what's it behind us
good evening
take everybody seat we're going to get
started here in a few moments
for those that don't know my name is
jason fine i'm a superintendent of
bexley city schools the greatest job in
the world
and i couldn't be more excited to
welcome everybody
we've got such an important partnership
with our city
and this is such an important process it
gives me
a little bit of nightmarish feelings
because i sat on this stage in the same
setting about a year ago so i'm excited
to watch the book you're gonna you're
gonna do great
uh but it was the first opportunity for
me to
meet the community and i'm so thankful
for this community so thankfully part of
this community and one of the first
community members i met was our
incredible mayor ben
and uh ben is going to talk us through
the process a really important process
that i'm grateful to be a part of and
i'm thankful that you are here if you
need restrooms if you head out to the
back of the building and take the left
you'll have restrooms over here uh if
you need anything i'll be in the back in
case you need me so thank you for
joining us let's give them
customers
so is one of the most important
decisions that we make as a community um
the selection of a new police chief
it's one that we don't take lightly and
if you've been following the process
you know that we've been taking our
sweet time and doing so
we started off with a community survey
report that gail saunders who admired
this evening
helped prepare for us
we engaged a national
search firm with expertise in law
enforcement executive recruitment to
help us with the search
and we've had a whole team
a whole village of community members
helping
uh submit questions for this evening so
thank you to those who did that
we've had community members helping with
interviewing helping with touring
helping with
this evening's q a facilitation
sit in his mock
mock community members in the mock
communities as part of our interview
process
so it's been a great robust process so
far and in many ways this evening is a
combination of it
this community event
where
unfortunately for them all four
candidates get to sit up here at the
same time next to each other and rip off
some ideas and some questions and give
us the opportunity
to
hear all of the really amazing skills
that they bring to the table and one
thing that i am overwhelmed with coming
out of a full day of back-to-back
interviews
is just the raw talent and skill that we
have in the candidates that we're
talking to this evening
i also want to take a second to thank
the officers of our brexit police
department
i had the pleasure of doing a
ride-alongs with many of our officers
getting into this process i intend to
continue until i get to every single
officer as we seek feedback for the
future of our agency
but officers provided
excellent feedback to our community
survey process they helped us craft
questions for the interviews and for
this evening
and
they have just provided really excellent
insight as we have
prepared for
this
process there is an opportunity for you
as well to provide insight so for those
of you who are physically present this
evening there are cards that have been
passed out
qr codes that you can provide feedback
it's an open
paragraph form survey uh it's brought
let us know what you think i'm going to
read every single one of them those who
are helping an interview committee
council members who read everything one
of them if you're watching this
virtually that link
is maybe on the social media post that
has this fly feed maybe it's on
baxley.org uh he'll be on the blast and
we're gonna leave that open until sunday
evening
and we're gonna continue to look back at
that as we as we finalize our plans
i want to address timing a little bit i
said timing it's taken us quite a while
to get here in july since we started the
process in early 2022. uh and then we
introduced we announced this town hall
would occur a week ago last friday so
less than a week ago pretty fast uh not
something that we wanted to do and i had
some feedback about how fast that was it
was because we were trying to wrangle
the schedules of four different
candidates to find a night where
everybody could come together uh for
this town hall
this was the only night that worked
that didn't put us out another month and
risked losing really quality candidates
so we made a decision to move forward uh
we have a really strong virtual presence
on this evening i'm really excited to
get that feedback from all forms
so should i take a little longer to talk
no uh without any further ado i would
like to welcome up to stay our stage our
parents for the evening and our
moderator gail sanders thank you
[Applause]
good
evening everyone and i'd like to invite
our candidates on stage for us please
as mayor said i am health songers and it
is a privilege and honor to be with you
this evening those with us here in
person and those who are listening and
tuning in virtually
and so tonight we're going to get an
obligation to hear directly from our
candidates they have had a full day so
we're so pleased and thank you for being
here and join us this evening we'll have
a seat and we're going to take a few
minutes to get started
[Music]
i do want to remind everyone that you
two will have an opportunity to have a
few questions and answer this evening
and so
throughout the evening i'll be reminding
you to jot down your questions and we'll
get those and get those answered as much
as we can so
let's get started um we're going to ask
each of you to take two minutes if you
would give us a little bit about
yourself tell us who you are
um your background and you can do it all
in two minutes make sure we
hello sorry cool all right two minutes
uh so my name is wendy stiver
i actually was born in honolulu hawaii
my family was air force so we moved
around a lot
and we first came to ohio in 1979.
um so i've been in and out of ohio since
then
um particularly in years in david
i worked at the dating police department
for 21 years i retired there in 2020 and
i left because i had an opportunity to
go down to charleston south carolina and
work on a racial bias implementation
project down there
i worked on that project for a while and
then ended up coming back up to dayton
i'm currently working as a consultant on
international police reform projects
in armenia ecuador and india
specifically designing procedural
justice curriculum
and implementing other
police reform one of the cool things
about that opportunity is that other
countries are looking to ours for
inspiration and leadership when it comes
to reforming their police departments
and i think that says a lot about who we
are
and it gives us an opportunity to to
raise the bar of possibility for the
whole world on this issue
so i'm doing that and i'm also a
part-time
i'm a i'm an aviation student at
sinclair community college and i'm
finishing up my private pilot's license
right now
so it's a lifelong dream and i finally
found the opportunity to do that so
hopefully i'll pass all my tests and get
that done
in your spare time
right
[Applause]
by the sheer numbers of the people that
are present here in the room
i'm watching virtually
it suggests that you are definitely
concerned
about who is going to serve as your next
police chief
over the course of today's conversation
i'm going to share with you how i plan
to lead manage and connect with you
over the course of the remainder of my
career should i have the privilege of
serving as your chief
but more than 26 years of law
enforcement experience and serving in
multiple capacities from field training
defensive tactics instructor
to
police supervisor instructor consulting
on critical issues that are facing our
community and nationally
being a peer support person for law
enforcement officials who are in crisis
as a result of being involved in a
critical incident but most importantly
outside of the work that i'm doing as a
law enforcement professional i'm also
active in my own community
currently serving a civil service
commission within the community which i
live i always find ways to give back
right now i currently serve as the
deputy chief for police for the cop of
metropolitan housing authority and some
of you may wonder how does that
community relate to yours
well just like you the housing authority
is a resident driven
community the police exist for the sole
purpose of serving you
but what's most important is
working in that environment has taught
me how to lead with humility
and while i've had a tremendous career
my career has been amazing because i've
worked with amazing people
and what i want the officers in the room
to know
is that my success has always hinged
upon the front line employees the
dispatchers the executive assistant
the officers whether they're part-time
