all right good evening everyone and
welcome to a special meeting of the
of the city council um
and uh why don't we get going dave
okay good evening and welcome to a
special meeting of the council of the
city of long beach held wednesday march
10th 2021
at 6 30 p.m we have a roll call council
member de laurie
president councilmember mandel is absent
uh councilmember tresten here vice
president mcginnis
president president bendo present
let the record indicate the presence of
city manager donna gayden
and uh deputy corporation council
richard barrios we have a salute to the
flag
and councilman delaurie you got a flag
behind you why don't you lead us
certainly thank you
and hand over i pledge allegiance
to the flag of the united states of
america
and to the republic for which it stands
one nation under god indivisible
with liberty and justice for all
all right thank you mike um
so i just want to start off by uh um
saying for some people that may not have
heard
we we lost a long beach icon
um recently uh bob carroll
passed away and uh for those of you
that may not know who bob was
bob was a long time city employee
uh 42 years but for 30 years he was the
superintendent of parks and recreation
and um
we owe pretty much
all of our recreation programs and
facilities that we have to bob
uh he's the one who uh
got some grant money and got the
ice ring built and other facilities he
came up with the ideas for
the concerts on the beach and many of
the festivals the city had
um he he made long beach the
recreational hub that it is
and uh in addition to that he was very
active in the community through the
lions club and other charitable
organizations
he he mentored countless
people in this in this city
um you know always willing to reach into
his pocket
to help people and uh
uh councilman de laurie had him as a
teacher back in the sixth grade which
which tells you what a fixture uh he was
here so
um i just wanted to acknowledge uh
bob's passing because he was uh he was
truly a
uh a long beach icon and uh deserves to
be recognized
uh and some of you may know that a
couple of years ago we
renamed the recreational complex the
robert
carroll uh recreation complex
so we even named the name the complex
after him so
uh sad passing for uh a good man
so uh with that uh
i guess uh why don't we move on to the
agenda
okay our first and only item is a
resolution authorizing the adoption
of a police reform plan pursuant to new
york state executive order 203 for the
city of long beach
okay and uh ron are you going to talk
about that
sure um so as everyone is aware
who's on uh from in from the city
council but uh as many of the
many people in the public are aware uh
the governor passed
executive order uh 203 in
um i guess that was june
of 2020. and that was in he created this
in response to the death of george floyd
in minnesota
the purpose of the executive order was
to create changes in
um local law enforcement so that
their policies and strategies are were
to be now focused on mitigating
police-involved deaths
and racially biased law enforcement so
um
in regard to all of that uh in a large
component of that is also
increasing our partnership with
the community and uh and also in
building trust-based relationships with
the community
so uh the plan um
and the executive order calls for a
review of our policing policies
obviously to mitigate the potential as
best as we possibly can for police
involved
deaths and racially biased law
enforcement actions
and the plan is to be developed with
interested parties
and stakeholders from within the
community uh the plan is supposed to be
ratified uh by the
local government uh in this case the
city council and it's
submitted to be submitted to the
executive director
of the new york state budget
the reason that they have it submitted
to the executive director of the budget
is because if you do not get the plan in
on time
you lose all of your state funding
whether or not it's related
to police police department or law
enforcement
so um that is
the the premise of this
uh dave put up the um a powerpoint uh
presentation that i
prepared and i believe tonight we're
pretty much opening this for discussion
i could do this uh
this powerpoint if the board if the
council pleases
uh tonight and then review it again uh
if we
if you choose not to take action tonight
at a further meeting depending on how
you want to handle that you want to
um uh well they've dave teased people so
uh
i i guess we should at this point
so dave uh why don't you move this uh
two slides up
um the next one so our police
reform was uh we
was established or actually was informed
if you will
by um a board of
that it was called the commissioner's
board on police reform and the
the people on this page were the members
of
that board uh and uh met um
numerous times uh well more than
numerous more than a dozen times
uh since from december forward uh with
regard to police reform
uh they were very uh a nice
cross-section of our community
from the latino pacific association we
had uh
father brian barr you had helen dorado
yeah rabbi
elijah frank from temple zion dan
gruesemeyer the nassau county district
attorney henry hall
for the north park crisis prevention and
post-intervention team
rabbi baruch kleinman from temple zion
uh joe lee who's an attorney here in
long beach and
a resident uh john mcnally who is
uh works as everybody knows with the
administration
you had elder mark moses from the new
life
church of christ disciples of christ
long beach civil service commission as
well
rodney nellums a community member jackie
odom for the north park crisis
and post-intervention team danielle
robinson another one of our just serving
district attorneys down here
and marcus tinker from the north park
crisis prevention
and post intervention team so um
this team worked extremely hard uh with
uh the um entire uh
throughout the entire process and
informed a lot of the decisions that we
made
gave a lot of tremendous input into the
plan
and myself rich to palmer
bill dodge uh worked very very hard on
this as well as
all of the supervisors in the police
department uh this plan
and its rough draft was given to the
members of the department
and the supervisory members of the
department so that they would have the
opportunity to see it
to give input back to it and to also
you know in case we were missing
something that the police department was
actually doing
uh as well so it um
we think it actually uh does a great job
the board members as well as the um
as well as the members of the department
we think it does a fantastic job to
actually
inform not only the department on how it
needs to move forward
but how to partner with and serve the
community
this is a tailored plan for the city of
long beach
put together by the people who are
who live here who know this community
and know the things that are that this
community faces
they know the shortcomings of the
department of the city they know that
strengths and we looked at ways to
really build upon
our strengths as well as to increase the
level of competency in our weaknesses
so uh dave if you go on to the next
slide
so um the the information that was put
out by the
um by the governor calls for policy
review
and uh when we go through our policies
and procedures the police department has
um
a lot of rules and regulations that it
um is that it uses to govern
the way we manage the police department
as well as how we are out to the public
but these these
policies that you see up on the screen
are directly related
to the incidents that we uh that george
floyd
basically uh uh precipitated and the
unrest that the country experienced
throughout much of uh the beginning of
2020
actually probably the first two thirds
of 2020 and things started to uh
calm down a little bit as uh as uh as
these situations were addressed
so we developed uh and revamped our use
of force policy to make it more
