somebody go through all of that to figure out. And that might be less cost effective and slower, but.
163 We're actually going to be doing both. We're running the pilot. I've got a dedicated, not dedicated, but a dispatcher who is going to be taking some time every shift to review the calls, make sure the codes are in there, and then we're going to be doing a weekly audit as well. So both will be done.
164 Thanks.
165 All right. I'll close here. I'll give everybody anyone who wants to go in just a minute if that's okay. Because we do have one last item. And as I do it, I forgot one last thing, which is I also agree with both councilors Zimmerman and Morillo about the additional phone number for psr. I'll go to councilor Smith if you have a minute, and then I'll go to Novick after that.
166 Thank you. Co-chair canal. I appreciate it. I think getting the the right responders to the right calls is in everyone's best interest. Our city will benefit from more efficient operations. The folks making the calls will benefit from the from the rapid responses by the right responders. And the responders themselves will be more engaged. And I think we should note that not every first responder is equipped and trained for every response. I believe that our responders are equipped and trained for specific types of situations. The better we are at getting the right person for the right job, the better off we will be. And I think that this pilot that you're coming up with is going to help us to do so. And I think you've done some great work towards that goal already. I look forward to seeing what those results are going to be later on. And I want to thank you for bringing this to the committee. Appreciate it.
167 Thank you, councilor Smith. We'll go to councilor Novick to close us out.
168 Thank you, mr. Chair. And dca, this might be this kind of follows from what councilor Carroll was saying. It might be obvious, but what I would really hope we have by April is we know which of the welfare check calls should be reassigned from police to somebody else. We know which of them should be reassigned to psr. And one of the questions we haven't talked about is, how many of them are we going to be distinguishing between welfare check calls, which appear to have a mental health angle and those which won't? We know how many should be going to ps three? We've had the bargaining discussions about the ps3's and we can budget accordingly and either reduce police overtime or reduce adjust for the number of police officers we need to hire, and simultaneously adjust for the number of ps three and psr people we need to hire. I just hope we're ready to have that conversation during the next budget process.
169 That's my goal too. Thank you.
170 Good.
171 Thank you. Seeing no other hands, I think you're our panel for the next item, so I'll just ask diana to call the next item. Please, please. Partially.
172 Item four Portland police bureau overtime updates.
173 Wonderful. I'll kick us off. So a reminder, both of these budget notes ask for quarterly updates. So this is our first update for both of these. We'll be back in January with a written report and a presentation if you'd like. And then April and following after that. This is responding to canal ten. One of the budget notes that our service area received. That really is two primary points. One is instruction to prioritize certain call types that are looking at training, as well as crime prevention initiatives. The second is asking for disaggregated, disaggregated reporting to counsel on overtime usage within the police bureau. So today's report will be focusing on that second portion and looking at the overtime usage within the bureau for the first quarter of this fiscal year. So here I have a table that shows in the sort of top nine types of overtime that the police bureau has by by major category, with two bars for each type. The blue bar is showing for this current fiscal year. The Green bar is showing for the prior fiscal year for the same time period. For pay periods one through seven, I'm going to talk through just what those pieces are, and then highlight the elements that canal ten asked us to. The first, the top overtime type is personnel shortage. Personnel shortage of overtime is that is needed when there are vacancies, whether those vacancies be driven by positions that are unfilled within the police bureau or folks who are out on leave, vacation fmla types like that. Second, we have investigations, investigations, responses to traffic incidents, homicides, case follow ups. These may be in the moment that there is a homicide that has recently taken place, and somebody is asked to stay after their shift, or maybe follow ups that are needed on a timely basis. Next is special tracking. This is a rather broad category that includes things like hostage negotiations, focused missions, air support, stolen vehicle operations, components like that. Fourth, we have administration. This is report writing, staff meetings, sergeant admin work things to sort of keep the organization going. Then we have secondary employment. This is employment contracts that are with private employers. The police bureau is working on overtime and reimbursed by those employers. Things like film shoots, private companies that require staff time. Then we have grants. Grants are overtime hours that are being paid for outside the general fund by state or federal grants. The largest ones we have are around speed reduction that we get from the state, dui missions, safety belts, components like that, as well as some of our stolen vehicle operations. Then we have demonstrations. One of the particular things that was called out in the budget note was how much time is spent on demonstrations on community engagement. So these two categories, demonstrations and community engagement, were 6.5% of total overtime hours for this time period. So demonstrations is event response as needed depending on the situation. Training is the next category. This is bureau in-service coaches pay advanced academy other training to keep people up to date with the trainings required for their positions, and