or full-time so we've always maintained
a connection with the officers and the
fop to ensure that we are providing the
highest level of service
[Music]
yes thank you very much
i know a studio
um probably some of you know why i'm
here but uh my name is ken gong
i'm currently the deputy chief of police
here at bexley and i've been the head of
chief since january 5th this year
a little bit of background about myself
for the people that don't know
i
been in public service since i was 17
years old i served in the military both
enlisted and worked my way back and uh
got a commission as an officer so i had
the pleasure of leading a lot of
groups of people and established great
teams over the course of my career i
served in denver storm
um
i'm a decorated veteran
and
it led me to
law enforcement you know i wanted to
continue
for
quite a while and i've been working here
at bexley for 24 years i started in 1998
and worked my way up from line officer
to sergeant patrol sergeant to
detective supervisor all the way to
deputy chief and i'm
currently in that role along with the
interim chief job and
i really genuinely love this community
the department i work with i
i love the officer we've built a great
team and i had the privilege of
of you know being a part of the process
the hiring process for at least the last
10 years and we have built probably the
best team that we've had
since
i've been here
and
i would like to continue to drive this
train because we have tremendous things
to do
and i want to meet a lot more people in
this community and get to know them well
and
yeah so that's a little bit about me but
i appreciate the questions already and
uh look forward to speaking with one of
you in the future so thank you
thank you so much
well good evening my name is gary lewis
i am currently the assistant vice
president of operations and the chief of
police at the university of louisville
and for those that don't know
it could be enunciated louisville
louisville
or very directly just global
i've enjoyed my tenure there it's been
four years my portfolio consists of
business operations human resource
management i oversee emergency
management fire department police
department dispatch security
environmental health and safety as well
as what we call uh our security forces
as well
like i said been there for about four
years started my career 30 years ago
with the ohio state highway patrol i
spent 22 years with that organization
rose through the ranks had a number of
responsibilities throughout our great
state and had retired spent some amazing
time at the ohio state university was in
media and public relations while i was
there i managed a number of incidents
and issues during my tenure i've got an
amazing opportunity to get back into law
enforcement when the chief of ohio state
said here there's a great job in
cleveland at cleveland state you really
should think about it i applied and i
found myself there at cleveland state
university and got to leave the men and
women there at that amazing institution
fast forward here i am live actually
it's an amazing community i grew up here
in central ohio
i am a west side hilltop kid who
understands the complexity and the
uniqueness of bestly in central ohio i'm
a father of five i have four sons who
are currently serving the united states
military i'm all over our country i have
a three-year-old daughter that i'm
hoping
to introduce all of you to in the very
near future
thank you so much and so now that you've
gotten some insight into who they are
and their why in terms of why they want
to become your next chief of police we
have a few other questions for you guys
so we're going to get right to it and
this time they will have about a minute
and a half to answer your questions so i
want to be mindful of that
and so actually mcdowell i want to start
with you
this one is really centered around
institutional collaboration
so when you think about the community
the mexi community community members and
groups have sought greater involvement
in the development and implementation of
policing in our community i'm sure
you've heard that throughout the day
today
and so
the question is how have you previously
partnered with communities beyond
elected leadership
to help develop or modify policing
services in your prior roles
so i'm going to speak about access and
legitimacy
as a government body
we are supposed to be accessible to the
community
we're supposed to be accessible to the
community and being accessible means
beyond the responsibilities of just
simply attending the meeting it means
making sure that i ask your phone and be
transparently honest in the best way
possible when someone has a question
about police operations there's
something that's happening in the
community that's where that connection
starts
so and beyond that
it's also about getting out of the
community and being visible and
available so that leads back to
legitimacy see if you're accessible to
the community
then the community is more likely to see
you as being more legitimate if as an
executive i'm modeling that behavior for
the staff as well as supporting them and
we're out engaging the community
together then that's how we build trust
because between the front-line officers
who you're likely to encounter more than
you may encounter me
as long as we're promoting that vision
of community that's how we
that's how i have been able to
accomplish that goal and will continue
to move that mission forward with you
and this really is part of us
and so you mentioned the accessibility
how do you build those relationships
whether it's with schools k-12 and we
have a college
university in our city as well religious
institutions businesses uh city
government and collaborate with them so
that they can receive the police and
support that they're seeking right well
we policed by the consent of the
community
and so in order to know what the
community's needs are you have to
connect
and it's also about meeting with each
individual institution
meeting with as many residents as
possible because all of you have
individual needs and all of you have
different expectations of
leslie police department so in order to
best understand those needs and to offer
a better best path forward we have to
have
ongoing relevant conversations because
one thing is critical to the success of
any executive you can have the best
plans but if you fail to communicate
effectively on multiple levels and
especially keep your staff updated as
well as the community update on what is
happening the question that you pose to
me which goes back to access and
legitimacy that access is communication
legitimacy is connected
be fair
thank you
same question
how have you previously partnered with
communities beyond elected
leadership to help develop or modify
policing services
in your world
yes well thank you for the question i
you know i did graduate from capitol
university here in the city and um
a lot of the
personnel over there and my so my 24
years here i've had the pleasure of
establishing long-term relationships
with
a lot of people
including the law enforcement community
that i meet with every month of the
local franklin county chiefs of
it police me a lot of insight for what
from what they're doing and it lets me
bring that back here
and
you know
i've always been a guy that's been 100
accessible and i'm willing to talk to
anybody
and
solve problems and listen to concerns
and uh you know achieve mcdonald's right
you have to be willing to meet with them
but also you got to go forward and not
only just meet with them you have to
actually
do the work
i am a working chief i always have that
working deputy chief as well i like to
get out there and fix it up with the
team and
it holds a lot of credit with the team
and
i've met with a lot of religious
institution leaders stakeholders in this
community and i continue to do so to
solve concerns and problems that they
may be experiencing you know if they
don't feel like they're getting from the
current
staff or my credit tester i'm going to
you know build back those relationships
so
you know i i do value um talking with
every individual here in this community
and i look forward to saying the future
thank you so much
anything to help develop or modify
policing services as you have been
building those relationships anything
you'd like to add at all
well yeah i would like to
actually establish more
current and regular meetings with
different groups in this community you
know in that
questionnaire that they put out you know
months ago
it allowed us to find out what groups
are available in this community
and what concerns they had and i don't
like to offer
you know
my hand and and getting to know these
people and meet with them on a regular
basis even a monthly basis or a
quarterly basis
and establish
