 The Public Safety Committee will please come to order. Madam Clerk, if you will show that the committee is in attendance, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Herbert, and Mr. DuVall. We're going to take up the resolution as our first item, requesting that security cameras be at the entrances and exits of nursing homes. And we're not going to vote on this resolution, but we're going to send it back to the city council for the city council to act on it. This is the result of a person that was on the Central Midlands Council of Government's mother, I believe, walking away from a nursing home. And he wants legislation to require these cameras. And the COG asked the different governmental agencies in the COG to pass resolutions and support. I understand that Lexington County, the city of Lexington and Richland County, have passed these resolutions. And we will send this back to the Columbia City Council on our next agenda to take an action, probably in support of this. Mr. Chairman, if you would, let me be on the record as we're accusing myself from the discussion on this. I once have some ownership positions in some assisted living centers and stuff. So noted. And I've recused myself because I sue some of these facilities. Oh, so noted. And I don't want to. So noted. So we will not vote on this, and the chairman will refer it back to the full council. One of the things we have on our agenda today is to talk about the increased oversight of the bail bond industry. Councilman Taylor asked us to take this up in support of Governor McMaster's comments that were recently in the newspaper asking that the bail bond industry be tightened up and to give us better control over people getting out on bail. I've asked Judge Mangum, who's our chief judge for the city of Columbia, to come to the meeting to answer our questions. And Judge Mangum, if you'll go to the microphone so people can hear you, we will ask you a couple of questions that might shed some light on the bail bond industry. First, Judge Mangum, thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. And can you tell us in a couple of minutes the authority of the judges at the municipal level for setting a bail? Sure. We set bail by state statute. And there's several statutes that we rely on. I have to apologize because I was not under the impression that I was going to be necessarily speaking today. So I may not have all the information that you want. If there are specific questions that I don't answer today or that you have followed questions for, I would appreciate the opportunity to do that. Thank you. So in terms of our state statutes, the state statutes inform judges in the municipal court in terms of what bonds we can set. So we cannot set bonds on capital offenses, which are things like murder, CSC with a minor. There's three or four of those offenses. Those immediately automatically go to the circuit court for the circuit court to set. We also cannot, municipal court judges cannot set bonds on a defendant who is already on bond for a violent crime and then commits another violent crime. That bond also automatically goes to the circuit court. Whatever's left is within the purview of the municipal court judges in terms of setting bonds for crimes that occur within the city of Columbia. Judge, the amount of the bond, is that something within your purview on those cases that you can set a bond? Is the amount set by law or is that an option for the judge? The amount is not set by law. There is some guidance in our state statutes in terms of what bonds are appropriate, the presumption and under our state statutes is for non-violent offenses, the presumption is a PR bond. The bond court judge is tasked with two specific questions by statute. That is whether the defendant is a flight risk or whether he's a danger to the community. Those are the two things that the judge considers in determining what, if any, bond is appropriate. On a violent crime that's before a municipal court judge, again, that's the first violent crime would not be a subsequent, but on a first violent crime before the municipal court judge, the judge has the option by statute of setting bond or denying bond. On any non-violent offense, the judge is required by statute to set a bond. And there's nothing to say how much that bond is as to the discretion of the judge? That is at the discretion of the judge, yes. Questions? I do have a follow-up question. If the municipal judge decides not to set a bond on a violent crime, does that person automatically get the opportunity to have bond set in circuit court or are you all at the end of it? There's an opportunity to file a motion to reconsider bond that would be heard at the circuit court and the circuit court judge would determine whether or not a bond was appropriate. So reconsideration doesn't come back to the original judge. We lose jurisdiction once we set that bond on a general sessions level offense. Our only involvement is that initial bond setting. And then a preliminary hearing if that comes in the future. We also hear those. Judge Mangum, when setting bond is discretionary to the judge on non-violent events for whether to be a cash bond or a PR bond. The presumption from our state statute is that it's a PR bond absent a finding that the defendant is a flight risk or a danger to the community. And can you give some examples of what those types of charges would be? Those who may not know. In terms of, I'm sorry. Can you give some examples of what the non-violent charges would be that would normally have a PR bond? So violent and non-violent crimes are decided by statute, not by judges. There's a statute that lists all the violent crimes in the state of South Carolina. That's 16, 160. So if it's not listed in that statute, it is a non-violent crime in South Carolina. I'm hesitant to ever give examples about what may or may not be a PR bond because it is very case specific and it depends on the defendant. It depends on the defendant's prior