I'm probably just like all of the rest of you that are here, but I would suspect that your feelings are even more um exaggerated, if you will, than mine. But I I I go to bed at night and I wake up thinking about the shots fired in Nancy Park, and it makes me angry, it makes me frustrated, it makes me disappointed that it happened in our town. And this isn't any way of of minimizing it, but then I think over the weekend about you know, gun violence throughout the world, and then even in the town about the same size as ours, Twin Falls, Idaho, three people killed at a brand new In-N-Out Burger, and many more wounded. We don't want any We don't We We are We are upset with shots fired, and rightly so. And just thinking about those people also is an important thing to be doing. Can't you hear very well? Okay. I'll I'll stand a little bit closer here. Thank you for that. Yeah, you might You might want to get away from the air conditioner, too. Um So, I can tell you that since this incident occurred, that our police department has been working non-stop trying to figure out who who did this, and doing the investigative work. And it has not been easy. There have not been a lot of people that have been real cooperative, even though there were many of many witnesses. And and we know this is happening around the region. It seems to be to me I remember when we had the uh during COVID, we had that surge in auto theft and carjackings by some young people. Uh it feels a little bit like that, and then they formed that task force that I was on down at the county. Mike Freeman was still the county attorney at that point in time. And we came up with some strategies around all of that, and and we've got some strategies we're going to talk to you about today, as well. First, I'm going to introduce there's there's elected officials here. I think it's important that some of them are here, and I'm really grateful that they're here. Ron Last, would you raise your hand, please? He's our senator that serves this area. He's also the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Public Safety Committee. So, to the extent that we get the state legislature involved here, he's going to be an integral piece of any of that type of strategy because we're going to have to employ a regional strategy and the chief is going to talk about that. And then Kate Agnew from the council is here. Uh and then Heather Edelson is here as well, our county commissioner. I saw her earlier. She's over here to the right. And did I Did I miss any other elected officials? Oh, Julie Risser from our council is here. I know James Pierce had to be out of town. And he wishes he could be here, but we're going to talk about as we go out in National Night Out and many of you will have parties in your neighborhoods. We're going to talk about this some more and some more detail. The chief and I will be out at half a dozen or so tomorrow night talking about it. And then on Wednesday night because we're taking the usual city council night for National Night Out. Wednesday night will be the city council meeting and we're going to take this up first hand. I think there will be people at the city council that want to talk to us about their thoughts about what's what's happened too and we're more than willing to to listen to folks. Some of you are going to have some great ideas here. We're going to have a conversation today when the chief is done. Uh but we've been working on not only the enforcement side of it to try to figure out what happened in the investigative side, but we're also thinking about what are we going to do about this? So, we got There's a three-pronged strategy that's been developed by staff. Uh I did some work too on the on the on the 90-day strategy, but they're going to talk about things in terms of enforcement, in terms of engagement and in terms of public policy, some things that we can do at the city council level to give our police a little bit more latitude in determining how many people can be in a park at any particular time for an event. So, um So, it doesn't mean we're going to pass it. They're going to bring that up as an issue. Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's on agenda. So, it's something we'll be talking about. Um and whether it's a good idea or bad idea, obviously, this is like everybody else, everybody's got opinions on this issue. So, we'll we'll be discussing that at length, I think, at the city council. And I can't tell you if there's a Peters position one way or the other on it. It's just an idea that some staff people have come up with that they want us to take a look at and address. So, we'll do it like we usually do it. We'll take a look at it carefully and we'll look at it whether it makes any sense. So, uh I'm going to bring the chief up now and he's going to tell you a little bit about the the things that I just touched on topically. And then we're going to have a conversation and be willing to take uh questions. And I think the chief will be great at uh at least providing information from a law enforcement standpoint. So, thank you, Chief Milburn. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh I'm Chief Todd Milburn. I've been here for about 5 years, and I wanted to get this meeting together and pull my people together to interact with all of you. We uh received a lot of emails, rightfully so. We know this is a very serious event, and we've uh done some communication out, but uh one of the things that I really appreciate doing is is community engagement, and really communicating to our community about facts, what's been going on, what are we doing forward, what does that plan look like to make this community even safer than it is in the last couple of years, right? So, that's the purpose of what we're doing here today is to give you these facts and talk more about what happened. And then we also want to do a Q&A at Q&A at the back end of that. I want to front end that uh load that to say that we're not going to be able to talk in depth about the investigation. We are after convictions, right? And so, we can't get into the nuances of exactly what happened and all the details that we're working on because our end goal is successful prosecution and conviction, not just arrest, but convictions, right? And so, I always want you to think about that as we answer some of those questions cuz I've been through a number of these kinds of community before, and we do get a lot of good questions, and rightfully so, people want to know information, but we just can't release all those details to get to that end result. So, today, I'm going to spend some time talking about an overview of the case. I'm going to work through some things. I want to quickly introduce some of my team here. I have Jake Ecker Ecker, he's one of my lieutenants. He oversees community engagement. He's going to talk up. Yeah, round of applause for Jake. Really good guy. And he oversees our uh many things in our department, but one of them is community engagement, and he's going to come up and talk a little bit about some other new things that we're going to do here for park safety. And then Ryan Schultz is my lieutenant in charge of investigations. You can give him a round of applause, too. Also a good guy. >> [applause] >> Um and so, he's going to come up and give you a little bit more information about a case update and talk about resources and things that we've been doing since the event. Okay, at a high level here now, it's just a quick overview of what's been going on here or what happened the night of here about a week and a half ago. As you know, uh we received a 911 call of shots fired in this park, and so we had a heavy response that came in. Not only did it did our police officers come in, but we had a number of partner agencies that came in here to assist us with that call. That included Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Bloomington, all of our regional patrol resources. So, if you were in the area, you likely saw a heavy response, and rightfully so. Officers investigated a call in the area. I came in. Members of the command staff came in as well because of the seriousness of the event, and so we were here in this parking lot aiding, providing leadership, and helping to process this scene. We had a number of witnesses here, um a number of people that were in attendance, and so we were able to identify a lot of people that were here, and we were able to hold on to and and uh have conversations with people and get people identified, and that's certainly key for an investigation. As we went through the investigation, uh we uh detailed a lot of things. We were able to collect some evidence. Again, I'm not going to be able to speak to exactly what that evidence is, and that's part of the investigation, but we processed the scene. And so, you probably saw Hennepin County Crime Lab, or you may have heard that they were here, and that's what they do is they process the scene from an evidentiary standpoint and so that work was completed. No arrest were made that night and the investigation is again still very much active and ongoing. And as we've gone through the investigation, we've assigned a number of detectives to handle this case and Ryan's going to talk a little bit about that a little bit more. One of the fundamental problems that we're having right now is lack of witness cooperation and that's what we're seeing with lots of these lots of these cases. I've been doing this job for over 30 years and this is always been a thing but it seems to be a little bit more pronounced nowadays than it ever has been before. We talk a lot about community engagement and building trust and working with partners in the community and we still continue to do that but one of again one of those challenges that we're observing and having difficulty as with is lack of communication or lack of people coming forward to give us information about what's going on. We have some of the best detectives in the state. We've solved a lot of high profile cases here in Edina in the last couple years. You're likely aware of that as well. I have 100% confidence in our team that they're able to successfully solve these cases. We're going to continue to work as hard as we possibly can and see this thing through but that's a that's a hindrance for us quite honestly. So we're going to keep working through that moving forward. Sorry, I got some feedback here. So as the investigation goes, I'm going to stop there. Ryan's going to come in in a little bit and talk a little bit more about the investigative perspective on what he's working on with his team. And another piece I want to highlight is communication, right? And so communication and how we communicate to the community. When this event happened, we sent out an alert through something called Rave and so many of you are signed up for that. You receive an alert about on average an hour or two after an event happens. It's criteria based and that alert came out to say an event is happening here. Stay clear. Police are on scene and they're investigating. That's really just intended to get people aware that we're working on a scene. It's complex. There's a lot of resources here in the area and that's what that was about. And then probably two to three hours later we sent out another one that the scene is relatively wrapped up and and we're moving on, but that's just intended again to give people information at a very high level about what's going on. It's