concerns that we may have and continue
to give them the best possible service
that we can give and if that means
departmental changes if that means
revising policy if that means procedure
changes
then that's all me because that's what i
do now so i would love to continue those
discussions thank you so much
again this is the two of our questions
the first one is centers on how have you
previously partnered with communities
beyond elected leadership to help
develop or modify policing services in
your private roles
so i'll start in cleveland partnering
with the fbi developing a fbi student
academy that provided services for
students
to learn more about that organization
and more about cleveland state
university against police department
partnered with the city of cleveland and
developed the first partnership ever to
have an other agency work with them and
having a horse mounted unit which was an
amazing tool that we partnered and had
this high visibility of our officers
with cleveland pd
monitoring the campus as well as the
community
i've continued that relationship in
louisville and building relationships
not only within the campus community but
externally to answer the question
succinctly oh lou was adjacent to campus
and i meet with them every other week to
talk about critical issues how we can
support that community although it's not
in our jurisdiction but the visibility
that presence is extremely helpful we
have partnered with local police
department in providing additional
levels of support for them during crisis
following brianna taylor and so many
other things
relationships that is my strength
building partnerships with external
agencies and entities that have a vested
interest i create a suburban community
network of all law enforcement agencies
in jefferson county and that has been a
huge success in sharing resources as
well as having to go to communicating
network and building so
so lots of examples of that dynamic that
go far from high schools middle schools
elementary as well as other governmental
entities
and i want to make sure that we're
giving equal time to everyone so it's
too hard to that anything else you'd
like to add related to building
relationships with community
institutions businesses
anything else you want to elaborate on
uh yes ma'am so with the building on
that so on the southern police institute
was founded in 1955
this is it
encourages agencies from all over the
world to send officers there we have
built a relationship with them that had
never existed we have created a student
internship program with the school of
criminal justice that allows our
students who are there at the university
of louisville to graduate we hire them
we have a three-year agreement putting
them through that training that's also
built a great relationship for us we
either just continue to see a lot of
success in building on the internal as
well as the external and making those
partnerships
thank you so much
to help develop or modify policy
services
in your priorities
so in my in my three years my last three
years in dayton i was gifted with the
opportunity to serve the downtown navy
community in downtown dayton if you're
not familiar is about the size of that
um it includes the oregon district where
i live
and it is a
very complex
atmosphere of different types of
businesses religious institutions
and large and small companies
restaurants
all of these breweries that are coming
in
and so i the first thing i did was i
went out and i met with my partners and
i listened to them and i just learned
what their priorities were
the downtown dayton business partnership
was concerned about visibility of police
officers
and um also about our really
not great reputation for being very
aggressive in parking enforcement
and the mayor actually looked at me in
the meeting and said fix it right
so
that's what i was tasked with so i
listened to people and then i reached
out and worked with different partners
to implement strategies to make those
changes that you talk about
one was a focus book patrol program
and as a part of that project we didn't
just listen to the community and respond
to their needs
and we asked them what they thought of
the idea and we incorporated their
suggestion and feedback into the actual
strategy
and then the second part of that was
listening to our parking enforcement
staff
and asking them to build better
relationships with the community
as we employ new strategies
and then the second part of it building
relationships talk about and family
examples that you want to share how you
go about building
relationships to collaborate with the
various organizations absolutely and so
all of my colleagues here have really
really excellent answers um but i'll add
to that and say it can't just be
i can't be the only person in the
organization that's out there building
relationships
i make a practice every time i go to a
community event or a meeting i always
bring someone with me someone who might
not normally be exposed to community
engagement as part of their own police
department it one prepares them for
leadership and it expands those
relationships beyond just me and to the
whole agency
is and that i actually try to be a
friend of mine to come here tonight just
because i'm so used to always bringing
everybody along
thank you so much and so next we want to
get into best practices talk a little
bit about that and get your views on
best practices
she's probably going to start with you
with this question
bexley's municipal leadership values
creativity and creative problem solving
and innovative leadership across all
departments
what is the relationship between law
enforcement and innovation and if you
could provide some examples on how you
have problem solved in a creative way
and original ways throughout your career
and anything you want to add about uh
implementing best practices in the
organization
thank you very much
so in 2016 i was given the task of
revamping our whole policyman which is
not an easy thing to do
so
i took it upon myself
to
establish 100 plus policies written
implementing them into our agency
and uh currently working on the
procedure manual now it's pretty healthy
right now but um
so that was based on
a lot of concerns um from the public and
just noticing that we just didn't have
the right
um
so
that was a lot of hard work you know all
these other agencies have teams of
people hr people attorneys
stakeholders that are in those meetings
and doing that
it was just me so
i take pride in it i worked very hard to
do it
and now we have some of the best
practice
of law enforcement executive of
research policies
now here at bexley we're still growing
right i'm always looking to evaluate and
establish more
to better serve our community and
as far as some innovative ways
um
this year we've we've tried to
look into the flock camera system to add
to our our community for for safety
and uh some data management system
upgrades to get transparency out there
with some statistics
thank you very much
best practices
best practices it's a great topic
you know while at cleveland state
university we had them so the gold
standard in law enforcement is clear
glee is an acronym
for accreditation and that is really the
standard that all agencies across the
country no matter the size look to build
towards so i had successfully got us
through the clea accreditation process
we were successful at that it is still
continuing with with policies with
practices with ensuring that things are
being consistent
fast forward to my tenure now at the
university
and looking at what innovation what
technologies are existing and we know
that as we continue to become smarter
and technologies are there we are
implementing as we speak i'm doing a
beta and looking at technologies that
involve camera improvement license
reading
the need for lighting and camera
coverage when i got to the universal
louisville we had about 400 cameras
we're up now to 2000
and that's in a four-year span so the
emphasis on technology on improving and
upgrading and looking for new best
practices and becoming a smart campus
that has been under my watch
thank you as we pass the mic down
i want to remind everyone that if you
have a question
raise your hand we'll get a notebook to
you uh as we
continue
so let's practices examples excellent so
this gives me an opportunity to talk
about evidence-based practices or
evidence-based policing and i was
fortunate to spend some time with the
national institute of justice in a
program called leads law enforcement
advancing data and science and
as a component of that i was gifted for
the opportunity to work in presidents at
nij
focusing on evidence-based practices so
an example of that when we talked about
that foot patrol project i worked with a
researcher at the university of
cincinnati and he analyzed all of the