responsive
to the uh needs of the city there was
never a mental aided policy so when you
say a mental aided
it's somebody who is experiencing some
sort of emotional or mental crisis
at the time they may or may not have
long-term disability
that's not what it's for it's for people
who are
experiencing difficulties at the moment
who need specialized consideration
by the first responders because the
police department
is the entity that winds up responding
to these situations
up front and is to provide care and
safety
to them and we we take these people to
uh for medical help when they are a
danger to themselves
or a danger to other people we're
obligated to do that through the mental
health law
and a lot of that needs to be codified
into a policy and a procedure for us to
deal with
so that's what this policy did the crowd
control
policy the city of long beach never had
a crowd control policy
uh and it's not that we and in the
policy we came up with different
categories
of of uh what we defined as crowds
whether they were cooperative or
uncooperative lawful assemblies or
unlawful assemblies and how they are to
be dealt with
and uh the very last resource or the
very last
tactic that we would use in these
situations would be something along the
lines of
you know the traditional forming a line
or a wedge
as the police department would do it you
take out your your batons you put on
your helmets and you go charging into
the crowd those days
are the days that we try to avoid at all
cost in this policy
and um it basically outlines how the
police department is going to
be more responsive establish
communication with organizers
and become uh cooperating with them to
try and give them
their first amendment rights of speech
and free speech
while preserving the peace for the
people who do not want to be affected
by these particular demonstrations and
trying to balance along those lines
vehicle pursuit policy was also reviewed
for this as well
that we you know call off vehicle
pursuits for certain
crimes where the danger to the public is
more
than the danger of the person getting
away and we try to look for alternative
means
of identifying people uh throughout
instead of chasing them at high speeds
throughout the city or the
um or the county uh civilian complaint
policy brand new policy that
i developed here and brought in and you
know we used some iacp
modeling as well as the county's policy
modeling and brought in a procedure that
every single complaint and this is
reviewed in the
in the uh rest of my slides but every
single complaint
must be taken the only complaints we
don't take are those that really aren't
complaints
so how does that what does that mean a
non-complaint would be
somebody who comes to the desk and says
i want to complain about this officer
who gave me a ticket
okay what's the complaint he gave me a
ticket
well that's not a civilian complaint
about the officer doing anything wrong
that's what you work out in court but if
he says the officer was rude to me when
he gave me the ticket well that's a
complaint
and we take that and not only do we take
it not only does it is the desk office
or supervisor must take it
an officer must refer that person to a
supervisor
it is to be taken it goes into our
records management system
it gets put on a new form called the
long beach police department 360 which
is a complaint
a civilian complaint investigation
report that then goes
gets assigned by the supervisor goes to
the um
uh the executive officer and myself for
assignment for investigation
it goes into a log so that forevermore
we will be able to refer
back to that complaint and know that it
existed so
that's a big big change for the way the
city does things
the duty to intercede i give you the
exact language a little bit later on but
every officer now by policy
has the duty to intercede if they
observe an officer using what they
estimate to be
unreasonable force and if they can
intervene
and stop that from happening they ought
to do it and if they did not have that
opportunity
they must report it to a supervisor so
that is now codified in our policy
a hate crime policy there's no hate
crime policy here in long beach and
we're that's under development right now
so hate crimes that would be uh for
instance uh an anti-semitic incident
or a crime that's uh directed to our
particular
race or ethnicity uh in it within the
within the city we are
developing a policy to ensure that those
cases are handled with the most the
utmost of sensitivity
the next slide dave
so um on this slide we talk about
recruitment
recruitment was a major area of focus
for the uh
the board and for members of the
community that have given feedback as
well
they want to ensure that the long beach
police department and the city of long
beach are doing everything that they can
to attract those people that reflect
long beach minorities women
um any you know we we we have done a
great job in the last few years of
hiring more women on the police
department
but we also only have 12 percent now
that's a pretty decent percentage i
believe
uh i think nassau county is running at
about five or six percent
of their entire department but we are
looking at i think that's right
i could be mistaken there but i know
where up to 12 for many years they had
one or two
and i know that we're looking at hiring
more women
in the future and more persons of color
so that we are more reflective of the
community
that we are here providing our services
to
uh we want to distribute how we're going
to do that we're going to talk to our
air
not only within the city we're going to
focus within the city but around the
county and the region
getting into our houses of worship
getting into our
schools and parochial schools uh making
sure that our
pamphlets and our announcements are up
on facebook and instagram
and cross instagram and cross
referencing those and ensuring that
anybody can walk into police
headquarters and get this
get a um get a uh an application
to take our next exam partnering with
the nassau county police department
their recruitment center
establishing a law enforcement
exploring post as well here to get
our youth involved in learning
everything there is to learn about law
enforcement and attract them
at an early age into
the law enforcement profession and
trying to really increase
that profile out into the city and we're
also going to be working with nassau
county with their mentoring program
nassau county has many um fraternal
organizations
uh that they uh they have a lot of
membership to
whether it be the italian or the
american or the the guardians or the
the golds or societies or the steuben
and those members of those organizations
have agreed to
mentor people who are having a difficult
time getting through the process to
mentor them so that they're successful
in their application process and getting
getting to the point where they can be
selected for the job
so that was a major area of focus for
hours next slide dave
um we also promote off of
civil service examination that's the
only way you can get into
the long beach police department there's
no uh gee or my friend johnny wants to
get hired
so everything that we do here in long
beach is done
through the long beach civil service
commission new york state provides our
examination to us
they take the test they get put in bands
and the people who get qualified
we we call them within the bands and we
investigate people
uh that make it in the bands our goal
is to ensure that more
people that are underrepresented in our
department
are more represented in the bands that
we get to
because we are a small law enforcement
agency we don't normally get to
the 70s or the 80s in our exam we're
usually between 90 and 100
is where you're going to be considered
and even more so between 95 and 100
scores
are what's considered for the city of
long beach so a lot of people consider
