Select Board 1-31-08 (Law Enforcement)

 Select Board Special Meeting Minutes January 31, 2008 Present:        Henry C. Cobb             C. Peter Cole             Daniel Boyer             Norman John Arrison             Patricia Daniels Others Present:    Larry Melen, Town Manager             Chief Brown             Lisa Sargent, Recording Secretary             Lori Haskins, VSP             Jeanette VonFeldt, VSP             Edith Stillson             Julia Lloyd Wright, Eagle Times             Lt. JocelynStohl, VSP              Sgt. Anthony French, VSP             Jeff Locke             Tom Heiser 1.  Call to Order by Chairperson: Mr. Cobb called the special meeting of the Weathersfield Select Board to order at 7:05 p.m. at Martin Memorial Hall. 2.  Sign Warning for Annual Town Meeting: Mr. Boyer made the motion to accept and sign the Warning for the Annual Town Meeting to be held on Monday March 3, 2008 with voting to be held on Tuesday March 4, 2008.  Mrs. Daniels seconded the motion, which carried unanimously. 3.  Law Enforcement Study Committee: Mr. Cobb mentioned Jeff Locke & Tom Heiser were not present but were part of the committee.  (They arrived a few minutes after this was said).   Mr. Cobb said he would like to start by defining the problem and he asked Lt. Stohl what she thought the problem was.  Lt. Stohl said she thinks there are a number of things that may need to be defined.  Mr. Cobb said at the last meeting we talked about lack of administration support for Chief Brown and that crime has increased from 200 to 400 incidents per year.  Lt. Stohl asked who was on the committee.  Mr. Melen said it was Mr. Cobb as the Chair and the Select Board representative, Tom Heiser as the citizen representative, Jeff Locke as the School Board representative, Chief Brown, Lt. Stohl and two other State Police representatives.   Mr. Cobb said he graphed the information he received from Chief Brown, which was obtained from the VIBRS clerk, and it does not show that crime is up in Weathersfield.  He noted that from 1999 – 2007 59% of incidents are for service calls, 29% are for crime and 12% are for emergency.  It was noted this is data from the Weathersfield Police Department only; it does not include statistics from the State Police.  Mr. Cobb said this shows incidents are consistent but about 60% of them are not related to criminal activity therefore, he dismisses the thought that crime is on the increase.  Lt. Stohl said that conclusion should not be made until the State Police incident reports are looked at. Lt. Stohl mentioned that a lot of public service that is going on is not criminal but could lead to criminal.   There was discussion as to why the State Police information, showing the number of incidents they responded to in Weathersfield, was not available for this meeting.  Mr. Melen said Town of Norwich and Chief Brown could not pull this information.  Lt. Stohl said Town of Norwich asked and received her permission to pull it and Chief Brown has a password that allows him to access the system so he could pull the information as well.   Mr. Cole asked if the data was divided out by Towns, Lt. Stohl said yes.  After discussion, Mr. Cobb asked Mr. Melen to get with Lt. Stohl and Chief Brown to decide who would pull the reports.   Lt. Stohl said she believes it would be beneficial for the committee to go to Rockingham and see samples as to how work is entered into their system.  She said looking at the last quarter of 2007 no information had been entered into the system from Weathersfield Police and the State Police are in compliance entering their data, Weathersfield is just not there.  Mr. Cobb said this is a problem the committee needs to look into.  Lt. Stohl said the Town of Weathersfield needs to be in compliance with the records, cases have to be coded, fields of data have to be entered and narratives have to be there.  Data is needed to solve crimes.   Chief Brown said a lot of stuff is going on between people as far as asking him what the problem is he still does not know.  He said it’s hard to fix what is broke without knowing what is broke.  Mr. Cobb said it appears one issue is data entry and there may be a procedure problem related to that.   Mr. Cobb asked if a case was every time an incident is reported.  Officer French said yes, every incident is a case.  He said for example each State Trooper handles 300 – 400 cases a year with no supervisor duties. He said that as a supervisor he handles about 250 cases per year.  He said for Chief Brown to handle 600 cases it is just too many when it includes the administrative part too.  Mr. Cobb asked if a VIN check was a case. Officer French said yes, a narrative has to be added into the system, it is considered a case.   Mr. Cobb said about 60% of the cases are not criminal so that should mean less data input for those cases but the question is how much time does 60% of the cases take in man time.  