crime hot spots in our downtown we
identified the six places where we
tended to see crime
and we worked with our officers to get
them to deploy in 15-minute increments
in those places which is based on an
actual research uh practice
uh or a piece of research by a
researcher at george mason university
that in 15-minute improvements we can
have the greatest effect on crime
reduction in our communities as we ask
our officers to get out of their cars
engage with people and walk around for
at least 15 minutes we studied that
we followed it up with a data analysis
and then we looked at the outcomes and
at the end of the year our researcher
told us that we actually prevented
something like 81 crimes
in those areas
and so as an example of a best practice
or evidence-based practice we were
successful with that and it created a
framework that we could use to redeploy
whenever we had problems with specific
parts of the study and so we had we had
a system that we could ask our officers
to go out and do some foot control based
on those principles of data tracking
thank
[Music]
so
in order to understand best practice you
also have to understand what does not
work for you
so as chief rule has indicated
the standard for most organizations law
enforcement i also work for an
accredited law enforcement agency and so
ensuring that we have best practices my
primary responsibility is to assess the
operations of the organization and write
a report to identify any trends or
patterns or training or policy needs
based upon evaluating a process but in
order to understand best practice you
also have to understand there's a review
process that must be afforded to that
process to be effective
so it has to be an ongoing evaluation
because when we work in one community
may not always work in another so with
each idea or initiative it's like you're
forming a hypothesis if i change this
one area in
my use of course policy or my pursuit
policy i'm expecting to see a different
behavioral performance so when you
implement these best practices or
promising practice you have to review
that process and so with the support of
my team the command staff and our
trainers
we just recently rolled out bodyboard
cameras which
isn't new
but it's still an innovative process to
again comes back to that access
legitimacy in building trust for the
organization which matters most in this
korean culture
thank you
so chief we're coming to you with the
next question
and we're moving into safety you know
that was one of the one of the top
questions and uh conversations in our
community dialogue and so we want to
start
with this question
mass shootings you know we've seen so
too many
and so the community certainly has a
concern about that uh just from a global
perspective
and so
uh
bexley has a vibrant community of
schools as you know places of worship
and other
institutions
how will you work to ensure the safety
of all of our communities
so one of the things that i've done
at seven years part of the fbi
joint terrorism task force i'm also on
the executive committee and so we get
executive briefings from dcc
and working with those federal partners
is key in making sure that we're staying
up to date on what's happening working
with our state and local partners and
doing things that's um there so fema is
the national standard structure if you
will in emergency management and making
sure that you're preparing incident
action plans and evaluating and building
these plans working with all your
partners
as we know especially with what we've
seen that's happened in the jewish
community in our synagogues is
developing some risk management
tools and assessments and be proactive
in looking for risk mitigation who is
more at risk in developing plans around
that to see how to mitigate how to
address those concerns those potential
threats
obviously having the relationship with
the fbi has been huge in also having
them present so for example we just had
fourth of july a major event here in
bexley and having those pre-plannings
working with those partners having those
relationships would be key critical and
monitoring what's not happening in this
community happening in the state but
across the country
thank you
i feel like you're doing this on purpose
anyway um
i i really it breaks my heart to have to
say i've already done this i've already
looked at this in august of 2019 we had
a mass shooting in my neighborhood
i was home at the time i heard the shots
shortly after i got a phone call
seven of my officers were involved in
this
going back to foot patrol not to keep
revisiting that same thing that strategy
is what led to
seven of my officers being at one foot
in that area at the time of the match
within 30 seconds
they were right there they responded
immediately within 30 seconds they
stopped this year
the absolutely horrific part of this is
that 30 seconds
was almost too slow he was able to kill
nine people
in 30 seconds
and so having a good strategy
having good training
because we've worked with our officers
to do this kind of training in one of
our community nightclubs
and we prepared them we talked about it
we had a strategy
and in 30 seconds this guy was still
able to kill nine people and only 27
so we need to do more we need to do more
as a community and we need to do more as
a nation
seven highly trained police officers
against one untrained young man
with a high velocity high capacity right
nine people
in 30 seconds
it's unacceptable and it has to be
unacceptable and acceptable to all of us
but while we talk about that we will
continue to train we will continue to
prepare and we will continue to build
strategies
um
[Music]
it's also conducting table top exercises
and working with your community as a
what if
wow it's happening david thankfully it
hasn't happened here but we're seeing it
often enough
that it's time to start having more
community conversations and particularly
um today i had a conversation with one
of the residents and the question was
asked how are you going to protect my
baby
as my police chief
i need you to know how you want to
protect
before an officer gets there
and so we have to teach you how to
sustain yourself
if you can't flee from the situation
but we also need to talk about best
practices in the last question
what's happening nationally should be
teaching us now what we need to be
paying attention to
do we have a proper security locks on
the schools when the police respond to
someone who's a potential threat are we
reporting them
through the court system to make sure
their red flags have been unable to
purchase the weapon
are we paying attention to the behaviors
of people who make those threats to us
and knowing how to intervene in knowing
who to call to ensure
that we are putting forth every year
forward to protect you
so it is a community effort but
prevention you paying attention and
reading those reports from previous
incidents will help us inform help
inform us on how we should look forward
as a community to keep you safe
so
recently as you know we just completed
the fourth of july event here in back
slate and that was my 24th
event that i have worked
helped plan
and
we are always constantly looking for
ways of improving security and you know
throughout my career with establishing
relationships with all the law
enforcement professionals in the
community in the central ohio area
i was the liaison terrorism task force
member for rafc and
allowed me to
establish a lot of rapport
in
contacts with homeland security and
it helped develop plans to
help out in these large events
that we included in the last few years
so
with the collaboration with local
leaders
you know putting in place large salt
trucks dump trucks to prevent cars from
going down people
um we have um
established
partners that will come in undercover
and uniform to help out with security
and um
and as well as so
for the high schools
in the schools around the city we
currently
have collaboration with lockdown drills
our men and women here at bexley are
highly trained we
establish critical incident training
constantly when giving opportunity and
resources that we have here in in
the department
so we are always looking for ways to
improve but
given our track record i think we do a
very very good job here at bexley and
we're always confident every time we
have a large event that
it's going to go on with
um
with a safe
safe
evening for the katy
thank you thank you very much
so this next question um another
topic of interest in the community as we
were
[Music]
continuing those community forums
and it is working with minority groups
i'm going to come to you major with this
question i'll share my mic with her
and so this question really centers on
the fact that uh nationally and
even recently here in ohio
um
officer-involved shootings have shined a
