Owen-sound-police Police-board Meeting Transcript — April 22, 2026

00:00:44 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Hi, I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm attending on behalf of Tim today.

00:00:48 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Morning, Kate.

00:00:49 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Morning.

00:00:50 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: She had homework.

00:01:12 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Good morning, everyone.

00:01:13 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: I call the meeting to order, and I'd like to respectfully acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the First Nations that have been inhabited by Indigenous peoples from the beginning.

00:01:23 SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: In particular, I acknowledge the history, spirituality, and culture of the territory of the Anishinaabek Nation, peoples of the Three Fires, known as Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nation.

00:01:34 SPEAKER_002: We offer these thanks to the Chippewas of Saugeen and the Chippewas of Nawash, known collectively as the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation, as the traditional keepers of this land.

00:01:44 SPEAKER_002: We recognize and deeply appreciate their historic connection to this area, as well as the contributions of the Inuit and other Indigenous peoples whose ancestors shared these lands and waters.

00:01:55 SPEAKER_002: May we live with respect for each other on this land and live in peace and friendship with all its diverse peoples.

00:02:01 SPEAKER_002: May we be rich.

00:02:03 SPEAKER_002: Moving on to first item is approval of agenda, and there's one item that would like to be added to it.

00:02:09 SPEAKER_002: We'll add it under 16F, and it's just a loitering issue.

00:02:15 SPEAKER_002: No items to be added.

00:02:16 SPEAKER_002: The agenda.

00:02:18 SPEAKER_002: Motion for that.

00:02:19 SPEAKER_002: Mary, thank you.

00:02:20 SPEAKER_002: Seconded.

00:02:22 SPEAKER_002: Ryan, thank you.

00:02:25 SPEAKER_002: Declaration of conflict of interest arising out of the minutes and matters.

00:02:28 SPEAKER_002: Oh, sorry.

00:02:28 SPEAKER_002: Thank you.

00:02:29 SPEAKER_002: All in favour?

00:02:31 SPEAKER_002: It's even written here.

00:02:32 SPEAKER_002: Even read.

00:02:33 SPEAKER_002: Thank you.

00:02:35 SPEAKER_002: Any declaration of conflict of interest?

00:02:38 SPEAKER_002: Hearing none.

00:02:39 SPEAKER_002: We have no presentations, abputations, or public question period.

00:02:43 SPEAKER_002: And if I have a motion to confirm the minutes of the public session held on March eighteenth, twenty twenty six.

00:02:48 SPEAKER_002: Marian, thank you.

00:02:50 SPEAKER_002: Seconder.

00:02:52 SPEAKER_002: Marian, thank Very.

00:02:52 SPEAKER_002: Thank you.

00:02:53 SPEAKER_002: All in favour?

00:02:54 SPEAKER_002: Thank you.

00:02:56 SPEAKER_002: Any business arising out of the public minutes?

00:03:00 SPEAKER_002: Hearing none.

00:03:02 SPEAKER_002: Correspondence in your package.

00:03:03 SPEAKER_002: You would have received the report from Crime Stoppers with Gray Bruce from January to March of 2026.

00:03:11 SPEAKER_002: And under number nine, Chairman's report.

00:03:15 SPEAKER_002: Nothing really reported.

00:03:16 SPEAKER_002: Just have an OAPSB board meeting on April 30th.

00:03:19 SPEAKER_002: Will actually be a PGO.

00:03:19 SPEAKER_002: Will actually be PGO our new operating name, Province Government of Ontario.

00:03:26 SPEAKER_002: And moving on to item number ten, and I think we have a IOP presentation from Hank.

00:03:33 SPEAKER_002: That's really quick in the meeting.

00:03:37 SPEAKER_002: Wow, I'm just gonna.

00:03:38 SPEAKER_002: Sorry, I didn't have it on there.

00:03:44 SPEAKER_002: Nope, not on.

00:03:46 SPEAKER_002: It just went off.

00:03:47 SPEAKER_002: Sorry.

00:03:49 SPEAKER_002: Hi, hi.

00:03:50 SPEAKER_002: I'm just going to put this on here for you.

00:03:59 SPEAKER_002: So, this presentation I did for the OACP Zone Five meeting—it's only about five minutes long.

00:04:08 SPEAKER_002: It's pretty short.

00:04:09 SPEAKER_002: I don't know, were you there, Chief?

00:04:10 SPEAKER_002: No, I wasn't there.

00:04:11 SPEAKER_002: I know the chair was there, and after that meeting, the chair asked me to bring this to the board, and I couldn't make the last meeting.

00:04:18 SPEAKER_002: So I apologize for that.

00:04:19 SPEAKER_002: So it's a little bit delayed, and things have changed a little bit since I first wrote this.

00:04:23 SPEAKER_002: So please bear with me, and I will through it.

00:04:28 SPEAKER_002: So, here we go.

00:04:31 SPEAKER_002: The goal today is provide information on Inspector General decisions and finding reports, what they are, why they matter, and some thoughts about how you should be thinking about IG decisions.

00:04:43 SPEAKER_006: This is not about walking through individual files, and it's Individual files and is not debating legal thresholds.

00:04:49 SPEAKER_006: This presentation has three main themes: first, how I.G. decisions are communicated and used in Ontario; second, why publications matter to the chiefs and boards, operationally, governance-wise, and in terms of risk; and third,

00:05:03 SPEAKER_006: what organizational response could look like.

00:05:07 SPEAKER_006: I hope to give some thoughts about how to use these decisions in the context of service improvement or as part of the quality assurance process, as required by the adequacy.

00:05:14 SPEAKER_006: One slide, two.

00:05:14 SPEAKER_006: One minute.

00:05:15 SPEAKER_006: So slide two.

00:05:15 SPEAKER_006: Yes.

00:05:15 SPEAKER_006: Okay.

00:05:16 SPEAKER_006: Thanks.

00:05:24 SPEAKER_006: In December 2025, the Inspector General announced that the Inspector would begin publicly releasing Inspector General decisions along with accompanying findings reports.

00:05:33 SPEAKER_006: These releases will occur regularly as compliant investigations are completed.

00:05:38 SPEAKER_006: This is not a one-time publication or pilot project.

00:05:41 SPEAKER_006: The intent is transparency and a focus on improvement to provide the policing sector with practical examples of how requirements under the Act are being interpreted and applied, and where gaps or strengths are identified.

00:05:55 SPEAKER_006: Key shift is this: IG decisions are now public, visible, structured, and meant to inform the entire sector, not just the organisation involved in a particular complaint.

00:06:06 SPEAKER_006: An Inspector General decision is a formal determination made under the Community Safety and Policing Act about whether Ontario's policing laws, regulations, and standards have been met.

00:06:16 SPEAKER_006: This is not guidance, commentary, or best practice advice.

00:06:20 SPEAKER_006: These decisions are legally binding and will serve as precedent for future matters.

00:06:25 SPEAKER_006: In practical terms, published decisions show how the Inspector General is interpreting and applying standards in real situations.

00:06:32 SPEAKER_006: That interpretive function is what makes them relevant to all services, not just the ones involved in a particular investigation.

00:06:42 SPEAKER_006: There are two types of matters that result in IG decisions: there are Section 106 matters, which concern the conduct of police service board members, or Section 107 matters,

00:06:54 SPEAKER_006: which examine whether policing services are providing adequate and effective policing, comply with the law, or follow policies or procedures set up by the police services board, the ministers, the chief, or the chief of police.

00:07:08 SPEAKER_006: Well, these are both different streams.

00:07:10 SPEAKER_006: Both have implications for chiefs and boards.

00:07:13 SPEAKER_006: Governance findings can affect operational confidence, public trust, and working relationships.

00:07:19 SPEAKER_006: Service delivery findings directly affect operational decisions.

00:07:23 SPEAKER_006: Policy and training are examined under oversight.

00:07:27 SPEAKER_006: In both cases, the IG decisions and findings shape expectations going forward.

00:07:32 SPEAKER_006: As of this past Sunday, there have been 14 IG decisions released.

00:07:36 SPEAKER_006: 18 IG decisions released.

00:07:38 SPEAKER_006: Prior to that, when I did the presentation, I think there was eight.

00:07:40 SPEAKER_006: So they are released randomly throughout as they're completed.

00:07:48 SPEAKER_006: There's also two IG decisions that are on the website that are out of mandate.

00:07:52 SPEAKER_006: So what is happening was the investigation was completed, and during that time, the board member stepped down.

00:07:59 SPEAKER_006: So the IOP, in essence, loses jurisdiction.

00:08:01 SPEAKER_006: However, there's still a value of grievances, and they are included on the website.

00:08:06 SPEAKER_006: Each investigation or inspection results in two connected documents: a findings report and an IG decision.

00:08:13 SPEAKER_006: The findings report lays out the evidence and analysis, what was examined, what facts were established, and how the inspector reasoned through the applicable standards.

00:08:20 SPEAKER_006: And the IG decision is where the IG confirms whether those standards were met.

00:08:29 SPEAKER_006: When noncompliance is found, the Inspector General may issue directions to address identified gaps.

00:08:35 SPEAKER_006: If those directions are not followed, measures may be imposed to ensure compliance.

00:08:40 SPEAKER_006: In board member conduct matters, sanctions are also possible.

00:08:45 SPEAKER_006: I lost track with slide one.

00:08:46 SPEAKER_006: Here's slide four.

00:08:47 SPEAKER_006: Two.

00:08:48 SPEAKER_006: I think we should get four.

00:08:49 SPEAKER_006: There we go.

00:08:51 SPEAKER_006: Thank you.

00:08:51 SPEAKER_006: Very early on, the IG is clearly signaling system-wide expectations for boards, police services, and chiefs.

00:09:01 SPEAKER_006: There are four recurring themes that you should be paying attention to because they affect operational decisions.

00:09:08 SPEAKER_006: There's an ultimate personal accountability.

00:09:12 SPEAKER_006: Theme one is governance, conduct, and communications can create operational risk.

00:09:17 SPEAKER_006: After generalist decisions should not be overlooked by chiefs.

00:09:24 SPEAKER_006: There's an example where a police services board member disclosed confidential operational information obtained during closed meetings.

00:09:32 SPEAKER_006: The IG did find misconduct and emphasized the confidentiality is essential to public trust and effective governance.

00:09:39 SPEAKER_006: Theme two: adequacy must be demonstrated.

00:09:43 SPEAKER_006: The IGs made it very clear that call taking, dispatch, and communication decisions are no longer peripheral operational issues; they are now central to compliance.

00:09:52 SPEAKER_006: Several decisions so far demonstrate this.

00:09:55 SPEAKER_006: In these cases, the IG has found statutory requirements for adequate and effective policing were technically met, however, concerns were still raised.

00:10:02 SPEAKER_006: For example, about initial call prioritization, delays in acting on new information, and failures to notify callers when response times exceeded internal thresholds.

00:10:13 SPEAKER_006: This tells us is that adequacy is not only whether officers eventually attend, but how decisions are made, when they are made, how they are documented, and how they are communicated.

00:10:23 SPEAKER_006: Theme three deals with specialized capabilities and equipment use is being examined.

00:10:27 SPEAKER_006: The clearest example of this decision is the decision involving the Pepperball system.

00:10:33 SPEAKER_006: This came out of Peel Regional Police.

00:10:37 SPEAKER_006: The service conducted research, relied on vendor-approved training, and believed it was acting responsibly.

00:10:43 SPEAKER_006: However, under the regulations, officers cannot carry or use a weapon unless provincially prescribed training requirements exist and are met.

00:10:50 SPEAKER_006: Because no such training had been prescribed, the IG found the service to be non-compliant and issued binding directions to stop use.

00:10:58 SPEAKER_006: As I understand it, there were three or four other departments that were using pepper ball at the time, and are no longer doing so because of the IG decision.

00:11:06 SPEAKER_006: Theme four: professional service delivery and communication matters as much as outcomes.

00:11:12 SPEAKER_006: Another theme running through the decisions is that public complaints are often about process, not misconduct.