that to be a benefit to being a small
organization
but it does limit our selection pool so
we are trying to support those people
who are looking to take our exam
into doing better on the test we're also
looking to
focus on professional development
opportunities for our officers
themselves
we want to ensure that they are given uh
not only their firearms training every
year but
getting exposed to our in-service
training that nassau county has put
together and
also using we have a thing called train
caster here
in the city of long beach which is right
in their cars while offices are not
assigned
to other calls for service they can go
through a 15-minute training session
where they can look watch a video and
learn
specific tools and new methods on how to
do their jobs more proficient
proficiently and professionally so we're
looking to start to developing
that and the use of that more we also
want to recognize our officers for doing
great work
so we're re-establishing a police
officer of the quarter
here and we're also going to establish a
civilian
member of the quarter our chamber of
commerce
used to give us money for that many many
years ago
so we're looking to re-establish a
partner in the community
to award after an evaluation an officer
who does the most outstanding work per
quarter
here in long beach as well as our
civilian members because ladies and
gentlemen
there's not a thing that's going to
happen in this department if every one
of our civilians walk out the door they
are
absolutely critical to our performance
and we need to recognize
them as well our next slide dave
our training now is uh are in service
training and professional development
like i talked about before
some of the things that are focused on
there are procedural justice
so procedural justice is exactly what
the word say
in the procedure or the process of
informing justice
how do we ensure that the public one has
a fair process
it's transparent and that we provide
them opportunities to have a voice
we shouldn't be deciding what we're
going to do
until we hear out both parties or the
parties
involved and we also need to ensure
that our decisions are being made in the
most impartial way
possible implicit bias training so
and and racial justice and policing so
implicit bias is
and i've spoken to it about in front of
the council before
it is the biases that we have
that we don't even recognize are
internal to ourselves
and and the studies that show and
harvard university was the cutting
ground on this
studies show and you can take their um
their implicit
bias test yourself if you just go on you
put your google
harvard university implicit bias and you
can take a little test to
learn about your own biases but how do
we can't prevent these things it turns
out
but we can mitigate their
what their influence is on our
decision-making process
by educating us hey am i making this
decision because it's right
or because someplace inside of me it
felt right first and feeling right first
is not always the correct action to take
is what implicit bias trains uh trains
us to do
hate crime training the new department
policies and development and when that
comes out
we will be training our officers in that
de-escalation
involves active listening being
impartial
learning new verbal tactics to try and
de-escalate situations
uh permitting officers to tactically
reposition themselves new york state
has a no retreat law for police officers
we never
by law have to back down
but sometimes we call it tactical
repositioning
that's a much better way to go than
pushing
the fight even though we're legally
allowed to do something
doesn't mean that we should do it or
that we
have to do it so teaching officers those
techniques and exposing them to the
opportunity
that if you have somebody with a knife
and they're experiencing one of those
mental crises again
we should be have the opportunity the
understanding that we can position
ourselves
and maneuver ourselves away from this
person in a safe manner
and hopefully not have to use an ex a
deadly force
against somebody because they get too
close and we have to protect ourselves
or they get too close to somebody else
and we have to protect them
um i already talked about mental health
problem oriented hot spot policing
so included in this plan plan is our new
cops unit
which is two police officers assigned to
do not community outreach
they're assigned to work with our to
help develop and explore program
they're designed to focus on persistent
problems within our neighborhoods to
come up with resolutions
to reduce the numbers of calls
for service that we're getting so that
officers have more time
to build relationships and provide the
level of service
in our communities that the community is
demanding
um so that's something that we're we're
we're going to be doing
uh the duty to intercede like i spoke
about in the last slide
is exactly that dave can you go to the
next slide
so this particular graphic shows the
decision-making models
model that the recruits our police
officers that go to the nassau county
police department are
involved in getting it teaches them a
process of so so you should look at this
as a wheel
right and you can be at any point in
this particular
this particular decision making model
and you kind of spin the wheel
so if you gather information and
intelligence that's the first thing that
you
you do when you when you receive a call
for service
from there you assess the threat and you
develop a strategy in your mind
what do i have to do where do i have to
go the next thing you do is you consider
the policy and the
legal powers that you have from there
you identify
your options and contingencies gee based
on the law
based on what the strategy i have what
can i actually do
and then you do something that's the
next step if it doesn't work you could
immediately okay so the situation
changes
you can wind up back at assessing the
threat again because oh the person
dropped the knife
situations are very fluid this is very
similar it's difficult to do when you're
first exposed to it
but no more difficult than driving a car
the very first time we got behind the
wheel of a
car we didn't know what we were doing
you know you pulled away from the curb
bouncing and stuff you hit the brakes
you probably
did one of these things in the car with
everybody in the car but today
you don't even think about driving the
car when you're driving it you'd be
you could be talking on your bluetooth
you could be listening to music be
talking to somebody next to you
and if you're not paying attention you
could wind up at your destination or you
go on autopilot wind up home by mistake
when you were supposed to pick up milk
at the store because you went on
autopilot
that's very much the same as the way
this decision-making model
gets ingrained in our offices next slide
dave
so uh with regard to use of force uh
and these things by the way most of most
of what we're talking about here is
going to be put up on a department
website
so that the public will have the ability
to see statistically
what we are actually doing and how and
when we are doing it not quite in real
time
but certainly every month it will be
updated to the point where you'll be
able to get a very good feel as to what
we're doing
so um every use of force that we use
we put our hands on somebody that is
that's a use of force report
and that must be given to us in in the
form of r258 report
and then that gets tracked by the
department all users of force are
evaluated for the tactics
and potential training needs so we look
at the types of use of forces that we're
getting and we're saying hey
are cops doing what
they should be doing and if they are
because of the training do we want to
adjust the training so they do something
different because we will do what we're
trained to do
um the policy required is way more
rigorous than what's required by law