history. It depends on, we ask a series of questions from every defendant that comes before us. Things like, do you work? Where do you work? Where do you live? How long have you lived there? We're looking for things like, have you ever failed to appear at a prior court hearing? We look at a prior criminal history. We look at statements from law enforcement. So all of those things come into play when determining whether a PR bond would be appropriate. And just for my edification, what is the statute that distinguishes the violent and non-violent? The violent statute is 16-1-60. That's the list of all violent crimes in South Carolina. Okay, and there's not one that lists non-violent. No, it would just be everything not on that list. Again, question. I wanna make sure I understood you correctly. If it's only if it's on a violent, when you said a minute ago, when somebody is out on bond and they're arrested again, it's only if it's a violent crime, they're out on that it goes to circuit court. Yes, sir. Okay, so like on homeless situations or urban camping and things like that where we have repeat offenders that you're out on bond for wanting to get arrested again. I mean, if somebody, I guess what I'm gonna ask is, if I'm a misdemeanor or whatever you would call it because I'm not a lawyer, if somebody's out on bond and they're back in jail, do we tend to do a PR bond or a cash bond on the second time? Again, it would be case specific. It would depend on the situation that's before the judge. Okay, let me ask you a different way. Sure. What percentage of those do you think are generally PR bonds? What percentage of what charges? Somebody is out on a bond for another nonviolent charge and arrested again and bonds set by the judge just as a guesstimate percentage. I mean, how many are cash bonds? How many are PR bonds? I couldn't tell you. I'd have to, I did provide some statistics, I think before. I don't have those in front of me. I'd have to go back and look at those statistics. I don't know those off the top of my head. If I look at our accounting and I see, again, this is really trying to get an understanding. Now look at our accounting, forfeitures and fines. Forfeitures would be forfeiture of bond for not showing up to court. Is that correct, Ms. Wilson? You know, nobody? No, a forfeiture would be somebody that pays their ticket without coming to court. Okay. Okay, then that. Or they're fine if it's a warrant. Somebody that pays without contesting their charge. Do we have any feel for how many people are, again, you may not have the statistics and you may want to look and get back to us. Do we have any feel for the statistics of how many people are set with Mr. Main or PR bonds that don't show back up for their court date? I don't. By statute and by court procedure, when somebody does not appear for their court date and they have been issued a bond, then a bench warrant is issued for their arrest. So that's the remedy for the municipal court in terms of somebody who fails to appear from a misdemeanor charge that went through bond court and then fails to appear. Do you have a question? Not at the moment. I guess we're back to the, on the bail's bond question. I mean, how often do we run into bail bond situations in our municipal court system? Probably at all or? How many bonds are issued that require? No, I just, I don't have quite an understanding on the level of bonds, dollar amounts. The bail bonds, but they don't get involved on a cash bond, it's $200 or $300 to do that. I've never seen a bond, a cash bond for $200 or $300. I can't tell you that that wouldn't exist, but I don't know of any, I've not set a bond for $200 or $300 and I don't know of any of our judges that have done that. I can't, I mean, I'd have to go back and look, but that would be unusual. What are the typical bond levels that we see in the municipal court? Typically, if we're typically gonna do a, I'm not, it depends on the fine amount. I mean, that's the easiest answer. It depends on the fine amount. The range, how to love. So we do have some fines as low as $252.50 and then go all the way up to over $5,000. And so are you saying that the bond that you will set will be compatible with whatever the fine is for that particular charge? Yes. So the fine, if they're found guilty and the fine is $1,000, then typically the bond would be $1,000. Right. A PR bond or a cash bond. PR is no money. PR is a personal recognizant, so there wouldn't be, I mean. There's no money. So the only time you would set a cash amount for bond would be if you were setting a cash bond and not a PR bond. We typically don't set just a cash bond. We set cash or surety. And so that would typically be the option. It's either a PR or it's a cash or surety. Now certainly there are situations before judges where they do issue a cash-only bond. What's a cash or surety? Cash is the definite answer. Cash is, what's the surety? Surety is when you get the bail bondsman involved. That's what I'm saying. How often do you see that very often? It happens every day. Yeah. I would say that's the primary bond that's issued by judges. Because remember, we're hearing all of the cases, all of the charges that come up in the city of Columbia. So some are misdemeanors, but we're hearing all the felonies as well. Absent the ones that meet that very specific guidelines that I talked about. And then if the defendant doesn't show up for court and they have a bond that's been funded by bail bondsman, your issue on a bench warrant, then what happens? We are hoping that the defendant gets picked up on that bench warrant. That was to the bond though. That's a very interesting question because there is a procedure in circuit court for those bonds to be estrated through the solicitor's office. The city doesn't have a procedure in terms of bond estrangement. I have reached out to court administration to try to work with them to see if there's a better way for us to estrate bonds. Excuse me, a street means? A street means would be