00:11:17 SPEAKER_006: As an example, decisions involving an alleged refusal to accept a harassment complaint, the IG ultimately found the service complied with the Act, but that finding depended heavily on evidence.

00:11:29 SPEAKER_006: The service followed up, sought further information, and explained the appropriate process.

00:11:35 SPEAKER_006: The IG explicitly praised the services for strong coordination, phased enforcement, and clear communication.

00:11:42 SPEAKER_006: And the term "good customer service" was used deliberately.

00:11:46 SPEAKER_006: And I believe that was Waterloo.

00:11:47 SPEAKER_006: And there was a media release yesterday in regards to that as well.

00:11:51 SPEAKER_006: The IG has openly commended Waterloo Police.

00:11:52 SPEAKER_006: Commanded Waterloo Police for a very thorough investigation, which came to light as a result of an IG inspection.

00:12:01 SPEAKER_006: The message includes that adequate and effective policing includes how people experience your service, your intake processes, explanation of why police will or not act.

00:12:11 SPEAKER_006: All ops and closing the loop have become relevant in many of these investigations.

00:12:16 SPEAKER_006: Slide five.

00:12:18 SPEAKER_006: Why does it matter to the chiefs and boards?

00:12:24 SPEAKER_006: These decisions matter for several reasons.

00:12:26 SPEAKER_006: First, they are binding and create precedent.

00:12:29 SPEAKER_006: If a similar issue arises in the future, published decisions may be used as a reference point in assessing compliance.

00:12:36 SPEAKER_006: An example of that would be as if Owen Sound decided to implement pepper ball usage.

00:12:41 SPEAKER_006: After the decision now being released, there would be a huge risk for that based on the previous decision of the IG.

00:12:49 SPEAKER_006: Second, they provide insight into how standards are being interpreted in practice, which directly informs leadership decisions about policy, training, governance relationships, and operational oversight.

00:13:00 SPEAKER_006: And third, they contribute to public transparency.

00:13:06 SPEAKER_006: Chiefs and boards may reasonably be asked how the service stays informed and aligned with emerging oversight expectations.

00:13:14 SPEAKER_006: So, what is expected of services?

00:13:16 SPEAKER_006: The IG has strongly encouraged police services and boards to build an organizational process to ensure that decisions are reviewed, and, where appropriate, integrated into operations.

00:13:28 SPEAKER_006: Practical terms, this does not mean changing practice every time a decision is published, but it does mean assigning responsibility for awareness, assessing relevance,

00:13:38 SPEAKER_006: and being able to demonstrate being informed if an issue later becomes subject to oversight or an inspection.

00:13:44 SPEAKER_006: Slide six.

00:13:46 SPEAKER_006: Perfect.

00:13:48 SPEAKER_006: The purpose of publishing decisions and finding reports is to strengthen transparency, accountability, and overall policing performance across Ontario.

00:13:56 SPEAKER_006: For chiefs, senior leaders, and boards, the opportunity is to use these decisions as organizational intelligence to understand how standards are being applied and to ensure your services are aligned and defensible.

00:14:08 SPEAKER_006: The memo encourages services to stay informed through the Inspectorate website, and I do have a few notices notes here that I've created after this was developed.

00:14:18 SPEAKER_006: I would encourage everybody here to check out the IOP website.

00:14:23 SPEAKER_006: In the bottom left, there's a contact us area where you can sign up for email alerts.

00:14:29 SPEAKER_006: If you haven't already, you should do so.

00:14:31 SPEAKER_006: Again, there's only been fourteen so far, so it's not too cumbersome.

00:14:36 SPEAKER_006: But actually, each ID's decision comes with a summary as well, which is about two or three paragraphs.

00:14:42 SPEAKER_006: Really quick, easy read.

00:14:44 SPEAKER_006: Decisions are now posted on Ken Lee as well, which is recent; I think last week.

00:14:51 SPEAKER_006: And what I've noticed is some boards, and it's entirely a board decision.

00:14:54 SPEAKER_006: What they've been doing is including the IG decisions as part of their correspondence.

00:15:00 SPEAKER_006: So when they are released, the summaries are included with the package of their correspondence.

00:15:04 SPEAKER_006: That way, you ensure the board is aware of these decisions.

00:15:08 SPEAKER_006: It's not a bad idea.

00:15:10 SPEAKER_006: So far, there's only 14, so it's not a whole lot.

00:15:14 SPEAKER_006: With that, the other stuff's on the Toronto inspections.

00:15:17 SPEAKER_006: So with that, do you have any questions?

00:15:21 SPEAKER_006: I know you already said you sign off from the...

00:15:22 SPEAKER_006: I go right along getting them.

00:15:24 SPEAKER_006: This is what they're for.

00:15:26 SPEAKER_006: Yeah.

00:15:27 SPEAKER_006: But I don't have to have them, John.

00:15:29 SPEAKER_006: You know, the chair also receives them.

00:15:31 SPEAKER_006: But any of the ones that are unfounded for board members, where it simply says they acted appropriately, I've done anything with those, but...

00:15:42 SPEAKER_006: I suspect there'll be more coming once the IG gets caught up.

00:15:47 SPEAKER_006: But 14 so far, we're well over about 1,500 complaints.

00:15:52 SPEAKER_006: There's been 14 decisions, so a lot of them are streamed out; the complaints so they'll only result in decisions because they're not...

00:15:59 SPEAKER_006: But there are some still that are delayed a little bit.

00:16:03 SPEAKER_006: What's pepperball?

00:16:05 SPEAKER_006: It's like an aerosol spray, but it's used from a... it's in a shotgun round.

00:16:10 SPEAKER_006: Yes, a little ball.

00:16:11 SPEAKER_006: That in riot situations they fire them at the ground in front of the crowd; just creates distance for the first.

00:16:17 SPEAKER_006: So we wouldn't be... we don't have anything like that here.

00:16:21 SPEAKER_006: No, no. I was Peel.

00:16:22 SPEAKER_006: I believe Waterloo and I must say Windsor.

00:16:24 SPEAKER_006: They may have also acquired the equipment, but now no longer can use it.

00:16:29 SPEAKER_006: So obviously it's a cost to the board too.

00:16:31 SPEAKER_006: Once you buy the equipment, you can't use it.

00:16:33 SPEAKER_006: Can't use it.

00:16:34 SPEAKER_006: So did they ban the use of it or ban the use of it without training?

00:16:40 SPEAKER_006: Right now, there's no prescribed training standards the ministry has created.

00:16:44 SPEAKER_006: So Peel did a great job.

00:16:46 SPEAKER_006: They bought the equipment.

00:16:47 SPEAKER_006: They actually went down to the States, got the training.

00:16:49 SPEAKER_006: They did all due diligence.

00:16:50 SPEAKER_006: Did a lot of good work.

00:16:52 SPEAKER_006: However, the ministry has not provided any guidance on that yet.

00:16:55 SPEAKER_006: So, by an absence of that guidance, they can't use it until the ministry has.

00:17:01 SPEAKER_006: And the ministry's training could be simply go to the States and take their training.

00:17:04 SPEAKER_006: Who knows?

00:17:05 SPEAKER_006: It is not there yet.

00:17:05 SPEAKER_006: Right.

00:17:06 SPEAKER_006: So they jumped the gun a little bit, I guess, if you will.

00:17:09 SPEAKER_006: The equipment hopefully will be used because it's very, very common tool in the States.

00:17:17 SPEAKER_006: I would assume so.

00:17:21 SPEAKER_006: Right.

00:17:21 SPEAKER_006: Distance too.

00:17:22 SPEAKER_006: You don't have to throw it.

00:17:23 SPEAKER_006: It's attackable in function, so it exists in the bigger services.

00:17:30 SPEAKER_006: Any other questions for Hank?

00:17:34 SPEAKER_006: Thanks, Hank.

00:17:36 SPEAKER_006: Thanks, Hank.

00:17:36 SPEAKER_006: Appreciate that very much.

00:17:37 SPEAKER_006: Moving on to item number eleven, operational reports, and I notice that Inspector Maston was highlighted on this.

00:17:50 SPEAKER_006: Deputy, through them, but I'm going to have to go off the screen because I'm still on 20 minutes of my laptop's not going to transform.

00:18:00 SPEAKER_006: Start with the criminal investigations branch.

00:18:06 SPEAKER_006: There were actually two drug investigations that occurred throughout the month.

00:18:12 SPEAKER_006: We had a group of our officers doing some enforcement in the downtown River District area with respect to open drug use, and during that, nine individuals were arrested,

00:18:24 SPEAKER_006: and a number of grams of crystal meth and fentanyl were seized.

00:18:28 SPEAKER_012: That's something we're going to be trying to do on a regular basis, just as a way to help keep control of some of that activity downtown.

00:18:37 SPEAKER_012: And another one, there was an investigation that was done jointly with the OPP, which ended up with two firearms being seized.

00:18:47 SPEAKER_012: It was happening mostly in town, but the rest was done just south of Rockford in OPP territory.

00:18:56 SPEAKER_012: Resulted in two firearms seized and significant quantity of fentanyl and cocaine.

00:19:03 SPEAKER_012: Charges related to that as well.

00:19:06 SPEAKER_012: The remainder of the report is just with respect to mental health referrals.

00:19:10 SPEAKER_012: The numbers are there.

00:19:13 SPEAKER_012: We've talked about drug overdose information.

00:19:17 SPEAKER_012: The number of fatalities has significantly reduced, not only here but across the province.

00:19:24 SPEAKER_012: There's a number of different reasons why we suspect that's happening: the toxicity of the fentanyl has been starting to see a lot more meth and cocaine coming back in, replacing some of the fentanyl.

00:19:39 SPEAKER_012: But the SOS team has a great programme that's been running here for a year now.

00:19:46 SPEAKER_012: That I think contributes to that as well.

00:19:48 SPEAKER_012: So that's all good news.

00:19:52 SPEAKER_012: Just some training presentations.

00:19:55 SPEAKER_012: Our in-house Crown counsel and one of our detectives with respect to intimate partner violence to some police foundation students at Georgian College.

00:20:04 SPEAKER_012: The remainder is just stats on bail compliance, and our apprehension unit continues to be very effective dealing with those issues.

00:20:14 SPEAKER_012: And then we move to CORE.

00:20:16 SPEAKER_012: So our CORE officer is getting quite a few foot patrol hours in the River District area.

00:20:22 SPEAKER_012: That number is just specific to the CORE officer.

00:20:25 SPEAKER_012: We later report on all the foot patrol hours from the rest of the officers combined as well.

00:20:30 SPEAKER_012: So, number of tours at the station and some community events with Cubs and Scouts, and the remainder that is the CIB direct report.

00:20:43 SPEAKER_012: Some questions.

00:20:47 SPEAKER_012: The auxiliary unit put in 181 hours of time.

00:20:52 SPEAKER_012: Jessica Brown, we talked about this at Sergeant.

00:20:54 SPEAKER_012: The sergeant and our auxiliary sergeant talked about this at the last meeting.

00:20:58 SPEAKER_012: But she's got herself trained up for the car seat installation and inspection, so she's done another four hours of that, assisting people getting their car seats either checked out or assistance with installation.

00:21:14 SPEAKER_012: This is the time of year that all of these force requalification happens as well, so we had to bring all of our auxiliary unit in for their requalification.

00:21:22 SPEAKER_012: So around 50 hours.

00:21:24 SPEAKER_012: Time is done to get that training completed, and one of our auxiliary members has resigned from his role as of March 26.

00:21:32 SPEAKER_012: Frontline patrol and part-time stats, division statistics.

00:21:46 SPEAKER_012: So, this is we're showing some increases in the number of traffic charges, which is good to see.

00:21:55 SPEAKER_012: Or last year, same time, you'll see our part-time officers are still heavily engaged up at the courts.

00:22:00 SPEAKER_012: Two hundred forty-six hours of court security time being done by our part-time officers.

00:22:05 SPEAKER_012: And prior to assigning them to that, they one of their key responsibilities was traffic enforcement.

