 Okay. We do want to make, let y'all know that Nowcast is here up there too. We are filming this and it will be aired so they can just go to NowcastSA.com. NowcastSA.com. So wave to the cameras. Okay. One, just one quick thing on the, in your packets you'll find some green sheets. It's an evaluation form. Please take some time to fill that out. Let us know what topics that you would like to see for next year and future years. So that's real important that we know. This topic today has become a very popular one. So we would like to hear from you as far as what else you would like to see us cover. We would like to announce on page seven of your program is a one page announcement of our neighborhood awards program. We are holding it again this year. So please take some time to read through that and submit your award entries. Okay. We'll go ahead and start with the program. Just a quick announcement too. After the panelists, we're going to have time for our round tables from one to one thirty or their bouts and they are located over on this end of the gym. They are, there's some signs that have each of the safe officer substation locations and then we have some city and county program tables in the back and our panelists will refer to that. We have the pleasure of having one of our longtime NRC friends of county commissioner Tommy Ackerson who would like to say a few remarks remarks. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, Sylvia. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Congratulations to each and every one of you for having the enlightened self interest or the motivation, the inspiration to be here. I want to, of course, congratulate the leadership team of the neighborhood resource center. It is, I founded my own neighborhood association about, about almost 35 years ago and I know that you probably will find this really remarkable and hard to believe that I'm still an officer in that association. Anybody been an officer for more than one year? It just seems to go with the turf. But when people say, why are you still an officer? Because I'm not going to let go of it until somebody rips it out of my hands. I don't want anybody to take my office and end up doing nothing or bobbling the ball or saying, oh, what the heck? It's optional. You don't really need a neighborhood association after all. You know, that's bull. Well, let me just say that is heifer dust. That is heifer dust. We need neighborhood association so that we can take care of the territory, right? You know, good neighborhoods don't just happen. They are, they are the end product of a process of people pulling themselves together, educating themselves, being good and decent people, carrying deeply and not treating it like a disposable thing in our life where you just like a handkerchief or a Kleenex where you just throw it away after you use it. No. No, this neighborhood has real people in it. This neighborhood has people who are hoping to achieve their dreams of having a great place to live and raise their children in. But when I mentioned the neighborhood resource center team, they are Susan Schopp, Sylvia Mendiola. Thank you, Sylvia. Wendell Davis, who's out of town here this morning, Tom Newton, who is a lawyer and a great resource for this NRC, Don Arispe, Natalie Biggers, Michael Montoya, Jackie Pepper, Susan Sheeran, and on the staff Rosalind Chavez. Let's have a round of applause for all those great people. Thank you. See, I believe the Neighborhood Resource Center is a great overarching organization that we all need to make sure that neighborhoods are respected across the city. When we send a person to the city council or commissioner's court, it is very important that you be able to reach not only that individual that you directly elect, but the colleagues that they are sitting with so that they will resonate with these issues. And I look at animal control and code compliance as good examples of where I think there's probably a couple of council districts that it's not so very critical to. But I can tell you in the older areas of the city it's very critical. As one person said, some people move up to the neighborhood and some people move into the neighborhood. And I would like to think that people move up to my neighborhood, not just into it, so that they'll come in and do some great things. But when it comes to leading neighborhoods, I think of the Theodore Roosevelt quote, he said in his quote called The Arena. It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strongman stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs, and this is where I think of you, the leadership, the membership as well as the leadership. Many of you have been in office and you're out of office, but you may even actually be the de facto leader, or you don't need a title, because everybody knows that you're one of the leaders, if not the leader. And so that's an important deal. Not everybody who holds an office really makes the same impact as some who don't hold an office, but who do a lot of work do. But he says, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, who's faced as marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm, who's a great devotion, who spends him or herself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. Putting a neighborhood association together, keeping it together is an act of high achievement. You know that. It's a big deal. It's a big deal, and that's why this NRC conference every year is a big deal to me, because I can tell you what, and I'm looking at a young guy. Stand up. This guy is on his neighborhood association board, and he is 19, 18. You know, we all look around at our neighborhood membership, and we all think, uh, wonder who's