Hello Mayor and council members and happy new year. I hope all of you had a great holiday season. I am happy to report that the police department is a step closer to being fully staffed. We are currently down two positions but have two candidates that have successfully passed the background investigation phase. One of those candidates has fully completed the process and has a start date of January 24th, 2022. That candidate will be scheduled to be sworn in at the February 7th council meeting. The second candidate is scheduled to have a psychological evaluation in late January and then will proceed to the final step of the process if that evaluation is successful. Were hoping that the second candidate will move through these final steps and be able to start on February 28th, 2022.

The body camera project is moving forward. All of the equipment that is needed has been ordered and I’ve been told by the contractor that our devices should be here by the end of January. I am still working on the policy for this new program. Once the equipment arrives, we will work with the contractor and our own IT department to install all the necessary equipment. We will then move into a testing phase of the program before going fully online. I’m hoping to start the testing phase of this project in early spring. I will keep council posted on our progress of this very important project.

The winter storm we had recently created some challenging driving conditions and numerous crashes that we responded to. I’m happy to report that we had no major injury crashes during this storm. Most were minor without serious damage or injury. We are prepared for these situations.

Lastly, we have rescheduled our department wide officer wellness training for March of this year. We have had to move the date on this training several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This training is highly recommended. It focuses on stress and mental health and well being. I’m very excited to offer this to all of our members. I’m hoping the plans in March move forward this time around.

That is all for now. Have a great month and I will see all of you soon. Chief Roberts