00:22:11 SPEAKER_012: So that's where you're seeing the number of charges reduced from them as well.

00:22:21 SPEAKER_012: Criminal code numbers—we're seeing a slight drop in criminal code numbers.

00:22:25 SPEAKER_012: We think some of that is probably going to be reflective of the pre-charge consultation process that came in, just working some wrinkles out of that.

00:22:36 SPEAKER_012: I think they will start to balance out.

00:22:39 SPEAKER_012: Just some confusion with some of the officers in terms of where the Crown became involved in that process.

00:22:46 SPEAKER_012: So we probably saw a little bit of a drop as that got rolled up, but I think... drop is like got rolled up, but I think it's that's all been straightened out with Inspector Matheson.

00:22:55 SPEAKER_012: Ride programmes actually they're up fairly substantially for the number of parades charged in March.

00:23:04 SPEAKER_012: We had eight; typically only see a couple a month usually on that stat.

00:23:10 SPEAKER_012: Eighteen ride checks conducted, resulting in 600 young drivers checked.

00:23:16 SPEAKER_012: There was one person charged with impaired as a result of the ride programme.

00:23:20 SPEAKER_012: So the remainder are just the officers doing their regular day-to-day traffic work.

00:23:25 SPEAKER_012: There's your collisions.

00:23:28 SPEAKER_012: There's nothing really unusual with respect to our year-to-year collision numbers.

00:23:35 SPEAKER_012: They're all relatively consistent.

00:23:36 SPEAKER_012: So certainly nothing to comment on there.

00:23:47 SPEAKER_012: And this will be the community service officer.

00:23:53 SPEAKER_012: Basically, all of his interactions through the month of March.

00:23:57 SPEAKER_012: He remains very busy with, as you can see; I won't read through them all, but there's any number of community engagement items that have happened.

00:24:10 SPEAKER_012: Those are all with respect to our social media: thirty-eight posts done in March, listing all of the things seen there,

00:24:18 SPEAKER_012: and a list of all the community engagement and committee work that happened in the month of March.

00:24:32 SPEAKER_012: Again, just a list of all the workshops and various training events that have happened through the month.

00:24:48 SPEAKER_012: And with respect to training through March, again, just listing the various training that our members have attended throughout the month: the Fraud Investigators Course at Terry Fox Police College.

00:25:02 SPEAKER_012: We sent our CIB Sergeant on the Professional Standards Investigations Course that's held in Oshawa.

00:25:09 SPEAKER_012: We often use the Sergeant to investigate some of our minor law enforcement complaints and administration complaints that come through.

00:25:18 SPEAKER_012: Our training officer went on the carbine instructor requalification, so he's able to teach that as well as the fitness pin assessment course, which is hosted by Peel Regional Police.

00:25:30 SPEAKER_012: We did have a fitness pin coordinator that left us about a year ago and went to York, so that was filling the gap so that we are able to do it again.

00:25:40 SPEAKER_012: There's—I believe—it's the OACP that supplies a fitness pin that the officers can wear in the uniform if they meet the requirements every year.

00:25:46 SPEAKER_012: It's voluntary, but we used to have to send them to one of the joining services for that.

00:25:50 SPEAKER_012: So now, we're ready to do it here again.

00:25:54 SPEAKER_012: And again, he spoke of the auxiliary unit completing use-of-force training.

00:25:58 SPEAKER_012: And the other thing is, we have our newest recruit, Chief Inspector Mathis, and we're down for the graduation; we swore her in a few weeks ago, and she is now on leave.

00:26:11 SPEAKER_012: They are just finishing up the training officer, and then she moved on to a job.

00:26:18 SPEAKER_012: Sure.

00:26:18 SPEAKER_012: So, Brian, you have a call.

00:26:25 SPEAKER_012: Can you just go back to the nine charges for public use of drugs?

00:26:31 SPEAKER_012: Can you just explain what the follow-up procedure is for this?

00:26:35 SPEAKER_012: It was nine arrests; it's not necessarily nine charges.

00:26:37 SPEAKER_012: I don't have the charge number, but it wasn't nine.

00:26:41 SPEAKER_012: So our process right now:

00:26:45 SPEAKER_012: this all goes back to some direction that came out from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada with respect to what they will essentially bring forward with respect to possession of narcotics charges—not trafficking,

00:27:01 SPEAKER_012: not those sorts of things.

00:27:02 SPEAKER_012: Somebody that actually possesses illegal narcotics.

00:27:05 SPEAKER_012: They have a practice direction that went out to all the prosecutors in terms of what they, within the PPC, are willing to take through to a court process.

00:27:16 SPEAKER_012: And I forget the wording in that, Chief, but it's substantial.

00:27:23 SPEAKER_012: It essentially has to identify a number of specific harms to the community; it has to be happening in the presence of children; there are areas typically frequented by children,

00:27:33 SPEAKER_012: and there's a big coordinator in there.

00:27:35 SPEAKER_012: But what it doesn't take away is the police's ability to arrest.

00:27:39 SPEAKER_012: It's still an arrestable charge if somebody that the charge was never removed from the Criminal Code or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

00:27:47 SPEAKER_012: So it is still illegal to possess substances.

00:27:51 SPEAKER_012: And our approach has been that people doing that in open public areas where we're seeing active drug use, the officers will arrest.

00:28:01 SPEAKER_012: Arrested, they'll seize the drugs, and then it becomes a matter of whether or not the circumstances fit within the Public Prosecution Service of Canada's framework for what they'll support charges on.

00:28:12 SPEAKER_012: So, I forget without looking if people were arrested; maybe two or three of them actually had charges laid, for seized, and then they'd be released on condition.

00:28:25 SPEAKER_012: Okay, thanks.

00:28:29 SPEAKER_012: All right, moving on to administrative reports.

00:28:33 SPEAKER_012: Okay, so records, courts, and bylaw report.

00:28:38 SPEAKER_012: Just going through the vault records just slightly in March from February, and we're on track for our year-to-date.

00:28:46 SPEAKER_012: Our warrants executed are down slightly.

00:28:51 SPEAKER_019: Person charges—Dave mentioned that relates to there being a twenty-three point four percent reduction—but that a lot of that relates to pre-charge consultation.

00:28:58 SPEAKER_019: Pre-charge consultation and not having to go through and put the whole package together and lay a charge and then have it withdrawn up at the courts in any event.

00:29:06 SPEAKER_019: So that's going to save money.

00:29:08 SPEAKER_019: Although the numbers decrease, we have to pull the last tricks next.

00:29:11 SPEAKER_019: The statistics as to why they decrease moving forward because it's not necessary; there's less charges that could be laid.

00:29:17 SPEAKER_019: It's just we're not going through all the effort and all the work to put a file together to make that decision sometime down the road.

00:29:24 SPEAKER_019: It gets withdrawn at the courts.

00:29:25 SPEAKER_019: Now it's going to get withdrawn right at the front.

00:29:30 SPEAKER_019: We're also looking at some pre-charge diversion programming,

00:29:34 SPEAKER_019: so that there's options of not laying a charge but moving through just like they would if they were at court and they got pre-charged once they were charged.

00:29:43 SPEAKER_019: So that's the early discussions on that.

00:29:47 SPEAKER_019: You'll see in the chart if you scroll down; you'll see the number of charges are dropping, dropping off significantly this month, and that was the one we started the pre-charge.

00:29:58 SPEAKER_019: Going down to the courts, you see a significant increase in the special constable hours.

00:30:04 SPEAKER_019: There were quite a few matters open at court and scheduled for the month of March.

00:30:10 SPEAKER_019: Coming up back into full swing: twenty-nine point eight percent increase in special constable hours worked.

00:30:17 SPEAKER_019: Staffing up there to cover those increased demands in the court.

00:30:22 SPEAKER_019: Total persons in custody transported remained about the same as last year's year-to-date.

00:30:28 SPEAKER_019: The special constable hours have increased, but they were down lower for the first two months, so we're on par.

00:30:35 SPEAKER_019: I will note that the seven-hour officers, using primarily part-time officers, continues to be a drain in service.

00:30:46 SPEAKER_019: As the deputy mentioned, they're not doing the things they were hired to do; they're are plan to do, so we're missing that foot patrol.

00:30:53 SPEAKER_019: Assistees with daytime calls for service volume, and the calls for service continue to increase.

00:31:02 SPEAKER_019: As we'll get to that in the communications centre.

00:31:05 SPEAKER_019: So, you're looking through that highlight: all police calls increased ten point four percent, but still year-to-date they're slightly down.

00:31:16 SPEAKER_019: OSPS calls have increased fifteen point two percent in the month of March, but overall five percent year-to-date, which I think is significant.

00:31:26 SPEAKER_019: The tax dollars for their workloads into the calls for service.

00:31:30 SPEAKER_019: We're averaging fifty-two calls per day, and that's represented a four percent increase over last year and a five percent increase over the previous year.

00:31:39 SPEAKER_019: So we continue to see increased demands for our services in the city.

00:31:46 SPEAKER_019: The daily dispatch rate for calls for service was the second one down.

00:31:51 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, the next one down.

00:31:52 SPEAKER_019: Sorry; you'll see our calls are higher on average every month than they were moving forward, explaining that five percent increase, but this is also the time of year where it's below the average,

00:32:05 SPEAKER_019: and we're not coming into our peak until April through to October, where we anticipate that those calls will increase more.

00:32:14 SPEAKER_019: So a five percent increase now during the slow, what would be considered the slower time, as a concern moving forward to what's going to be during peak demand times.

00:32:24 SPEAKER_019: I like that.

00:32:30 SPEAKER_019: Information technology: quite a bit of work was done with the call hosted solution and onboarding for some of our clients.

00:32:37 SPEAKER_019: I will note that our onboarding took several weeks to get through.

00:32:41 SPEAKER_019: Bell still hasn't been as cooperative in the onboarding process, but we onboarded our last eight; we onboarded our last agency in half a day, significantly,

00:32:50 SPEAKER_019: and on a week for us to get the onboarding completed.

00:32:54 SPEAKER_019: So they were quite pleased that we used that time wisely, and we're obviously learning from that as well.

00:33:00 SPEAKER_019: Westgate Police Service opened the new facility, and we continued with the installation of things that we built back to them for those services.

00:33:08 SPEAKER_019: And at the same time, we keep everything running here, keep the lights on, and now we'll turn it all on again.

00:33:15 SPEAKER_019: We'll turn it over to our guest.

00:33:18 SPEAKER_019: So, just a bit of an update: we were in partnership with Hyperion, and I think later in the package there's an article about Hyperion, and they were purchased by Motorola Solutions.

00:33:32 SPEAKER_019: Obviously, they saw a lot of potential and a lot of future with the company,

00:33:38 SPEAKER_019: in much the same way we did when we piloted with them early on as an adopter to try and develop it.

00:33:42 SPEAKER_019: So we got in at the right time.

00:33:45 SPEAKER_019: I'm sure the costs are going to increase significantly now that they're part of a large conglomerate.

00:33:51 SPEAKER_019: But we have been early adopters, and we use some grant funding in order to get moving forward with this project.

00:33:57 SPEAKER_019: And all that, Suzanne.

00:33:59 SPEAKER_019: There's your question.

00:34:01 SPEAKER_019: Yes, your question.

00:34:02 SPEAKER_019: Oh, great.

00:34:05 SPEAKER_019: So, go ahead.

00:34:09 SPEAKER_019: She has to come and do that.

00:34:11 SPEAKER_019: Yeah.

00:34:12 SPEAKER_019: Good morning, everyone.

00:34:13 SPEAKER_019: A question regarding the stats, the service calls, and the fact that court hours are increasing.

00:34:23 SPEAKER_021: Do we keep track of the statistics of the actual time to respond to calls as an indicator at all?

00:34:37 SPEAKER_019: As far as response times for based on priority, yes, we have all that data and all that information.

00:34:43 SPEAKER_019: Some of it's skewed, but generally, we do have that data and that information as to their needs, and it varies.