gonna follow us, or, you know, and then you get something to say, oh, no, I'm gonna be here forever. I don't want anybody else taking my place, and you know, you see them kind of struggling, and you think, come on, come on, let the fresh blood come into the process, acknowledge, appreciate them, ask them to go out and get more young people. I think that is the essence of some of the leadership that we have got to have in our neighborhoods, because what's not sustainable is merely extendable. If you don't, if you, if you don't get new folks in, and I know of several neighborhood associations, I've got 60 unincorporated areas in my precinct, but I will tell you, we have a lot of neighborhood associations, our number that have gone out of existence. They're out of existence because they did not fulfill the John Maxwell 21st Irrefutable Law of Leadership, the Law of Succession, the Law of Succession. So anyway, uh, Theodore Roosevelt left us with these, uh, words who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. So with that, I say, keep up your great work, support the Neighborhood Resource Center against the backdrop of your support for your own neighborhood association, and let's have not a good but a great community. So ladies and gentlemen, congratulations to you for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commissioner Atticus, and we are always happy to have you here at our conference. Before we start the panel, we're going to have our, drawing of the one hour with our attorney, Tom Newton, and we'll go ahead and make that get the winner chosen. Somebody would like to pick a winning ticket. Ms. Jeannie Russell would have the pleasure. All right, congratulations. We can start our afternoon panel on Neighborhood Safety. Our moderator today is Jeannie Russell. She is with SA 2020, and I'd like to just kind of briefly describe her background. She's, Jeannie received her bachelor's in anthropology from UC Berkeley and her master's in education from UC Davis. She also received her joint master's in journalism and Latin American studies from New York University. She has spent several years as a teacher in New York City, Tokyo, and Guatemala City. So she's very well educated and traveled. She has also been involved as a staff and advisor to two of our mayors, Mayor Hartberger and Mayor Castro. At this time, I'd like to go ahead and turn the program over to Jeannie Russell with SA 2020. She participated in the SA 2020 meeting. So that's great. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being a part of our community vision. For those of you who were not part of the community meetings, I just wanted to set the stage by giving you a little context of SA 2020 and where things stand now. So SA 2020 was a citywide community visioning process where we set really ambitious goals for our city in 11 areas, one of which is super relevant for today, which is community safety. There are a number of others that also touch on what you're talking about today, like neighborhoods, for example. So just this week, we had the first progress report on how we were doing on those goals, and I'm really enthused to tell you that in the area of community safety, we've actually made some very impressive progress largely because of the great support we've gotten from the law enforcement agencies represented here. So thanks to both of you for that. The big goals that the community set in the area of community safety were around, of course, the overall crime rates. That's not surprising. Also, really important to people was police response times, and I'm sure we'll hear a little bit more about that, but the police response times have improved dramatically since that goal was set, and so thanks to Chief McManus and all of SAPD for that. Another really significant goal that the community set and was reinforced this week when we came together again was around community involvement in public safety, and I think that really gets at the heart of what you're talking about today here at this conference. So increasing the number of folks who are really taking control of their own safety in their own communities through programs like Citizens on Patrol, am I getting that name right? See the program that trains folks to really work in tandem with law enforcement in their own neighborhoods programs like that, and we've also seen some really significant increases in the number of folks engaging those types of programs. So across the board on community safety, we've seen some really important strides. So I'm really happy to be here today and to be joined by two men who have a wealth of experience in law enforcement, a tremendous history, unlike me who's popped around and lived in lots of different places and done a lot of different things. These guys have been doing the work for a really long time and bring tremendous expertise to this panel. So we're going to start out, I think, with Deputy Chief Joe Hamilton, who's to my right, and who is with the Bear County Sheriff's Department, and then we're going to move over to Assistant Chief Jose Vaneles. Did I get that right? And hear a little bit about what's happening in each of those law enforcement agencies as it relates to neighborhood safety. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. On behalf of the sheriff who is in class this morning, she loves to come to functions and to speak. So I am a fill in. We love to come to your neighborhood association meetings. So please call us and invite us. Where's Leonard? Leonard's at the back and he handles all in RB. They handle all tough questions and they'll be part of the part of the group discussion afterwards. It's great to be here. Also, I keep running into the commissioner everywhere. It's so cool that he's involved in so much. And he's everywhere. And the reason is that he cares. And I just think we're blessed to have that commissioner in here. A couple of things to talk about at BCSO, the Sheriff's Office. Our primary responsibility is in the unincorporated area of the county. If you're in a city, then normally you would go through them and most may live in the city of San Antonio and they have excellent programs. And I'm sure Joe will address some of those things. The biggest thing is to be involved and you are involved. So I commend you for being here. We want you to be a difference maker and not a victim. The county is divided into 16 districts and we have officers. Now that's the unincorporated area and we have deputies assigned to each of those districts. Typically have 30 to 40 on duty at a time, 24-7. Mainly they answer calls for service, patrolling residential areas, traffic law enforcement and business patrol. Those four key areas primarily what they do. What can you do to help? We can't see, if we witness something, we can take action. But we can't see or hear everything that's going on. And one real important thing, when you see something in your neighborhood, somebody doing something that's a little suspicious, write something down. It's a link that tells us where to start looking. So write it down, write down the date, time and location that you see something and that gives us a starting place to start an investigation. And when you see something that just seems a little different or a little odd, trust your instincts. And it may be an unfamiliar vehicle in your neighborhood, it may be parked at a neighbor's house. And if you just blow it off and don't do anything, you could be the next victim. In one instance, we had a person knocking on a door and came to the door and said they were there to do some work. And the resident said, now you must have the wrong house. This was a burglar. He was checking to make sure that nobody was home. And the person didn't capture any information from that person. So if they come to your door, ask for a business card, get some identification, they're very likely to be legitimate. But they're also very likely to be casing out your residence and to see if anybody is home. So write down that information. Don't take action on your own. If you're in the city, call the other city. If you're in the unincorporated area, then call the county. There are some key numbers. Everybody knows the 911. And the chief will share with you the city's number. But our non-emergency number is 3356,000. And you should have that number written next to your phone somewhere. 335 is 210, 3356,000. And you'll get a menu, depending on what your need is, and you can punch in one, two, three, or four, whatever, and an officer will be dispatched or deputy will be dispatched to your location to check that out. But have those numbers handy and be very wary and cautious. Now this is not just when you're at your home, but if you're at Walmart or if you're at HEB, be cautious and stay in groups and watch what's going on around you. Look for anything suspicious so that you don't become a victim. Want you to be a difference maker and not a victim. Check out our website for the county. And there's all kinds of programs from neighborhood watch to cops program and many opportunities. But the main thing is to be involved and that you care about your community. And that's because you're here. I think I've covered everything that I have on my list. I would give you one example. If you have stuff in your home that's of value, we had five guns stolen from a residence one time and we tried to get an inventory. The owner didn't have any numbers written down. So it was hard to track something that's stolen if you don't have any numbers written down. So get your little spiral notebook or use your computer and write down what you have value in the serial numbers so that if it is stolen then we kind of know what we're looking for. That'd be a good thing to do. Thank you very much for the invitation and thank you on behalf of our of our sheriff and if we she's busy talking all the time and talking to groups and she's gifted at that. But I'm a fill in and it's an honor to be here. Thank you much. Good afternoon. Jose Villanuellis and assistant chief for the police department overseeing the operations support bureau. That's encompassing three of the divisions which is the investigations division terrorism intelligence division and the tactical support division. On behalf of chief of menace I want to thank you for the opportunity of being out here like Joe Hamilton said I commend you for being involved as Commissioner Atkinson also said that that's the source of those those that will follow you in your roles as you are taking those leadership roles in your neighborhood and that's a very important statement he made because for us we know with the large area that we have to provide services is something that we cannot do on our own. We rely heavily on the eyes and ears from you to report those those activities that you see that you might consider suspicion. Even if it's if it's not suspicious at a time just like Joe Hamilton said writing down the license plate number date and time we can always correlate that information with other leads that we might have that others are reporting to pinpoint that individual or vehicle involvement and criminal activity. Again there's various programs in which you all can participate in assistant Santa Police Department and Bear County Sheriff's office in allowing us to provide you better services and as I see the cellular patrol the neighborhood watch programs there's other programs that are sponsored through our