also strategic in case we have major events, we can communicate effectively with people and give them communication on what they may or may not need to do if that is the case. We also sent out a city statements, so we the city our communications team sent out a press release just to give an update, a brief update to community. And so that happened a day or two later. And then we're here, right, today. And so what we need in law enforcement is time to process and go through investigations. Again, these are not solved online or through social media the next day. They take time. And so that's why we're here today. We need to give ourselves a little bit time to continue the investigation, but more importantly, right, come back here and have a conversation with people about some of these timely updates. So with that, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to pause. I'm going to bring Ryan up. He's going to talk a little bit about the investigative side and just expand on that just a touch more. Ryan, come on up. >> Thank you everyone for coming out today. Ryan Scholtz, I'm the lieutenant over CR investigative division. A little bit about the case update, what we can share. I want to apologize that I can't share everything for obvious reasons. It's an active investigation. We are limited on the amount that we can share because we want to have a conviction and we want these people to be held accountable for what they did here. I what I can assure you is we have a team of very very good detectives that are all working very hard on this case and they are very vested in making sure they figure out what happened. It's a challenge for us because our witnesses, as the chief alluded to, the witnesses, the people that were here, are not cooperating and providing us good statements of what happened. So we have to use non-traditional means to figure out what happened and that takes time. That's going through a ton of evidence to figure out who, why, and what happened here. But I can assure you that they are working very hard on that. What we have done because of the scale of it when that happened here in the park, those that live around here probably saw the patrol response from all of our neighbors that responded to help. We had a ton of officers respond here. And knowing we had a large scene, we had nine of our detectives come in and myself to come in that night to help interview all roughly 30-something people that were here in the park. It would be great if we had more cooperation from what was here. So we're still working on that side of it to gather that. We did collect some evidence on scene that we are actively going through and and working on to get more of a story of what happened to try to find out what happened that no one will tell us what they actually saw. So um that's our biggest challenge on on trying to do that. What we have realized through some of the information we've gathered already is it's a regional problem and it's throughout the metro. There have been incidents similar to this throughout the metro. So we have partnered with the ATF, the FBI the BCA to help us in the investigative front with some of their tools, technology, and expertise. So we're meeting with them. We've also formed a work group with our neighboring agencies, Eden Prairie, Hopkins, Minnetonka, St. Louis Park, Hennepin County Sheriff's Office to collaborate on a weekly basis of what kind of intelligence they're gathering and we're gathering and see if we can formulate some things together and put the pieces together and then also stay active on the intel to drive what else could happen or or it happen. So we've formed a really good partnership with our neighbors and they've been super helpful and I can assure you that we have really good detectives working on this case and we'll continue to work until we hold those accountable. And I'll turn it over to back to the chief. >> Thanks, Ryan. And just a little bit more background, I realized that I missed the front end of what happened here in St. Cloud. This is good for us to talk about because you're going to ask me this anyways, but when the 911 call came in, the question was well, what was going on here at the park at the time that led up to that. And so, what we had here was a group of I would say young adults, maybe youth, but probably more young adults that were using this park for a location to have events, right? Just a gathering. Decent kids, decent young adults as far as we could tell that were doing that and that was the intention. We had people show up and cause the problem was some type of a feud that went on between two groups of feuding groups, I would say, or groups of people. And that's what led to the gunfire. They weren't necessarily tied into the group, into the group that was already here, but they came here because they likely heard that there was an event going on and then just kind of happened to be the spot to come to that day, right? This is the pattern that we're seeing across the metro area. We've had unfortunately a lot of events that was already talked about at parks that have led to gunfire and it's a major issue that we're seeing across the metro area, right? And everyone's heard about that. Unfortunately, it impacted us, but again, I want to go back to our officers are very upset by this. We're upset by this. We don't allow this kind of thing to happen here. But again, we're going to continue to work hard to solve this and figure that out because from the police standpoint, we're about enforcement, we're about holding people accountable and we very much intend to do that. So, I want you to walk away and understand that from our perspective as well. So, with that, I'm going to bring Jacob. He's going to talk a