 Today is our opportunity to talk with Police Chief Livingstone who has been with the town for a very long time and has seen a lot of things, so I'm really eager to hear the types of things that he has to say. I want to give you a brief update on what's going on with the team with us right now. As of yesterday, we have 26,867 total cases of COVID-19 that have been diagnosed and were tested, 224 of those are in Hampshire County and 11 cases are in the town of Amherst. As of yesterday, there are 844 deaths in Massachusetts and there have been 122,049 tests that have been taken, that have been given so far and so that's one of the things that the state is trying to do and they're doing, every day we see additional progress in getting more testing sites, prioritizing tests for people who are first responders, people who are on the front lines, workers, things like that, especially prioritizing quick tests for them so that they can find out right away if they are subject to COVID-19 or not. Governor has come out with a number of things that guidance documents that we have then translated for our community. The big ones that we did this week were guidance for construction sites and these are our guidance and rules but the guidance from our inspection services department have been sent to anybody who had taken out a building permit in the last three months plus they're included with any kind of building permit that's issued subsequent to that. We also have guidance for grocery stores, the state has put a maximum limit on it, occupancy of grocery stores at 40% of the typical occupancy and so we're informing the grocery store so they're aware of that. We also have given some guidance to encouraging them to do curbside pickup as opposed to having people come into their places of business. We're coming out soon this week with more guidance for other retail establishments. One of the things that we talk about and this is before I transition over to Chief Livingstone, we meet pretty much every day with the police chief, the fire chief, the health director as the leads of this with the DPW superintendent, the finance director, the assistant town manager to go over where we are in terms of that there had been any incidents. What's the status of our employees? Is everybody healthy? Have there been any incidents with employees or are we are we fully staffed and able to respond to any kind of emergencies? But we do that on a daily basis and then review topics that have come up. I can sort of alert you that coming forward, we will be talking a lot more about budget. We had been talking about just response and making sure our first responders are outfitted with the right PPE, personal protection equipment, but coming, you know, going forward over the next few weeks, you'll hear a lot about budgets and things like that. So that is going to be a major topic of conversation with the library, trustees, the school community, of course, the town council. So as I talked about our COVID response team, you know, many, many employees are contributing to this and I think the police are in the front lines. And so I'd like to just lift Scott Livingstone, our police chief, has anything that he wants to start off with? How's your how's your I guess the first question is how's the department, you know, are you guys ready to handle anything that comes down the road? You know, thanks, thanks, Paul. And first and foremost, yes, we are from a very healthy agency right now. We have nobody else either sick or with any symptoms currently, both in police and fire. I mean, excuse me, police and dispatch. So from that perspective, things are going very well. The officers are adhering to all of the recommendations that come through our our local health department, who we work very closely with and all of the recommendations from CDC and the state government as well. So we're in a good position that way. We have all the equipment that we need as far as PPEs and the officers are well burst in and, you know, how to respond to calls and protect themselves as well as the public. So really good shape as far as that's concerned. Thanks. Great. I'm going to just take a quick chance to remind attendees how they can ask a question using the Q&A button in the Zoom application or by raising your hand in Zoom, star nine for those of you on the phone. We did have a couple of questions come through earlier that that are for the chief. So I can I can launch into some of those if you guys would like. Sounds good. So some of that you just you just covered in your statement there. But we have someone asking, are you still going into people's homes? And what are the the major impacts to your operations or changes that have happened? So sure. That is one of the, you know, when we decided how we were going to respond to types of calls, certainly things that we took into consideration as a are there certain calls that we can no longer respond to? And by that, you know, we looked at our medical calls. Typically pre-C19, we would respond to almost all of the medical calls with the fire department. So we've had to revisit that and see which types of calls we could cut back on and we've done that. You know, if there's an emergency situation, we would still respond to those. But your general, you know, if somebody's got a cough, if somebody's not feeling well, we wouldn't respond to those necessarily. But if an individual obviously injures themselves at home, falls, breaks a leg or has a heart attack, we are certainly responding to those. And we would don't the protective equipment that we have issued to us. So we respond to people's homes. We try and limit that. If it's something where they want to report off, let's say, for instance, a larceny, we would ask that they step outside and interact with the officers in a safe distance, you know, the six to eight foot range. And we can still, you know, take the information we need to file reports. That sort of thing. But, you know, we've really kind of had to change the way we've operated as an agency because we were so very, our philosophy was always about community policing and community outreach. And we've certainly had to change that. And it's it's taken the officers getting some used to because it's kind of the opposite of how we operate as an agency. So it's been getting a little bit weird, a little bit, you know, getting used to dealing with people from a distance, I guess. So I noticed you call it C-19. Is that that's I call it COVID-19 or coronavirus. But at least work is at C-19. Is that how you reference it? It's shortening things up for sure. You know, it's just a term that somebody started using in the agency. And I think it's stuck. So interesting. We have another question here for the for the