safe program that you all can get involved our VIPs have been instrumental in providing surveillance over the holidays those high crime areas in the neighborhoods. A couple that I know of for sure is like England Park Mall the downtown area Central Park Mall North Star Mall those areas they've always provided surveillance for the police officers to be on hand in case they see or witness some criminal activity. The police department is really broken up into six service areas and within those six service areas each one of them is commanded by police captain and he has anywhere between two to three hundred police officers assigned to that service area that patrols and gives you your your patrol availability for that area 24-7. At any one point in time we will have approximately 150 police officers patrolling the entire city in addition to the other special units that we have such as a pop our DWI enforcement our traffic enforcement detail our SWAT detail and a couple other specialized units narcotics vise and rope so we do we do feel that we're comfortable in the numbers that are out there providing service however we also want to push out like Joe said see something say something if you see something that really caught your eye for some reason reported say something to somebody that we recently stood up a southwest Texas fusion center and that's the repository for all the intelligence coming in to the police department whether it be through the police department bear county sheriff's office FBI DEA we're all interconnected at that fusion center so in fact Joe didn't mention it but he has a bear county sheriff's officer assigned to the southwest Texas fusion center so we're right next door like we are right here in the fusion center so we can talk and exchange information exchange intelligence so it doesn't matter who you report that to whether it's bear county or sapd we will get that information out to the the field units again on behalf of chief menace thank you for allowing us to be participating in neighborhood research community uh meeting uh it's our privilege to be here thank you um i'd like to just make a just a quick announcement somebody lost their car keys um the the keychain is a james avry keychain with that says very special dad on it it's with the alarm clicker so if anybody finds or sees a um a set of car keys uh please let us know thank you go ahead go ahead with the q and a session so we're gonna we like to try and use the mic so everyone can can hear you the other day i was watching the city council meeting and i seen where the chief said that the crime is way down the same token the next day i get an email that says the crime is way up every day when i go and check the crime statistics in my neighborhood every day i see at least one assault and one a burglary and we see a lot of these goals we buy gold we buy silver whatever are these places regulated like uh pawn shop should be and are they required to record whoever pawn something or sell something to them because my neighbors are telling me when they get burglarized they're not taking tvs they're not taking those types items they're taking gold and silver and things like this that they can get rid of quickly and stick it in their pocket and walk away so so two questions right first about whether the crime rights are up and are down and second question about um what sort of regulation there is of the pawn shops i don't know if that's something sapd as far as the daily crime report that we get and that we utilize to deploy our resources and strategically and tactically try to address crime areas our property crime numbers overall citywide is down 15 percent uh and that's not to be confused with the ucr data the fbi puts out this data that i just told you that we're down 15 percent is the numbers that we use on a daily basis to to gauge the crime rate in specific service areas citywide we're down 15 percent and and if i want to know the specific service area where your your residences i'll be able to tell you what the crime rate is for that area if it's central service area we show a 21 decrease in property crime in that area again you may be hearing that a burglary or an offense going on in your area but compared to the numbers that we compared to last year we're still showing a decrease in the crime what neighborhoods are that's a west service area and we're showing a 12 percent decrease in property crimes with with the only exception in in the service area that has a increase in crimes arson and we're showing an eight percent increase in crime and arson for the west service area your second question regarding pawn shops they are somewhat regulated however uh the reporting responsibilities for the pawn shops to report the items that they take in are as an involuntary basis we have a program here in san antonio called leads online and pawn shops are can report all the the items they take in on a volunteer basis on leads online electronically so that we can cross-reference whether those items have been reported stolen but that like i said that will take legislature changes at the state level for us to regulate a minimum okay i believe we have a question back here yes sir you mentioned for us to make sure that when we see it we call it in um i'm wondering first of all what kind of training the dispatchers have and also what can we do if they refuse to take a report because that's happened to us numerous times we call a non-emergency number sometimes they'll refuse to take it sometimes they'll say oh that's a co-compliance issue even though it's something that our safe officers already told us it's not a co-compliance issue it's something we need to call about then one time um for instance