 thing. On today, March 12, we welcome all of you. And we'd like to introduce any of you who are new to our Pac-Me 3 meeting this morning. Do we have any newcomers that have never been? And Sergeant Snyder, I'll introduce you. So yeah, there he is. He's stepping in for the captain today, our commander. He's not with us today, but Sergeant is. Okay, good. Yep. I think everybody's been here before. Thank you all for coming again. We need to review our minutes from February, which were attached to the registration materials you've got. And thank you all for registering. It's just a more safe way to post our Zoom meetings. Are there any corrections or additions to the February meeting minutes? Here we are. Thanks, Alexis. We thank our secretary, Rita, who does such a terrific job with these. If there's no corrections or additions, can I call for a motion of approval? Don't move. Thank you, Joyce. Joyce moves. Is there a second? Second. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Rita and Daryl, for a second motion. All in favor. You can raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? I don't see any opposition. Thank you. So the minutes have been approved. Thank you. We have a few items of business that we did want to cover first thing. We wanted to take a vote. How many of you all are ready to meet in person? That's the question. So the mass mandate has been dropped in Durham. Things are opening up. And our next meeting is April 9th. And let's just do, I've got all of you on my screen. So let's just raise our hands. How many would like to meet in person April 9th? I have a question for you. I know in the past we've met at Lyon Park. Is that the meeting place? That is not confirmed, but yes, that is where we meet. So Lyon Park as of now still has a mass mandate, just a building. So it may be lifted by April, but I just want to let you all know that they are still asking that people still wear masks in the common spaces. Great to know. They want to check with Desali the executive director first to make sure. I mean, I need to still have your meeting, but you may have to wear your mask. Good point. So we may be able to meet in person, but we might have to wear a mask. And certainly people would be encouraged if they felt more comfortable to wear a mask. So is there any discussion before we take that vote then? Let's talk about it. So otherwise we don't meet in May and we meet in June and that meeting would be the 11th of June. We don't meet in May historically because of the Mother's Day weekend and the graduation for local universities that weekend. It just was too much going on. So if we decide we want to try to meet in person, we have to make sure we can that the Lions Park Community Center is available to us, which we think it will be. Also the mask mandate. I don't know that we'll be able to do hybrid. Daryl and Alexis, what's your feeling on that? Will we be able to? We will. Okay. So those who can attend in person would have an option to meet by Zoom or we just wait till June. So those are the choices we have to make. Does anybody need any more information? Any thoughts? Until June. You think Joyce, we wait till June? And Noel, you're on mute, so I didn't hear what you said. I was thinking it might be better just to wait until June and then we can decide if we want to meet in person. Maybe not mask, no mask, all that stuff. Right. So we have two good points of view for waiting until June. Are we ready for the vote? All right. So all of those, how should I put it? I don't want to prejudice it. So how many of you would be willing to meet in person in April and then I'll count and then we'll count how many want to wait until June? That sounds fair enough. Thanks, everybody. A voice. Okay. So how many would like to resume that option of in person for April? And just raise your hand if you. Oh, okay. How many would like to just wait until June? Okay. So it looks like June wins. So we will do in Zoom again in April. Thank you very much. And we will get the ball rolling and get with Tazali about June. And I think we'll have a very clear picture by then of whether they'll need masks or not. Mindy. Yes. Hey. Hi, Jesse. Hi. I'm just trying to, so I live in Lion Park. I'm the vice chair of the neighborhood association and I'm literally, I can see the center from my bathroom. So I, all that to say, I do a lot of work with Tazali. So I just texted her and I was in the chat and she says that they are ready whenever, whenever we are here. So thank you. It's going to be hard to coordinate. When you're ready, just follow up with her. Yeah. That is great. And you know, Lion Park's neighbors have always been very supportive of the pack. So we're anxious to get those people back in person, namely this Umstead Hazelene. So, Jesse, we'll leave it to you to make sure she gets there in June. How's that? I'll do my best. She's, she's, she's present, but also kind of like, you know, she'll, she'll let you know. She'll be 80 seconds this year. So she makes special appearances. We value that. She's been a terrific pack, remember, over the years. Okay, super. So um, we are all set on that. I wanted to remind you that we are now doing these invites. So you have to register for our meeting. So please share that with your neighbors, neighborhoods. Like Noelle, you represent a neighborhood where you have different people come every month. So make sure they understand they have to accept the invitation and then register to get the Zoom link for the April meeting. Is there anything else on that, Alexis? My grandchildren tend to get in the way. I think a lot of people here with grandchildren get in the way. The main thing is there's two separate ones. So the Google group is the most important one because that's going to be our listserv. So we want to make sure that everyone actually accepts that it should have been sent to your email. And a lot of the times it goes to the spam email. So please check that and make sure that you click accept. And that will make sure that you're on the listserv. And then the second thing is that the Zoom meetings going forward will be a registration just to protect the meetings and also to help us keep who is coming into the meetings. And so those are the two separate things. The Google group, make sure that you're accepting the request. If not, please email PAC3 leadership team at gmail.com to make sure that you're on that. I have been sending an email out, but we would like to get to the point where you're just all on the listserv. So we'll just have to post it there. And then the separate one is just making sure that you're registering for the Zoom. Right. Thank you. Any questions on that, everyone? So how do I know if if I'm already in the Google list or not? Did you receive an email to accept the Google group? And if not, if you could just email PAC3 leadership team at gmail.com. And then I'll send you the request that you'll just have to accept. Okay. Thank you. And please share that, Han, with any