00:34:53 SPEAKER_019: And one of the things the IOP was trying to do was establish response time calls for service.

00:34:59 SPEAKER_019: But the issue and the concern with that is it's like comparing apples to oranges.

00:35:05 SPEAKER_019: If one person does it by priority type, and unless you end standard priority call types.

00:35:10 SPEAKER_019: Unless everybody uses the same call types and the same priorities, what could be a higher priority for somebody else is a lower priority for us.

00:35:18 SPEAKER_019: That type of thing.

00:35:19 SPEAKER_019: So we do have information on response times, but it's hard to compare it across the board.

00:35:26 SPEAKER_021: So the issue is we have our internal priority schedule and data, and the question is, will we be tracking internally based on anticipation?

00:35:38 SPEAKER_021: Based on anticipated increased demand for service and the fact that court hours are increasing, so that we can see a trend on the impact of these changes.

00:35:52 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, so I think if I understand what you're asking is, if we see that the calls for service are increasing and our call time and our call responses are increasing at the same time,

00:36:02 SPEAKER_019: then it speaks to workload and officer availability, staff availability, and the need for increased resources.

00:36:12 SPEAKER_019: To simplify it down, and yes, that's something that we look at and examine, and it would go into any type of a staffing plan.

00:36:22 SPEAKER_021: That would be helpful for us to know as a board as well as you go forward, because obviously we need to keep an eye on what's happening as we move forward.

00:36:31 SPEAKER_021: So thank you for that.

00:36:33 SPEAKER_021: Yep.

00:36:38 SPEAKER_021: Okay, so now Suzanne can talk with Kara.

00:36:40 SPEAKER_021: Yes.

00:36:42 SPEAKER_021: So, as the chief said, the time or the amount of calls that the dispatch keeps increasing every month.

00:36:51 SPEAKER_021: As we move into summer, we're going to see the call volume increase substantially.

00:36:58 SPEAKER_021: So, part of NG 911 and the new phone system allows us to explore different ways and different workflows with those calls.

00:37:06 SPEAKER_021: Partnership with Piper, we're able to take some of the lower priority non-emergency calls and transfer them to Kara, our community assistance and response agent, and have her handle the calls.

00:37:21 SPEAKER_021: And then, if an officer needs to be dispatched, then we can go through the proper process and comms to do that.

00:37:30 SPEAKER_021: So she, Kara, operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's applied to every single service that we dispatch for.

00:37:37 SPEAKER_022: So, Soggin Shores, Owen Sound, Hanover, West Grey, and Cobourg and Port Hope, and all of them.

00:37:45 SPEAKER_022: All she's doing right now is taking all the non-emergency phone lines, and she's trying to decipher if the call is administrative, so a general inquiry about criminal records or a question about a fingerprint.

00:38:00 SPEAKER_022: Question about her fingerprint date, or if it's a minor report that has no suspects, no victim, no weapons,

00:38:07 SPEAKER_022: and she can actually take the call and create an email and send that to dispatch so that they can dispatch an officer if that's needed,

00:38:15 SPEAKER_022: or she can send a text so that the person can report it online.

00:38:20 SPEAKER_022: Currently, the online portion is only applicable in Owen Sound and Cobourg, and the hope is to move everyone to that platform within the next year as well; we can change.

00:38:34 SPEAKER_022: So right now, our dispatchers handle a significant call volume every day, not only with 911 but with the administration lines.

00:38:42 SPEAKER_022: So the focus is to try and take some of those calls away from them and allow them to concentrate solely on dispatching emergency calls.

00:38:53 SPEAKER_022: So Kara will transfer calls to dispatchers immediately if there's any emergency detected, so if there's yelling in the background, if somebody's swearing and not answering her phone or questions,

00:39:06 SPEAKER_022: if she can't understand the caller at all, or simply if the person says,

00:39:12 SPEAKER_022: "I want to speak to a call taker" or "I want to speak to an officer," then she'll immediately transfer that call through to the dispatchers.

00:39:19 SPEAKER_022: The callers are immediately engaged with her when they call her administration line.

00:39:25 SPEAKER_022: She picks up immediately, and she has a structured form of SOPs that she follows.

00:39:30 SPEAKER_022: So standard operating procedures for each of the calls.

00:39:34 SPEAKER_022: Some of the calls that we're going through to her right now are theft under five thousand, lost property, gas drive-offs, and mischief to property under five thousand.

00:39:44 SPEAKER_022: So all of those are essentially reported after the fact.

00:39:48 SPEAKER_022: So somebody comes home after work, they figure out that somebody tried to break into their garage or there's a theft of the bicycle that they left on the front porch.

00:39:59 SPEAKER_022: She can handle and process those calls.

00:40:01 SPEAKER_022: They don't require immediate dispatch of an officer, and the information that she takes then formulates the report.

00:40:08 SPEAKER_022: If there's any follow-up that needs to be done, then the dispatchers take a look at that and create a call for service.

00:40:17 SPEAKER_022: So right now, Hyper is offering real-time transcription and documentation, so we can actually see; we have a portal, and we can actually see every single call that comes through, and the questions that she's asking,

00:40:31 SPEAKER_022: and we can actually play a transcript of the calls as well.

00:40:35 SPEAKER_022: She offers support in 30 plus languages, which means that the dispatcher doesn't have to intervene; they can speak their language, and we don't have to transfer the call to a language line.

00:40:49 SPEAKER_022: So they're immediately able to talk to them in their own language.

00:40:53 SPEAKER_022: Yeah, she is emotionally responsive.

00:40:58 SPEAKER_022: So one of the calls that I attached actually for you was an interaction with a dog, and the caller and the dog and another dog.

00:41:09 SPEAKER_022: Kara actually responds and says, "I'm really sorry that you went through this.

00:41:14 SPEAKER_022: I'm going to put you through to a dispatcher."

00:41:16 SPEAKER_022: So the emotional response that she gives is probably even a level above what we currently do in dispatch because we're going from call to call.

00:41:29 SPEAKER_022: She automatically escalates to dispatchers.

00:41:32 SPEAKER_022: So right now we're seeing a lot of swatting calls and coldbergs.

00:41:36 SPEAKER_022: All of those are starting on the admin lines, and she is automatically identifying the emergency and transferring those calls through to a dispatcher.

00:41:47 SPEAKER_022: So we're not wasting any time with those emergency calls.

00:41:52 SPEAKER_022: There's a lot of analytics that this is going to be able to provide us, and from the analytics,

00:41:59 SPEAKER_022: we're able to identify trends and change some of our SOPs so that we can increase what she's doing for us.

00:42:08 SPEAKER_022: They're very supportive group.

00:42:13 SPEAKER_022: They're looking; they're not only can we look at our information, but they're looking at our information as well, and they're providing us with feedback and other things to consider, which is great.

00:42:24 SPEAKER_022: So she automatically transfers to the proper police service for admin calls.

00:42:29 SPEAKER_022: So before we would have to take the information and relay it to the sergeants or to the officers over the radio,

00:42:34 SPEAKER_022: whereas now she just transfers that call directly back to the admin or like the administration for that service.

00:42:42 SPEAKER_022: She is sending an online link for any of the reporting for unsolved Cobourg.

00:42:44 SPEAKER_022: Reporting for Owen Sound Cobourg, she's capturing a report through standardized questioning and emails that to dispatcher if an officer needs to be dispatched, and she transfers the calls immediately for processing.

00:43:00 SPEAKER_022: So this is the call that I was talking about.

00:43:02 SPEAKER_022: So she answers it.

00:43:04 SPEAKER_022: You've reached the non-emergency police assistance line for Oceansound and runs through all of our police partners.

00:43:10 SPEAKER_022: If you're reporting an emergency or a crime in progress, please hang up and dial 911.

00:43:15 SPEAKER_022: She explains to them that she is Kara and she's here to help her help you process your thing.

00:43:19 SPEAKER_022: What we found in dispatch by actually naming her, the people who are calling in, if they have a follow-up, they will say I spoke to Kara earlier.

00:43:29 SPEAKER_022: So then the dispatchers know that they actually spoke to the online person and they can go back in and see what was reported online.

00:43:37 SPEAKER_022: So it's really helpful, and I think we get a little bit more interaction with the public utilising her that way and not getting angry and hanging up, so she just does.

00:43:49 SPEAKER_022: So the caller says, "I just wanted to report to someone."

00:43:52 SPEAKER_022: All right, can I help you with that?

00:43:54 SPEAKER_022: Could you please tell me a little bit more with what you want to report?

00:43:57 SPEAKER_022: I was walking my dog and almost got hit because the person wouldn't wait at a stop sign."

00:44:03 SPEAKER_022: And she says, "That sounds really scary.

00:44:05 SPEAKER_022: I'm glad you and your dog are okay."

00:44:07 SPEAKER_022: "Sounds like you're reporting a crime, and I'm going to transfer you to a call taker."

00:44:11 SPEAKER_022: And the call got transferred.

00:44:14 SPEAKER_022: So, all of that took place in a matter of thirty seconds.

00:44:18 SPEAKER_022: So, there's no delay.

00:44:21 SPEAKER_022: It's automatic.

00:44:22 SPEAKER_022: It's quick, and you're done.

00:44:26 SPEAKER_022: So, this all seems amazing to me.

00:44:28 SPEAKER_022: It is.

00:44:29 SPEAKER_022: It is quite amazing.

00:44:30 SPEAKER_022: Is it really that good, or are there hiccups?

00:44:33 SPEAKER_022: There are some hiccups.

00:44:35 SPEAKER_022: Some of the things, some of the hiccups, are due to our SOPs, so we have to develop them more.

00:44:45 SPEAKER_022: One of the things, like when you get into the stats portion of the presentation, one of the things that it identifies is that I think over 50% of the calls are categorized as "other".

00:44:58 SPEAKER_022: So those calls deal with wanting to speak to an officer directly or wanting to leave a message for an officer.

00:45:05 SPEAKER_022: We didn't implement anything for that on the system, so now Hyper is developing something because we're a bit of a unicorn with process calls for six different police services.

00:45:18 SPEAKER_022: We have to figure out how that workflow is going to work.

00:45:21 SPEAKER_022: So you just keep getting better and better.

00:45:22 SPEAKER_022: Yeah, yeah, and that's the nice thing with Care; she is very adaptive and they're very responsive.

00:45:28 SPEAKER_022: Like all the swatting calls that we've had, they've gone in, they've dug through programming within minutes of the call to see where the call is coming from, what they can do to improve their service.

00:45:40 SPEAKER_022: So it is very, very adaptive, quite consistent as well.

00:45:44 SPEAKER_022: It seems to be quite consistent.

00:45:45 SPEAKER_022: And as you say, with no disrespect to 911, but it's emotionally stable.

00:45:50 SPEAKER_022: Yeah, yeah.

00:45:52 SPEAKER_022: You're going to get the same response every time, and there's no inflection in voice.

00:45:58 SPEAKER_022: You don't perceive or hear a tone in the dispatcher's voice.

00:46:02 SPEAKER_022: And yeah, so hopefully there's more and more AI all the time, and as you get used to it, as soon as you know you're talking to AI,

00:46:11 SPEAKER_022: you speak differently because they just want general information.

00:46:15 SPEAKER_022: Yep, they just want you to answer the information, not provide the whole story, just enough to get the call on and get it going.

00:46:22 SPEAKER_022: Wonderful.

00:46:23 SPEAKER_022: Yeah, Mary.

00:46:24 SPEAKER_022: So these are calls going to 1-2-3-4 or 9-1-1-2-3-4.

00:46:30 SPEAKER_022: There is a 9-1-1 component that we're looking at, starting to look at now, which could potentially handle our abandoned and unanswered calls.

00:46:39 SPEAKER_022: So right now, with every 9-1-1 call where there's a person that hangs up or the call isn't successful in connecting, we have to call those back.

00:46:50 SPEAKER_022: So we do two callbacks and we do one text message.

00:46:54 SPEAKER_022: And Kara has the potential of taking that over for us.