then finally community engagement. A majority of the community engagement over time is time spent by officers, with the focus intervention team, community oversight group, as well as other community engagement and select portions of crime reduction work. So this is the sort of broad categories that we currently use. I want to talk us through a little bit more about how we track overtime as a whole, as a service area, and the direction we hope to be going and to improve these reports as we go. So as you may know, we have had prior budget notes that have asked the service area to be reporting on a monthly basis to the city budget office, the chief financial officer and the mayor about overtime usage, as well as general spending within the service area. So we have a monthly cadence that uses a dashboard. This is looking at one of the dashboards that we use that standardize across the bureaus. We have two different components of this. On the left side you'll see the number of certified staff. And on the right side for each of these you'll see the number of overtime hours worked. These are a color scale. Looking back at the past five fiscal years with sort of a general Green good, red bad. So Green means more staff on the left side, and it means fewer hours of overtime on the right side. Within boec, you can see a fairly sort of clear story here where as staffing has gone down, sort of in the pandemic, post pandemic, we saw overtime go way up within boec. This is a story you've heard before. That's sort of our classic success story that we're able to under his leadership and his prior role, higher up and significantly reduce the amount of overtime that's being used, as well as reduce the call wait times that we have. We provide this as sort of a monthly update, looking at sort of what's going on that helps sort of make operational decisions. Next, we have a similar one for the fire bureau. We can see here a little bit more complicated of a story, in part showing the complex nature of overtime within the fire bureau, 95% of the overtime within the fire bureau is backfill overtime. So it's very heavily skewed towards that category. You might remember from prior slides with the police bureau, it's about 30 to 40% is backfill overtime for the police bureau. So fire is is way skewed towards that backfill. That's in large part because they need to backfill overtime to meet their staffing goals on a daily basis. There. Overtime doesn't as clearly line up with the amount of staffing, in part because of changes around seasonality. There's a much greater need for fire response during the summer months. There's also much higher demand on our staff where they're being called away to wildfires. So this is something that we look at and talk about sort of how we're seeing the shift in terms of number of filled positions that we have, and also the needs that are being met within the bureau. This is a similar chart for the police bureau. So this is looking at the number of sworn staff that are non trainees. So a reminder it takes almost two years between when somebody is initially offered a position. And then they can be serving on their own. So there's a big lag between there's a pause in hiring during COVID for budgetary as well as political reasons. We began hiring again and now people are rolling off and becoming those non trainee sworn responders on the overtime hours here, you can see that we've got this filtered so that it's looking at all over time. You can see there are a couple of outliers here where November of federal election years large overtime in anticipated or or needed demonstration response. So those sort of throw these out of whack. We can filter these and sort of line them up to be able to tell the story. That's going to help make operational decisions in the moment. Overall, when we looked at that sort of prior slide that had those nine broad categories, you may have noticed these were sort of apples and oranges. Some of these were talking very clearly about what somebody was doing administrative overtime. Some of these were talking about why we were needing overtime. One of our goals is to try and help clarify those. So one of the tasks that we've been going over for about nine months now is talking through a better way to consistently categorize overtime across the service area, and we're proposing putting things forward in these four buckets, which would then be broken down into some of these subcategories, some of which look familiar, of looking at training, looking at personnel backfill, programmatic overtime, and event related overtime. These are categories that we think would be relevant across all of the public safety service area, and they really focus on the why. In addition to having those categories, we hope to also have ways to tag things that will be able to tell more of the story. For example, all of our grants related overtime is currently categorized as grants, though most of it is crime prevention initiatives. We'd want to capture that and be able to tell the story of. These are the crime prevention initiatives we're doing on overtime, using general fund dollars versus using grant dollars. Be able to split that out. So tagging that with fund. In addition tagging it with cost center, which is laying out who is responsible for the work. It's a sort of internal mechanism that we use. And then finally with activity type, you know, administrative overtime was one of the larger categories you saw in the earlier slide. It's not helpful necessarily to know that somebody is spending time report writing or they spending time report writing on a homicide investigation where they doing it because they needed to report something to council, what was driving the need for it. So be able to have those differentiated. So as I said at the top, this is our first of our report outs to y'all. Our hope is that when we come back in January, we'll have made progress in the sort of technical implementation of getting these categories laid out and start to do some of the retroactive realignment of prior overtime. So we can sort of tell those those histories and the stories.