to hold the bondsman accountable when the defendant fails to appear on a city-level charge. Is that a statutory limitation of the city or is that something that we can institute out of the city? It is derived by state statute. It's my understanding that the municipal court has not ever in the past estrated bonds and it is my understanding also that it is typically, in general sessions, it's done through the solicitor's office. So that's part of what we would have to work through is to figure out how that process works. I just was saying, do we have the ability to do that as a city of Columbia or is it prohibited by state statute? We have, under the state statute, there is a process for estrating bonds. How that process will go. The state statute doesn't specify. The state statute talks about the attorney general, the solicitor, but certainly there should be a process for us to be able to do that. I think the question is whether or not that estreatment is a civil action and if it is, then municipal court doesn't have jurisdiction. That's the issue that I've reached out to court administration to try to get some. I do see that the municipal association has published something on that so I'm a forward it to you all. And I have read that and also read the bench book. That's why I've reached out to court administration to ask for some guidance in terms of how we would handle that in the municipal court. Because we do not have civil jurisdiction. Judge Meng, thank you for answering our question. Tina, you've got a question. Just something simple, because I really wanted to be able to give folks who may not know an example. I'm pretty sure lottering would be something that you could give a PR bond on. Sure, I mean we could give a PR bond on any, essentially any nonviolent. I'm going back to what you said earlier about statutorily, there's certain ones that you lean towards just doing a PR bond naturally. Lottering would be one of them. Again, depending on the specific facts of the defendant that's before. Those are the facts, somebody was lottering. There are no extra facts. If somebody appeared before me on a loitering charge with no prior criminal history who had never been charged before, it is likely that person would get a PR bond on that charge with that set of facts. That's one last question for me, I guess. This is just general information question. Because I'm not going to admit, I've not been before a bond judge in my life, at least yet. So, how does it work? Does the solicitor's office send a prosecutor in there? Does the police officer make the case? Does the person stand there and you as a judge, you got to do both sides of making the case? It used to be that the solicitor sent an assistant solicitor to bond court, but that has ended, that ended several years ago. Is it him because of COVID or him before COVID? I believe it was a choice solicitor Gibson made was to not send solicitors to bond court. That's my understanding. Does that have a negative impact on us? You don't have to answer that. When a judge is, and I would invite all of you to bond court is open court, just like every other court we have, I would invite you to come down and watch. But when we set bonds, there is a judge, a clerk, and however many defendants may happen to be in bond court that day, the judge is the only person in that courtroom who's making that decision and they're making it based on the information that's before them. The arresting officer's not there as well? The arresting officer sometimes is there and sometimes not. Sometimes the officer sends a statement. Sometimes the officer informs the court about other information, but sometimes the officer's not there and Chief Holbrook could speak better to that than I can about why or why not. I was just curious, I mean. I do have one follow up question with regards to that. Do you feel that you have enough information at the time that you're setting the bond to set an appropriate bond? I think every judge would like as much information as possible. You know, there are hard decisions that you're making and you're making them sometimes with very limited information. So more information would always be welcome. That we should look at as regards to bonding and bail bondsmen and the fact that they're making a good safer, make good job easier, make the best department job easier. You know, I'm not sure, I'm stepping, I think a little bit out of my role as Chief Judge, but I certainly appreciated the things that the governor said in terms of bail bonds reform, reforming, and the process that goes into that. I think a treatment is an avenue that we definitely should, the court should pursue and we can work with the city attorney's office to figure that process out. I did not realize we didn't have these and I do appreciate what the governor is doing too. I think it's very frustrating sometimes and we can all share in some of the responsibility that we read the stories in the paper where, you know, somebody's out on bond committing another thing, another thing, another thing. I just think it's something that we just need to investigate and take a little bit more look and any other suggestions that you may have and want to share, you know, be welcome to hear them. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Judge Mangan. We will not dig deeper into this subject this afternoon due to other things that we have on the agenda, but we will reserve the right to go back to it in a future time once we learn a little bit more about it and maybe give to Judge Mangan more than the day's notice to come back before us. Mr. DeVall, I did want to note I had to go back to my old city of Columbia days and we previously had a panel on violent crime and bond reform and so that may be something, if we want to do a deep dive, that may be a way to do it. Whether or not we can get those things done is a totally different thing, but. That was a panel discussion. It was a committee. The mayor's panel on violent crime and bond reform, he had. When was it? This was in 2013. Robert Boch's, our South Carolina Court Administration, Leon Light, Carl Solomon, various people from various roles. Refresh that committee. All right, I've asked Chief Holbrook and Chief Jenkins to give us a five minute update on public safety. Chief Holbrook, would you like to lead on? Thank you, Mr. DeVall. I'll start with just a year to date, quick at a glance on some crime numbers and just kind of work through some of our hot button topics. Very similar to what I reported in some correspondence with you all recently, our part one crime is tracking very well. Your today are homicides are down 18%, rapes down 26%, robberies down 13%, burglary is down 13% and auto breaking is down 22%. Our aggravated assaults, which is essentially our non-fatal shootings, is our Achilles heel. It's still tracking plus about 30%. As you know, last week we held our ceasefire call in. We had 22 individuals that all had predicated offense convictions that subject them to federal prison if they got caught with a gun or ammunition. They were brought in as part of our ceasefire program, specifically to address breaking our shooting cycles that we see so much with our young adults in Columbia. Since May of 2021, we have invited over 90 individuals to participate in this program and we've only had 16 re-offend and let me tell you what that means. That's about a 17% recidivism rate. Nationally, the violent crime recidivism rate is over 70%. That is a huge success of an evidence-based program. We're very proud of that and that's really part of our DNA and we'll continue to do that. So far this year we've had 94 people shot. That's one less than we had all of last year. So we are tracking to have a record year of people hit by gunfire. And I would be, I think remiss not to mention we've seen over 600 what is defined as mass shootings across our country tragically, most recently at the University of Virginia. We've had two in Columbia this year. We had the apartment shootings at Green's Crossing and then we had the mall shootings. So those are some outliers that account for 15 people being shot and certainly impacts our numbers. But we've also assisted the Sheriff's Department in several active shooting hoax calls at schools. Our preparedness I think has been evident with how we responded to the mall and then these school shootings that thank God turned out to be hoax but I would also tell you that our staff between our special operations group and emergency management with Director Tinsley have trained over a thousand people in our city this year and active intruder, active shooting response and almost 200 city of Columbia employees. So we take our preparedness and training for that very, very seriously. We've seen 649 guns this year and which is consistent for what we've reported the last several years. One thing that I would add and I've mentioned this several times. If we look at our auto breakings for example, which we are down 22% but we've still had over 1200 auto breakings reported this year and at least half of those would be unlocked vehicles and probably a third of our stolen guns are reportedly come from unlocked vehicles. So we could just from citizen responsibility if we lock our cars we could potentially knock our property crime rate down double digits easily and prevent guns falling into the wrong hands on the street simply by locking a car or removing your firearm. Chief, does the report that you get on an automobile break-in have secured and unsecured blocks on it? Yes, sir. So you can give us a statistic on those 1200 to how many were secured and how many are unsecured? I can, most of them are unsecured. Right. I noticed that when I first started going to neighborhood meetings the officers would come in and talk about break-ins and I finally asked them, I said how many of them were unlocked cars? Oh, most of them are unlocked cars. I think we need to start using that statistic when we talk about automobile break-ins. I don't consider it a break-in if they leave the keys or the fob in the car. We refer to them as lead-ins. Lead-ins. Lead-ins. Another topic I would report out on would be our pathways unit. We provided our update two weeks ago but since that time we have obviously increased some of our contacts. We're at 500 arrests and field books. That's up 20 since we last reported that. We've conducted 505 field interviews and taken information reports and we've rendered services to 225 persons. We currently have referred 415 clients and taken the shot of 900 actions for these identified clients. And since the rapid shelter has come online we have introduced 15 people to the rapid shelter and we continue to rest through the overflow with this incredible weather we've seen here lately and working with staff at the rapid shelter. It's going fantastic in my opinion. Expected logistic things that have come up just being online for a couple of weeks but I have found the staff down there to be exceptional to work with and we've just dealt with things as they've come our way. So it's working very well in my opinion. The last thing, well not the last thing, we often hear about traffic. I wanna tell you that we average about 830 traffic citations a month. So far this year we've issued over 8,300 tickets and a little over 2,000 for speeding. So enforcement is in effect. We've had over 6,400 collisions and that's down about 4% from, about 4.5% from this time last year. So we see some improvement. We hear that about a lot. I know you all hear it a lot from constituents as far as disregarding traffic signals, stop signs and speed in general. And we're doing the very best we can to address that and remind people to slow down and stop appropriately. Last thing I have a report on is our recruitment and retention efforts. Two weeks ago we officially brought online the hiring and retention initiative, our pay plan. As you can imagine it was extremely well received thank you all for that. Ms. Wilson, thank you