chief. They say they see people gathering in groups from time to time. And it may may not be more than 10 people, but they worry that not everyone is taking the stay home order seriously. And they wonder what they should do when they see something like that. Yeah. So, you know, we'll we'll respond to the people are really concerned and call will certainly respond if they want us to. I think for the most part, we'll take it on a case by case basis. So if it's a group of young college aged people are hanging out, let's say five or six of them in a fire pit. And they're not adhering to the social distancing part. We will certainly go there and remind them of that. But to just generally getting calls about, hey, I've seen this group, you know, we would discourage people from just calling in indiscriminately because what we were seeing is people would be driving by a location, for instance, and then try and report something to us. And, you know, the information gets kind of clouded. And, you know, sometimes we didn't know where we were responding to or what we were responding to. So if there are very specifics that somebody wanted us to respond to, you know, we would certainly still do that. Great. So something that came up last night, I think, was about the notch and whether that was open for people to park there. And is that explain is that something that you would respond to? Or what is what's the rules around the notch in the visitor center there? Yeah, so a couple of things like we, as I mentioned, we had a call come in from a pastor by maybe a week and a half maybe two weeks ago, even where they said, hey, there are a lot of people hanging out in the parking lot, probably preparing to go for a hike. That's not something we would typically want to respond to. This just too general for an officer to be going up there and trying to decide who's in violation or who's not. And then we received further information from the state DCR that they're actually going to close that parking lot down this past weekend. And, you know, we had conversations with how that would be regulated and how officers could possibly respond to something of that nature. The biggest problem we had from the Amherst Police perspective is we don't have jurisdiction over the street over 116 in that location. And the parking lot is included in that. So if we were to go up there and try to enforce parking regulations, we really don't have the authority to do that. That would fall on the state's jurisdiction. And that was one of the things that we tried to speak to the DCR. People about is if there are violations, we're kind of stuck to in a rock and a hard place about how to enforce that because we envisioned if they close the parking lot that people would start parking in the streets and that would become even more of a hazard than if people had just had the parking lot access to the parking lot in order to go on their hikes. So as it turns out, I did dig a right up there on Saturday morning and saw that they must have changed their minds and decided not to close that parking lot, which I think was a good thing. So this question is kind of related. So with warmer weather getting here, eventually, do you worry about big parties? Like happens in most springs in town? And if so, how will you handle that? Sure. So I don't know of worries that are right. We are certainly having discussions and it's something that police officers themselves talk about frequently. What we have learned and we have a close relationship with most of our landlords, a large portion of our young people have gone home. We kind of anticipated after spring break that a lot of them were going to stay in town in their rented apartments and do their distance learning from their own apartments. And it doesn't seem like that's the case, at least not as many as we thought we might see. So are we concerned about large gatherings? Yes, worried about them, maybe not so much. But what we'll do is we'll handle those on a case by case basis as well. We flat out don't want people hanging out in large groups, you know, just having drinking parties that goes against every regulation that's coming out from our local health director, the state and the CDC people. So we would we would approach those people and ask that they disperse. So we will frown upon any large gatherings of that. With just the idea of partying in mind. Great, thank you. Yeah, we have another question here regarding downtown and the caller says that they've been downtown the other day. It looks pretty vacant and quiet. You know, a lot of businesses might have closed their doors for now. And they're wondering if the police department are doing anything to protect the closed businesses downtown. Or so we are and, you know, that's absolutely true with downtown. And I walk through downtown just about every day myself during the daylight. Hours and it is pretty sad because it's always such a vibrant and busy downtown. But it's it was one of our, you know, biggest concerns. My staff and I spoke about it. And, you know, the first things we decided is that with each shift now, officers will be responsible for going around and actually checking door knobs and going old school where we used to have an officer do center checks and that's what we're doing now. And, you know, we were able to find a few open doors and notify the business owners and they are very appreciative of that. And we've also had to make unfortunately, had to make an arrest in the downtown business from a break in that had occurred. So, you know, but we are out there on every ship checking businesses to make sure that they're, you know, they're protected. Paul, did you have anything to add on the local business front? Or so, yeah, we have had in regular touch with the Business Improvement District and with the Chamber of Commerce meeting weekly with them to talk about the future of downtown, talk about the businesses that are struggling and trying to do everything we can to help them survive this this this drought. And hoping that there are as many of them as possible will come back. I think one of the challenges for a lot of small businesses is they work on very narrow margins and that's not there's no different in our community as well. We have had some landlords who have been really generous about forgiving rent or delaying rent payments for several months. So that's a really important thing for our local businesses. You know, I'm trying to do as much, you know, whenever I can go and buy things, you know, take out meals and things like that just to help help them get through this very, very difficult time. The unfortunate thing is that when for restaurants, especially where a restaurant dependent economy, when we come out of this, no