174 Thank you, thank you. I see I know councilor Smith says a legacy hand, councilor Zimmerman. Is that a legacy hand as well? Okay, then please, you have the floor.
175 Great.
176 In the first chart, you showed the bar graphs with last year. And this year, I want to make sure I'm understanding that this is just representative of that first quarter for both years. Right. Correct. So in secondary employment. So I go to the timbers game I see uniform officers there. Is that an example of secondary employment. Yes okay. Love that. Think it's a good practice. We used to do more of it in terms of and this body has been advocated for previously about returning to more of the police officers, filling certain posts for certain entities who wanted to pay for it. Can you help me understand, if I were to go to any of those officers that are at the Portland timbers game like I saw this last weekend, are they rolling into an overtime status because they worked the timbers game in a regular status? I guess I'm trying to understand why we're putting secondary employment here as an overtime concern or I guess a reportable, because I understood it, that the secondary employment would pay for it. So for me, in the overtime world of concern, overtime that's being paid dollar for dollar by an outside entity is less concerning to me. And I just want to make sure I'm reading this the right way versus the practice of using that special assignment to then now be an overtime. So when you go to your Monday shift, you're an overtime by default. Can you help me out a little bit here.
177 Yeah. So secondary employment is a part of the ppa contract that's bargained that this is an option. Cities do this in a variety of ways. Some this the city itself is not included. And officers are paid directly or they're paid through their union and the city of Portland for transparency. All the money is funneled through the city so that we're able to track these hours. That's in part so that we understand what is going on with our officers, so that we can make sure that we're planning for sort of health, life safety, that they're not overburdening themselves. And we've got that there in terms of why that is here, in part, it's because we don't currently get full reimbursement for these dollars. It's not a one for one, it's a one for point nine. This is in part a legacy of old city code. There is a portion of city code that laid out structurally how much we are allowed to charge for reimbursement. It put a cap that was written in 2011 that specified the amount of health care costs and retirement costs. That cap hadn't been changed in 14 years last year when we went through and did code around charter revisions, that part of code was struck. So we're no longer bound and had our hands tied there, increasing it to being full cost. Recovery would have been a large leap in one year. So we're in a multiyear process where we're going to be getting to a place where we're getting to full cost recovery. So for now, it is a burden on on the bureau, not an enormous one and not as big of one as it was two years ago. But we're getting there, and we think it is important to be tracking because we need to understand what it is going to cost the city. Another component is just the opportunity cost. You know, when officers are signing up for overtime, they have a choice that they could sign up for night shift and east precinct or timbers game, and they may choose to do one over the other, depending on whether a night owl or whether they like football. And that's going to be a choice that they are going to be going back and forth between. So I think it is important to be tracking it in order to sort of understand what the burden is on staff in terms of how it impacts the officers themselves. Yeah, these are hours that are are worked towards it counts towards their flsa workweek. So if they've worked 40 hours or more this becomes overtime. This would contribute towards those hours. All hours for secondary employment are overtime hours. We don't do secondary employment on straight time. However, for something like a timbers game, you know, we do potentially have an increased police presence there for a variety of operational reasons that are independent of the timbers. Calling us up and saying, we'd like to see x number of officers at our game. So it is sometimes a give and take where, you know, if the timbers were not to ask for police officers to come, they would likely still be some sort of police presence, though likely a smaller police presence than otherwise. That's not the case for everything we do with secondary employment. A lot of secondary employment we have is things like film crews that are coming to to shoot a movie here. That's something that's creating new work that we wouldn't have been aware of unless somebody reached out and said, hey, we want to block off this street. We want to make sure there's greater security because of the talent we have on set. So some of it does get a little bit more complicated.
178 I'm very comfortable with secondary employment being a part of our our options. I'm cautious about if I'm the if I'm the sergeant of xyz precinct and I've got my workforce laid out and I know this thing. But then bob, bob chose to also work the timbers game. And now when bob comes to his regular shift out in my precinct, he's now in an overtime status because of the timbers game putting him into it. And that's what I was trying to clarify. It doesn't sound like that's actually what is occurring, that those are always considered overtime. Whereas his 40 hours, his normal hours in the precinct, for me as a patrol sergeant are not being affected directly by those choices. So that's helpful. Yeah, I can tell you must be a fan because you use the term football. So I appreciate that. And I and I do think that the having that option is an important one. But I want to make sure it's used reasonably. This last weekend, for instance, we had a the no kings protest and demonstration. So there were some people who were scheduled to be on shift because that was the day they were scheduled to be on shift 2 or 3 weeks ago. And I am sure that we called in some other people. So when we look at demonstrations, let's say that there were 12 officers who were already going to be working, but then there were 25 others who were put on an overtime status. And we're only accounting in this graph here. We're only accounting in that situation. For those who are called on and or those who would not have been working, but for the event that has led leadership to call them in. Is that an accurate way to read this?