other friends or other students. Okay, super. Yeah, we're trying to capture everyone once you all involved. So thanks, Alexis, for setting all that up for us. That's super. We also want to look at our expenditures and purchases for this year. So we as an organization as PAC3 and all the PACs get money from neighborhood improvement services, which is a department in the city. And we get to buy things that help promote our mission of solving issues of crime and partnering with the police to solve quality of life issues. So we've, the executive team has made a list of items that we'd like to purchase and we need your approval today. So let me present those in lieu of the fact we don't have a treasurer and we are, I'll make a little plug here. Anybody who wants to have a role in the PAC leadership team, we'd love to have someone be a treasurer and it's really straightforward. You don't have to raise money. That's the easiest thing in our organization. You get a lump sum. We decide what to spend it on and that's all you'd have to manage. So if we have anybody out there wanting to be treasurer, we'd love to have you join us. But anyway, what we looked at was actually some long-term items to help market the PAC3. So Officer Mock is going to many neighborhoods, talking to many of you in your neighborhoods. And we'd like to have a presence at any of these events where we could have a table and maybe a PAC3 representative there, one of our officers. So the things we're looking at sound pretty self-serving and they are, but they help us identify ourselves at neighborhood gatherings or any community events. So we need a tablecloth. We need the goodie bags like grocery bags to be able to put the handouts in for National Night Out, which will come up in August. And for when we return to our in-person meeting in June, we'd like each neighborhood representative to be able to take a grocery bag with PAC3 information on it with maybe some safety tips and with then some handouts and things we really want to get distributed are the postcards that are in Spanish and in English that have our PAC3 information on it. And the community crime map that we heard from our expert last month on the mapping, we want that included and Officer Mock is going to provide those for us. This city police department will print those up for us. We want to be sure to get that information out. So people have the resources, the tools to be able to check their own neighborhood and the criminal activity there. We'd also like to ask for a shirt, polo, or a t-shirt that says PAC3 on it for those of us who go to these events to be able to wear. So we might need four of those for Rita, our secretary, Daryl and I as your facilitators. And LaWanda, you wear your police officer uniform, right? So do we, we'd love to get you on if you think that's important. I think I'll be good just wearing the police polo. Okay, all right. And Alexis, should you have one as well? I'm good either way. I typically wear the neighborhood improvement services polo, but I can always switch it up and wear the PAC polo as well. Okay. All right, so we're asking for four of those. Let's put four, the number four on that one, two, three, four. And the other top item on the list, okay, so this identifying shirts, the tablecloth, so we can set up a stand whether when we do like the mobile substation and we, you know, Jennifer's out there with her victim services things and we get different organizations with different tables. We'd like to have a tablecloth and we'll use that also at the mine and car community center for every one of our meetings. So we don't know as of today how much money we actually have to spend. So we're waiting to try to get those numbers from the NIS. So we are hoping you'll give us a blanket approval for the grocery bags, the polo, the postcards, the tablecloth, and then one item we're hoping we can afford either a whistle, flashlight, gadget that we can hand out to people as a personal safety device. But those were the top items that the executive committee agreed on. So are there any questions, concerns about how we're spending the money? No, okay, so what I need then is a motion that we accept the expenditures as proposed with the limit being the amount of money in the budget that we don't have a number for. So we will limit our purchases to within that amount. Thank you. Let's just take care of this. I'm stumbling, thanks Noel. All right, so the motion's on the table. It's seconded. Does anyone else have any questions to worry? All right, all in favor of approving the expenditures? Raise your hand. All right, those of you thanking Nada for putting the checkmark in. Great. Jesse, are you in? Yeah, Carol. Oh, Carol, welcome. Terrific. All right, so we have some new people we're going to have to introduce. All right, great. So it has passed. The motion has passed. We'll give Alexis approval to make those purchases for us once we get that amount. And thank you all. That helps us as a group to identify ourselves. Super. So let's see. I have two minutes. So we have open positions. We are looking for two at-large members as well for our leadership team, our executive board for the PAC. So please think about it. Maybe I'll have to make some phone calls. There are a sense of emails to ask you personally if you'll be willing to just help us out in these positions. It's not a huge requirement. And then I'd like to give there's a couple of new faces that have just that have joined us. So Carol, I see you for one. Do you want to say hello and identify yourself? I'm Carol Gregg. I'm the pastor to the congregation at Duke Chapel. And I've come a couple of times before. Yes, sorry, another Carol. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, Carol Baldwin, a longtime member of PAC 3, and a very busy lady. So we're glad. Hello, Carol. Hi, everybody. Nice to be here. I'm Carol Baldwin. I live in Buck crossing out near South Point Mall. And I have been around for a while. Thank you for rejoining us, Carol. It's great to see you. Mark, I see Mark. Yep. Hi. I'm Mark Aldrich. I live in the Montclair area out by Barbie Chapel. Great. Yep. Super. Well, welcome. We appreciate you joining us today. So was there anyone else new that I missed? Okay, I think I recognize Latoya. You've been before, right? Where did Latoya go? She's got her hand up. Latoya, did you want to say something? Hi. Yes, I've joined before, but I just wanted to properly introduce myself. I live in the Lion Park area. Super. So thanks for having me. Well, great. Well, we hope to be in your hood back in June. So we'll look forward to meeting you back then. All right. Super. I think, Alexis, did I cover everything we needed to cover? Right on schedule. Alrighty. Well, it is my great pleasure then to introduce our guest speaker for today. And she is no stranger to District three. She was an officer in our district several many years ago. I guess you came to Durham in 19 or you lived in Durham, you grew up in Durham and you