00:46:59 SPEAKER_022: So if they call back and the person isn't cooperative or they're angry, or there's yelling in the background, or whatever the reason, then it will automatically transfer that to a call taker.

00:47:11 SPEAKER_022: But that connection is automatically made, and the dispatchers aren't spending—you know, you could spend up to ten, fifteen minutes trying the callbacks due to interruptions.

00:47:21 SPEAKER_022: So if a 9-1-1 call comes in, they have to hang up, and then start that whole process over again.

00:47:27 SPEAKER_022: So this eliminates that.

00:47:29 SPEAKER_022: Okay, so 9-1-1 calls come in.

00:47:30 SPEAKER_030: If I'm on the elevator at City Hall and I push the wrong button, you still come to 9-1-1.

00:47:36 SPEAKER_030: Yep.

00:47:36 SPEAKER_030: Okay.

00:47:37 SPEAKER_030: How's the public response to this?

00:47:40 SPEAKER_030: They seem to be pretty good.

00:47:42 SPEAKER_022: I think our response could be a little bit better, but I think it's more based on our SOPs than it is actually the callers.

00:47:50 SPEAKER_022: There, I haven't received a complaint.

00:47:52 SPEAKER_022: Let's put it that way.

00:47:52 SPEAKER_022: Okay.

00:47:57 SPEAKER_022: Anything else for Carol?

00:48:00 SPEAKER_022: Any questions, or do you know that she would put her hand up?

00:48:04 SPEAKER_022: Okay.

00:48:05 SPEAKER_022: Yeah.

00:48:05 SPEAKER_022: So just let me do the stats real quick.

00:48:09 SPEAKER_022: Something that we haven't been able to process or figure out before NG 911 was the number of calls that we process on the end line.

00:48:18 SPEAKER_022: So Care is able to do that for us.

00:48:20 SPEAKER_022: She tells us that right now we have processed in one month, so from the 10th of March to the 10th of April, 5,076 calls:

00:48:26 SPEAKER_022: 2,076 calls on the administration line. 24% of those calls have been handled without escalation, so that means it wasn't transferred.

00:48:37 SPEAKER_022: 2.7% of those calls were resolved by a Hyper agent, meaning that those calls either received a link to online reporting,

00:48:47 SPEAKER_022: or Care was able to obtain a synopsis of the call and send it to the dispatchers.

00:48:57 SPEAKER_022: Yeah.

00:48:58 SPEAKER_022: Does Kara duplicate answers to calls, or does everyone ever get a busy?

00:49:03 SPEAKER_022: You should never get a busy signal with Kara.

00:49:05 SPEAKER_022: She can handle a number of calls at a time, right?

00:49:12 SPEAKER_015: Mid-call disconnect: is that people who maybe realize it's automated and they don't want to talk?

00:49:17 SPEAKER_015: It could potentially happen, yeah.

00:49:20 SPEAKER_015: But they always call back.

00:49:22 SPEAKER_035: So if they want to get a hold of somebody quickly, like enough, they'll keep calling.

00:49:27 SPEAKER_022: So eventually they either have to go through her or say, "I want to talk to an officer," "I want to talk to a call taker."

00:49:35 SPEAKER_019: Or it could be after the initial response, the dispatcher emergency hangs up and tells them one of those things.

00:49:40 SPEAKER_019: They could do that too.

00:49:41 SPEAKER_019: Oh, so that would be part of that.

00:49:43 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, there is only one, two, three, four that they're going punching for.

00:49:50 SPEAKER_019: And then the last one just is a.

00:49:52 SPEAKER_022: The last slide is just an explanation of the type of calls that she's currently handling.

00:50:00 SPEAKER_022: So there's follow-up, gas drive-off, gathering email information, lost items.

00:50:05 SPEAKER_022: So you can see like a fairly significant number falls under other.

00:50:10 SPEAKER_022: Well, half of them fall under other.

00:50:12 SPEAKER_022: So that's where we worked with Hyper.

00:50:14 SPEAKER_022: We went back through the transcripts and we can see the reason why through the transcripts that they're disconnecting.

00:50:20 SPEAKER_022: So a large number of those actually have to do with wanting to leave a message for an officer, wanting to do follow-up with an officer, or wanting to talk specifically with an officer.

00:50:32 SPEAKER_022: So for another service or whatever.

00:50:37 SPEAKER_022: What does no caller transcript mean?

00:50:41 SPEAKER_022: That there is no connection.

00:50:42 SPEAKER_022: So somebody hung up before they even got to care.

00:50:47 SPEAKER_022: Okay.

00:50:49 SPEAKER_022: So there's so 70% of the calls were handled by the operators.

00:50:55 SPEAKER_022: We're looking to get that down, and that is actually down significantly from when we started.

00:50:59 SPEAKER_022: So we did.

00:51:00 SPEAKER_022: We were doing a week-to-five-week comparison, and we still are.

00:51:03 SPEAKER_022: And our call handling is getting better.

00:51:07 SPEAKER_022: The emergency line, so those are emergency calls that got turned or that the person hung up and dialed 9-1-1.

00:51:13 SPEAKER_022: So nine percent or point-nine percent of the calls are on Sound.

00:51:17 SPEAKER_022: Point-seven are Soggy Shores.

00:51:18 SPEAKER_022: Sogging Shores.

00:51:19 SPEAKER_022: Point-three is Cobourg.

00:51:21 SPEAKER_022: So having those numbers or those percentages, we didn't have before.

00:51:26 SPEAKER_022: So this is a really good tool for me when I'm working with the dispatchers and figuring out what their workload is and where it's coming from.

00:51:36 SPEAKER_022: Kara's gonna get employee of the year.

00:51:38 SPEAKER_022: Yeah.

00:51:38 SPEAKER_022: It's very helpful though because it's what you see more and more in dispatches that the, because the call volumes going up, your dispatchers are becoming more stressed.

00:51:52 SPEAKER_022: So they're trying to get the calls on quickly, and sometimes their tone or their reaction to a call is isn't what it should be.

00:52:02 SPEAKER_022: So having something like this in place where we can focus on the emergencies and get the radio and get out a fire department helps bring that back, bring us back to centre.

00:52:13 SPEAKER_022: And it's also going to help on the officer front because we're taking some of those initially.

00:52:25 SPEAKER_022: So just next steps.

00:52:27 SPEAKER_022: This is what we're continuing to do with them.

00:52:29 SPEAKER_022: So we're looking at the real data and trying to find some trends and how we can increase or change our SOPs.

00:52:38 SPEAKER_022: They constantly do an AI reconfiguration with her voice and, and with the product.

00:52:47 SPEAKER_022: So if there's any changes, then they'll reach out and they'll say, "Okay, we've done this, and it you should see a change in your in your responses."

00:52:58 SPEAKER_022: The they do.

00:53:00 SPEAKER_022: We can test all the changes.

00:53:02 SPEAKER_022: So any changes that they do on their end.

00:53:04 SPEAKER_022: So if we ask them to create an SOP, then we can test that in a test environment.

00:53:09 SPEAKER_022: That's something in dispatch we don't typically have access to.

00:53:13 SPEAKER_022: We make the changes and we run in a live environment and try to make other changes and modifications as we go.

00:53:20 SPEAKER_022: This is really helpful, being able to do that in a test environment.

00:53:24 SPEAKER_022: She's they're looking at standardized phrasing and then expanding categories for call handles and hopefully sometime, maybe within the next couple years, we can actually have it integrated with our CAD system.

00:53:38 SPEAKER_022: So then there's no email required and it just automates.

00:53:40 SPEAKER_022: Required and it just automatically puts it all on and whatever.

00:53:47 SPEAKER_022: So if someone called and didn't want to talk to a female, want to talk to a male, can AI flip to a male voice or?

00:53:55 SPEAKER_022: Ah, not currently, but we could potentially look at that.

00:54:00 SPEAKER_022: Yeah.

00:54:01 SPEAKER_022: Next thing, changing Kara's name to.

00:54:04 SPEAKER_022: Yeah.

00:54:10 SPEAKER_022: We thought the name was very in line with our strategic plan because it's community assistant and response agent.

00:54:19 SPEAKER_022: So the dispatchers, we held a little competition for it.

00:54:23 SPEAKER_022: They came up with five.

00:54:25 SPEAKER_022: I think I said two, five different ones.

00:54:27 SPEAKER_022: We gave the chiefs the top two, and he had the final say.

00:54:32 SPEAKER_022: Pretty hardy.

00:54:34 SPEAKER_022: Anything?

00:54:35 SPEAKER_022: Not.

00:54:36 SPEAKER_022: I will say, you know what.

00:54:37 SPEAKER_019: I'll say you know what it was a great opportunity for us to partner early with the with the company and start developing this.

00:54:45 SPEAKER_019: They, Suzanne said, they've been excellent to deal with, and the nice thing about it is it's an ongoing, it's a moving target.

00:54:53 SPEAKER_019: So that fifty-point-nine percent, why is that happening?

00:54:56 SPEAKER_019: And they're the first ones to say, well, we can fix that by implementing X, Y, Z, and so they're always looking at how to improve the product for the future and move it forward.

00:55:05 SPEAKER_019: So and other agencies as other agencies are coming on board and adopting the system, we are able to access their SOPs.

00:55:12 SPEAKER_019: They've been we've been sharing them back and forth so that we don't have to redevelop, but they can reinvent it and do all the work of creating what they've already done.

00:55:20 SPEAKER_019: So there's a lot of opportunity here moving forward to get this better and to improve the numbers.

00:55:25 SPEAKER_019: And like Suzanne said, this is the first month, and I think if we do this presentation again in a year, you'll see that there are some change in the numbers, the numbers,

00:55:32 SPEAKER_019: and the opportunities for removing the work phone, administrators.

00:55:38 SPEAKER_019: Even if it's fifty percent that are just looking to, I want to call back or I want to put an email.

00:55:45 SPEAKER_019: I want to call this officer.

00:55:46 SPEAKER_019: I want to send this officer a message.

00:55:48 SPEAKER_019: If we can implement that, that strategy, and they're working with us to try to figure out the best way to move that forward.

00:55:54 SPEAKER_019: So, a lot of work went into this by Suzanne and by Amy, and that should be recognized as well.

00:56:01 SPEAKER_019: Because doesn't just automatically start answering phone calls.

00:56:04 SPEAKER_019: And as Suzanne kind of mentioned, we're a bit of a unicorn, and because of the work that we do for a number of agencies that we do,

00:56:13 SPEAKER_019: so it was a challenge for Hyper as well to create a system and a process that worked for us.

00:56:21 SPEAKER_019: And they've been good to deal with, but a lot of work went into it on Suzanne and Amy's part and the dispatcher side,

00:56:28 SPEAKER_019: looking at all the different possibilities before we actually go live and start testing.

00:56:31 SPEAKER_019: So.

00:56:32 SPEAKER_022: And I have to say too, from the dispatchers' perspective, having a name and having them participate in that,

00:56:40 SPEAKER_022: they're they're more accepting of it because there's that perception that somebody's going to take over their job, but that's not what we're trying to do.

00:56:50 SPEAKER_022: We're trying to make their job easier so that they can focus on the emergency calls, and they have that time and they have that downtime between.

00:56:57 SPEAKER_022: So if they have a swatting event, they can take the five minutes after that call just to, you know, get back to centre and start over again.

00:57:06 SPEAKER_022: So, are there any other dispatch services that have Kara or Hyper?

00:57:12 SPEAKER_022: Halton currently is using it, and Toronto Police Service is using it.

00:57:17 SPEAKER_022: So those are we have monthly meetings with them, and we all go through our process and how we're doing it.

00:57:23 SPEAKER_022: So, right up there with the big boys.

00:57:25 SPEAKER_022: For yeah.

00:57:27 SPEAKER_022: Yes.

00:57:29 SPEAKER_022: Good.

00:57:31 SPEAKER_022: And I will, I will say they have teams of ten.

00:57:35 SPEAKER_022: I'm just going to say that.