one's going to go and buy two dinners. They might go back to the restaurant, but things will fundamentally change because they may not be able to have as many tables. They may not have as many people as closely in a space. But we don't know what that future looks like. And we believe that we have really good foundation in terms of we are an attractive community where people want to live. We have the university and the two colleges here that has a ready employment base. But we think we will be poised to come back and we want to be ready to get a jump running start when we do come back. Great. Thank you. I have another question for the chief because if I remember correctly, you've been an Amherst for a big part of your career, we'll say. Have you ever seen anything like this in Amherst or anything that you can recall that was similar? Yeah. So I have been an Amherst as a police officer for 40 years, which is a long time. And I like to joke that I started when I was three years old. But nothing even close. I was a beat officer in 1978 when we had the blizzard of where we got four or five feet of snow. And for a couple of days, nobody was making around except for police and fire for the most part. And we had to respond to calls with plow trucks, that sort of thing. But nothing to this magnitude. This is just unprecedented and unusual. And just how we have to change, how we respond to calls, and just all the protections that are in place. This is unbelievable, really. And I guess the theory thing is nobody quite knows when it'll get back to normal. Another part of the weirdness of it, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. That's interesting. When you talk about that, Chief, we keep thinking about, well, how is this going to change the way we do business? So right now we're having all of our committee meetings on Zoom or something like that. And doing a lot of meetings remotely through Microsoft Teams. And I wonder, we start to speculate, is that going to be the new normal? Or are we going to go back to just how we've always done things? I would guess that for police and fire, you're less susceptible to different things. Because what your business is about is responding when people call and showing up present. You can't zoom into a house if there's a complaint coming from somebody of a burglar, or if you're of a burglar or something like that. And I think the training, what I've always been impressed by your department is the level of training that you've made sure all of your officers get. And just seen it in action with how they handle very difficult, challenging things like domestic violence and things, or people experiencing homelessness who might be meddling it well. But do you see any substantial difference that will stick on how you're doing things now? You know, I hope not because, you know, and it's funny, funny, not funny, but the police officers themselves don't really like the way that we have to respond and interact with people. And the best way I can, the best description I can give is that, you know, we had a software that we used in order to let the citizens report little things online, like for instance, all larcenies you could report online, like if your bike was stolen or something was stolen out of your yard. And it was the officers themselves who said, you know, we'd rather just go to the house and talk to the people about little things like that. So, you know, it was interesting to hear the officers themselves say, you know, they don't really like this way of doing police. And they're hoping that it doesn't last much longer. It's the face-to-face interactions that police officers have with the public mean something to them. And I'm talking most of the time, it's very positive. So, you know, we hope that it's not going to be the new norm, that this is the way we're going to be doing normal business. It's interesting you say that because when we interview new police officers, one of the questions we have is if you came to work here and wanted to just respond to a call every once in a while, this is not the department for you. This is a very department. And we get people who want to be doing police work actively and have a broad array of different police work that they have abilities from sort of, you know, broken window type things to high-level groups. And I think that's the type of officer that we recruit and it comes here. And so I can imagine how that is just, you know, I'm not saying they're bored, but that there's just not enough activity for them and that person-to-person activity is what drives them. Yeah, and they're bored. You know, because we encourage the officers, especially now, and there are so few calls, we're like, you know, you need to be out in public, you need to be seen, you need to be interacting with people when you can and where you can. And, you know, we didn't have to tell them that twice, that's for sure. You know, they want to be out and about and seeing people and trying to reassure them that things are going to get better and the community still safe and but we're there if you need us. Great. All right. Well, I do not have any other questions that were submitted. Do you guys have any parting statements that you'd like to leave our viewers with? Chief? No, I think, thanks for the opportunity, Paul and Brianna, for this. I think it's great that the public gets an opportunity to see this and be involved in this and, you know, I would just add that if people need us, we are there for them and we'll get through this together. We have a great, great community, the town of Amherst, and I'm sure we'll get through this with flying colors. And I just like to add that how much I appreciate the support of the community, the broader community, and the council. It's a really hard time to be an elected official, I think, and trying to figure out what's the right thing to do. And I think they've done a really marvelous job at hitting the right notes at the right time. And I also just, the general public has been so supportive and thankful for the work that everybody in the town is doing. It really matters to us. Right? Absolutely. Well, I do want to thank Police Chief Scott Livingstone for joining us today. If you have any follow-up questions, you can email us at info at AmherstMA.gov. We will be doing this every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of weeks at noon. So if you didn't get a chance to ask all your questions today, please feel free to join us on Thursday. We'll have school superintendent Dr. Michael Morris with us, as well as health director Julie Federman and town manager Paul Balkaman. I just want to thank everybody for tuning in, and we will chat with you soon. Great, thanks. Take care. Bye. Thank you.