can fill in my gaps here, but in 1997, you joined the police force, I believe, worked in the Durham Police Department, in the heat unit, was a captain, and then went to Marsville to be chief, and was after a national search hired back to become our police chief here in Durham. So we extend our heartfelt welcome to you, chief, and we'll turn it over to you. And we have you down for 20 minutes. So I hope that works for you. Thank you, chief. Thank you. Thank you. It's so great to see some new faces and and and my my family of the past. And it's so good to see everyone. Thank you so much for having me on today. I've been trying to make my round. So I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to get here, but I'm here. I will go through just very, very briefly, just some some questions that were asked. Obviously, I want this to be more of a dialogue and a conversation versus me just kind of throwing information at you. But as Mindy said, I am Patricia Andrews and I'm new ish to the Durham Police Department having served in 1997 until 2016 when I left to go to Morrisville. And then as luck would have it, good luck, good fortune was able to return. So I'm very happy to be here. You know, the goals for the police department, you know, I like to think of them as my goals, but certainly, you know, the best thing for me is that it's a shared goals and vision that's shared by everyone here at DPD. And, you know, certainly what we all want to address is obviously recruiting and retention. You all have heard about it a lot. You've seen the news stories about our staffing. You know, it's not anything that certainly isn't is new for Durham or any other agency across the country. You know, officers are leaving agencies for a number of reasons. You've heard a lot about, you know, the pay. Officers are leaving to go to other agencies, smaller agencies that are paying a lot more than what the midsize to large agencies are currently paying. We also have officers that are just saying, you know what, I'm done. I'm finished. You know, the past couple years of COVID and certainly the, you know, the really move for reform in the criminal justice system coupled by some really nasty rhetoric around law enforcement has really caused them to say, you know what, I just don't want to do this anymore. You know, I got into this career to help and I'm trying to help, but I just don't feel appreciated. So I'd rather take my 15 years and just leave. And, you know, for, you know, we kind of expect that of a newer generation of officers because what we understand from our new kids, they're different. They're, they're different for sure. And they're not married to any one profession. I'm a bit jealous sometimes because they, they really do reinvent themselves like that. And so, you know, that we see that with our, you know, two year folks, three year folks, but for a 15 year veteran, a 10 year veteran, someone who would traditionally be vested in an agency and in a retirement system to say, you know what, I'm done. That's significant. So we're really struggling, continue to struggle with that. And, you know, we're starting to make some, I do see some changes. I do see some more interest. I see officers that are currently here really having the desire to stay. You know, some of that had to do with the new pay plan that came out and was voted on by council. And then, you know, there is a part of it that is having to do with some of the internal low hanging fruit that changes that we are making and changes that we're making because we're listening to our officers and we're really asking them because that's my philosophy is that, you know, while, you know, we are, we are one team, we're one family. And if one person fails, we all fail. And so that's kind of the motto and really are, this is what the vision I'm pushing forward to our officers. I will tell you morale. So along with all of that is morale is rolled into that. So we're, we're trying to be innovative and doing some out of the box things, listening to a lot of input from our staff, whether it's developing new mentoring programs in CID, all the way to, you know, the reason why executive team, including lieutenants, captain, sergeants or lieutenants and captains and above are out riding the streets, right? That was all driven by uniform patrol officers. And then finally, you know, violent crime, certainly I can't name, you know, the goals and direction of our police department without talking about violent crime. Obviously, we want to see a reduction in violent crime, not just in certain parts of the city, but our entire city. It's very important though that we understand that, and you've heard me probably say this a time or two, we can't arrest our way out of crime, meaning we could arrest a lot of people. I certainly have tremendous staff that are able and capable of doing that. But we have to really look at what is causing the crime and criminality, right? So that we continue to work with our community based groups. We continue to strengthen our CIT program, you know, our community resources, our community partnership with community safety department. And so you all know that that's a relatively new venture here in the city of Durham, not without a little bit of drama focused around it. But what I will tell you is this is that it's a welcome addition, a welcome partnership that we have with, and I think you might have talked to a time or two with Ryan Smith with community safety. But we certainly are doing everything that we can from the police department side and with communications and fireside to ensure that this program is a success because we all do believe that police officers are tasked with jobs and responsibilities that are not in our wheelhouse, that we should never be doing. We can't, you know, enforce and then, you know, we're not social workers. And so, but we're asked to do that on a daily basis, right? So, you know, we're just we're looking forward to future partnerships with community safety department. And finally, you know, I've been here a little while and been able to do some assessment. And what I will tell you, the Durham police department is complicated. It's much like a Facebook status. It's complicated, right? And it's an onion, right? So there's layers, there's so many layers. And, you know, I'll say this, that the Durham police department is not broken. We are not broken and disjointed. We are a collective group of officers that are committed to doing what's best, you know, by the community that we serve, also while making sure that our officers are whole, right? And they're mentally able to and physically able to do the work. And so those are the things that as I start to peel back the layers of the onions, we start to ask the questions of, you know, so why are we doing this? And is there another more innovative way of doing these things? Are we efficient? Are we as efficient now as we were five years ago or 10 years ago? Are we doing things just because, because