179 Correct? Yeah. This is only looking at overtime rather than straight time. We do not track straight time with nearly the level of detail that we track overtime. That's largely for sort of time coding reasons that somebody is incentivized to enter accurately their time code if they want to get paid for overtime, whereas somebody who's oftentimes doing multiple things during a shift.
180 So if I'm a if I'm an east precinct patrol officer and now an event has occurred in my precinct and I was already working that day, and I'm bringing this up because you kind of mentioned investigations, for instance. So if I'm asked by the incident commander to sit at the corner of 122nd and duke for I don't know how long, four extra hours to keep the scene secure. And that has moved me into an overtime status. Now, does that get billed to investigations even though I'm not a detective?
181 Generally, yes.
182 Okay.
183 Yeah.
184 So to understand, it's not just the people who are doing the investigative work. It's all things related to that moment. Yeah. And that's something that at the at the first line leader, area sergeant or lieutenant that is being calculated that evening about okay, we're moving we're moving Zimmerman into overtime, and we're billing it back to this account so that we have some accounting for what this event occurred.
185 Yeah. So we have these nine categories here that things roll up into. There are subcategories under that and subcategories under that. There are over a thousand overtime tracking codes we have. So if we wanted to know how much time east precinct worked on investigations, we can track that down individually to be able to see that sort of thing.
186 Thanks for this. I appreciate the quarterlies thanks for your work.
187 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. Councilor Smith, I think you're next.
188 Thank you, thank you. I was looking at a bunch of the slides about the special tracking, the secondary employment, the personnel shortage, personnel shortage. I'm going to I'm going to hold off on that. But I think what's what's more important is that during my presentation to my labor and workforce development committee last February, we learned that there were 86 ftes worth of vacancies among sworn police officers. And I see that the number has dropped to 84 after a few months, but I suspect I may know the answer to this. But someone who hasn't followed this, they may not know that the the two reduction, they don't tell the whole story. So can you explain that? Because it is my understanding that we have hired a number of police officers, not just two, but can you explain what happened there? So if someone is looking at the previous numbers and they look at these, what does that look like?
189 Yeah. So on this slide you can see sort of some of our changes in staffing. So you know October 1st of last year we had 439 sworn officers who were non trainees were now up to 4446. So you know, people joined the bureau. Anyone who joined the bureau in the last year, they are still trainee. So they're not showing up in that that increase. People left the bureau. People retired, people separated for a variety of reasons. But a lot of people left their trainee status. As of right now, we have about 114 people who are trainees. So they are somewhere within that 18 month, two year pipeline of becoming a trainee officer and being able to to serve for their their hours. So I think that's the sort of big slow rolling wave we see here where we have done a lot of hiring some of those 114 folks, they're hired almost two years ago, and they will soon be able to serve on their own.
190 When will they cross to the other side?
191 Yeah. And we I don't have a graph on this, but we do in other slide decks. If it's of interest, we could report on in the future of sort of where people are in those categories.
192 It is I think it's important because it would appear that you all have not done no work to to bring people in, and we're going to have to make a decision on a decision package about what to do with that $2.2 million in terms of recruiting through dca causes budget. And so if it looks like you're not the return on the investment that we've been putting in to allow you to have all this money so that we could reduce the overtime, I think you need to tell that story. You know, when you put these slides up, you need to also say, but this does not tell the whole story because we do have an additional 114 in we have been working, but they're not a part of this calculation. Or put them in another slide that says this is who's in the queue, and this is when they will cross over. Yeah, that would be helpful to tell your story, because if you're not telling your story and I'm looking at this as a new councilor and I haven't been paying attention, I wasn't in commissioner Smith's workforce and development labor committee room. I'd say you guys are not doing no work.
193 That's a great observation.
194 Totally not true.
195 That's a great observation, councilor. And it's very similar to boec and what boec experienced a few years ago and how frustrating it felt certainly going through the really difficult times, because boec had a ton of staffing, but a third of the staff was trainees and it wasn't showing up as real results. But that's what we're beginning to see here. You know, there's a net increase of seven. If I did my math right from last year to this year, as you see more and more trainees in that pipeline, 114 trainees right now, you're going to begin seeing more and more certifications. And I think that's a great point, that being able to demonstrate where trainees are in their training programs, there's five phases of training, and we can certainly provide a report of how many trainees are in each phase of training for another.