little bit more about some of our resource. We'll come back to your question here in a minute, but at the end. Jacob, come on up. >> [applause] >> Uh thank you for being here today. I'm Lieutenant Jay Kackman. I oversee our professional standards as a lieutenant and as part of that community engagement, falls underneath my silo of responsibilities. So, what I really want to talk about is has been our approach here uh not just over the last week and a half, but all spring long. Uh, earlier in the spring, uh we started having issues out Centennial Lakes Park. I'm sure several of you have heard about the issues that were happening out there and we started taking approaches to um combat those disturbances and make the park safe for everyone. Not that it wasn't safe, but we were getting a lot of complaints out of it. And we realized from a law enforcement standpoint, we can't do it alone. So, we partner uh with Hennepin County. We have a joint community policing partner that's embedded with our uh police department who works hand-in-hand with our community engagement department. And with them, we're able to make uh connections with the community and be able to get individuals from the community to come out and help us with different uh groups of individuals that might be causing issues that we traditionally might not have the best luck uh making that contact with just as law enforcement. Uh as part of that, uh we also realized that we had to have the law enforcement response as well. So, we started putting a lot of resources down in the Centennial Lakes area cuz that was intel driven. That's where we were having the issues. That's where the people were. We had officers on overtime down at the park making sure that uh people were leaving when the park closed cuz a lot of the disturbances were people staying late, creating noise complaints, uh smaller issues like that. We started looking at uh more enforcement at the park areas to let people know that we are serious about keeping our park safe. We're serious about enforcing the ordinances if they're in effect. Uh we brought our mobile uh camera pole trailer down there. It was up here a little bit ago. It's down for maintenance right now, but that's a tool we bring out as well to be able to have a visual deterrence within the property. Uh in addition to that, we've been partnering with partnering with the parks department in Edina to come up with strategies with them as well because once again this isn't uh, necessarily just something that law enforcement can be able to combat. We've got to have our partners as well. So, we've had bi-weekly meetings with the parks department coming up with different changes we could do just down at Centennial Lakes to make changes down there. Um, you know, from rentals of equipment to uh, enforcement of the code and the ordinances. And throughout all that um, our biggest success was making those inroads with the community through our JCPP program. Getting individuals from the community involved, getting them uh, present and having them understand the issues that we are dealing with. So, looking forward to now here we are today. Um, we're going to we're going to continue to build off that model. We're going to continue to partner with our partners in the within the community to identify solutions and strategies going forward. Uh, some of the stuff that we've done just in the last week and a half in an immediate response is I also oversee our cadet program. Our cadets are uh, instructed that on their free time they're supposed to be doing directed patrols at all the parks. So, you're probably going to see an uptick of squad cars of with officers, cadets or even our reserve program coming into the parks, being present, getting out, talking with people in the park. Uh, we don't want them just to come into a park and drive through the park. You know, we want them to get out, make connections with the community, make connections with all individuals within the parks to show that we're here, we're here to support you um, and to keep our parks safe. In addition, we do have officers that um, are coming in working specific park related patrols. Not just Centennial Lakes anymore. We're opening that now to the parks where we typically see a lot of the activities that happen. We're going to continue to work with the uh, park division, parks and recreation and continue to meet with them, come up with more uh ideas, solutions. No idea uh is off the table. We're going to continue to work through those ideas, vet them out, see what we can do, see what resources we need, and continue to present solutions and ideas. Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure I covered everything on my list here. Um but I think the biggest thing I want to preach from like our side from community engagement side is we're going to continue to work with the community, with your neighborhood associations. Um if if you do have a neighborhood association, just make sure you register them with us. Um my community engagement officer's in the back there, Nick Donahue. He if you uh have ever dealt with him, he's a great resource for community resources. Um that's a He's waving his hand in the back there for you if you if you need to meet him afterwards. He uh he's a great resource to be able to connect with to get your contact information to so if we do need to uh get a hold of say a neighborhood block captain or something like that to push information out. I know he got a hold of the neighborhood block uh captains in this area to let you let them know about this meeting today so that way they could spread it out to the the neighborhood. Um I encourage you to uh make contact with him, get him your information as well so we can help push