it's the way we've always done them? I don't know how many of you have ever heard that. But, you know, I always tend to give a little bit of pushback when I hear, because it's the way we've always done it, which means oftentimes it's, we just would rather not change it right now, because that takes a little bit of a little bit of resourcefulness, which, you know, our staff very capable of doing. So we are coming up with internally some new initiatives. You know, and what I've told my staff is that really, you know, don't worry about something not going the way you thought it would go, right? Because oftentimes if it doesn't go well, that's an opportunity to learn, right? That's an opportunity to self-assess. That's an opportunity to, to go back to the drawing board. It's not a failure. It's not a final failure. It's an opportunity. And so when I'm asked to assess the Durham Police Department, I will say that you have a tremendous group of men and women that are committed to each one of you here on this call, and each one of our community members that aren't, as well as our visitors. We are committed to the city of Durham with, with everything that we have. There just needs to be some tweaking internally and we're getting there, right? So let's talk about our staffing to our vacancies. Right now, I will tell you that we are sitting at about 94 vacancies. And we've had some folks that have had to leave not of their own fruition, but because it is, they've, they could no longer be a Durham Police Department officer. We've had officers that have simply retired. They have chosen to get out of the profession and retire. We have had officers that have resigned to go and do other things. And we have a lot of retirements coming up. I think within the next year, we have probably 10 or 15 that I know of potentially that can retire, whether it's on age or time. And that is certainly one of the things that we always cringe because what that means is if we're, you know, we're officers are leaving, we've got to pull those officers into the agency. We've got to be able to make up the difference. And what has been happening as we've seen this trend across the country with officers leaving, they're leaving at a high rate, much higher than we're able to fill. Right. And so we're catching, we're trying to, we're constantly trying to play catch up to fill the positions. You know, our vacancies right now, we have, we have vacancies that are having to be supplemented on patrol. And that's where we're seeing the most of our vacancies is on uniform patrol. You know, and we're working really hard to come up with some innovative ways in order to fill, kind of fill in those cracks and gaps. One of the things that we've been doing is we've been using what's called Power BI and most of you are probably very familiar with that software. It's a godsend. Right. When you start to look at how it relates to policing and how, how do we allocate our resources? And so what we, we essentially do is we use Power BI to look at what districts are generally the busiest and then when are they busy? Right. And what types of calls are they going on? And so it helps us allocate our resources while relying on that data that tells us the story of where we need to put our officers when. And so that's been helpful as we have utilized supplemental patrol, as we've utilized, you know, kind of the all hands on deck model. But we know that that can't go on forever. So we're constantly looking at how do we utilize our, you know, our reserve officers. So right now we have reserve officers that are, that are working part time in a, in a number of capacities within the agency. We are potentially going to be bringing back officers as on a reserve status that we'll be filling in on uniform patrol, which is in the past something that we haven't really looked at. But now, you know, we are, and we're going to be again utilizing our reserve officers for our telephone response unit. So answering those calls that typically don't really require an officer to come and see you. So, you know, if it's a belated something that has happened, you've gotten home and something has been taken off of your back patio. Well, typically an officer would respond, that call would go to the telephone response unit. And what that does is it frees up an officer out there on the street by having an officer sitting here answering the call. And so that's what I can see has been extremely successful. We had it a long time ago, way back when, but it's been extremely successful. So more to come on that, happy to come back and really speak a little bit more as we, as we move forward in the year. So finally, I do want to talk to you and touch on some of the violent crime incidents that we have had. So towards the end of 2021, y'all should have known 2021 was not done with us. She had to go out with just a bang. And it was busy for us, right? We had some incidents at South Point Mall that was just, and for me as a police officer, still shocking. We had the shooting on Black Friday shooting out at South Point. And then we had some other incidents that occurred. And our detectives were able to, despite all of the chaos focused around that, our detectives were able to make arrests on the individuals that were involved in that skirmish and the shooting. And so those cases are still going through the court system. I do not believe that they've been heard yet. So typically what's happening is because of COVID, and now the district attorney's office is trying to get back on like a regular schedule, you'll start to see the case processing go through a little bit quicker and quicker as we clear the backlog. But I can assure you, our detectives are following the case, as well as folks that have a vested interest in really knowing what's happening with those folks that were charged with the gun crime. So we did charge the victim with carrying of a concealed gun. So our philosophy is if you're carrying a gun and you're carrying it illegally and the actions that you take result in injury of someone else, then you will be charged. You will be charged. We have far too many guns out here for us to turn the other cheek and not charge folks appropriately. And so that is my direction to staff is that do your job, use your discretion. But here is my two cents about charging people with carrying of a concealed gun, especially in the time that we're in. I did a recent kind of field trip to our property and evidence and the amount of firearms that we have that resulted from seizures and seizing from crimes or homicides, what have you, is astounding. It's in the thousands that we have here, in the thousands, almost the tens of thousands. So clearly there is a problem with gun crime. And certainly we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can both on the enforcement side and the community outreach side and really talking to our kids and really getting back to basics with them in order to be a part of the solution to reducing