something that's happened numerous times is that the trailer will pull up on the highway right away they start unloading furniture they have no license plate they start selling it right there our safe officer had told us that they were having problems with the roosevelt flea market with that they captured several people who were selling stolen goods and they and that this might be tied to this that they were instead just coming to our neighborhood and trying to sell them on the street there and sometimes you know i would tell the dispatcher no this is a police matter we need someone to come out and check in and our safe officer specifically asked us to call you and sometimes they would take the report for that reason sometimes they would refuse to take the report one time i called up sometimes i called up it back and asked to speak to the supervisor and one time i called and it happened the same person answered the phone and she hung up on me because i asked to speak to our supervisor so it's very frustrating when you're trying to encourage people in your neighborhood as a cellular and patrol coordinator to call and report things and then they say well we try to call and they wouldn't take the report okay so that sounds like what can we do for SAPD can i just add to that i think um i maybe have had the opposite issue of not being sure when you should call so is there a good place for maybe citizens to inform themselves about what we should be calling about and what really is a nuisance call it's a fortunate to hear that one of our call tickers hung up on you and i will address that with our staff however through the strategic management for accelerated response times which is our smart initiative in order for us to improve our response times to actual uh crime activity we have taken efforts to uh what we call expedite reports for those uh incidents that do not require a police officer to make the scene uh so that and again uh those those are the kind of things that we try to do to be able to be available to respond to the emergencies and those uh incidents in which do require police officer to make the scenes we have tried to improve the coordination with 311 our co-compliance number that they they get all the info their calls through is a 311 line however from what i understand that 311 is not available 24-7 so at a certain point in time those calls do roll into our dispatch center and we have instructed our call takers to try to take that report over the phone so that we're not tying up resources police officers in handling non-law enforcement activities but if you really need a police officer we will send a police officer to the location where you're requesting it uh but i will try to uh recently the 311 call center was placed under new uh director uh which i got banned for the city now uh so we will try to touch base with her to improve the service delivery that you're talking about when you call 311 or the non-emergency number for SAPD so that uh those kind of things don't happen i'll also comment on that if it's in the unincorporated area and you call our dispatch and if you have a problem or not getting some kind of service call me and i'll give you my phone number it's uh 210-335-5102 now i'm not going to be there midnight you can leave a message because it's an administrative number or you can shoot me an email at joe.hamilton at bare.org and we'll check it out it may be a perfectly reasonable reasonable explanation it may not be but if if you're victimized you don't care what the stats are whether they're up or down you're a victim and you need assistance so you can also send a message or an email to the sheriff on on the website and she'll hand it to me if it's a patrol matter because i'm over the patrol division and also special operations but call us and let us know uh we'll try to we'll try to fix it or address it with you individually and then uh hopefully provide better service the code compliance is a little different in the county than it is in the city the city has generally have much more authority to regulate those issues than than the county but we'll try to do our best to uh to help you out chief chief could you repeat that number please br549 no the phone number is that's a joke for those of you remember that old laugh in show it's uh 210-335-5102 and leave a message which is fine if if i'm not in because i'm not in today i'm i'm here or the email i do tons of of email so it's joe dot hamilton at bare.org would you have a question another question over here yes my name is henry edel agrange and i live in the woollong lake uh neighborhood my uh i really don't know what it's a it's hard to explain this but my neighbor had their bicycle stolen and we provided the information to the safe officer and uh which was the driver's the license plate he comes back and tells me because we have an alley where you know trucks can go or vehicles in and out and he said that's your neighbor so what does he think that my neighbor does not commit crimes and he wouldn't give us any more information just says that's your neighbor but the the license plate was given to him by the name or the person that had the bicycle stolen and all he says is that is your neighbor but it means that my neighbor is not capable of committing a crime the thing is the safe officer didn't come back and give us any information where he lived or anything you know there's no accountability there she had her refrigerator stolen from her carport and one of my neighbors was taking a bath and she had her air conditioning stole from the window thank you so again sapd and maybe um what would be helpful here is to just talk about if you have issues like this what are some of the places you should contact whenever you have a concern such as yours and you're not getting response that you you think you should be getting from the police officers out in the field you can always call the respective service area substation in which they report to and speak to a supervisor and again if you don't get results or response there they do they do have a captain uh each service area has a captain overseeing that that substation and you can talk to the captain if no if you're not satisfied with that level I'll do the same thing chief Hamilton that is you can send me an email directly and and I will make sure that we follow up uh I don't like hearing about things that we did not follow up but we failed to follow up I think you all deserve at least some feedback on your concerns and that's one thing we do stress that we at least follow up with the citizen and address your issues or your concerns so my number is 210-207-8205 210-207-8205 and email address is josejose.banalesba.les at san Antonio.gov again no if you have issues with officers out in the field and they're not uh being responsive uh the first person you should try to talk to is their immediate supervisor out in the field and every police officer reports to a sergeant out in the field and you can be they can be contacted the substation number okay we have a couple of more questions I know Ms Eckert had her hand up and then one more I don't have a question I just have a statement uh we we are very appreciative of our safe officer in almas park terrace uh I know commissioner adkinson was asking for young people to come into the neighborhoods and step up to the plate but um about a week ago I decided that maybe I needed to set the example so I went out to patrol my neighborhood so the young people could see that even even as you get older you can still patrol and look and see as I made the first street in my neighborhood I noticed a police car so I drove to the end roll my window down and they rolled their window down and one of the officers leaned over in the car and I'm pretty sure it was my safe officer but when I saw two police officers in the car I knew that something wasn't right so I just said I'm patrolling the neighborhood and I left as I turned the corner and got on the next street the police car was there and they were in front of my house my home both doors were open to the police car and they had apprehended somebody they were in pursuit at that time I can't tell you how much we appreciate it we're in a historic district an older part of San Antonio crime has not it has not been a high crime rate but we appreciate our officer we appreciate Alfred Gomez we appreciate Martinez we appreciate all of the central safe officers and I know all of their names and they've all been as far as I'm concerned perform above and beyond please do not do away with our safe department they attend neighborhood association meetings at night when I know they'd rather be at home they listen to all the gripes about dogs barking and everything else so whatever you do Sandra wherever you are don't do away with our safe department because we truly appreciate our officers thank you San Antonio police department one more question thank you very much for the kind words ma'am thank you we appreciate your support mine isn't a question mine is a thank you very much I was just we were getting complaints and I wanted to tell you we're very happy our we we have somebody policing he goes he waves at us and he's very nice but when we call him he's also very tough so he's controlling the neighborhood safe officers are really important part and I want to thank you for what you do for us in our city thank you thank you so much for your willingness to come out and take the tough questions and also share some um tips I don't know if either of you want to end on any kind of final tips for the how we sort of strengthen this community partnership because it sounds like that's really what it's all about I want to acknowledge our uh COP program cellular on patrol and our volunteers when we have a disaster or something major we have X number of people when we have just routinely it's X number of people that they're not extended well when you have volunteers the volunteers actually make a difference and so I commend our in various programs and hear the COPs program for those volunteers that are doing this on their own time and they're just really an asset to our community we thank you both in the city and the outside outside the city for the volunteers that are participating in various programs and I have to echo the same sentiments for volunteers and our COP people and our also our police explorers that they provide uh so much for the police department in terms of their dedication and commitment of all their time in assisting us in different many venues that they participate in lastly uh again as we move forward to trying to reach the goals for SA 2020 I think it's very important that we continue the partnerships that we can create with the community and the police department and the sheriff's department working together uh any any any way that we can increase or create a force multiplier for us it is a tremendous help and by utilizing you all as our eyes and ears with you all knowing about the programs that we have in place to see something say something and all the various programs that are are actually administered by our safe officers uh there's so many other programs that you could be involved in that would assist us in our efforts to reach our SA 2020 goals thank you okay at this time we're going to break into the oh first we're gonna do some door prizes sorry oh I'm sorry thank you guys very much thank you genie thank you thank you chief