00:57:37 SPEAKER_022: Just saying.

00:57:38 SPEAKER_022: We're doing better for a team of two.

00:57:40 SPEAKER_022: Yeah, that's why we're stealing all their all their work from.

00:57:44 SPEAKER_022: Yeah, yeah.

00:57:47 SPEAKER_022: Good, good man.

00:57:48 SPEAKER_022: All right.

00:57:49 SPEAKER_022: Thanks, Dan.

00:57:50 SPEAKER_022: Appreciate that.

00:57:51 SPEAKER_022: Good to see you again.

00:57:55 SPEAKER_022: Great.

00:57:56 SPEAKER_022: Moving on to 12C under human resources.

00:58:00 SPEAKER_022: So OSL.

00:58:03 SPEAKER_019: This point, the that's the new HR and payroll and everything system that we're implementing.

00:58:10 SPEAKER_019: We're about 95% configured, and data verification is taking place.

00:58:14 SPEAKER_019: There were some significant delays in getting responses from the city, so that the payroll export could be finalized, and the project milestones are behind because of that.

00:58:22 SPEAKER_019: But we want to be able to dump it into the city system, so that there isn't duplication.

00:58:27 SPEAKER_019: We bought a system.

00:58:28 SPEAKER_019: I think it was my first year here in 2019, the one that we're replacing now, and it never worked.

00:58:33 SPEAKER_019: The dumps of information we had to create Excel spreadsheets, provide that, open, it was duplication of work, and we're not doing that again.

00:58:41 SPEAKER_019: So it's caused delays, but we want to make sure it works when it goes live.

00:58:47 SPEAKER_019: And then training and policy data is being compiled, we update, uploaded in the system, so the as long as well as the quarter master, we.

00:58:54 SPEAKER_019: As well as a quartermaster will be rolled out later on once we go live, and it was scheduled starting May, but now I think probably in June, which isn't, you know, it's not significant.

00:59:05 SPEAKER_019: It's it's significant, but it's not the end of the world.

00:59:07 SPEAKER_019: But we it wasn't on our end.

00:59:09 SPEAKER_019: So five candidates are moving forward to recruit constable selection.

00:59:19 SPEAKER_019: Hopefully, get some candidates to go to OPC to fill the vacancies that we have.

00:59:24 SPEAKER_019: Right now, we had several new hires that you can see there: part-time data clerk, couple communicators, and then we had some individuals leave the service as well.

00:59:34 SPEAKER_019: Our clerical secretary, communicator, special constable, data clerk, and auxiliary.

00:59:43 SPEAKER_019: So, yeah.

00:59:47 SPEAKER_019: Okay.

00:59:47 SPEAKER_019: Last hours in training.

00:59:48 SPEAKER_019: We'll move on to there.

00:59:50 SPEAKER_019: See total number of hours.

00:59:52 SPEAKER_019: Sick time up about thirteen percent year to date.

00:59:56 SPEAKER_019: It's up about seventeen percent.

00:59:58 SPEAKER_019: I can say I was caught the same bug that was coming through the whole building,

01:00:02 SPEAKER_019: and seemed that there were a number of people that were off sick for a couple days with illness as well.

01:00:10 SPEAKER_019: I'll highlight that there was an increase in the last hours due to Hepatitis B, and that was a result of a dog bite.

01:00:16 SPEAKER_019: One of our officers suffered and missed some time as a result of that.

01:00:22 SPEAKER_019: That's it for the absences.

01:00:24 SPEAKER_019: Unless there are any questions about the absences, and then moving on to building health and safety.

01:00:32 SPEAKER_019: So it was determined that we'd put a monthly update in for the board and the building.

01:00:37 SPEAKER_019: So just by way, I'll skim through it.

01:00:41 SPEAKER_019: But the brickwork, I just left that on there just to maintain awareness of water leaks during the past several weeks.

01:00:47 SPEAKER_019: We've had significant heavy rains.

01:00:49 SPEAKER_019: There were two locations where the water was leaking: the front entrance way, and as well back in the com centre.

01:00:56 SPEAKER_019: The wet tiles were removed and replaced, and in the front lobby, there's some work done there.

01:01:02 SPEAKER_019: I don't know the cause of the entry for the water in the com centre or the front entrance way right now, but it didn't.

01:01:11 SPEAKER_019: It only did it once, so I'm hoping it was the way the wind was driving the heavy severity of the rain, and we don't have any other further issues.

01:01:18 SPEAKER_019: But it is something to highlight and make sure we keep an eye on.

01:01:21 SPEAKER_019: The cleaning service continues to do an excellent job, but their contract remains outstanding.

01:01:26 SPEAKER_019: Once the city transitions to their new employee, then we'll start talking about that.

01:01:31 SPEAKER_019: Routine maintenance and repairs—it's been really good that there's at least two days per week that somebody from the facilities is coming over and making an appearance here in the building,

01:01:40 SPEAKER_019: and that's helped significantly on the general maintenance.

01:01:43 SPEAKER_019: Elevator still needs to be locked out manually in the evenings to prevent after-hours access upstairs portion of the building, the front lobby washroom.

01:01:51 SPEAKER_019: I think there was an update on this after I did that.

01:01:53 SPEAKER_019: And Dave, you spoke to Derek and I spoke to Derek.

01:01:57 SPEAKER_012: And I mean, this probably goes back four to six weeks now, but he said it's just waiting on a locksmith to come and do the installation.

01:02:06 SPEAKER_012: If you didn't have timeframes.

01:02:07 SPEAKER_012: Okay.

01:02:08 SPEAKER_019: The AL compliance obviously that's long term, and will need to be included in a facility assessment and needs review because there's no plan capital expenditure to meet that need.

01:02:18 SPEAKER_019: HVAC we're waiting for the engineering review, assessment, and recalibration schedule for the coming months.

01:02:26 SPEAKER_019: There will be a temporary repair for a new HVAC system for the entire building, being a priority and not scheduled for several years.

01:02:35 SPEAKER_019: So they're going to try and do that.

01:02:36 SPEAKER_019: They're also trying to get the engineering done so they know what they need so they can order it and get it on order because it'll probably be eighteen months to get built for this for

01:02:49 SPEAKER_019: the building.

01:02:50 SPEAKER_019: So that's to be scheduled right away.

01:02:53 SPEAKER_019: Interior painting.

01:02:55 SPEAKER_019: Derek was by on the seventeenth and they're preparing and determining what and when the painting will start.

01:03:03 SPEAKER_019: It's supposed to be in the coming weeks.

01:03:05 SPEAKER_019: And I told them the public access downstairs and the main floor that sees twenty-four hour use have been or the need.

01:03:10 SPEAKER_019: Are the need needed the most because that's the most damaged, and people need to see some love in the building.

01:03:18 SPEAKER_019: So we're going to start there, and then they're going to continue with the painting and try and get that stuff done later in twenty-six or twenty-seven.

01:03:26 SPEAKER_019: The parking lot storm drains this winter there was some flooding, and in the spring and they vacuumed it out, but apparently they need to do some further work on that.

01:03:35 SPEAKER_019: So hopefully we'll get to that now that the weather's thawed and everything's better in the spring, and the main floor staff washroom renovation project.

01:03:45 SPEAKER_019: We haven't had any updates or information about start date.

01:03:49 SPEAKER_019: When I spoke to the facilities individual, I explained that can't just tell us tomorrow they're coming because we have records checks and things on them prior to, so they're well aware of that.

01:04:01 SPEAKER_019: They could cause a delay, so they need to let us know.

01:04:04 SPEAKER_019: That's it for facilities.

01:04:07 SPEAKER_042: I just wanted to say thanks so much for doing a written report on this.

01:04:11 SPEAKER_042: That way, when council does receive the minutes, they can have a look and see how things are going.

01:04:17 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, we'll try and keep it up to date through the things, new things on there, so they don't get missed and lost.

01:04:23 SPEAKER_019: Supposed to be an HVAC consultant here, probably now.

01:04:27 SPEAKER_019: Going through the building of Sean Bosk, so I'm sure what he's doing.

01:04:31 SPEAKER_019: I think that's the engineering consultant that so they can design the new system.

01:04:34 SPEAKER_019: They said that that was a priority to get it designed so they could order it because it would be at least eighteen months.

01:04:44 SPEAKER_019: Kate said she had to leave.

01:04:45 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, very good.

01:04:47 SPEAKER_019: Moving on to financial update.

01:04:55 SPEAKER_019: So we lost Kate, but I received an update from Kate on Monday afternoon or Monday evening, and I went through it briefly.

01:05:05 SPEAKER_019: I had meetings yesterday, but Jeff Lock and I met for about five minutes, and we both agreed that the information that was there wasn't accurate enough to present to the board or in public.

01:05:17 SPEAKER_019: So we're going to hold off, and we'll go through that information, bring it forward the next meeting.

01:05:24 SPEAKER_019: I just want to ask Carol.

01:05:27 SPEAKER_019: Carol, can you hear me?

01:05:28 SPEAKER_019: Yes.

01:05:29 SPEAKER_019: Are you on Corporate Services Committee?

01:05:32 SPEAKER_019: I am.

01:05:33 SPEAKER_010: Do you know if these updates on what is the report?

01:05:39 SPEAKER_019: It's a projected projection out to the end of the year for policing.

01:05:42 SPEAKER_019: Do they go to corporate services?

01:05:44 SPEAKER_019: Not, not routinely that I've seen.

01:05:49 SPEAKER_021: I'm just new again on corporate services, but I think it's really, really important that we start to share this information, just like we just did with the facilities update.

01:06:00 SPEAKER_021: Like the more we get the information out, so definitely.

01:06:04 SPEAKER_021: Are you thinking, Marian, that it would be good to ask for it to be included in the agenda on a regular basis?

01:06:10 SPEAKER_021: Yes.

01:06:11 SPEAKER_021: So I think that's a great idea.

01:06:14 SPEAKER_021: Who would do that?

01:06:15 SPEAKER_021: Who would make that request?

01:06:16 SPEAKER_021: Just a question: Does Fire also appear on that report?

01:06:21 SPEAKER_021: Yeah.

01:06:22 SPEAKER_021: No. Do you get a report from Fire as well?

01:06:24 SPEAKER_021: I don't know, Carol.

01:06:26 SPEAKER_021: Not on a regular basis that I'm aware of, but I, you know, I think as we move forward, the more information to corporate services because we're going to be changing in the next year,

01:06:41 SPEAKER_021: where it'll be all council members who sit on that financing.

01:06:45 SPEAKER_021: It's evolving into a different committee, so I think having the information go forward will be really, really important because the whole committee structure is going to be changing.

01:06:56 SPEAKER_021: It won't include the public.

01:06:58 SPEAKER_021: It'll be all council.

01:07:00 SPEAKER_021: So I think changing the practice of sharing the information is important.

01:07:06 SPEAKER_021: Marian, what do you think?

01:07:07 SPEAKER_010: I think it's important as well, but the reason I'm saying it should go to corporate services, yeah, because the chief has different figures than Kate has,

01:07:21 SPEAKER_010: and we need to find out where those are for sure, and to yeah, I think the more information we share, and the difference is, as you know, we're a board.

01:07:35 SPEAKER_010: Fire is a department, right?

01:07:37 SPEAKER_021: I mean, there's that kind of difference.

01:07:39 SPEAKER_021: But I'm just projections.

01:07:44 SPEAKER_010: You're saying the projections for police.

01:07:47 SPEAKER_010: Does that include emergency services?

01:07:49 SPEAKER_010: Well, no. What I'm thinking is, are we singling out police service if we don't have fire there as well, library, art gallery.

01:07:58 SPEAKER_010: So that's another question you can ask.

01:08:01 SPEAKER_021: Yeah, I think maybe maybe that's something we could make it as a request.

01:08:07 SPEAKER_021: And I, it's unfortunate Kate has left because this would have been perfect timing to be able to have that conversation with her.