for your hard work with that. Ms. Benjamin and Ms. Javis' staff, it was a heavy lift. I mean, we literally have retooled everything from the ground up, pour it down and build it back up. And as you know, building annual steps of our officers can certainly plan for the future. There was a big investment in our vehicles. We now have a vehicle assigned to every eligible officer. That was a pie in the sky that we talked about a lot and we've actually reached that. So as we continue to bring these new vehicles online that you all generously supported the purchase of, we'll start rolling off some of our really high mileage vehicles and replacing them with the Tahoe's that you're seeing. And that's going very well. The Tahoe is the vehicle of choice across our state and we are in a long line of other municipalities that have also purchased hundreds and hundreds of vehicles especially with recovery money. There's been a pretty significant effort statewide and I think really throughout the country to address fleet issues with agencies. So we've got our vendors very accommodating to us but it's a process and we certainly respect that. We are providing you all updates weekly with people who are onboarding. You saw three this past week and one from the week before. So in the last two weeks we've onboarded four. One from Philadelphia, one an NYPD officer who just left the agency and get standing and other one a certified South Carolina officer. So we'll hit the ground running quickly and then another young man from Rochester, New York who has been attending South Carolina State. So that we know we're getting some awareness up north and we'll keep targeting that area for the mild temperatures and access to the mountains and the oceans. And of course we think with our pay plan it's very attractive for lateral transfers for certifies as we continue to market our program and recruit. I've challenged our officers to be a recruiter. If every person will recruit one police officer it'll solve our problem very quickly. We've got nine in basic candidate school within the department right now and two in the academy and the way we do our BCS we do it in groups but really about every four weeks we're putting some into the academy and that's a fluctuating number. We've also got five applications for our cadet program. That is a feeder program and that is a way that we can I believe bolster local recruiting to again we wanna reflect our community but we also wanna find people from our communities that we serve to be part of the rank and file. So we're very pleased about how things are tracking and we're extremely grateful for the support and effort that has gone in to helping us kind of reestablish staffing at the level that we all expect. You had a target this year of 60. 40, net 40. You're well on the way of reaching those one. We're not where we would like to be but we think being two weeks into this we're starting to track how we'd like. We know we've got a average four or five a week so we've got our work cut out for us. Real good. Thank you Chief. That was an excellent report. Any questions? I just wanted to add to once we get through this season Chief and I did have a meeting over at Allen University exploring some creative ways to bring folks in but I am of the mindset that this is not the season to do it but maybe for next academic year so we'll bring that back. Yes ma'am, that was actually on my note I missed it. Thank you. We hope that intersects with our cadet program. It perfectly aligns with it. It truly is working the logistics out of how they can continue their studies. Maybe be on our payroll in some part time capacity and again moving in towards a career law enforcement but I think it's, yeah. Chief I just have a couple of three basic questions just to kind of educate me on some things you mentioned too. Explain to me why do we do traffic in the county doesn't? I just never have always wondered that. You know the highway patrol seems to take care of everything outside the city but we have to do it in the city and do they pay for the highway patrol to do that? I'm just curious why the, you know why that nuance exists that it's not just in Richland County it's in other counties some do respond to traffic accidents. We, as you know, I know you noted from the number I said we spend a lot of time responding to the crash reports and you know as we continue to come up with innovative plans to improve efficiencies one of the things that we are gonna have to look at is how we respond to private property fender benders. That takes up a lot of time and we respond to those and how we respond and when we don't respond to false alarms. Those are two things that I think you all as a public safety committee can help us address and message with our citizens. Okay, just so I understand that on the traffic matters this is just something that we've just always done that we, I mean is it something that we should take a look at? I'm just curious. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I'm just, you know again I was always wondering why we handle that cost as a city and the county didn't have to handle it on their side. I don't have an answer for you on that. Well it's traditionally a function of municipal police to respond to accidents. I think you'd find just about every municipal government that has a police department. Colonel Williamson would stroke out if we announced today we were not responding to traffic accidents in the city of Columbia. I'm not saying we shouldn't. I'm just trying to understand, you know again why we carry some cost that other units of local governments don't have to carry. Just as, because as we struggle and we all struggle to fill our openings for our most important law enforcement positions, again when you look at the time we spend responding to traffic accidents when others don't have to spend that time. I just wonder if it's something we just- It's significant. I mean there's no question about it, it's significant and