196 That would be so helpful. And if you don't tell your own story, you leave it to others to tell it. It won't be right.
197 Yeah.
198 Thank you, thank you.
199 Thanks. Councilor Novick.
200 I just wanted to know. Director cozzie. Do you know, off the top of your head, the trainees of number 114. Is that up by x amount from last year?
201 I don't know, off the top of my head.
202 Okay, thanks.
203 So just to to kind of conclude this, I will say I would love to to just go back to the slide on the with the buckets and say that the, the three that things that you added on the right. No the the four. Yeah. That one. These three things on the right look great to me. The top two look great to me as well. I understand the desire to track this separately or consistently across the psa, but I do want to point out that the budget note is specific to pbe. And so although we did spend a lot of time today on the other bureaus, I don't feel that I can currently say how you're doing. I don't know that the report gives me enough to work off of in terms of how implementation of that budget note is happening, because we do have ours in the graph for these. But I don't know that it's fair to compare q3 to q3 given ice. I think it may be like a we could look at either an annual average or something like that to to kind of tell a story that because if you look at that demonstrations, one, it would it would convey something that I don't think is accurate because I know that q2 of this year, which is part of the last fiscal year, Portland mercury reported $800,000 of overtime at the ice facility in June alone, which I think is upwards of 8000 hours of overtime. I, I can't I've I've seen it decline through at least July and August. So I don't I don't want the reporting to convey that, that PPB was not following something that I think they actually are, but because of the lack of information on that, part of it was a little hard to work on. The other piece of it is there are nine very, very specific categories mentioned in the first part of that budget. Note. And these are the categories which pb said that the approved budget would force a reduction in. And so we said, well, you're saying it would reduce or force a reduction in these seven categories plus sexual and domestic violence. And the other one was off the top of my head. And traffic. Nope. Property crimes that you're saying it would reduce this, but the aggregate reduction for all of them together is less by a significant margin than the amount spent on community presence, which for for those who are keeping score at home, is separate from the ocps. Right. The assistant chief lavelle's that whole project where those are folks who are working that straight time, as far as I'm aware. But so and demonstrations that those two pieces are being maintained at this very high level. While we're saying it has to be reduced here. And so when we said, well, don't reduce it here, don't reduce it on these items that are in paragraph one, I currently, the report doesn't break it down enough for me to know that. I think the solution to that is to look at those two lower the third and fourth category on your written report, or the two lower boxes here. And to separate those out, because wildfire deployment and demonstration response is very different, we have to respond to wildfires. And I think we have to respond to we have to be at the rose festival, we have to be at a lot of these things. And also, recruitment is something that was explicitly protected in the budget note, which is currently on the same place as community presence. So I just want to ask for that disaggregation next time so that the next time we do this I'm able to say, are you where are you at in terms of implementing it? And I do think on at least the demonstration side, that it's a lot better than that graph shows, at least just. But I have anecdotal data, so just wanted to flag that. I'm not sure if you had anything. You looked like you wanted to say something for a second.
204 Yeah. I mean it will have these as the four sort of big categories. We will have subcategories to each and noted that we will have those be some of those subcategories that it won't be all event response in one, but instead what are the components of it.
205 Yeah. And I think event events aren't events right. There's voluntary responses where policy dictates we need to go to it. And then there's there's responses that are it's a wildfire. Someone's going to need to respond to it. You know. So I want to that was kind of the whole point behind it, the budget note in the first place. And I know I'm seeing over your shoulder Ryan back there, who I'm sure has the the data. So I know I'm just sorry you're in the line of sight, but I would love to get that. At least the event one separated out. I understand it might just be a subcategory in the case of programmatic overtime, so I'll leave it there just because I don't want to take up too much time here. And we're a little over. But thank you both for being up here. Thanks for the presentation and for answering all of our questions. We're going to close this out in just a moment here. The next meeting of the community and public safety committee is Tuesday, November 4th. I just want to note our normal schedule was going to be the 11th and 25th of the month. We've moved them both up by a week. So because the 11th is veteran's day and the 25th is part of the council recess for thanksgiving. So we're looking at the fourth and 18th. They're still Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. And with that, this meeting of the community and public safety committee is adjourned.
206 Thanks.