more information out that way. >> Thanks, Jake. So, just to reaffirm some outcomes here today. You heard a little bit about that. Some tangible things that are that are definitely changing. When we think about park safety in the city of Edina, we have over 40 parks here, right? We can't stick a cop in every park, but we can be a little bit more strategic in how we're doing it. And so, as Jake alluded to, our cadets and our reserves, we're going to activate our reserves and then restructure our cadets so that they're in the parks every day and they're doing that extra proactive patrol. And really what that's intentional in doing is just at least getting eyes out there to see if we can identify a brewing problem and get officers there. The other piece to that that we we loosely talk or briefly talked about was our partnership with our nearby cities. We call it our consortium cities. So, generally that's St. Louis Park, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Hopkins, and a few others. And we've had dialogue now with them over the last couple weeks in particular to really build out a robust intelligence division, also followed up with operational officers out in the street. So, in other words, if we get information that there's going to be a large event or party that we're unaware of that's building, then we're able to partner with our cities and get more resources to where they need to be. And that partnership in law enforcement has always been there, but it's going to be more robust and more specific to park safety because again we're seeing this problem that's been going on across the communities here in the metro area for quite some time. And that's going to be the change now moving forward. So, we're going to do that for the remainder of the summer past school and as long as it's warm out, we're going to continue that work going forward. And then we're going to reassess and we're going to come back over the winter. We're going to continue to work in part with parks and our council to talk about what else can we do heading into next spring to make sure our parks are safe. And I just again want you to have that comfort and that assurance that this is taken very seriously and that's the work that we're going to put into play here right away. Uh lastly on that note, I've been conversations with uh all of the um heads of all the I'd say the major law enforcement circles or organizations here in the metro area, which includes the FBI, the BCA, uh and Hennepin County. And we continue these dialogues about how we can think about being proactive in this enforcement with the gun violence problem that we continue to see here across the metro area. So, that work very much will continue on. The last thing I will turn this over to questions as a little bit more on this park um ordinance possibility. We haven't made a decision on it, but we're having conversations with parks and we're going to bring it in front of council to talk about a situation. If we just look what happened here, we were unaware of an event that was happening here. It wasn't sponsored, it wasn't permitted, and we had a bunch of people here and it blew up into a problem. And so, thinking about should we change your ordinance to add some language in there to require people that want to enjoy the park get a permit if there's more than 25 people and it's not sponsored and it's not recognized through the city. It at least gives the officer some tools that if they come upon it at 7:00, 8:00, 9:00 at night that they can escort people out. It would be probably considered a petty misdemeanor or misdemeanor at the most, but really it's just a tool to allow law enforcement to get a park clear of any problems before it erupts into a problem that we had here a week and a half ago. So, that's the intent and that's what the conversation's going to look like or at least start off for our council. And that's another tool that we're looking at to again to go back to our park safety initiative here for the remainder of the summer. Okay, we've talked a lot, so you got a lot of information. Let's spend the next unless I'm missing anything else, we're good. Okay. Uh let's do a little Q&A here. Uh we'll spend some time doing that and then I want everyone to know at the end of this if we don't get to your question, officers are going to be here, other city staff are going to remain here, so you can absolutely talk to all of our staff on a one-on-one basis if you feel more comfortable with that, but just know that we'll stay as long as you need to as well. So, we had a question right here in the front. >> The question was answered. It was that where's the camera? >> Yeah. >> But it's over in maintenance, but that leads me to another question. Is there only one of those? >> There's We only have one trailer camera. >> Can you repeat what you said? What do they cost? >> Yeah, thank you. So, the question is do we we um had talked about this trailer camera that we had here. It's down for maintenance and we only have one here in the city of Edina. We do have one here in the city of Edina. If we needed to get a second or a third, we can always reach out to our nearby cities in an emergency basis and pull on others, but we are likely to ask for another camera in the years ahead here as well as part of our planning. >> What are they? >> They are very expensive. They range though from usually minimum 40,000 on up to 150,000 per camera. Yeah. >> One up to your left here. >> Question over here. >> I have two questions. I guess a question and a point of feedback. Um First off, thank you for holding this meeting. My name is Lisa Diebold. I was sitting in my backyard when the gunshots went off that evening. Um I appreciate the effort to have a better