Chief Brown said checking a VIN takes 5 minutes but the paperwork part of it can take another 15 minutes and traveling from one end of town to the other to do the check can take another 15 minutes.  He said a lot of his time is in traveling and gave the bank escort as an example.   Lt. Stohl said just because the number of incidents hasn’t increased over the years a lot has changed over the years.  She said the process has changed for example an unmanageable juvenile will tie up two police officers for 4 – 8 hours.   Officer French noted the State Police do not do community policing which is something that takes up time from Chief Brown.  He noted that everyone in Town knows Chief Brown (which can be a good thing) so they take up his time talking with him. Mr. Locke said that is something that needs to be looked into, time.  He said when do you ask for help because you don’t have enough time to do something yourself and what is there out there for help.  Lt. Stohl said this is something the committee needs to look at; we need to look at how things work in the law enforcement business.  She noted that the State Police do VIN checks as well but people usually come to the barracks to have them checked and this isn’t a priority.  She said part of the time issue is prioritizing.   Mr. Cobb told of the article that will be on the Warning asking the voters to approve money for more officer time and administrative time in case we need it once this study is completed. Mr. Cobb asked if we could get access to VIBRS in this building without a lot of money.  Lt. Stohl said it would be very slow without the high-speed line.  It was discussed that if manpower is an issue it may not be wise to have a slow system and having someone wait several minutes for the information to come up on the screen.  Officer French said he looks at the computer to obtain information himself, he said Police officers interpret data different than a dispatcher and it is beneficial to have the computer system available for the officer.  Mr. Cobb said the Select Board has been told we can not have access to the system with our current line.  It was said that the system is available but it is very slow therefore, it is worth looking at all the options to see which line will be the best. Lt. Stohl reiterated the need to have the Chief’s information put into the system so they can have access to it to potentially help solve a crime.  Again, she recommends the committee look at the system at Rockingham barracks.   Lt. Stohl asked how many hours the VIBRS clerk works for Weathersfield, Mr. Melen said ten hours per week.  Lt. Stohl asked how much money that was; Mr. Melen said $15,000.  Chief Brown said ten hours isn’t just data input, she comes here to get paperwork, does the data entry and maintains a paper file.  Lt. Stohl said that if we look at Rockingham’s system we would draw our own conclusions as to efficiency.  She said a Trooper can type in a word document, save it on a disk (or stick) and then give it to administration to enter which would save a lot of time.   Mr. Locke asked if data was available to determine how many hours are spent on investigations, Lt. Stohl said it varies but she can show us some samples.  She noted that Troopers have caseloads to manage which means they have to manage their time.   Mr. Locke said the Town might want to look at having press releases like the State does. Mr. Cobb said we can’t replicate what the State Police does in our small town but we can look at our options and possibly start with some changes that won’t take a lot of money.   Lt. Stohl said we can run the data, we may be consistent with the numbers but a big difference is in the way we do business now versus several years ago.  Mrs. Daniels thanked the State Police for coming to talk to the Board and the Committee.  She asked that the Committee report back to the Select Board with their recommendations.   Mr. Cobb asked to go to Rockingham next month and to receive the VIBRS data before then as well as the information on the T1 line.  Lt. Stohl suggested meeting at Rockingham on Wednesday February 13th at 4:00 p.m.  Everyone was ok with this date and time; the next meeting of the Law Enforcement Study Committee will be then.   Mr. Cobb thanked the State Police for their time. 4.  Adjourn: Mr. Arrison made the motion to adjourn.  Mr. Cole seconded the motion, which passed without dissent.  The Weathersfield Select Board meeting was adjourned at 8:27 p.m.                               Respectfully Submitted,                             Lisa A. Sargent Approved by the Weathersfield Select Board on February 7, 2008                             ___________________                             Henry C. Cobb                             ___________________                             Norman John Arrison                             ___________________                             Patricia Daniels                             ___________________                             Daniel Boyer