01:08:17 SPEAKER_019: I just want to hazard the sort of awareness of a hazard, and that is that the information, unless it's combined, unless it's provided mutually, wouldn't be valuable because the report that I got yesterday,

01:08:32 SPEAKER_019: if that went there, it may cause alarm or it may cause concerns unnecessarily because it's not accurate.

01:08:39 SPEAKER_019: There's a number of items on there, so if this were to happen,

01:08:44 SPEAKER_019: it would have to be done mutually through Kate and Jeff Hawk to come up with what is agreed upon as would be an accurate reflection of where we're at during the year,

01:08:55 SPEAKER_019: so perhaps numbers coming from one or the other.

01:08:59 SPEAKER_021: Yeah, perhaps the question to corporate services and or to Kate specifically is: as we transition to the new committee, will each fire, police, library all be submitting information to be shared at those meetings,

01:09:18 SPEAKER_021: so that it's not one versus the other, but it's all together.

01:09:22 SPEAKER_021: Because it's important information to have made a public record for sure.

01:09:31 SPEAKER_021: Right.

01:09:34 SPEAKER_021: Okay.

01:09:35 SPEAKER_021: Okay.

01:09:35 SPEAKER_021: Good.

01:09:37 SPEAKER_021: So moving on to chief's activity reports.

01:09:41 SPEAKER_021: Yeah.

01:09:42 SPEAKER_019: So everybody can read it, look it over, but a couple highlights.

01:09:47 SPEAKER_019: The deputy I attended the Women's Toast of Great Bruce International.

01:09:49 SPEAKER_019: House of Great Bruce International Women's Day breakfast, and at West Western as well.

01:09:59 SPEAKER_019: OPC graduation and at Meaford, CFB Meaford change of command transfer command and reassignment ceremony.

01:10:10 SPEAKER_019: We attended as well.

01:10:13 SPEAKER_019: Building our relationship with the individuals that are running CFB Meaford, trying to work forward on some training work with them.

01:10:22 SPEAKER_019: That anything else?

01:10:26 SPEAKER_019: There was an interesting webinar on the conflict in the Middle East and Iran and the escalations, retributions, and end games.

01:10:32 SPEAKER_019: What's you know what we could see happen here within Canada as a result of that?

01:10:38 SPEAKER_019: So that was it.

01:10:42 SPEAKER_019: Okay.

01:10:44 SPEAKER_019: All right.

01:10:44 SPEAKER_019: Moving on to other items.

01:10:45 SPEAKER_019: First one is the host.

01:10:46 SPEAKER_019: First one is the hosting of the Zone Five meeting, October sixth.

01:10:50 SPEAKER_019: That's been confirmed now.

01:10:52 SPEAKER_019: We're um, this is when we talked about having it.

01:10:56 SPEAKER_019: We didn't set a budget for it.

01:10:58 SPEAKER_019: Historically, Zone Five meetings have been about nine hundred dollars.

01:11:02 SPEAKER_053: That includes breakfast and lunch for about fifty people.

01:11:06 SPEAKER_053: And normally, the venue cost is provided by the hosting municipality and our service.

01:11:12 SPEAKER_053: So, looking at one of the areas we might be able to get, I think Chief Ambrose has got a contact, and he'll be looking into that.

01:11:23 SPEAKER_054: So, did you have a chance to look at pricing for fifty breakfasts and lunches?

01:11:30 SPEAKER_054: Yeah.

01:11:31 SPEAKER_054: Okay.

01:11:31 SPEAKER_054: All right.

01:11:32 SPEAKER_054: This time, well, when I say breakfasts, donuts, donuts and coffee, yeah, banana bread, whatever.

01:11:40 SPEAKER_052: So, what I'm suggesting we might do is someone put forth a motion to spend up to a thousand dollars for hosting this with the um?

01:11:51 SPEAKER_052: I'll make that.

01:11:52 SPEAKER_052: Mary, okay.

01:11:54 SPEAKER_052: Seconder.

01:11:55 SPEAKER_052: All right.

01:11:55 SPEAKER_052: So there'll be more details coming out.

01:12:02 SPEAKER_052: Go ahead.

01:12:04 SPEAKER_052: Yeah.

01:12:05 SPEAKER_042: Discussion to mention: Is it possible to look for sponsorship for that?

01:12:11 SPEAKER_042: Haven't norm.

01:12:11 SPEAKER_042: Have it normally in the past.

01:12:14 SPEAKER_042: What were you thinking of a sponsor?

01:12:16 SPEAKER_042: I don't know.

01:12:17 SPEAKER_042: Just somebody at the community businesses or something sponsor the lunch.

01:12:25 SPEAKER_042: We could look at it.

01:12:26 SPEAKER_042: Yeah, it's tough to get anything out of that for a sponsor unless you get.

01:12:32 SPEAKER_042: No, I see.

01:12:33 SPEAKER_042: Yeah, because it's private.

01:12:33 SPEAKER_042: Like they wouldn't.

01:12:35 SPEAKER_042: They wouldn't.

01:12:36 SPEAKER_042: Yeah, they would get the name on the billboard, but it would only be the people at the meeting that would see it.

01:12:40 SPEAKER_042: Okay.

01:12:44 SPEAKER_042: All in favour?

01:12:45 SPEAKER_042: Then of motion.

01:12:46 SPEAKER_042: Yeah.

01:12:50 SPEAKER_042: Yes.

01:12:52 SPEAKER_042: Next time is a neighbourhood response team.

01:13:10 SPEAKER_042: So safe and sound.

01:13:12 SPEAKER_019: The random neighbourhood response team ended did that in in the March, yes, would have been.

01:13:18 SPEAKER_019: And their community outreach that was the community outreach that they implemented downtown.

01:13:23 SPEAKER_019: There's there's some funding through the Gray County and EMS.

01:13:29 SPEAKER_019: So I met with Kevin McNab, Gray County EMS, to discuss the results.

01:13:35 SPEAKER_019: We haven't had an opportunity to meet with David Town, but they.

01:13:38 SPEAKER_019: With the information that they sent out was about the number of interactions that they had with the community and number of people they spoke to and what,

01:13:47 SPEAKER_019: and I mean they were obviously out there and they were meeting with people.

01:13:52 SPEAKER_019: I said to I said the police haven't seen a reduction in calls for service.

01:13:59 SPEAKER_019: It's still a significant number of calls for service to safe and sound and dealing with the marginalized community in downtown.

01:14:08 SPEAKER_019: So I'm not sure the effect of this on from our end on that.

01:14:14 SPEAKER_019: But certainly, I just wanted to bring to everybody's attention that that programme's ended now, and that we'll continue to meet with them and are trying to meet with them and see what they're moving forward.

01:14:28 SPEAKER_019: Is this something they were hoping the SOS team would kind of take over?

01:14:32 SPEAKER_019: The SOS team was already in place.

01:14:33 SPEAKER_019: This is something they were hoping would deal with some of the.

01:14:34 SPEAKER_019: Helping with deal with some of the, you know, outside of the hours of SOS, and work with people downtown.

01:14:42 SPEAKER_019: Part of their mandate was they would be asking people to move along if they were in the downtown area, and it's kind of conflicting with the way we approached the situation.

01:15:02 SPEAKER_019: Okay, something, anything else to the questions around that?

01:15:07 SPEAKER_019: Also, in item C, there's the article from Hyper View Inc. and this talks about Motorola's purchase of them and gives some background on both companies.

01:15:16 SPEAKER_019: There.

01:15:18 SPEAKER_019: Item D, staff appreciation night.

01:15:20 SPEAKER_019: I'll turn it over to Kayla.

01:15:24 SPEAKER_019: So this year's staff appreciation night, there was a survey sent out, and we're looking to have it proposed.

01:15:29 SPEAKER_059: It would be a sit-down dinner, and we've looked at in on the Bay. and what was date of end of October to beginning of November.

01:15:37 SPEAKER_059: No date confirmed yet.

01:15:38 SPEAKER_059: There were two estimates that were received.

01:15:41 SPEAKER_059: The one includes the rental of the hall, food, and one drink voucher, and it was nine thousand eight hundred seventy-four.

01:15:50 SPEAKER_059: And then the other cost was just for the hall and the food, which was eight thousand nine hundred fifteen.

01:15:59 SPEAKER_059: The difference being only the drink tickets, the association has agreed to share the cost this year, and they're looking at Seniors' Office Association.

01:16:09 SPEAKER_059: They're both.

01:16:10 SPEAKER_059: No, no, right, right, association.

01:16:16 SPEAKER_059: Um, they're looking to do possibly something like a photo booth as well for that night, and then doing the dinner and maybe something attributed like a trivia or something else.

01:16:28 SPEAKER_059: We haven't nailed down the details, but we were just bringing it forward,

01:16:31 SPEAKER_059: looking to have a motion proposed for a budget that we would be able to follow to finish the planning for this year's staff appreciation night.

01:16:41 SPEAKER_059: What did we spend last year on it?

01:16:45 SPEAKER_059: On the staff appreciation night, it was just under seven, seventy-five hundred, something like that.

01:16:55 SPEAKER_059: Anyone want to propose a budget?

01:16:56 SPEAKER_059: I'm looking at half of.

01:16:57 SPEAKER_059: Looking, it's half of nine thousand eight hundred.

01:16:59 SPEAKER_059: Well, that'd be five thousand dollars, and the other one was nine thousand, so four thousand five hundred.

01:17:04 SPEAKER_059: So forty-five, five thousand.

01:17:06 SPEAKER_059: I don't know what figure we want to settle on.

01:17:08 SPEAKER_059: I don't think we should put a figure on it.

01:17:11 SPEAKER_059: We could say up to ten thousand dollars.

01:17:16 SPEAKER_059: But if the association sharing, yeah, it's only half.

01:17:19 SPEAKER_059: All right.

01:17:20 SPEAKER_059: Yeah.

01:17:23 SPEAKER_042: Are there special presentations or awards given out at this as well?

01:17:30 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, we usually give the service bars, service awards, and any specific like I think we recognize attorney's medal there as well, just verbally, things like that.

01:17:42 SPEAKER_019: Service bars aren't included in this.

01:17:45 SPEAKER_019: No, nice.

01:17:46 SPEAKER_019: No, they would be provided regardless for ongoing budget.

01:17:51 SPEAKER_019: Right.

01:17:52 SPEAKER_019: So we just need a number that we know.

01:17:55 SPEAKER_019: Yeah.

01:17:55 SPEAKER_019: I just don't want to go over and then have to deal with that.

01:17:57 SPEAKER_019: So if we said six thousand dollars, does that work for you?

01:18:02 SPEAKER_019: Sure.

01:18:03 SPEAKER_019: Okay.

01:18:03 SPEAKER_019: If they're being started with that, okay.

01:18:10 SPEAKER_019: Have a seconder for that.

01:18:11 SPEAKER_019: Sure, Derek.

01:18:14 SPEAKER_019: All in favour?

01:18:15 SPEAKER_019: Okay.

01:18:18 SPEAKER_019: Thousand dollars, upward two.

01:18:21 SPEAKER_019: All right, and moving on to item F, and this was an item.

01:18:22 SPEAKER_069: We got to item F, and this was an item that we added to the agenda at the beginning of the meeting, and it was regards to loitering.

01:18:28 SPEAKER_069: And somebody wants to speak to that issue.

01:18:30 SPEAKER_069: I'll start it off.

01:18:33 SPEAKER_042: There's a great concern by the public with the loitering that's taking place outside of safe and sound.

01:18:39 SPEAKER_042: And I know the city has a loitering bylaw.

01:18:42 SPEAKER_042: I just want to have it explained publicly how that works.

01:18:47 SPEAKER_042: The police chief can maybe add to it.

01:18:53 SPEAKER_019: Well, I mean, it's a city bylaw, and obviously we can enforce the bylaw.

01:18:58 SPEAKER_019: I'd be looking for some direction from the city as to why they weren't enforcing the bylaw.

01:19:06 SPEAKER_019: And it's a daytime issue with bylaw enforcement working during the day.

01:19:12 SPEAKER_019: I would suggest that they should be taking the lead on that.