collective light
on racial disparities in policy
members of the minority community in
columbus have expressed a fear that as
they drive through bexley
they might be targeted by our police
so how can you actively nurture an
environment where our bestie streets
remain safe
and that all people
in bengali and surrounding communities
feel comfortable visiting our city and
any data or benchmarks you might want to
employ they have
addressed the effectiveness of
my best shot here because this is worthy
of a much longer conversation
this is a national issue
and cities all over the country are
experiencing the same thing
this is where we look at evidence-based
policing evidence-based practices we
look at the data there are opportunities
for improvement and opportunities to do
better
and first and foremost is we know
through evidence
that when we focus our traffic
enforcement efforts on traffic problems
when we focus on safety issues
we tend to see reductions in crashes
injuries and fatalities
by the front doesn't go up
and
the disparity effects are changed
they're reduced
and so we do a better job of serving the
community in ways that
doesn't produce the kind of collateral
that we're talking about
and the other component of that is is
sometimes
we use traffic enforcement to address
violent crimes and drug products
and there are much better ways to do
that
using a traffic stop to address violent
private drug problems in a community is
like doing surgery with a shotgun
right
we want to do that with a scalpel we
want to give our officers better
technology and resources so that they
can go after violent criminals they can
investigate crimes and they can do it
constitutionally with search warrants
rather than using a shotgun to
take out a kidney stone
i'm getting the wrap up
i'm sorry
i had the unfortunate pleasure of going
through uh for officer involved
shootings
i've been in a position of leadership
and what really sustains the agency is
the relationships that they have with
these communities
well as the major said this is an answer
that can't be
answered in just under the short span
of what i would tell you is
that you have to be willing
to stand in the gap and have a
conversation with those who are willing
to talk to you
oftentimes you may be the first
individual who may be open to having
that meaningful dialogue but in doing so
it's important to set ground rules and
parameters but also expectations for
yourself as well as your staff or anyone
that's observing because their interest
in the conversation is have their
interests satisfied but also there may
be some trauma associated that may
extend beyond their actual interaction
with you
and so it requires a high degree of both
social and emotional intelligence to
address this issue effectively but if
you understand change initiatives
if we do a better job at the initial
contact
people may still
have those perspectives about law
enforcement but they're at least saying
very highly but uh
gentlemen defend our officers we have a
great team of officers and we are
not heavy-handed
at all so i believe we just did a study
on that last
year 70 something 77 percent of our
stocks they go away for warning so
we're here to try to educate people when
they come through
but we're not going to let you
you know commit violations when you come
through banks we have a lot of
pedestrian traffic in this city and we
try to keep everybody safe
and there's an awful lot of guns out
there on the street and we have a great
rate of pulling those illegal guns off
the street we've got a property we're
going to improve that full of guns
um
we
try really hard to keep this community
safe
and
i think this is you know this is not a
public safety is not a spectators court
it takes the community to
get involved as well so
if they're if they're getting second or
third-hand counts of stories of
mexican police officers who
make stops you know based on race i
would challenge them to
to come in to talk with us to look at
the video to understand how the officers
treat these
traffic
stops and the people that occupy these
cars and just get a true sense of the
good character of men and women and work
in this agency
because i really do value the work that
they do here and i think it's it's
unfair for some of these people to feel
that way but i do understand and i'm
going to have this conversation
[Music]
so i want to address the elephant in the
room and say perception is reality
and that perceived reality to many
people
or travel through this community is very
real you've got to be honest about that
and i think regardless of what the data
says that that feeling
that individuals have is real so how do
we address that you got to be accessible
you got to be transparent and you have
to be willing to listen and develop
those relationships with key
stakeholders and start to chip away
those perceptions
those realities and how people feel
because if there are anxieties that
start to
increase when a person sees that welcome
to bestly sign then we've not done our
job
feeling safe
is so critical to the citizens but it's
also just as important for those
traveling in and out of this community
but also having this firm but fair
mentality but changing that culture that
belief that that feeling i think is
going to be key no matter which one of
us is selected for this position i think
that it's very important to work with
key stakeholders in every aspect in this
community from our jewish community to
our african americans our black and
brown or lgbtq and talk about
how they feel
on different issues and how the response
has been in the past and how it will be
in the future
thank you
somebody touched on morale and change in
part of your responses so we're going to
move into a question regarding morality
change it is an issue that's facing
departments all over the country we know
that we've seen it over the last two
years and beyond so what specific morale
issues do you think might impact
bentley police officers and as chief
what steps would you take to boost that
correct and secure officer retention and
at the same time
recruit quality candidates to the open
positions
so i am starving
so morale is
um definitely comparable to the
retention
of fear that
i live with uh this has been happening
the last couple years but uh
and you see the nationwide you see the
numbers
and
law enforcement and it's concerning you
know and
you have to understand the reasons why
they want to leave this profession and i
do understand it you know and
i've been a part of the hiring process
for a long time and i've seen the
numbers dwenville and wendell and
you know but we've managed to get the
best the best out of what we have with
the poll
as far as keeping the morale up you know
we're a small agency we have
limited
mobility in our department we have a
detective
that's it like we don't have the
resources we're 32 school we don't
have to operate a swat team or
canine team or all these other glorious
things that these large department
departments have for resources so
how do you build brian well you you give
the officers structure you give them
training you give them the sense of
wanting to be here
um
you have city leadership strongly the
city leadership that provides
the stuff that we need to do our job i
think we do have that here
um
but the mobility question you
we have a lot of talented people here in
bexley and you want to see some of your
rock stars get promoted you want to see
them move up to change and i think we
need to allow them
i think it's strong and we have very
promotable people here in our meetings
here we need to see them move up and i
think that's a strong point
thank you so much
so i think with morale you know arouse
my responsibility at the end of the day
as the leader it falls on me and i think
just assessing
the internal dynamics the challenges
that come in as an outsider we're going
to have to evaluate that and evaluate
that quickly i think there are some
low-hanging fruit opportunities though
to find some wins and increase and
improve morale
he's also listening internally to the
department to a lot of the things that
are taking place in this profession this
space also means listening to the
community
i think it goes hand in hand and evan
flows clearly with what you can share
with
the
inability to have upper growth it's
great insight to kind of understand some
of the challenges that have been going
on so i appreciate even hearing that but
i do think that it's listening and then
applying that and i talk about this
often but we have to manage up as
leaders it's my job to manage up to
share with council to share with the
mayor to share with stakeholders how
important these items are that if we're
15 30 50 or 500 strong that these are
opportunities of growth development as
well as morale to be able to improve the