the attorney general's office as part of
all of these changes
has the right to review any use of force
by any officer now
and the uh then as i said it's all going
to be put up on our
our website the use of deadly force
well that's an entirely different thing
and if we wind up using deadly force
we'll probably call in i believe we're
going to call in no let me say that more
definitively
we use deadly force on somebody and
somebody gets shot
we're going to call in the nassau county
use of force team
to help us evaluate that so there's an
independent look on what we did instead
of just the long beach police department
looking at themselves so that we can go
above
uh above reproach if you will the
attorney general's office by the way
automatically gets a notified of these
things
and their office of special
investigations has the right to
uh uh investigate any one of these and
they
probably will if somebody dies in one of
these situations god forbid
you can count on the attorney general
taking the investigation that's the way
it's going to go
i already spoke about civilian
complaints so i won't uh waste any more
time
on that if you go to the next slide dave
so community outreach initiatives these
are the things that were specifically
put into the pro
plan to reach out into our community and
there's more than just here
but they're designed to reach out into
the community and
to help build more of a trust based
and solid resilient relationship with
our community
so that there's more understanding and
less
misunderstanding so um you have your
commissioner's young adult council
which is going to have at least six
children six kids on it between 16
and 23 from all across uh
the long beach community and the focus
of this group is going to be on
community engagement
community service and building better
police community relationships
the youth police initiative so this is
going to work with uh
with our community our police officers
kind of come together
and they're going to work with our
at-risk kids to reduce the
misunderstandings on both sides
police officer and the youth and to
repair relationship
and re-establish that trust between the
youth
and the police and also try to teach
conflict resolution so that kids aren't
always resulting
to violence the police youth academy so
that's
something that nassau county does that i
don't believe long beach has ever done
before but
many of the school districts that have
populations of at-rich kids they send
them to the police academy on a saturday
uh they get it exposed to all the
different aspects of police work
and it's a very non-threatening positive
relationship building
type of engagement
you have the citizens police academy
where citizens then go to the nassau
county police department they go through
an
11 week program on i believe it's uh
see the tuesdays are thursday nights
once a month they go through the
uh once a week they go through the
process they get exposed
to all of the things and the
considerations that police officers get
trained for
and get to have interactions with with
the instructors in the police academy
as well as the commanding officers of
many of the units and then
as an addendum to this we plan on after
you graduate from that holding specific
days with the people who attend this for
the long beach
police department to educate them on the
specific things that
specific things that we do down here in
long beach so they see what our officers
are trained as and exposed to
as well as how we do business in long
beach
now the establishment of the cops unit
which is the community oriented police
and
policing and problem solving unit that's
to estab
that unit is to have those offices like
i explained earlier
specifically in our community
dedicated to community outreach and
helping the community
solve the problems that are most
persistent
in long beach uh law enforcement
exploring post i spoke about already
the commissioner's community council is
going to be a council
that we spread out across the the city
that come in
and meet probably quarterly with the
commissioner of police
and the upper executive so that we could
sit down talk about the issues that they
see and feel out in the community
help give us feedback on how we're doing
and try and work
to build better relationships and be
more responsive to the issues
that the community is seeing and the
community is experiencing
and we get to hear firsthand uh the
great training program is a program that
we do with our third graders
here in long beach it started a number
of years ago and it's an
anti-anti-bullying and anti-gang
program it's called uh gang resistance
education and training
is what great great stands for that's a
terrific program i led it nassau county
great results and we're also going to
work with the nassar county police
department
to try and see if we can stand up a pal
involvement down here in long beach in
the beginning if
the number of students are low we're
going to try and figure out a way
to transport the kids to the programs
that take place or at least invite them
to the programs
that the county is actually uh using
because
there are 55 000 kids across nassau
county
that go to pal activities every year
so it's a very successful program for
the county and i think that long beach
needs to at least
be educated enough to know that it's
important that they have the ability
to take advantage of these of these uh
programs
next slide dave so this is the area
where
i talked about duty to intercede so this
is what our policy basically says
that any officer present or observing
another officer using force that he or
she
reasonably believes to be clearly beyond
that which is objectively reasonable
under the circumstances
shall intercede to prevent the use of
unreas
reasonable force if and when the officer
has a realistic opportunity to prevent
harm
so if the officer is seeing it from
across the street and it stops and he
doesn't have the opportunity
we don't hold them responsible for not
getting in there in time but they
absolutely
have to report this an officer who
observes
another officer use force that exceeds
the degree of force as described above
shall promptly report these observations
to a supervisor
and they will be held accountable to
this as well
uh john next up john dave next slide
so in conclusion i mean i don't i don't
think i have to read it i think i was
pretty clear as though
as to what our focus was uh this is a
very brief summary of a 57-58 page
document
that's been up on our website to uh for
uh
well over a week um it will be up a
little bit longer and
the council i open it up to any
questions that you may have with regard
to anything in the document that i can
help
give some clarity to
okay great thanks ron um
so i guess before i open up for
questions to the council it's just
worth noting that uh after the draft
report was put up
we uh through senator kaminsky's office
were able to identify a potential
funding opportunity that
may allow us to get uh body cameras
for our for some or potentially all of
our offices any associate equipment so
we're updating that section of the
report
to reflect that uh recent development
so with that i guess i'll open it to any
questions
for the commissioner from the council
okay going once going twice
oh okay i don't have any
specific questions because i've read the
executive order 203 i just want to take
an opportunity to
thank denise ford for allowing me to
attend the
legislative meetings that were held
through the nassau county police
department on their reform
uh reports and i i know that she's
a participant today so maybe she will be
able to
uh express more but i just wanted to
take the opportunity to say thank you to
her
uh for allowing me to attend those
meetings it was very eye-opening
and i wanted to apprec again appreciate
everyone's work on
on this document thank you
okay any other questions or comments
from the council