01:19:15 SPEAKER_019: And if there's a reason why they aren't taking the lead on it, then I would like to know about it before I go and step out and start doing those things.

01:19:22 SPEAKER_042: So the city bylaw enforcement acts on complaint.

01:19:27 SPEAKER_042: So someone would have to complain that they're not proactive, yeah.

01:19:33 SPEAKER_042: Because I know there's a lot of interference with people walking through there, or people are afraid to walk through there.

01:19:41 SPEAKER_042: There's even been comments of people being afraid to be downtown, just because of the.

01:19:49 SPEAKER_042: Yeah, yeah, financial conflicts.

01:19:53 SPEAKER_019: I mean, and I'm up out of the whole downtown, not in a specific area.

01:19:58 SPEAKER_019: But loitering is a difficult thing because I would if I'm dressed in my police uniform and I'm sitting on a bench,

01:20:04 SPEAKER_019: why am I allowed to sit there and not be bothered while somebody who may appear to be in a different, uh, you know, acting out,

01:20:12 SPEAKER_019: maybe suffering from mental health or in a situation that isn't, you know, they don't have a place to go to.

01:20:19 SPEAKER_019: Why is it that you would enforce it against them?

01:20:21 SPEAKER_019: So it's a difficult thing to say.

01:20:26 SPEAKER_019: You know, we're going to enforce that for, you know, certain individuals, not for other individuals.

01:20:33 SPEAKER_019: So our position has always been that if there's an issue, we send officers down.

01:20:39 SPEAKER_019: As you saw there, we had 90 hours on from our car officer, and 94 hours from our officer downtown doing foot patrol.

01:20:49 SPEAKER_019: There's an issue, they'll deal with the issue.

01:20:51 SPEAKER_019: And if there's a complaint, obviously we deal with the complaint.

01:20:55 SPEAKER_019: But they do proactive work while they're downtown, you know, doing their foot patrol.

01:21:01 SPEAKER_019: But we're not there 24 hours a day, and we're not there doing it all the time.

01:21:07 SPEAKER_042: So, from the perspective of the bylaw itself, do the police have any input into the wording of the bylaw?

01:21:15 SPEAKER_019: And I've never in my seen it since my time here.

01:21:21 SPEAKER_019: I've never been involved in any review of it, or is that something out of our purview, or can we look at it and see if it should, if it shouldn't be?

01:21:29 SPEAKER_019: No. Now, one other thing, I'm aware there are other municipalities that have bylaws in place in regards to licensing for shelters and things like that,

01:21:41 SPEAKER_019: in order to keep that a little bit tighter and in and around an area in front of somebody who offers those services, because they've recognized other communities that there's issues,

01:21:52 SPEAKER_019: and that's something that you know should probably be examined locally.

01:21:57 SPEAKER_019: Should probably be looked at a little bit further.

01:22:01 SPEAKER_019: Whether that's an amendment to the current bylaw or whether that's a completely separate bylaw, it'd be something that's up to the city to do.

01:22:07 SPEAKER_019: But that should be something they look at.

01:22:10 SPEAKER_042: So is it possible to put that on an agenda to have a look at potential sheltering licence bylaw and the loitering bylaw?

01:22:19 SPEAKER_042: Yeah, we could invite them to.

01:22:21 SPEAKER_042: Maybe we could probably do that.

01:22:23 SPEAKER_042: We could get some examples from other municipalities that have something like that.

01:22:27 SPEAKER_042: Okay, Carol, you have your hand up.

01:22:30 SPEAKER_042: Yes, just some clarification around process.

01:22:35 SPEAKER_042: We are around the council table.

01:22:38 SPEAKER_021: We're asked to encourage people to fill in a report of concern, that's distributed to the appropriate city departments.

01:22:47 SPEAKER_021: Does report a concern also trigger to go to the police services?

01:22:52 SPEAKER_021: Is there that linkage at all?

01:22:55 SPEAKER_021: How does it intersect?

01:22:59 SPEAKER_019: Whoever screens them at the city and decides where they go will often include myself or somebody here on those if they relate to police or if they feel that they need the police awareness.

01:23:14 SPEAKER_021: So tracking the number of concerns that may come in as a result of the topic is that done?

01:23:21 SPEAKER_021: I mean, are we seeing more of an increase of concern?

01:23:24 SPEAKER_021: So that's my first question.

01:23:25 SPEAKER_021: I have one other question as well.

01:23:28 SPEAKER_019: As far as through the city, I don't know.

01:23:33 SPEAKER_019: I'll take them.

01:23:34 SPEAKER_019: I'll look at them.

01:23:35 SPEAKER_019: I'll see who needs to see them, and I'll distribute them within the service.

01:23:38 SPEAKER_019: I don't track anything with them; they're one-offs for me, and I don't receive them often enough to actually get all that worked up about them.

01:23:45 SPEAKER_019: Okay.

01:23:46 SPEAKER_019: So the good news is you see them or someone in the police services.

01:23:50 SPEAKER_021: So we should continue to encourage people either to connect with police services directly or with Cara or report a concern because it is a bylaw enforcement activity.

01:24:04 SPEAKER_021: As well, so that's one thing to encourage the public if they have concerns to continue to do.

01:24:14 SPEAKER_021: Second of all is around on social media.

01:24:19 SPEAKER_021: Recently, there have been some postings of people taking images of downtown and some potentially aggressive behaviours.

01:24:33 SPEAKER_021: Who actually?

01:24:34 SPEAKER_021: How does that get addressed?

01:24:36 SPEAKER_021: I mean, it's on social media, but you know, it's not.

01:24:40 SPEAKER_021: That's not necessarily directing the issue to the resources that would follow up.

01:24:47 SPEAKER_021: I'm wondering how do we get that and acted upon if it isn't already.

01:24:53 SPEAKER_021: There was one where there was some potential aggression towards a vehicle or people in a vehicle, and so that there's a lot of chatter on the social media around this,

01:25:05 SPEAKER_021: but you know you have to know about something before you can resolve something, correct?

01:25:12 SPEAKER_021: Yeah.

01:25:12 SPEAKER_019: So we have in the past been become aware of issues and things through social media, and then we'll sign it out, and somebody can follow up and look at it.

01:25:22 SPEAKER_019: But if we don't, if it's not brought to our attention, aware of it, then you know it could get missed.

01:25:29 SPEAKER_019: Usually, it's somebody reaches out either from the city or the public.

01:25:34 SPEAKER_019: Usually, it's from the community saying, "Have you seen this?"

01:25:36 SPEAKER_019: And well, this was posted.

01:25:38 SPEAKER_019: They send it directly to us, and then we can follow up and deal with anything that needs to be done on the criminal investigation side.

01:25:46 SPEAKER_019: Then, dearie, is it possible to have on the police website a report a concern section?

01:25:55 SPEAKER_019: Is that is that helpful?

01:25:58 SPEAKER_019: We have an info bot.

01:25:58 SPEAKER_019: We have an info line on town police.

01:26:01 SPEAKER_019: That if you have a concern, if you have anything, you can positive, negative, anything, you can put it through.

01:26:07 SPEAKER_019: We have our own system.

01:26:09 SPEAKER_019: Okay.

01:26:12 SPEAKER_019: The problem is, it's a bylaw situation, which is the city.

01:26:18 SPEAKER_015: So whatever it is you do, it has to be done together.

01:26:24 SPEAKER_015: Have to be on the same page.

01:26:27 SPEAKER_011: I would say that there is a body of case law out there with respect to different municipalities that have tried bailouts with respect to tents and even loitering.

01:26:43 SPEAKER_011: I think falls within that.

01:26:45 SPEAKER_011: Where you're not seeing the level of support for, particularly with homeless population, to be able to tell somebody that you just can't stand there.

01:26:53 SPEAKER_011: And a lot of the case law sort of points to the idea that you can't tell a person that's homeless to not be able to access a public park or put a tent up or

01:27:03 SPEAKER_011: that thing.

01:27:04 SPEAKER_011: So it's really limited the teeth of a lot of those bylaws.

01:27:08 SPEAKER_011: So we are looking to enhance the loitering bylaw.

01:27:13 SPEAKER_011: We probably need to look to some of the other municipalities and see what's been supported because I think we brought up this issue with the bylaw last fall sometime,

01:27:23 SPEAKER_011: and I think the bylaw is fine.

01:27:27 SPEAKER_065: It's just the enforcement of it that's lacking, and it's a compliance model, as I understand.

01:27:34 SPEAKER_065: Therefore, they have the only act on complaints.

01:27:38 SPEAKER_065: So it's you know social media is great to have it go through, but if nobody reports a concern to the city, it sort of falls on deaf ears.

01:27:49 SPEAKER_065: So I think that's where it needs to be focused on getting the complaints to the right place, and then see what happens.

01:28:01 SPEAKER_065: Hopefully, we can look at something at a future meeting.

01:28:05 SPEAKER_065: Do you want to put the loitering bylaw on the next agenda?

01:28:11 SPEAKER_065: Okay.

01:28:12 SPEAKER_042: And the discussion about a licensing shelters as well.

01:28:16 SPEAKER_042: Okay.

01:28:20 SPEAKER_042: Right.

01:28:24 SPEAKER_042: Looks like I skipped an item.

01:28:24 SPEAKER_042: I should.

01:28:25 SPEAKER_042: I missed the own some police service collision statistics.

01:28:32 SPEAKER_019: Yeah, so they were included in your package.

01:28:34 SPEAKER_019: They've been distributed, and they're available.

01:28:38 SPEAKER_019: My computer's not working, but they're available.

01:28:41 SPEAKER_019: I mean, they speak for themselves.

01:28:43 SPEAKER_019: It's essentially all the data that you could ever want to have with respect to collisions that get reported to us by accident support services.

01:28:55 SPEAKER_019: So there's 50 some pages of yeah, it's broken down by date, location, time, everything, and it gives a good synopsis of what happened and you know collisions with pedestrians, collisions with bicycles,

01:29:10 SPEAKER_019: all the different things.

01:29:11 SPEAKER_011: So days of the week, time of day, locations, environmental conditions, all of that sort of thing.

01:29:18 SPEAKER_011: This is something that, if we haven't already, we'll share with engineering because they often ask us for the data here.

01:29:30 SPEAKER_011: Good, all right.

01:29:31 SPEAKER_011: It's time.

01:29:34 SPEAKER_011: All right.

01:29:34 SPEAKER_011: We on item number seventeen.

01:29:36 SPEAKER_011: If I could have a motion to move into closed and confidential closed sessions.

01:29:39 SPEAKER_011: Is Carol still here?

01:29:41 SPEAKER_011: Yeah.

01:29:42 SPEAKER_011: Moved by myself, seconded by Carol Merton at the board.

01:29:45 SPEAKER_011: Move into closed session upon termination of the closed session.

01:29:48 SPEAKER_011: The board moves into confidential closed session.

01:29:50 SPEAKER_011: These meetings are to review and discuss matters that fall under Section 44, Item 20, Item 2 of the Community Safety and Police Act, and Section 25,

01:30:00 SPEAKER_011: Item B of the Owen Sound Police Service Board General Policy.

01:30:03 SPEAKER_011: 003 Board Governance to consider: A, educational or training sessions; B, a position plan, procedure, criteria,

01:30:12 SPEAKER_011: or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the board.

01:30:20 SPEAKER_011: C. Personal matters about an identifiable individual, including matters of police service, or any other employees of the board.

01:30:29 SPEAKER_011: D. Labour relations or employee negotiations.

01:30:33 SPEAKER_011: All in favour?

01:30:35 SPEAKER_011: For those who are watching the meeting live on YouTube, the feed will reconnect upon the board returning to the open session and to report at a closed session and the confidential closed sessions.

01:30:46 SPEAKER_069: If anyone would like to view the remainder of the open session, they can watch the live stream on the Owen Sound Police Service Board's YouTube channel later today.

01:30:53 SPEAKER_069: The video recording of this meeting will also be posted on our website.

01:30:57 SPEAKER_069: Thank you.