Hello Mayor and Council members. I apologize as this report is late this month. The police department continues to recruit. We recently lost another candidate to the background phase of the process and an additional candidate to another agency that was ahead of our process. As of now, we have one open position that needs to be filled ASAP and a second position that may be open before the month of October. We have one officer that has plans to move to another state, creating the second open position. It has been difficult to recruit folks in the last couple of years. We have opened the process back up and are now accepting applications. We exhausted our last list of possible candidates and are starting anew.

I continue to research the use and purchase of body cameras for our officers. Council and budget committee members approved additional funding for this project. The quote that was issued to our department has expired now and a new quote was received recently. That quote is a bit higher but not substantially. I have included our IT department in this process and now the issue is server space for storage of the additional digital media created by the use of the body camera. We have not reached a solution as of this time. The companies that sell this equipment all have a “cloud” option for storage of media but this comes at an annual cost, making this an ongoing expense that we just do not have funds for. I will keep all of you updated on this project.

As we get full swing into summer, officers are busy with calls for service that generally increase this time of year. Additionally, we have seen a decrease in planned events (protests) this year as opposed to last year. These are taking staff time and resources but not at the same level as the previous year. This is good news for our officers, who are working extra hours when these events happen and also good for our overtime budget.

That is all for now. I hope all of you are enjoying our beautiful summer sunshine. Chief Roberts.