all right see you none why don't we open
it up to the public
so who do we have dave
they've been muted yeah i know okay i
was
stuck in another window um yes
so first up we'll have roy lester before
that just folks
anybody who does does want to speak use
the raise your hand function
and we will um we will call on you in
the order that uh
that it comes up on the screen here a
reminder you get three minutes
and i will at the end of your three
minutes you'll hear the alarm ringing in
the background when you hear that then
you know your three minutes is up
so roy we're going to start with you
lucky lucky me um ron
i think you did a great job on this um
to be honest i've lived here my whole
life and i've
never really had a problem with long
beach police so
i i just you know you're preaching to
the choir here
this this is uh great stuff but i do
have a couple of questions
the data that you're talking about which
is really a good thing because it lets
people know everything
is that on the website because i know
you mentioned that it's there
on page 58 you say it's it's on
lbpd.com but i could not find it is it
already up there
so uh the the actual website roy
is being developed as we speak okay all
right
so it's not up yet all right so i'm
patient
okay uh number two and
and this is one that caused the problem
and this was before you came here
when you're talking about the crowd
control we had a problem this summer
with a bunch of kids and because of it
they came down to the beach
because we could not control them we
ended up shutting the beach down
and uh the boardwalk you know there were
just too many people
would this crowd control i i mean it's
basically
talking about um marches and stuff like
that
how would you be able to handle that
when it overwhelms our regular police
force
so roy it completely depends on the
situation and as it takes place i mean
yeah check the one take the one that we
have that particular one was a pop-up
uh a pop-up type of thing where there
was really no information that was
supposed to happen
uh and be as large as it was the the
the first one that happened not the
second one i think i had more of a
leeway on the second one but
so i mean i would call in county
resources to help out
of course if it becomes the point where
we think that the public danger
might be affected the public safety
might be affected
we would shut the beach down if it was
necessary to do so
uh if you had an unruly crowd we're not
gonna let people try to walk through an
unruly crowd
and access the beach if there's
potential for them to get hurt or if
crimes are taking place
our goal would be to get a hold of the
the man the the the people who are
actually organizing these things we
establish a dialogue with them
we let them kind of know the ground
rules of what's going to be tolerated
what's not tolerated
and if we think that there's going to be
a lot more than we can handle
we'll call for our brothers and sisters
in the nassau county police department
and around to come down assist us with
the control
and to be able to police within the in
the manner in which that we would like
them to police
under our rules you know and no one gets
hurt we don't we'll
tell you right now the ground rules are
simple here no destruction of property
and no hurting of people if you come
down you know if you can manage to do
that
you know we'll your your free speech is
going to be respected here
we're not going to let you damage
people's property and run amok on the
city
it's just not the way uh not the way
america should be should be run in my
opinion
no i i'm but i'm talking about this had
nothing to do with free speech this had
to do with
people wanting to hang out on the beach
a tremendous number of them
and you know a lot of the citizens
suffered because they lost their beach
for a while after that and you know i i
really feel confident ron that it
wouldn't happen again with you
but i was just wondering i hope so roy
but the fact that you said that makes me
nervous don't say that oh stop it
okay thank you ron great job thank you
so much
you're welcome
all right who's next dave
okay william hold on one second
just having a window problem uh william
uh how do you pronounce that dapper
okay go ahead sir yeah welcome hi um
commissioner walsh will you be having a
senior adult council
and also will body cams only be on
police officers
or also on detectives as well
so uh as far as the senior council
there's senior members who are
would be invited and have been like even
on our police
reform board there were uh several
senior members on that board
um as a specific uh uh council
if there if there was a need for it i
would be open to that as a uh
as something that we could open up to if
there was enough interest but
certainly they would be invited to
participate on our
commissioners community council as far
as body cameras go
the body camera issue is something that
you know requires
careful planning and integration to
ensure that
we're not violating people's rights
either so what does that mean
um when you have a body camera on you
everything that happens
is on that camera so we have to be very
cautious that what's caught on camera
is legally allowed to be given to
whoever's requesting whether it be a
foil request
or to the courts because not everything
is allowed if there was a
call at your home you're certainly not
going to want
your video showing up on something that
has nothing to do with you
so there's a lot of a lot of uh
careful preparation and planning that
needs to be done that we're looking at
as as as we speak as far as detectives
go
usually it is the uniform force that
wears
a body camera but that's something that
we could consider as well
but detectives usually are in are not
the first responder they're the person
who do follow-up investigations in
controlled environments
uh but uh of course if they were going
out to make an arrest
on somebody they would they would be
wearing a body camera
okay and then also if one police officer
is um being excessive or
foul language and the other officer
doesn't report it
and people are recording if that's uh
being brought in afterwards are you
gonna reprimand the
officer even worse that's mandated for
he's not concerned
mr douglas that's absolutely mandated if
we have information that any one of our
officers
violated policy or procedure or the law
they will be disciplined and they
violated the law they will be answering
for that as well
uh there is absolutely no way that
that's going to be tolerated in this
police department
okay thank you very much that's all i
have thank you very much thank
all right have a good night and who's
next dave
next is leah tozer okay hi leah
leah go ahead and um hi guys
good evening hi um hi commissioner walsh
i just want to say that you know
i feel so safe in our city and i get to
say that to people all the time when
they ask
all those questions so i just want to
throw that right out there
um this question is uh you know first
are you
are you guys voting on this tonight
no uh probably not because the
changes we're making to the section
about the body cameras will probably
uh require us to table it and vote on it
at the next meeting
and also we we're getting comments now
that may need to be incorporated
okay so okay so i just want to make sure
that it's that that
you so you're not voting on it tonight
because i was wondering why
it was called as a special meeting if
we're having the city council meeting in
six days
um you know like it was just announced
yesterday
why you know why that would be done with
like minimal
public input well there's not minimal
public input that's what we're all doing
right now
the reason it was done separately is
because
uh we assumed this was going to take
some time
and adding it into a full agenda
elsewise could make for a very long
meeting
so we wanted to make this a standalone
since it's an important topic