you know, any innovative things we can do to reduce that number or how our response posture would be I think would be beneficial for us to examine. Second, on the rapid shelter system, I mean our officers have a really good understanding. I'm delighted to hear you say it's working out really well. Let's just say it's just so the friends that are over here and me all here, there's somebody that's having an issue in five points. It's after five. We have a pathways person that can go visit with them or if not then there's a police officer that sees them and it used to be, let's just be candid, until Ms. Wilson and the city opened that 24-7 shelter, pretty much all your officers could do was tell that problem person, walk on or I'll take you to jail there really wasn't a third option. That's true. And we're finding that this third option is making a difference, at least I'm hearing that in the community. That's correct, so certainly a misdemeanor occurring in our presence, we do have an option to make a custodial arrest. Oftentimes in the example you gave, we are responding to something after the fact and that did not occur in our presence and there is a level of frustration with obviously the business person or a citizen that's called about that disturbance. So now we do have an extra option. We can employ our ability to persuade to potentially get that individual to the pallet and remove them from causing that disturbance. So our officers are very, they're very abreast of that process as is our pathways. So pathways are when they're available, that's our first line of defense, but our officers, it has been widely communicated, everybody is tracking on the same page and just what we've seen in the last two weeks, there is a really an equal ratio of referrals from pathways and referrals from our line officer. So everybody recognizes the benefit of this and jail is still an option at times and but if we can get somebody to shelter and to services, we know that's a win. Two things I would add for the benefit of our media in the room, number one, is on your last report, I noticed it was almost a one for one men and women at the rapid shelter. It sure has been. Which really surprised me a great deal. Number two, is there, if someone's calling in to dispatch or 911 on a problem homeless situation, should they mention anything about pathways, leave it up to the dispatcher to make the call? I mean, is there a way that we should notify our public that when they're making a call on these type disturbances that would help you and your team? I mean, I hate to dispatch a policeman and then have, cause I don't know if people understand that when you dispatch a pathways technician, it go with a policeman. Yes, sir. So in other words, so is there a way to eliminate the duplication there if our citizens are able to help our dispatchers when they call them in? That's a great question. That's when our manager frequently asks, how do we best define and illustrate this line of communication? So 911 is that first step. And it can be regular 911 or it can be the non-emergency. They're both going to the same place. The dispatchers, they ask a series of questions about the nature of the call. And the more information a caller can provide, the better. That helps with the decision making at 911 and the information that they push to the field for us to make decisions. So somebody wants to say, hey, we heard of the pathways unit and we think this might be something that they might be able to address. That's not going to hurt anything, but they'll take that information and they'll push that out to the supervisors and they triage as it comes out. Pathways for somebody that's a homeless situation where they have somebody in mental distress, pathways would be that first option. But we have a whole roster of officers that are crisis certified. So they can also respond and address the needs. And we have our partnership with the Department of Mental Health and the crisis response team that comes at, when we ask they'll come out and do the assessment. And now we have staff at the Rapid Shelter that is also working in conjunction with us to come out in the field after hours to address somebody that's in need. So really, we've kind of got multiple pawns we're pulling from. And I think that's what in my opinion calls this to be successful in the last few weeks, especially. I was just gonna add, I'm glad you said that last part as of yesterday, Director Heppert has hired two case managers and another outreach person for after hours specific. And so they are working together, Director Heppert and Chief, because my question to them is, do you need another outreach person for during the daytime as well to be that force multiplier? But they wanna see how this is working as it seems that it's really starting to get a good rhythm. So we're gonna see with these additional staff persons on the Rapid Shelter side, pathways, and then just our officers in general being trained if we're making some good progress. Yes, ma'am, and keep in mind, we provide every police officer a phone. So obviously we use our radios, but when we're talking with like Rapid Shelter staff or DMH folks, I mean, all of our officers, they all have rosters of numbers and there's just a lot of just immediate direct communication. They can take pictures of a potential client and send it just so they can have some awareness of what they're dealing with before they respond. So communication is everything. And I think so far, so good would be fine. Let me just say this, Chief and City Manager, the response I'm hearing from the business people in particular that I run into like yesterday has been overwhelmingly positive that people can tell a difference. What your team and your code team did on Forest Drive, I think has been day and night change there. And I think the fact that we have a place now where after five and on the weekends, we can address these chronic unsheltered homeless folks that we couldn't before, I think