gun crime in our city. And we are also to still investigating the home invasions that occurred recently in the early months of latter part of February, early month, days of March that involved our Duke students. And we know that this has been something that has occurred in years past. We do not know at this point if the people that are responsible for these recent incidents are connected with some other ones from years past. But we are looking at the connection as well. In the meantime, our community resource, community services unit, they have done a fantastic job with distributing flyers, making sure they're doing these pop-up events. I'm really spreading the word on, you know, about safety in general, right? And working well with those apartment complexes that have been most affected with getting the message out to our kids, our students, and making sure that they are protected. And also knowing too that and letting them know that they cannot let their guard down, that they also have to be vigilant. Duke has been incredibly helpful. They have actually started patrolling and they have also started patrolling with our folks. They have requested off-duty. So that is happening throughout the night. And we also are patrolling the area heavier now than we have been. So it's just finding that balance of making sure that we are giving everyone our services and our best while keeping our students safe as well. So having thrown everything at you that I could possibly throw at you at about a thousand miles an hour, I will stop and just kind of be quiet for a second and open it up to you. Thank you so much, Chief. And I wanted to say that I sent her office a huge list of points I wanted her to cover. And you did an incredible job. But I must ask you, how can we support you, Chief, and budget-wise? What are you looking for in the new budget? We'll have the budget presentation next month by John Allure. And what is it that you need and want? Yeah. So right now, I'll tell you, we didn't make a lot of tremendous asks this year because we are still trying to figure out really what do we need, right? So I can tell you that our asks that we have made are all up for consideration in the budget. There are some software that we ask for that will help enhance our investigations on the electronic side. And so I don't see that would be a problem. As you know, we're going to be incorporating ShotSpotter in the budget conversation. So you all have probably been following that. And then there was a, we also made some requests for our latent print examiners. So that's in our forensic services. And they are a tremendous group of human beings that are doing a heck of a lot of work. So we've requested two more latent print examiners. So out of all of that, those are kind of the new requests. There are some ongoing requests that we made that we feel confident that that that will be increased in our budget. So and as far as that, the support continuing to advocate, right? I can say all the time, and I can stand on my ear and say how something is wrong or we need more of this and more of that. But really, it is you all that gets things done. And I'm looking at Mindy Square in particular because Mindy has done so much here in the city of Durham has asked some tough questions and I heard her doing it yesterday. So, but it's things like that that I know that you all do every day, continue to do that, continue to advocate for the answers to the really tough questions about what's happening in our city with gun crime. And what are we doing to support our communities that are most at need and are really most at need, particularly doing during this time, you know, the access continuing to advocate for access. So in doing that, you also support us, because when we can kind of figure those things out, we will see a reduction in the crime that's happening within the city. Thank you. You're welcome. Are there any other comments, questions from? She I know it's a lot, you heard a lot. She talked about a lot of things and you may have questions like what is latent fingerprints, that's fingerprints, latent prints. So if I can help explain, it's only taken me two decades to learn some of the lingo. So I understand, don't feel embarrassed if you don't know what she was talking about, because I yeah, it's a learning curve to understand law enforcement lingo. Any other thoughts? Thank you. I mean, we support you and you know, we're behind you. And if there's any way we can help you. And I'll tell you our community resource officer, Officer Mock is heroic. And she hands, I mean, she's just been out there working weekend. I mean, we can always reach her. She's always a part of our leadership team for pack three. And it's, it's a real tribute to you and your, your staff that the people we interface with regularly are doing a heck of a job and trying so hard. So yeah, shout out to you and Chief, any other thoughts from? No, nobody. And I'm gonna, I'm going to say I just want to just do a just a we lost Canine Darrow yesterday. He succumbed to his cancer. You know, he was shot. It'll be a year ago, I believe the third, no, the 30th, I think of March. And he made a miraculous recovery from that only for cancer to ravage his body. And so he couldn't recover from that. And so he he crossed the rainbow bridge yesterday surrounded by his team. We went yesterday morning and awarded him the Purple Heart for his bravery and during that time last year. And it was almost like he knew I put I kneeled down and put his Purple Heart and slid it towards him and his little face, he just kind of it's almost like he knew. So I will tell you, you know, we, we celebrate all of our officers here, no matter if they have two legs or four. And, and we will certainly we will miss him tremendously. So I just wanted to let you all know I just will please continue to keep his handler in your in your thoughts and your prayers. Because he was very he was a big part of Dora's life and Dora was his. So I'll close by saying that. So thank you. No, thank you for sharing that. And our hearts break to hear about that. Yeah, that's really sad. And I know that officer was very close to the animal. So that's tough for your officer. All right, well, we should move on and we'll follow up and we hope chief you can stay on. But we understand it if you can't certainly. But we'd like to have our pack three update our district three update by our Sergeant Nicholas Schneider, who is joining us in place of our commander, Captain Murray. So, Lieutenant or Sergeant Schneider, if you'd like to give us our monthly update. Sure. Good morning. Thanks, Miss Sully. Everyone. My name is Sergeant Nicholas Schneider, the patrol sergeant in District three here. In fact, I was a patrol officer in District three, a patrol corporal and a sergeant. I've been here for this is my 21st year of service. District three is near and dear to me. So I'm very happy to be here and and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all. As you know, Captain Murray is not able to be here, but he did provide some remarks for me to present to you. So we'll start off with violent crime. For the past 28 day cycle, we have 32 total cases to break those down further. We've had 15 robberies. That is a reduction of 11%. We've had 14 aggravated assaults that is up 40% from the last 28 day cycle. And seven of those involved firearms. And that's an increase of 130%. Property crime as a whole. We've had 127 total cases. And that's down 5% of burglaries. 