services
thank you
exactly
so to expand on what's being said
it's also important to create a shared
vision and to identify within that
vision what is important to the existing
staff there was a moment when for for
any one of us in the areas of where we
were there was a moment where you were
really excited when you started the job
you knew what the qualifications were
you knew what the hours were you knew
what the mobility opportunities were
but somewhere along the way you lost
your engagement somewhere along the way
you began to look elsewhere and so as
my two colleagues have already stated
my responsibility is to understand first
is it because we lack effective
management because oftentimes people
lose interest because of who their
direct supervisor is
so we need to identify that we need to
make sure our supervisors have the right
tools we need to make sure our reward
system is in place
to identify
those individuals who are totally
committed to public safety the mission
and vision of this organization because
the best pay
the best equipment
the best community
that's what you expect that's what they
expect but we also have to make sure we
have the best management
we're listening
and we're inclusive in our ideas because
when you have a really talented staff
and they're committed they don't want
change course down the throat because
they know they're smart enough to help
you guide that process and see the
mission through
thank you
so policing is relational and
most police officers will tell you that
they want to know that people care about
them right the community cares about
them and leadership cares about that so
that's one of the most important things
i in a previous position of leadership i
talked to everybody in my unit and i
asked every one of them
to tell me about a really good day that
you had at work
then every one of them told me stories
of
serving other people caring for other
people
and a lot of it really is about caring
and so we have to give them what we ask
them to give to the community we have to
take care of that we have to practice
trauma-informed leadership just like
we're talking about practicing trial
metaphor
we have to make sure
that we're caring for the organizational
spirit
in a way that makes it a good place to
to be people want
[Music]
you're winning right
so
so that's that's how i see it in terms
of
improving morale or addressing morale is
to make sure that we're listening to
folks and we're caring for them we
express to them that we care for them
we're giving them opportunities to bring
their best selves to work every day and
that includes training that includes
leadership
and it definitely includes working
work-life balance
because the one thing we've learned in
the last couple of years
is that if we give our whole selves to
our jobs
that we're cheating ourselves of the
other joys and experiences in life
thank you so much before i ask one more
question i'm going to ask ben hackman
and gloria to gather any questions from
our
community and we'll be able to ask a
couple of those as well so
communications
it is critical in all we do
and so this next question centers on
communications engagement
approachability and i want
[Music]
has a strong sense of community and you
probably have a sense that today as
you've been speaking with others and it
really is strengthened by the shared
experiences that the community has and
just the camaraderie that this community
has in gatherings and events so
how might you take advantage of these
occasions for the department to engage
with our community
and
any other strategies you might share to
personalize those engagements and
communications so first and foremost i
want to speak to the uh
the
patrol staff the officers
i will and i'm committed to
showing off my roll calls on a regular
basis to keep you apprised of some of
the ideas and the vision and vision that
we discuss so that we can stay focused
on what's important
but when it comes to the community i'm
going to show up
and be happy about attending the event
it's exactly what i do now
i am invited i am invited to events and
i show up and playing clothes
i brought my
fiancee with me to events because i said
i want you to see the people that i
serve and i want you to see the
experiences so when i come home and i
talk about my day you have some level of
understanding
you know being a police officer to me is
still an honorable job
and
this is the moment
for all of us who said we really want to
make a difference
the community and the world and those
who have different experiences with the
police they're crying out for us to show
up and bring our best selves to the
profession so what you can expect from
me
is i like to bike i like to hike a
photographer so if you're having one of
those events i'm going to show up i will
bring my kids
unless you ask me to show them as a
police sheet but i am happy to
participate in your community events and
i've had the pleasure of meeting some of
you and further these conversations
already
thank you major
sorry
um so as far as communication goes um i
think
we've all played the telephone game
right and the one piece of communication
that sometimes we leave out is that
feedback and making sure that we're
listening to each other but then we're
also
verifying that we understand each other
i think that's a really important part
of it so it's it and and i gotta tell
you
anybody who has tried dating late in
life in 2022
understands that communication
in our era is insane
it's social media it's tick-tock
as my father used to call it there's a
match book
right there's twitter and text message
and email and phone calls and i don't
even know anybody that uses the phone
anymore right i have friends that just
won't even answer and so there's so many
ways that we communicate now that it
really creates a challenge
to communicate effectively and we've got
to establish cultural competency
throughout the organization to use all
of those tools the best way possible
it's about showing up it's about being
present but it's also about recognizing
that not everybody in the community can
show up and so we have to take advantage
of all the technology and all the other
things we have to make sure that
we're sending those messages out as
clearly as possible listening and then
providing the feedback to make sure that
he knows we actually understand what
they're telling us
thank you very much much yes
chief louis
so i believe
to be relevant is to be president
you have to be present
and i think that what has been shared
with technology and social media
youtube videos
having that engagement that mechanism to
be able to communicate what's happening
and oftentimes we forget our primary
is internal
i can't tell you how many great
communicators do a phenomenal job going
back to the community but they forget
their own department their own officers
dispatchers etc and not sharing that
vision that message so i think you've
got to make sure that it's consistent
it's frequently often you got to be
willing to accept and hear what's going
on i do a number of different events
from chapter chief i do
community forums
the mayor's appointed me to do things
with local metro my own department
across the city as a whole and so making
myself available being present being
relevant and pushing out those messages
as well as hearing that communicating it
back out what those best practices are
the vision the direction is very
important so to me i think what everyone
has shared and then building on those
and using those technologies will be key
[Music]
bike i'm always online control like
um
i like to ride through this city and
you know pop in and talk to business
owners and stop by and see people that
i've known for the 24 years i've been
here catching up on with people and uh
you know
and i i value that i invited the
relationships shifts that i've built
since i've been here and
you know i was just thinking i
was i was going up it was you know it's
graduation time about a month ago and
i'm headed up one street and i see a
banner for
a
graduate locally here
i remember her you know i remember a
call that i went on when when
as an infant she was an on breather and
i had the opportunity to bring her back
and
that stuff fits
with me you know i love to watch
families grow and
watch their successes and be there for
their failures
helping them learn helping them
you know go through life if they don't
get it at home they'll get it from me
they'll they'll get structured they'll
get someone to talk to and
that's why i love being out there you
know i've always done that and i always
will and i hope i can do that in the
future thank you very much
and thank you uh community members who
have submitted your questions i'm going
to start with the first one and i'm
starting with
the microphone