it's making a big difference in the quality of life. Not, and again, and I think this is what we all have to remember. Historically, we've seen the homeless issues on Main Street and the entertainment districts. They've moved to the suburbs as well. And I think it's really making a difference out there. I'm really proud of you guys and y'all for what you've done. While we've been here today, Ms. Kellett, and I'm saying this in case she's watching because we're gonna loop back around on Super Harbison, very interested in connecting with some of the same efforts that happened on Forest Drive with Walmart and other regional folks to see what they could do. I think there's a lot of, they're more organized out there now from an association standpoint and they really are wanting, okay, good. So they're really wanting to connect the dots. And I think when we taught recently, it was after a chamber breakfast or whatever that was. And we talked about that so she's reached out so we need to closely. I would tell you, Ms. Will, that brings me to my last question which came up yesterday. This is just something that I learned yesterday just for clarification, if it's something we should change. On urban camping, what I heard yesterday was by statute we have to verbally warn somebody. Then write them all written citation and then on the third time take action and incarceration if we have to. And my question, if that's the case, can we eliminate the verbal warning and just make it a citation and then action? I mean, we've got somebody in the same place. I hate for our officers to have to three times make a visit to correct something. If we can do that to two, I think it might help if it takes us with an ordinance to do it. I mean, I would say let's work with. We could work with legal to see if there's a way we can streamline that. You know, one of the things that we try to do is give ample notice to give folks an opportunity to gather their belongings and vacate. And then we typically post it, but there may be some things we could do to more directly address them. We could do like a non-monetary citation, which is basically a written warning. Right. And then I just think it will. Yes, sir? Thank you for what you just did. And I just wanted to add that it's incumbent upon council folks such as myself to explain to people who have negative comments without even knowing what the housing is. I think it was here at the last meeting, city council meeting, and a person said to me, yeah, it looks like a prison cell. And I said, or dorm room, you know, whichever it's how you choose to look at it. And so I have found myself having to explain to people. It's, there are some folks who just want to think it's inhumane and so forth, but I think we have to do a good job to have explaining. And that's the example I use. It's like a dorm room so that they understand that the living conditions are good and they're temporary and all that we are offering versus where some folks were staying. So I just wanted to note that that I've gotten that a couple of times. Thank you, chief. Excellent report. Thank you. Chief Jenkins, I recognize you in that fancy suit. Seeing him in uniform must be preaching today. Sometimes just gotta be in continuity. So thank you all for this time. I didn't really bring a report like that because I was understanding that you only wanted just the staffing and talk a little bit about the ISO. So that's what I will concentrate on, okay? So basically, you know, we're still trying to recruit people. We got like all else is going on and we got everybody out there trying to recruit people. We are getting some applications through the portal. When I checked the day, I think we had like a hundred applications for non-sworn and probably about close to 30 for sworn. So we're still trying to do that. We basically have a couple of programs. Over this past Friday, I actually swore in four new firefighters. They started shift this weekend. Right now, I'm conditioning and offering 22 people to start school in January. I'm just gonna open last week and go finish up this week. So we have 22 people. The issue is that since a year over the past year, we've probably trained about 57, right about 57 firefighters to come on board. We can do that because we do our own academy. The problem is just since the first year, I've lost about 70 people, about 70, yes. So currently, we got 57, right around 57 openings for firefighter positions. So although we gained, we're still losing and I think this probably, since I've been here, it's probably been the worst time that I've seen for us. Right now, we probably had about a 14, about a 14% attrition rate and we should only be around a three. And when you're talking about being at 3% attrition, that's because people do retire and some people just gonna do other things. But when I say there's right around seven that we lost that would encompass people that didn't pass through the crew class, people that retired and then other folks that just looking for something else to do and seeking other avenues in other departments. So that's kind of the way we are on with that. We're talking about ISO, we are, and there are various reasons and I do want to say this also, we're still riding short sometimes. Well, all the time, riding short because we got to be able to get people in the door in order for us to have those trucks full. We can talk about all the calls that did it. I could have brought you all those stats, how we run everything. When I say everything, I do mean it. We run active shooters also. You know why? Because we don't want to have to go inside to rescue these folks, get them aid, you know? So we have to do that. That's why we're wearing bulletproof vests now. But anyway, you know, so that is still a problem. Like I say, just losing people, it's really a problem. And it's almost like every week now, I'm getting a resignation now, it's just resignation. Or the other thing, it's in our house teasing folks in HR. I was trying