response team present. However, there was a there were officers on site that's my understanding at the time of the shooting. So, my first question is how how can what needs to be done to reduce the response time because reducing the park to 25 people without a permit sounds great in theory, but that's way too big. And so, do we need to close the parks at sunset until we get things under control? Having resources on having officers on site wasn't enough of a resource when the event occurred in the first place. >> Yeah. So, the question was there were officers here earlier in the night and then is this really a comprehensive sustainable solution when we can think about maybe some other opportunities to reduce hours of the park and things like that if I'm got that correct. The thank you for bringing that up. We did have officers in the park earlier in the evening because we received some loose third-party information that there were going to maybe be more people than what should be in a park and that's about all we had at the time. So, if you were in this area you may have seen some officers and in this case we had a sergeant that was cruising through the lot and did see some people here and they were not causing any problems. And so, that was the response that we had that night and then that officer as it goes in law enforcement had to leave for calls. And so, when we have officers on patrol doing that work they have to leave because we have we're busy, right? We have a lot of things going on and that gets me into that part two thing with uh cadets and reserves and getting more of a sustainable piece in play. So, that's a law enforcement side. On the park side are there some other opportunities and things to think about? Absolutely, there always are and that's the part we're going to work with parks on coming into the winter to continue to think about. So, think about this as a phase one to work through the summer and then reassess over the winter time and get the right people and stakeholders to the table to talk about other strategies that we can put into play heading into the warmer months next year. Thank you for that question. I have a question in the pink. Yeah, go ahead. >> Um do you think that young people young young scared are going to read city ordinances and apply for permits to be in the park. >> The question is do I think young youth are going to apply for permits and follow ordinance language? Uh they they may they may not. I can tell you they typically don't read the language and they don't pay attention to ordinance adoption, but it's more about the tools that we're given so that we can be an enforce it. That's the key to in my opinion. I've been doing this job for over 30 years. If you're not familiar with me, I worked in Frogtown Park for 29 years and I've dealt with a lot of unfortunate violent situations and homicides and park violence and things like that. And so from my experience these strategies work pretty well, but it's all about giving the officers the right tools and also thinking about capital improvements and sustainability. It's a package deal. So not ordinance language isn't just a single solution, but it's a package deal of all those things considered. >> There's another thing we can talk about I can just >> Also from a legislative strategy standpoint I think you you raised a really interesting question and that is you know the at the legislature they passed a lot legislation that allows schools to ban guns from the premises. And so we're thinking about public buildings and public parks that we should go back in with a legislative strategy around that. Banning guns from parks, banning guns from legislature. >> They don't care. They don't care. >> Yeah. >> They don't care. That's only the bad guys. >> Yeah. >> So it's just it's just one other it's one other notion that's floating around out there right now is ideas. So you can have you can have your own opinions on things and if we bring it up at the city council you can come over and visit with us at the city council. >> Sure. We don't have to put stuff out again. >> Let me follow up on one other piece to that too. So when we think about youth and Lieutenant Hacker talked a little bit about this is a big focus for us is youth engagement and I equate it to getting kids busy. And often times what we see with these kinds of incidents is that we have a lot of youth out there that don't have enough to do. They don't think the future is bright. They They don't have enough activities. They might not have parents, mentors, whatever. But that's the work ahead too that we're of course having conversations about politically and strategically is how to get kids busy. But it isn't just in Edina, it maps itself out across Hennepin County, it maps itself out across the metro area. So that very much is the work ahead here too when we think about strategies to solve the problem. Now ma'am, I'm going to skip you cuz you already had your question. So I'm going to go over here to the lady in the blue shirt there. Yeah, you or black. >> Okay, so I don't know if you're going to answer this question, but it sounded like there were just two young men when you heard it. And did you recover any weapons or did they get checked in the woods here? I always I have this worry that there's going to be some little kid who finds a gun in the woods, you know, I Were they recovered or did they run away with them or what? >> Yeah. The uh the question is how many guns were involved and were there groups firing at each other, those kinds of things. That gets back to my opening remarks. We can't get into those details. Um the guys and gals or whoever was involved with this sometimes will listen to the news and follow along with what we're saying and we don't want to tip our hand, right? So uh can't ex- tell you the information around that. I can only tell you that evidence was gathered and collected and it's helpful for the investigation. Over here in the red hat. >> So first of all, I was right over there when I was over there. So I was pretty angry about this. Um I think I'm going to bring up the elephant in the room. We have a pattern um graduation, carjacking off the front of our middle school, and now this. I'm not here to vilify a community, but we can't talk about this week. We're the Somali community and what are they going to do to take responsibility for their young people? >> Yeah. >> And then we're running the streets with no left. So where are they? >> Yeah. Yeah, so the question was is uh Somali community representation, why are they not here for this discussion and some of the issues that we're seeing from a gun violence across the metro area. I'm paraphrasing for you but that is about here in Edina and elsewhere. Sure. So, what I'll say to that and then I'll let the mayor jump in on that as well. Um from my standpoint uh representation from impacted communities uh on all sides are important and we're having those conversations with leadership on that very point. Right? And so when we talked earlier about lack of cooperation with police investigations, uh this is one of the things that we're having conversations about. >> You're good. >> Next question here in the front. Yeah, you. >> The question is uh from a criminal justice standpoint if if and when we make arrests and we present charges, how confident are we that for successful prosecution and accountability? In these high-level uh these high-level cases, I'm very confident. Um I can tell you that we have conversations with the right people behind the scenes uh um something like this that we ensure that they're going to go to jail, right? And from the police standpoint, we're advocates for that. In addition, if these kinds of things lead us to federal investigations or charges through the US Attorney's Office, that's absolutely the conversation that we have with those authorities as well. So if we're not confident and happy and there's criteria that's built into that that ties back into gun violence, that's what we'll do and that's what we do in law enforcement. Those are the conversations we have cuz my standpoint is very strong in that as well. Accountability, enforcement, and you know, we make sure that people go through There's a system for these things and when you're dealing with this kind of violence, um and its impact on community, people have to be held accountable. So, that's my answer to that. You just have to know from my standpoint we push on that issue very hard. Thank you. Question over there. >> Is there a reason why you guys didn't send out like a suspect description The reason why I asked is because we got all, you know, we were just told to stay inside, don't come out. We're looking for somebody and we have K9s coming out, we have drones coming out, helicopters coming out, SWAT coming out, and we have no idea who we're looking for. And I think to be completely transparent with the people that live in the community is sending that information out. >> Sure. Yeah. >> out if we catch something on ring camera or something. Anything that can help you guys out. So, >> Yeah, good question. The question was why didn't we put out suspect or suspect information at the time of the alerts that went out? Right? Because community can be helpful for that. Um I can tell you being here at the scene, it was a very chaotic scene. We had a number of witnesses and this goes back to we we don't have a victim that's come forward. Okay? And so we don't, again, going back to witnesses to help us describe who was involved, what's the suspect look like, those kinds of things. That information was not available to us at the time. So, we're non-traditional piecing this thing together. And then at that time we had enough officers here, we had enough information to know and understand that we didn't have somebody that was running into neighborhoods uh that were going to impact. Now, that changes and that's what the alert system set up for if we absolutely had an active shooter and then we thought that was happening, that's information you absolutely would get. So, this was just preliminary information, be aware there's a situation, lots of police are on scene, they're working through it. Um and I can speak from experience here, too, that the information we get in the first 10 minutes is vastly different an hour later. The information changes so rapidly and it takes us a little time to get our facts in play, but we were confident enough in our facts at the time that we weren't concerned about impacts in the neighborhood that way and that's the why. That's why you didn't get that alert that way. >> How do you know it's not an active shooter if you don't actually have >> Active shooter meaning that the information that the shooter is running through the neighborhood with a gun. We know okay, let me clarify that. We knew that the person left in the vehicle. It was clear to us. >> So I'm assuming it's inferred, but you never bring up Minneapolis and we border Minneapolis. So I just want to make sure that Minneapolis is also one of the consortium or the people that you're conferring with because they could totally come through and go somewhere else and vice versa. We're just a pass through. So >> Yeah, so the question was we are bordering Minneapolis and are we collaborating working with them and staying in lockstep, right? Are we communicating effectively back and forth? And yes, we do. We have partnerships, we share intelligence information, we communicate