16 total cases. That's been up 100% as we only had eight in the last 28 day cycle. 48 cases of shoplifting. That's been up 17%. 28 cases of larcenies from motor vehicles. And that's down 52%. Sorry, down from 52 in the last cycle, that's a 46% decrease. Thankfully, larcenies from motor vehicles have really decreased this 28 day cycle. 10 cases of stolen vehicles. That's also down. And that's down 23%. Without boring you with all the other numbers and so on and so forth, I do want to mention with the home invasions and the armed robberies and stuff like that, specifically in the LaSalle Street area, the McQueen Drive area. I can't go into details right now, but there are some very, very interesting developments with regards to all of that. The captain definitely wanted me to mention that to you. So please be on the lookout for some information as these leads develop over the next couple of weeks or so. The captain asked me to make sure that I mentioned to you that he will be sending stuff out to you just as soon as he gets it and as he can share it with you. That's all the captain has prepared for me. Does anyone have any questions for me? Great. Thank you. And the captain sends, if you are on our listserv, you get a weekly report from our commander and then you get this monthly highlights that Sergeant Schneider just read to you. So you can get this information by being a part of our PAC 3 listserv. So please do accept. Thank you, Sergeant. We welcome you today. Officer Mock, would you like to follow up with your activities? Okay. For the past month from the last PAC meeting, I've definitely been out in the community, engaging a lot of those residents along the LaSalle Street, Irwin Road and Campus Walk area in reference to the home invasions. We've been setting up community safety mixers at the Belmont and at the Heights. And this past Wednesday, we were over at the flats on the Irwin, but we found out that the kids were on spring break this week, so we didn't have such a great turnout. So I'm going to reconnect with the management. We're going to come up with a new date for theirs. And I've been out to, well, I met with the Bradford Place community online for a neighborhood watch meeting. I kind of sat in on part of their HOA meeting and kind of shared a little information about neighborhood watch. So I don't know if anybody is here from Bradford Place today. I don't really see any names sticking out to me, but they were invited to attend to go ahead and get their neighborhood watch signs installed. So I'll be following up with them just to make sure, you know, they have to attend PAC and be involved. So I was asked to come today and share some brief safety tips on home safety. These are some common crime trends that face homeowners. Like if you have a house or apartment, burglaries are very, it's probably like the top crime, but we are seeing like larcenies, other types of larcenies like packaged theft. So what I would recommend for burglaries, a lot of the thieves are targeting your jewelry, cash, electronics. So make sure you're keeping those things documented for your jewelry. I recommend taking pictures and keeping that in a secure place. So in the event it is stolen or whatever or lost, you have a picture document of your jewelry and to be able to identify that if it's ever taken to a pawn shop. And we also have property inventory forms that I can forward out to PAC to place on the listserv. And these are great ways to document your items with the serial numbers, making models, and all that important information. So with the packaged theft, you know, I'm kind of encouraging residents to make sure they use the locker systems that a lot of delivery companies are using. That is a great way to make sure you get your packages safely, or maybe put a note in the delivery section for your driver. So if you're not at home, not to leave your package, you'll pick it up or try it another date and time. So those are like some basics, crime trends that I'm seeing. And to kind of safeguard your home is what we call this target heartening. These are things you can do around your home to keep your home safe. Make sure you have a dead boat lock. Those are very important. Make sure the screws are at least three inches longer because that kind of protects your door frame in case it's ever kicked in. And make sure you have a peephole or a way to look out your window or door. And another thing, I kind of added a storm door that creates an extra barrier between your main door and the outside. So that's another great protection. And garage doors. So make sure we're securing those at night if you have one, because we do have people to ride through neighborhoods looking for open garage doors and they're taking some of your lawn equipment or any tools you may have. Or maybe your cars are parked inside the garage and doors are unlocked, keys are left inside. So just make sure we're securing those garage doors and check your windows. Make sure the locks are working properly. And make sure that, you know, if you open your windows, you know, the weather's warming up, make sure you're closing it and locking it back, especially at nighttime and if you're leaving home. And a great way to kind of, I guess, secure your windows is make sure you put up blinds and curtains because, you know, open home, you invite people in to see what you have. So closing those curtains, especially on the main level, definitely can do to your crime. And the most vulnerable areas around your home, I would say would be the side and the rear areas in the backyard. So make sure those windows and doors are very protected. And a lot of times you can place plants and things in underneath those windows to kind of keep people from getting too close. So some of those hostile plants. So I recommend lights, you know, around the exterior of your home and also turning on your lights inside your home if you're leaving in the evening. Sometimes that light can be a great deterrent for people because it'll give the sense that, hey, someone is inside, leave your TV on, do things that's going to create noise and, you know, activity inside your house. And motion sensor lights are also great. And turn on those alarm systems. You know, if you have them, turn them on, that's what you're paying for. And if you have any signage, you know, for your alarm system, place those in your front yard where they're visible in the front and backyard. Those are very important tips. And surveillance, we're talking about cameras. So make sure you have interior or exterior cameras. If you can have both, that will be great. And that will give you more visibility around your home and also give you peace of mind when you're at home and away because you're able to check in. And the biggest part that I would say right now in this time of the year is the maintenance. So making sure that we are trimming our grass, keeping our shrubs low. Don't let those things grow up above your window seal because then that's going to start creating visibility issues. So making sure we keep those shrubs at least two to four feet. And if you have trees in your front yard, make sure you have those trimmed from the ground up to at least five to six feet. And then that way you're able to detect movement in your yard and backyard. So if you're able to see movement, you're able to see people. And if the grass, not the grass, but if the limbs are so low, these can become hiding places for criminals to, you know, to go undetected a lot of times. So keeping those maintenance issues under wraps would definitely help protect your home. And like I said, use hostile plants in those areas of those windows that can definitely decrease any opportunity of entry. And then we have some resources. If you're ever interested, I'm always available to come out and do a home security assessment. And these assessments are free of charge. I look at those. The sub-ted plan, we look at your lights, your alarms, and all those great things to help keep your home safe. And we also do lighting assessments. So if your neighborhood could use more lighting, feel free to give me a call. And I can set up a light assessment request through Terry Thompson. And that's something I can do for you and your community. If you're ever going out of town, we can do residential patrol requests or if you're seeing suspicious activity in your neighborhood. This is a great way to let officers know, hey, we need to give a little extra attention in these areas. And like Mindy mentioned before, the community crime mapper, you know, I would definitely encourage you to go to this website and do research on your community and know what crime trends are happening in your area. And next door and your PAC list serves are great resources of information. And coming to PAC every second Saturday of each month is very important to stay informed to your crime trends in your neighborhoods and neighborhood watch. Okay. So I try to wrap it up as fast as I can. Yeah, we're running out of time. Thank you so much. Everything she said, she was rushed to present it, but every tip is so important. We've got to do our share to prevent crime. And so please take to heart everything she said and try to encourage your neighbors to trim up their plants and put in more lighting and look after each other. Thank you, Officer Mock. And now we'll have Daryl Mount, the Crime Prevention Specialist for Duke University, and also one of our facilitators, co-facilitator Daryl. Can you give us a few minutes, just a few? Yeah, no problem. First off, hey, everybody. I'm actually out on Shigateague Island right now in Virginia, where I come see my daughter every so often. And there's like a big, I can't believe we're actually maybe getting snow by the end of the day today. So it's going to be kind of a weird change for me. But anyways, regarding Duke University, the students right now are currently on spring break. And we had our big game on the fifth, which was a big task all around. It was well planned in advance. We had a lot of VIP celebrities and so forth, but we were proud to announce that we had little to no incidences whatsoever on the game day of the fifth. Unfortunately, we took a devastating loss to UNC. But hopefully we're going to make progress to our tournaments and so forth. Regarding the crime trends, we have our normal low-line thefts, larceny, such as bicycles and electronics that do occur throughout our campus. They're still on trend. That's our normal activity for us. And a lot of people also don't know. We're also responsible for the medical center, the hospitals and the DMP and the cancer center. And those are keep us fairly busy with with other activities that are happening within those areas. Duke's like its own little mini city with all different moving parks and so forth. Our partnership here lately with Durham has really gone over well within the community and with our students. I think they've seen a good side of enforcement and good side of presence altogether in regards to having our patrol out of our jurisdiction, but within the city there off the south campus walk and so forth. And I think it's actually turned out to be a blessing because I think we have like Sergeant Snyder mentioned that we have a movement now that I think is maybe going to hopefully put that those incidences, at least maybe in our rear view, a mirror possibly, but we'll see what it all comes out to. But we have some good interesting developments coming from that. So the students will be coming back as of Monday and masks were lifted and it's changed the I think everyone was happy to see that all together and more normal feel now is starting to feel around the Duke campus. And they're all looking forward to the big day of graduation, which will be coming up here very shortly in May. Thank you so much, Darryl. We appreciate your report. Donna, if you could summarize your report, we'll share your slides real quick. If people can stay on for three or four minutes here, I think we'll have to finish with Donna. Okay. So Alexis. So is it up? Let's see, Alexis. And also to close this out, Mindy, I'll have something to mention. It'll take like two minutes as well. Okay, so it looks like we'll go about eight minutes after 11. If you can hang with us, we appreciate it. Okay. All right, Donna, their slides are all right. Okay, so the first slide is, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. All right. So the first slide is just my contact information. I'm with Durham County Department of Public Health. So we'll go on to the next slide. Um, since January, Durham has seen an explosion of cases of Omicron. There are over 113% more cases than we saw in 2021 in just the first 62 days of 2022. Fortunately, Durham County's case count has reduced by almost one half in the last week. This indicates we may be coming to the end of the Omicron wave. From February 1st until March 3rd, 2022, there has been a total of 5,285 cases throughout the month of February and three days into March. There's been an average of 170 cases a day. So we'll go to the next slide. Public Health continues to offer free walk-in COVID-19 vaccines Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. And on Tuesdays, vaccines are available until 5.30 p.m. Come to our building at 414 East Main Street. And we'll go to the next slide. A new COVID-19 testing site at the Fidelity Investments RTP campus is now open. El Centro Espano is now open for testing only Tuesday through Saturday. All tests are available for free. No insurance is needed. Registration is encouraged. And you can check our website to get updates on testing. We'll go to the next slide. The indoors mandate is officially over in Durham since March 7th, 2022. Masks are still required on public transportation in healthcare settings and in businesses that require masking. Masks are still required in Durham County government buildings, the courthouse, the sheriff's office, libraries, etc. They'll continue to be required in schools for the time being. That's what's been decided for the schools. And we'll go to the next slide. Smoking is a risk factor for chronic illnesses like lung disease, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. If you're ready to quit, join our quit for life. Stop smoking cessation classes. Our current series began on March 10 and it ends on April 7. It meets virtually from 6 to 7 p.m. And you can call me if you need information on how to join those. We'll go to the next slide. If you need help finding child care, there's information on child care services on this slide. And we'll go to the next slide. Join the Men's Health Council on Saturday, March 19th, from 9 to 10 a.m. at Duke Park on Knox Street for their walk for colorectal cancer awareness. Dr. Julius Wilder, gastroenterologist from Duke, will be present to answer questions. Go to the next slide. The Durham Board of County Commissioners has announced that Kimberly J. Sowles is the new county manager beginning March 14. And she currently serves as the city manager in Greensboro, North Carolina. Next slide. Register for our free webinars. And this is our list of webinars that we announce every month. And there are some webinars on teen dating violence awareness month, which was actually February, but this is a post-TDVAM series, webinar series, that I would like for you to join in, because this is with a group that I work with. If you have difficulty locating the webinars, contact me. And we'll go to slide 11. The stress of life can be overwhelming. And here's your information for a helpline. We'll go to the next slide, 12. We have monthly diabetes support classes that are virtual. The next session is Tuesday, March 22. And it's from 6 to 7 p.m. If you're interested, contact Willa Robinson, W. Robinson at DCONC.gov, or contact me if you have trouble finding that information. Next slide. Registration for the Eighth Annual Women's Health Awareness Conference on Saturday, April 9, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. And there's the information for that. And the event is virtual. If you have trouble finding that information, of course, contact me. Next Saturday, Patrice Carr Nutritionist at the Health Department will present a webinar, Good Nutrition for Good Health. You can join by Zoom or by phone. And you can contact Joyce Page if you need that information, or, of course, contact me. And thank you all for this opportunity to present. And that's my last slide with my contact information again. Fantastic. Thank you, Donna. The city offers so many resources, and we share them with you because you're our contact to the neighborhoods and other citizens, people in need. There are resources available from our city and our county. So don't hesitate to contact one of us or the city or the county public health department because there are many, many resources at our disposal. All right. Super. Okay. Alexis, we'll finish with you. I'll go as fast as I can. Yeah. And Bobby put some things in the chat. Bobby Matthews on our call. Thanks, Bobby. Please read the chat as you're on our Zoom meeting because information is being sent to you that way as well. Alexis. All right. So I just wanted to go really quick about the equitable and green infrastructure funds that we have coming up in the near future. And I have a few highlights to mention. Council approved a one cent or a one cent on tax rates to prioritize investments in an engagement with low wealth communities and communities of color that have historically been excluded from or harmed by policy decisions. The reoccurring 1.6 million funds will be used for infrastructure upgrades. So what is infrastructure? Do you ask? Well, that can be physical structures such as roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewer, electrical grids, telecommunications and also non physical systems and structures. Systematic drivers of equity to eliminate disparities. And also, what have we been tasked with? Neighborhood Improvement Services Community Engagement has been tasked with informing the residents of the tax rate yearly 1.6 million dollars engaging residents in the low wealth area in this process, prioritizing residents needs, wants and issues and in partnership with residents creating a community driven plan. And how are these neighborhoods selected? The geographic neighborhoods, demographic populations, environmental data, social, economic data, communities identified by community engagement and input from residents. To engage residents throughout Durham, NIS is seeking residents to become community allies. And they will identify and inform community residents of the half cent funding and the request for community participation. And they'll also be responsible for getting residents involved in identifying and verifying and verifying what they need, want and any issues that they have. And then also reporting the collective community feedback to city administration to include prioritized needs, wants and issues in partnership with Cure Americas. So for the next steps, we just ask that you complete this form and I will drop that in the chat. If you have any questions, you can contact me. And then also we're just asking that folks return this by March 15, whether it's in person at our office downtown or by email or by mail. And so yeah, that is what I have. And I will drop that information in the chat for you. Please let me know if you have any questions. All right. Thank you, Alexis. You really raced through that. I appreciate everyone's hard work on the meeting today. We will in June be doing a business meeting only. We will not have a guest speaker at our meeting in June, kind of like an annual meeting so that it will allow our partners to have some more time to share with you what's going on. So we were honored to have the Chief today and I know we've had guest speakers since September and we will try to have a couple meetings a year where we don't have to rush our regular partners who present every month. So take a deep breath, everybody. Thank you for being with us today. And you can always contact any of us on the leadership team. Just send your emails. Keep your neighborhood safe. Please try to share as much of this information as you can with your friends and neighbors. Durham is a great place and we all have to be accountable for keeping it that great place for everyone. All right. Thank you all. Have a wonderful month and we'll see you by Zoom in April. Okay. Bye, everybody.