to get people in the door. Y'all still letting people go out for an FMLA. But I mean, but I know people have issues, we just joking about that this year. But anyway, we do have ISO coming in. And I expect them to be in any time between now and in the summer. The problem is they are so backed up, and they only got one representative taking care of the whole state. Very good at what he does, he's very thorough. And so, you know, sometimes they may give you, you say, well, we're being, like we fully expected to have this done prior to the end of this year. But because of the backlog that he has, being the only one doing it for the whole state. So they kind of push us back. He works well with us. I still expect us to maintain a one in city. I expect us to maintain a two in the county. However, it's still gonna be dependent upon certain things, our staffing. You know, that plays a major part in our communications. How quickly we can get the call in the port and get dispatch and get on the scene. How quickly we can get X amount of firefighters on the scene. That's important, they judge you on that in a certain amount of time. So when people ask us why we wanna ride our truck short, that is one of the reason, I mean, I'm sorry, ride it full, that's one of the reasons because we gotta get X amount of firefighters on the scene within a lot of time to keep those, keep that rating. So, I'm not all doom and gloom. I will say this and I thank Ms. Wilson for supporting us. The state has, we're part of it, of a type five team, urban search and rescue team. And we are the host department, which is great. And the reason why we're the host department is because we got a state house right here. If anything happened, the state house collapsed or anything, we gotta go in there. If anything happened in this region, we get responded to the area to help bring down control. So what the state did in the state fire marshal's budget, they allocated $5 million, it's five teams in the state, we're the midlands, they allocated $5 million. So we received $1 million of that dollar. And the good thing about it is the city does not have to put up any upfront money. When we buy equipment, all we do is give the bill to the state fire marshal's office and then write the check. We don't have to spend that money in one year, we can carry it over. So just whenever we need the equipment, the only thing is it's gotta be available for to be able to respond with it. But City of Columbia is the keeper of the equipment and we keep the equipment and we can use it for anything that we do on our daily responses. So I'm not gonna take long. I just wanna bring that out and just say we're gonna keep going at it. Good report, Chief. Taylor or Tina? Oh, I think that I see we were buying a big new ladder truck this year too. We are. But you know, the problem with trucks now and any equipment is that it'll be two and a half years out. Yes, I mean, that's how the market is right now. Everybody is buying to get equipment right now and everything is just so backed up. A lot of that because of like offer money and things like that. Well, yeah, some of it. The demand was always there. The funding. The realty departures, how about that? Well, it's hard to get parts and all that good stuff. That's why normally when we buy a truck, we try to do a one shop stop because we ain't even worry about these folks having to provide this part. They provide this part. We work with one person, one vendor, and then they provide everything. Well, if something happened to the truck, we ain't gotta send this place, then we send it to that place, one place and we done. But anyway, you know, I was in a meeting with some fire chiefs a couple, you know, the Metro chiefs from South Carolina. And it's about 15 or 16 of us there, part of the Metro. And they all having the same issues about getting equipment in. What about the bunker gear and stuff where we bought, is that backed up, too? That is, we are right now because how long it took for us to get to that process. Right now, we are putting the, not the beers, but we are putting the, yeah, putting the beers out so we can get the bunker gear in. So that's in process right now. Then we had to wait on the counter as well. I know the city allocated money before the counter did, but the counter has allocated their portion of it. So we're gonna move forward with that. As the county now allocated their portion. Yes, yes, sir. Yes, sir. So we move, we move forward. And I wanna say that's huge. And we really appreciate it. That's huge because, you know, if you ever been to a fire you've seen the firefighters come out of the fire with all the insulation, how wet the gears and all the good stuff. And then they'll take us with the same bunker to another call without it being clean. And see that is part, firefighters are getting council council right now. And that is all part of our council initiative to make sure we keep our firefighters safe. All right, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to ask you, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Is there a template you wanna follow for both chiefs to present every meeting? And if so, gonna, we just kind of came up yesterday. So is there a specific, or I can work with them on a template, staffing, yeah, I think we do need a report at each one of the public safety meetings and we always wanna know about staffing and statistics. And statistics that are relevant for each one. I think we can develop a, let's work on that. Developing a list of questions that they are to answer each time they come. All right, that in January. Not gonna meet in December, I don't believe. Well, that's, you know, that'll be a separate meeting. Separately. Any other questions before we go into executive session? Okay, I'm gonna make a motion that we go into executive session for discussion of employment of an employee pursuant to SC code 30-4-781 municipal court judges. Second. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll?