Hello Mayor and Council members. I hope all of you had a good month. October brings Halloween and it was a good year for all the little ghosts and goblins this year. The weather was great and it was good to see the kids around the neighborhoods again this year. I spent the evening handing out candy from my home and was surprised to see how many folks were out this year really having a good time with their kids and loved ones. We got lucky with the weather this year as well.

We also had the fireworks show this month which went really well aside from some traffic congestion but this is normal for this event no matter what time of year it is held. It’s a long day and evening for my patrol folks but the community really enjoyed the event.

We continue the recruitment process at the police department as we are still down two positions with another one coming soon, making it necessary to hire three officers in the coming months. I have two candidates as of the time of this writing that are in the background investigation phase of the process. Both of the candidates are lateral recruits. This means they are already certified police officers from another agency and would not have to attend the DPSST basic police academy. This shortens the timeline for them to be solo officers for our city. I’m hoping each of them continue on in the process. By next months report, I will have that information for all of you. My goal is to get two officers hired by the end of the year.

The body camera project continues to develop. At this stage, the cameras and equipment have been chosen and we are ready to make the purchase. We should have the equipment by the end of the year. During this time, I continue to work on developing a policy for our department in order to implement the program itself. I have gathered sample policies from a number of different agencies around our state and have studied those. I’ve also had discussions with other chiefs from our county who have recently started a body camera program. I am hoping to be done with the policy soon and develop a testing phase of the program sometime in the beginning of 2022.

That is all for now. I hope all of you have a great week and I’ll see you soon. Chief Roberts.