yeah no i get that but again it was only
announced yesterday so
you know to you know let people know i
mean i you know
i told a bunch of people and nobody
seemed to know about it so that's why i
was just uh
asking why that was ron do you want to
explain
the whole process sure so
um this has been under development and
uh the community has had uh
has had members like i was said earlier
uh
the the 18 or so people that have been
involved plus we've also used the north
park crisis
prevention intervention team and
numerous other avenues to seek input
not only that it was announced at
several board meetings and put up on the
city's website
a week ago on monday so the entire plan
including all of the policies and
procedures have been up for public
comment and we have been getting
public comment back i'm not sure how
that was missed but um i'd be more than
happy to
you know listen to whatever comments or
you can email me if you had something
specifically
that you wanted us to uh consider for
the plan uh
uh this probably will not be approved
until next week and i'm still open to
making uh
adjustments to it okay thank you i
appreciate that thanks so much liam
thank you very much for calling
coming in tonight so ron i i just want
to make clear it
it this is this hasn't been uh
the public has been given several
opportunities to comment on us
oh yeah this is not something that was
done
just yesterday well absolutely not and i
think something that sometimes gets lost
too is
each and every one of the board members
here is elected by the public for this
responsibility as well
and uh the board it's uh i'm sorry
didn't meet the basement board i
apologize the
council is uh has had the plan i think
for
about three and a half three and a half
weeks or so right so i mean
and there's been a lot of feedback
coming and we've been making adjustments
as we got them
uh from the council and from the public
and from public venue and
people who even say things to us when we
go to when we go to other venues
gee that would be really good to include
in the plan that's really important and
we start we incorporate that in
so anybody who thinks that this is a
cookie cutter plan all you have to do is
read it you can see it's very very
tailored
to everything that the city of long
beach needs
and just as a point of clarity the
meeting was noticed on monday
and uh i just want to add commissioner i
i was impressed by the
the groups that were um
reached out to you know the helen dorado
the latino
father brian um how's the worship so
to me i'm comforted to know that there
was great outreach
uh you know to the community
it was really a vast cross-section of
the community which is
you know exactly the point one of the
objectives of the exercise
so i'm very well executed in a
tight time frame in a new job um just
very impressive
and the coordination with the the the
new information that you provide in the
plan
in terms of integrating with the
resources throughout the uh throughout
nassau county and the island is um
exactly the type of uh you know
initiatives that this city should be uh
pursuing
thank you
okay well uh are you done leah
oh i didn't know if i was muted or not i
just wanted to say like i know joe lee
was on there and i'm a board member of
the chamber and we didn't know about it
so i'm just saying like
i i get that you know sometimes just
putting on facebook doesn't
you know do enough and not everybody
that was just in that group
told enough people so and i obviously if
it was just done
monday and today it's wednesday i get it
what you're saying but i'm just
saying it happened pretty fast and when
there's a special meeting usually it's
because of an emergency
sorry just one that's why i'm asking the
question
okay
all right well thanks leah and uh
who's next dave uh next is jennifer
drumm
okay
uh yes hi good evening everybody um
thank you for uh
taking the time to take my question um
it was very impressive comprehensive
plan
and i look forward to seeing a lot of
this implemented i'm a long time
resident
of uh of long beach i've been here
by the middle school here and i plan on
staying here forever
so whatever could be done to clean up
long beach from
uh the community standpoint and safety
is is the utmost
importance um as it relates to just a
due diligence that went through
um pricing and doing cost comparisons
regarding the data storage versus our
legal fees
um was there a cost comparison done to
see
uh in putting the expenditure into the
body cams
would in fact lower the fees that we
have been seeing
and second to that point do we have a
total
uh dollar amount of what we have spent
over the past five years on
outside council relating to
false arrests and or aggressive
natures from the police
force
i don't have the information that you're
looking for on historical
i've only been here since february 19th
officially so
uh with regard to uh
prior expenditures and stuff like that i
mean
i i don't have i don't have that
information i don't know if anybody else
does um
i can get that information but could you
repeat you asked for the legal fees
for so in in regards to
uh the legal fees that were spent on
false arrests or excessive force cases
in particular and and basically what is
the cost comparison between
um the data storage and the legal fees
you know to see what what is our
what's our break even what is our upside
what is our downside
so i could just inform the question a
little bit if you would mind jennifer
by all means the the comparison there
would be almost unfair because
just because an officer is accused
doesn't mean that they're guilty they go
through the due process
and the defense of that is going to be
an expense even if
they didn't do it you know or what they
did was considered legally permissible
so i mean they're they're two different
they're two different um comparisons i
understand what you're trying to get to
how do we come to whether or not it's
justified to use i would say to you from
my perspective i hope that we come up
with the money because historic
throughout the entire country they
these videos 95 of the time fall on the
side of protecting the police officer
from
unfair and unjust accusations so i am
all for body cameras
i totally want to know if my officers
did something wrong number one
and number two i totally don't want my
officers to be held accountable
for something that's a he said she said
type of situation
and we now have proof that they didn't
do what they're accused of doing
uh yeah no i i i agree with you i think
in the long run
it it would save us money
and and and besides money just uh
the faith and overall uh community
um uh appreciation of
what officers do on a day-to-day basis
and just everyone on both sides of uh
the coin will feel safer in the
community knowing that officers aren't
doing the right thing
and uh so i think it's it's a good tool
it definitely will boost public
confidence i agree with you
um commissioner walsh from what i've
read uh in terms of nassau county police
officers and body cams
that's a contractual negotiation with
them wouldn't that be a contractual
negotiation for us i.e
it's not just us saying police officers
wear body cameras it would have to be
negotiated
i believe that is 100 correct so the
city
could say yes and the state could pass a
law tomorrow that law tomorrow that
mandates this
but the uh collective bargaining uh
process still would need to take place
so that the unions would have their say
as to the rules and regulations and how
it gets implemented and whether or not
there would even be a consideration for
compensation and things like that all
that is
subject to negotiation you're correct
and if i just may ask was what is the
budget
for the body cameras
well right now it's an investigatory uh
project to look into what what we would
do and what
we haven't had even had the vendors come
in yet i
it's funny though because i did was on
the phone with motorola speaking with
them
today about their their product which is
a
watchguard and uh they have the uh
probably the most aggressive management
software associated to it
but i can tell you this that uh the
cameras
are not the expense
a lot a lot of these um companies will
give you the camera
what the expense is is the software and
the licensing of the cameras
and the actual management of the video
storage but that you are we're going to
need at least one full-time person in
the city of long beach
to manage the video and manage
not only how we store it but when it's
required to be given to the district
attorney's office
to ensure that everything that we give
the district attorney is what's required
for discovery
and also isolates out and makes sure
that it's not visible
things that are not permissible to be
seen
it's a very very very complicated a
process to implement these programs
we're fully in favor of it but a lot of
careful consideration has to go into how
it actually is implemented
so if just my last question
was there uh you know a bid sheet or an
rfp that was
verified for the city that we are
putting out to numerous vendors to
all uh quote on for apples for apples
not yet that would be the process in the
future yes and with that
and would that be obtained would we
probably be able to see what that rfp is
they're public documents when they're
put out yeah okay great thank you so
much for your time and uh i
i appreciate everyone's time on the
council thank you for the insight
appreciate it
all right thanks jennifer all right
who's next dave
uh james hodge okay mr hodge
hello how are you and uh one i just want
to say that i wish that
this would have been uh a meeting that
was promoted way more and i wish more
people from the community would have
been able to have input and not be held
to three minutes because this is a very
very important topic that
executive orders uh was back in may and
so it's not on commissioner's walls
commission walsh all of it but again i
just believe that we should have had way
more time to really
thoroughly go through all of these
different uh
uh areas i i suggested that the
commissioner and the council look at the
people's plan and thoroughly look at
a lot of the the 12 sections
that they uh mentioned and that they
thoroughly went through
police officers former judges
prosecutors
because there is a lot that has been
going on we've marched in long weeks and
we've been watching all over because
there is different treatment we know
that there's different treatment by the
way
of what happened uh at the capitol and
so we know
that this is real we're looking for
the city of long beach and i and and i
say you know
how many people from on this board is
trump that actually live in north park
commissioner can you let me know that
how many people from north park
have from this community actually live
in north park
i don't know the exact addresses of uh
of
of the people who were on the council i
know that
two of the members three of the members
are very very involved in the north park
community
and i believe two of them live in the
north park community all right
no i'm letting you know none of them
that i know of live in north park
you know well it depends on your
description of north park and what
you're actually calling
the actual area there is a little bit of
dispute as to what block it cuts off on
and whatever uh you you whatever you
might talk about
it's certainly very familiar with that
area they are
okay well you know my thing is that i
just believe that it should be
way more involvement i don't think that
it was
uh enough involvement i i think what
you're trying to do
and and get the information out and i
mean you only had a little bit of time
so i see what you're trying to do
i appreciate you even for coming in the
community we didn't have
much interaction from you know the last
police commissioner in the mlk so you
you've been here
you know more than some i would say uh
uh on your first day i believe yeah
the first day you were here and i
appreciate that i do i must say
that commissioner uh ragona and uh ryan
super amazing uh i thank god for them
they were great police officers
uh but i do say that commissioner if you
could really
entertain and look at the people's plan
they have solid information i know
that long beach police officers there
are some great and there's some bad
everywhere and we must recognize that
some people in long beach say oh i've
never had a problem with the police
that don't mean a lot of others have not
i've always loved police officers my
greatest
mentor was one of the police officers
who was the president of the mlk board
sergeant marcus and the late sergeant
emergency
and also others but officer walsh
uh not officer walsh uh officer files
and officer williams i was personally
assaulted by those officers
in front of my mother something that i
never thought would happen
and you know people can look at the
records they can look at the report they
can look at
sometimes courts may rule in the favor
of the police but that don't mean they
did
uh that they didn't do what they were uh
uh again
i guess the complaint was against them
those officers
assaulted me hit me in the face in front
of my mother it's one of the scariest
days of my life i never thought it would
happen to me
being on a former auxiliary police
officer
working with the police department as an
animal warden
and always having the love for the
police department but
again sorry to interrupt this for three
minutes please wrap it up in a sentence
or two
okay we must have more meetings
to address these serious issues so again
thank you for this meeting but i think
we should have had more time to be able
to speak and
like flush these ideas out not just
three minutes on this very very
important
you know situation that we're going to
vote on and i don't think we can vote on
it tonight because you guys are still
working
on some of these plans currently
this is liz we have established that we
will
not be voting on this tonight yes
are currently listening to the community
as you know i mentioned to you that
i have read the people's report all 311
pages
and i have highlighted the one page
um the one pagers i have in a packet
to give to my fellow council people i
was just waiting to listen to
emily the social worker that was part of
um the people's plan
today to get some more information
this is a fluid and please flip police
commissioner correct me if i'm incorrect
this is a fluid document is going to be
evaluated at least twice
a year things will be
this is brand new this is something that
we should be embracing that we are
actually looking at
change
um i i just like to say this that
that you're 100 correct uh uh
councilwoman trusted this is a living
document
what we are submitting to the state is
our plan
and the people of this community
including yourself mr hodge
will have input into the outcomes that
we are resolving and resulting in
so if there is something that is taking
place that
you're seeing or more interest or more
effort that you would like to see take
place
because you're not seeing it that is
where the communication and the bonding
and the relationship
between the police department and the
mlk center and you
mr james hodge as a resident of the city
of long beach
have the opportunity to speak to us as
well as our officers
and just let me finish this one piece
we've initiated
uh uh many programs in the last couple
of weeks one of which
is our community contacts which we're
now tracking and we have
hundreds and hundreds of community
contacts
all across this city that we are
documenting
to show not only our outreach but to get
out into this community and finally
bond with them and show them that we are
here to listen and the information is
coming back and we are using it
to inform exactly how we are policing
all right well thanks james um
and uh like i said it looks we will be
voting we're not gonna be voting on it
so you'll have an opportunity to
speak again at the next um meeting so
who who's next uh
and it looks like it's mr miles yes
good evening um pleasure to meet um mr
walsh tonight i
hope you're meeting before now um but
it's a pleasure to meet you and
i don't count any of this to be uh
you're doing or anything like that but
i'm in agreement with leah tolzer i'm in
agreement with some of the things that
james hodge is talking about
this particular meeting um i did not
know but i'm
i'm appreciative also of the council
thank you uh bendo
that you will not be voting on this
tonight as the president
of a civic the north park civic
association as a
clergy member at evangel revival
community church nobody had any idea
this was happening
i found out about this yesterday i did
know that there was um
about the crisis prevention team who was
in talks with you
but to my understanding of section of
the executive order
it said that a plan had to have public
comment and i'm glad that this is
becoming that
um but in the future in full
transparency
we've got to be very clear and we've got
to get the message abroad
it's not a broad swath it is one
community group um that you met with
that i'm aware of
uh from north park and and people do
want to meet and know who
is the new commissioner they have
questions um i know you went to
uh the westin neighbors i didn't even
get your email yet so that's what i want
tonight
i would like to get your email address
and we can continue this conversation of
course further thank you
my email address is rj walsh walsh
lbpd.com
you can also call the department anytime
you want and we can have a conversation
on the phone
i would like to point out that i've only
been your commissioner for about three
weeks
so there's not a tremendous amount of
opportunity for me to go
uh out into the community and meet with
all the groups that i want
i have reached out to um you know pastor
uh melton out in in north park i've
reached out to some of the residents in
north park
uh myself and miss gayden even before i
was the commissioner
of police were out meeting people during
snowstorms and helping out residents of
the north park north park community
you don't have somebody here who's
sitting around trying to you know
not be engaged this plan was
extremely labor-intensive to put
together and to tailor
i've spent an inordinate amount of time
doing that and dealing with
other other situations in the department
and i look forward to holding the
conversations with you
mr miles and with anybody else who's
interested in engaging
and giving feedback i i appreciate you
um and that's why i was i
you do you have no blame you just got
here this is brand new
um this is for the city though a plan
that
came out from the executive order in may
so from
ragona to the palma um i have
emailed um ragona but then something we
all know that we have different
situations now things happen
so moving forward i appreciate that
thank you so much
i also just just want to point out that
you know this
this um it's been really interesting to
get all this feedback
and like what keeps coming through in
the in the uh
in a lot of the comments is
communication and so
you know i'm going to try you know we
need to try harder to communicate with
each other
and to that effect ronnie i'd be glad to
um you know
be notified of when your meetings are
all right
i emailed you when you responded to me
i've emailed you and so we've only had
that one contact you've never emailed me
back
but i would love to have a communication
with you as well well that was because
you
you invited the five of us to meet with
the civic and the five
uh city council members are not allowed
to go meet with the civic at one time
because then
it becomes an open meeting i understand
that but i'm saying all you had to do
was say i can't attend or
send me a future date or i had to ask
all five of you i can't just ask one of
you to come to a meeting
so i do understand how policy works i'm
a former employee i understand no and
and then and
and to your point i said i need to
communicate more with you so
i'm really looking forward to hearing
when your next meeting is and when we
could all
you know i publicized the meeting uh for
last week
um but i'll make sure i email you
directly again
all five of you will get the email but i
just want to make that um aware that you
will all find get the email
thank you appreciate it in the effort of
being responsible to
uh the entirety of the long beach
community um
i did not realize that this was going to
run as long as it is and i have another
commitment to another community
organization that started at
7 30. i actually moved it from 7 to 7 30
and i'm
i'm late for that um i could try to take
another question if you want and i'm
more than happy to be on
obviously on the next on the next call
that we have anybody
out there who wants to contact me it's
rj walsh walsh
lbpd.com you can also call the police
department
and i'm busy but i'll find time for you
i will talk with you and
i'd love to hear your input so uh with
that if it's okay
i'd like to log on to the other uh
association meeting that i have
okay um yeah currently we have no hands
raised
oh okay okay so that works out so what
we'll do is we'll take any
we'll take the feedback that we got here
uh we also know the
the body camera section is is being
updated
and uh what i'm gonna uh i don't know if
this is the appropriate point to do it
dave or if we can actually call it uh
but all right i'm gonna i'm gonna make a
motion to table this resolution
uh so we can carry it over and
incorporate the feedback
and um okay do i have a second
um i'm ladies first guy liz i was second
okay voting to table the item council
member delorey uh yes
councilmember mandel i'm sorry he's
absent
council member treston yes vice
president mcginnis
yes president bando yes okay so item one
has been tabled
okay so and john we're going to be
tabling it and then we're going to bring
it up at the next
city council meeting correct so it'll
come up at the city council meeting on
tuesday
so it'll be uh the opportunity for
people to
uh comment on any updates that were made
or additional comments they may want to
make
and um so with that uh motion to close
the meeting i just
before we make a motion to close i just
want to mention one thing
i i'm sure i would like to reach out and
they're not here
thank um the deputy uh
commissioner rich de palma who i imagine
was doing a lot of work
in the interim as well so you know
just wanted to mention that and also
bill dock who
runs rcoa
but i i would just like to take note
that
um again this is not is
is not new we have been talking about
this for a while
um publicly and
it's residents are going to have to take
some responsibility
to look at the city's website to see
what's coming up
and if you have a question email
us right eat treston long
at long longbeachmy.gov i have a phone
number
i would be more than happy to call you
back this is all about communication
don't listen to other people give us a
call
thank you all right okay so so
with that uh we'll uh we'll see everyone
uh
on motion to close oh i'm sorry we
didn't vote i'm sorry
yes liz second did it i'm i i'm sorry
no that was the other that was the
motion the table so i need a motion to
close the meeting
i'll make a i'll make a motion to close
the meeting thank you
second second i'll second it
okay good morning council member to
lurie
yes councilmember treston
yes vice president mcginnis yes
president bendev
yes okay and now we can do the finale so
uh
so thanks for joining and uh we'll uh
talk to you again on tuesday there's a
working meeting
that's true there is a working meeting
tomorrow night
um so uh
if you want to join us for that uh
youtube channel
you can join us for that see you
tomorrow
have a great night everyone