there have been police interactions with
the bexley minority youth population
that have led to mistrust in some
strange relationships
how would you work to rebuild that trust
and what changes to police practice
would you make to prevent those negative
interactions
well we have
currently we have ongoing
collaboration discussions with uh
these on regular basis and we have two
talented
staff members that
are in those meetings and
we discuss back and forth
how we think
juveniles are
talked to
our approaches and how we can better do
that
and their ideas are actually
you know 90 of what we're already doing
so
it's a misconception on a lot of
a lot of things because a lot of stories
come in a second and third hand and once
we're able to we had a luxury of
getting body cameras a few years ago and
that's helped tremendously because
we can put that stuff out there right
away and dispel any
any uh
you know accusation to show them this is
what this is how we care this is what we
do and they interact with you this is
how we
treat them and i think that's that's
helped a lot
and we'll take a case by case if we have
to but um
you know it's an ongoing battle it's
with with that narrative and
um
we've had two
two cases lately that it's concerning
because
it was legitimate law enforcement
purpose of talking to these
these juveniles who approached the
officers asking for help
we've got to keep those discussions
going with these juveniles we can't just
you know
don't talk to them because you're afraid
of what you might do to them because
once you stop talking juveniles
it's not going to be the best practice
thank you so much
is very
pointed and directed so not knowing the
full context but i will say this
that we've got to change the model of
how we do business as
really a profession i think that we
don't push back in communities enough
because i would ask questions as to
whoever called in
is what's illegal about being black and
walking in my neighborhood
why are we sending it houses of police
matter so i'm going to ask some
questions and we need to do a little
more push back on that initial call that
comes into dispatch what's suspicious
that's taking place that
involves a police response to this
matter
and we need to force that caller to
rethink
was this really or are you just
uncomfortable and it feels very
unfamiliar therefore you're initiating
to see something say something
was this really applicable and i think
that we need to completely change that
that mindset
one of the things that we've been doing
in the university
and i'm trying to
work with other agencies is to ask that
simple question
how is this a police matter why are we
engaging because once we show up and we
don't show up with one we don't show up
with two we show up with three or four
and now you've got a 12 year old asking
that question and that's what escalade
states and that
perception that you go back to is real
you get one time to make a first
impression i would not want that to
happen
father of five children i can tell you
that if that took place i'm gonna ask a
lot of questions if that's my child
and i don't want that to ever be a
parent's feeling to where that level of
engagement their first interaction with
next
this is our these are this is our
recurring rules right so we're talking
about interacting with kids we need to
capitalize on every one of those
interactions
to
uh
to
create an atmosphere where we're
recruiting kids out of these
interactions it may start off with
a kid coming up to a police officer or a
police officer approaching a child
but that child might very well be a
future police officer and so that's
right that needs to be very important
part of that conversation the other
thing is i also would like to have more
information about what is concerning
about these interactions
and
some more context or background
before
diving into
assessing
you know are these intersect
interactions we should be having
um is there a training issue
is there a perception issue and is there
a different way that we can approach
some of these issues if there's a
chronic problem involving kids in our
neighborhoods
that might be an opportunity to do some
problem solving and engage those kids in
the process
and there's a number of
examples i can give you
[Music]
to look at
you know noise
kids playing basketball on the streets
and just rattling off some complaints
that i've dealt with in the past my
approach to them was to always talk to
the kids listen to the kids and find out
what was going on and i learned so many
interesting things about neighborhoods
and communities that way
and so sometimes it may look like a
problem it's really an opportunity to
build a relationship and to recruit a
future place also
thank you chief medellin
and so i don't want the response to
suggest to the existing officers that
you're not doing what we're saying
it is the question that was asked of us
and so we're all sharing our
perspectives and what's possible
and so i can tell you
is i work with a diverse group of
officers from many backgrounds like
and everyone there is received well by
the community more often than not
it's amazing to see
on a squad called
i swap commander who's white the kids
are either literally chasing him around
like he's walking back and forth asking
do you have any stickers can you talk to
us and it was amazing to see because
most people would think that that would
probably be the most uncomfortable
volatile situation
so what i'm sharing with the group here
is is that
if this is the narrative that's been
shared
then
what doesn't work is taking a defensive
posture
because we all know about lawful
but also all for congress we know
but at the same time
once the kid more kids know us
and you can call the kids by their full
government name they're at least likely
to commit offenses in front of you and
so look at the opportunity to advance
the mission of policing
more so than
what's not happening
and how we can fix this
thank you very much and we have time for
one more question from the community and
i'm going to start with you achieve
mcdowell
our officers are in a position to have a
dramatic impact on the quality of
service
how can you engage these officers in
providing creative leadership
to achieve continuous improvement and
positive change and please provide some
examples okay
so
one of the examples is we talked about
morale earlier so when you talk about
change change is a process that
regardless of the reason regardless of
the need it has to be implemented with
care and concern
and so one of the issues that was
happening is during the mists of colvin
we were not communicating enough with
our staff about what was happening we
gave them all the pdp
and we sent them out the adjustment
patrol strategies but yet they still had
questions and so what i recognized was
i needed to spend more time talking with
the officers and asking them
is there anything else we could do to
support you during this critical moment
you are unable to take vacations because
the world is shut down
there's very little for you to do
so in that moment we have to be
concerned about the well-being of our
staff
it still comes back to building
relationships because if you wait until
there is a crisis
it becomes far more difficult to help
your staff or the community transition
through that
situation if there is still a high
degree of distrust whether that's
between the frontline officers
management or
the advocacy groups that you're still
going to need to rely on when the dust
settles and you need everyone to come
back
thank you so much thank you
so
i think i can reflect on my own
experience and what was life-changing
for me in this in my profession
was getting the opportunity to
advance my career through training and
networking a little bit outside of the
law enforcement
right so we have
phenomenal people working in this
profession and i've met so many great
people today already working at the
mexican police department
i want to paint a vision for the future
that gives them an opportunity to bring
their best selves to work every day and
to
advance their own personal
goals
to improve
to seek out training opportunities that
might be a little outside of what we
traditionally think of in law
enforcement training
i had the opportunity to go to an
academic conference once and i was like
a fish out of water there but i learned
so much and i made connections that i
brought back to my agency in my city and
we used that to continuously improve
what we were doing
and so there are a lot of opportunities
to listen to them to care about their
futures and to give them opportunities
to to again bring their best selves to
work and to be their best selves and i
think that's probably one of the best
ways to engage people and to motivate
them while giving them the opportunity
to act as leaders
work on projects and produce results
you know i stood up here and i hear
about what
you do about morale for your aids
and we offer the highest level of
service
of any department that i know of in fact
when another agency is here what we do
they laugh because you know we'll go out
and
we request that we get but we
accommodate because we're like that
we're good caring for character people
so we'll go out there and get squirrels
out
you know
out of a
basement a
window or clip inside and you know get
bats out of the house
and
we just do it all we you know we
this stuff we turn off water and they
could when it was a resident who didn't
have the ability to get down the
steering we'll run down there and help
them do that or turn off the alarm and
um we're one of the few agencies right
now in central higher level
investigating this community you know
that's the way this board is progressing
you know they just can't keep up with
the case but we take the time and care
provide that high level of service
we will continue to do that because we
have such great men women in this
department
you know
i don't think it's going
so i want to make sure that i answer the
questions succinctly so for the first
time tonight i'm going to ask you to
repeat the question so i can truly
answer it
how can you engage our officers in
providing creative leadership
to achieve continuous improvement
and positive change
colonel robert caramania
highway patrol in 1950 said look right
be right
look right and be right
and i think it's so important to lead by
example
i think it's so critical to be there to
be present
to implement change and looking at 21st
century policing and doing what our
community expects but this profession
deserves
it is evolving it's evolving quickly and
as we continue to change i think it's
our job as leaders
to monitor the temperature of
people and get away from the us versus
them and make it much more collective
about what it is that we do holistically
i think that i have a responsibility to
pass the torch and to develop to mentor
to look at succession planning from an
organization from a community i think
that there are so many opportunities
that are there
here within central ohio with other
agencies to build on that and to build
on those successes
so to me
that is going to be key in
just right and be right to be present
and to show them that example that's
needed in so many ways
thank you thank you so much and thank
you so much for your questions
before we give our candidates an
opportunity to have some closing
statements
i just want to take this moment to thank
them because those of you have questions
you've been going for non-stop and
i think we just need to give them a
round
[Applause]
[Music]
and we are right back to where we
started
one of the comments that really
stuck out to me in the community survey
which was very thorough was that we're
asking our police officers
and we're asking a lot of them we expect
a lot of them which is fair
it's a tough job
and it's an opportunity again to raise
the bar of possibility for everyone
to
this community is fantastic
i have seen such high commitment and
engagement for both the community and
the officers today and other city staff
this is an amazing place and i
i love baxley
i hang out here sometimes when you don't
know about it
so
i would absolutely love to spend more
time here to spend more time with all of
you i think that there are a lot of
opportunities
and a
real chance to
again raise the bar of possibility
so i want to come here because you're
here
because
there's a vibration that takes place
within this community that's unlike
anywhere else i've been
you have
how highly professional committed
engaged
citizens
you have a professional law enforcement
agency
who has done a tremendous job with
protecting
this city and when you research the city
it is still recognized as one of the top
suburbs
in the state of ohio
but that's only possible because of you
and so to be a part of continuing the
discussion that we've started this
weekend
it would be an honor
and i welcome the opportunity
to serve as your next police chief
and you can expect me to leave with a
high degree of intelligence
and morality
and humility
i'll be accessible and available to you
as often as i can
so it's been a long
long ride of
working in this community and this
department and
i can't tell you
the appreciation i have
the opportunity to do that and
i would like to continue
for years to come
get my strong leadership style and
best skill set is uh you know just
being
the most honest
um
accessible
person that i can be in you know when we
went through the recertification process
with the ohio collaborative
you know
when they received all of our data and
offered
certification forms and
we didn't just meet standards we
the luxury of building relationships
with i just
i just want to say that so
i appreciate it
in 1992
i went to the mount gilead highway
patrol coast
i was the only african-american in the
entire county
a gentleman by the name of greg rogers
took me under his name
brilliant man who we lost to cancer
about 15 years ago
my mentor who
i absolutely adored
three years ago i got a letter in the
map
it's from a company called american
century gift trust
in 1995 greg had put a few dollars away
that will mature on my 50th birthday
i opened it up and said there's no
substitute for loyalty
invested in me years ago
and long after passing that i made a
commitment to him to his legacy
to mentor
to be the next
conduit to the next generation of this
profession that i have devoted 30 years
of my life to
i will never say anything negative
except that we've got to get better
and it starts with people like us
sitting here we're committed to you
someone will get this opportunity
and whoever it is if it's not me i
salute you and say that if you need me
i'm here i will support you and i think
my character and my track record has
proven that and so i appreciate this
opportunity to present to this amazing
community and potentially look forward
to that opportunity
thank you so much
to ask each of you to stand and give
these candidates a round of applause
[Music]
thank you
[Applause]
thank you in a round of applause
so
i think uh you get a sense just from uh
this evening the caliber candidates uh
that were talking to us this evening
i want to tell you
i don't take it lightly that you you all
chose to spend the day with us
and last week quite a bit of time with
us and
uh
when i was asking council members is it
fair to
put four candidates up on the stage
together
and make them sort of like
five for this
of course i asked the wrong people
because council members we had to do
that
fair enough
but thank you for your
gameplay uh participation as we have at
this this evening and we have some
additional engagement tomorrow
and still more to come
what i promised to you uh when we
started this process was that i'm
i'm here to hear your feedback and
consider that
as i work with our city council to
select our next achievement police
tonight is one data point
but your feedback on the data point is
incredibly important
we have an online survey i talked about
it's linked to on this live stream it's
on a it's not a piece of paper that was
handed out to you but there's also the
phone that no one uses anymore
you can pick it up 614-559-4210
is my dry clients say all
uh
i will call you back i would like to
hear what you have to say
about this evening
i love your online comments too
but i also love your conversation
so
we're not gonna rush we've not rushed
anything about this process except
making sure that everyone will get here
one room tonight for you guys uh we're
not gonna rush to final decisions we
still have a couple more more things
that we need to do
so we're going to consider everything
we've done through that interview
process
we're going to do some more in-depth
background checking
as we
go forward to make an offer to that
candidate
city council
is an incredibly important part of this
process i was talking about something
earlier today with somebody and they
were like so how does this work you know
you put a candidate for it council has
to vote for him what if council doesn't
vote for them
i said look if we put a candidate
forward
a council is split or is going to
like basically bomb that candidate then
i'm not doing my job
so we're building consensus together as
a community with your input
and the values that you've expressed
so thank you so much for you for being
here tonight we have a lot of online
listeners watchers right now and i
appreciate you guys being here this
stream will be available for the
community to watch
and to continue to provide feedback
on
i hope that everyone has a great safe
evening i hope that it stops raining
here for a while
thank you again a big round of applause
[Music]
thank you