about things that are going on. Sometimes we'll pull our resources together, investigators get together depending on what the case might look like. But yes, we do talk to Minneapolis police and vice versa. Question here in the front. >> So you've talked about can't share much of the way of evidence. In a perfect scenario, what are the charges you want to >> The question was in a perfect scenario, what would be the outcome or charges that we'd be looking at if we had a victim that came forward and everyone was cooperating. Likely egg assault with a weapon is a felony level crime. Right now we have reckless discharge that we're looking at, so that would be the current crime. In a situation like this, the state can act on behalf right of a absent victim because of obviously the severity of the impact to the community. So that's why we continue to push forward absent a victim coming forward, but that would be the likely outcome that we would seek. Yeah. Uh question here. >> Yeah, thank you. I'd like to know if we know how many property damage is not getting reported. They something on the box or I mean if they're complicated so that they can't get to the >> Yeah. How are the how are the the how are people getting to the park in the first place? How are they getting transported through, right? Vehicles. Yep, vehicles. Lots of vehicles. And again, our age range in this case and other similar cases is, you know, well above 16 on up, I'd say to 22, 23, 24 is kind of your age range. So, everyone most people have licenses and vehicles. Question over there? We've had uh conversations with different representation um across the street. Oh, have we had conversations with people in the apartments across the street? So, that's the question. My answer to that is no, we've not talked to uh representatives from across the street. But Yeah. Sure. So, to answer So, the question was have we had contact with people that were like across the apartment? The answer to that is maybe through the investigation if there were people out on the street, we might have that information. But as it relates to this topic politically and just dealing with leadership, no. Yeah, we had that question earlier and we addressed that. We've been reaching out to people and asked for people to show up, and so we just haven't had that cooperation quite yet. But we're working on that. But uh this I would say also to follow up on your question is you saw people on foot, right? In vehicles. This is a very transient issue. It travels across from different areas, right? Today it was the diner, or weeks ago it was the diner, and then tomorrow it could be in Woodbury, or it could be in Burnsville. We're just seeing that pattern shift all around the metro area, and people are very mobile, unfortunately. Question right there. It can uh again, I'm not going to get into the details about what we have, but the question was around Flock cameras, and does that play a role in these kinds of investigations? I can't speak to this investigation. We had a previous shooting case uh domestic-related uh earlier this summer, late spring, and those Flock cameras were instrumental in identifying the suspect in that vehicle, and that vehicle was found in Brooklyn Park, and officers, including our officers, were able to make an arrest and get that person in custody, and that person's been charged with the crime. Uh that technology was instrumental for us at that time to be able to solve that case. So, they play a role, and again, I'm sorry, I just can't comment on this particular case, but thank you for that question. Okay, we'll take a couple more here, and we'll go with you. Yeah, the question was the kids that were here, were they from Centennial Lakes Park, and do they transfer or move around? Yeah. But is there a correlation to Centennial Lakes Park? Yeah, and I'm sorry, the wind's in my back here, too, but I think what you were saying or asking was is there is there a correlation between those that were here and those that were at Centennial Lakes Park? Are we seeing that movement happen like within Edina? Is that accurate? Okay, pretty much. Um I don't Is it related to this investigation? I couldn't comment on that. Um, we're focused on the act itself and so who's involved um, or who's moving from one part to the other, it's not exactly germane to this particular investigation, but I can share with you that things are very transient that way too. So, people again are in their vehicles and they move around quite a bit. What you saw were, I think, over the last number of weeks, really decent kids that were showing up and just having events in the park here and that's how that started and that's also what we're seeing too is just it starts off innocently enough and then bad actors come in and cause the problems that we just experienced here. The bad act- You're asking about the bad actors, were they ones that came over? Again, that's part of the active investigation. I just can't get into those details. Question here? >> The people you were interviewing after the incident, are they local Eagan residents? >> Uh, the people that were interview- Are we interviewing? Are they local Eagan residents? >> I mean the Somali communities. >> Somali community members, are they local here? I can't again get into the criminal investigation on those interviews and who we have identified. I can just tell you that these are spread out across the metro area, people that we interact with. >> The people who you interact with down here, I assume you were asking where they were from. >> Again, that's part of the active criminal investigation. I just can't get into those details. With the bike helmet in back. >> Yeah. Ramsey County Sheriff Fletcher is the only law enforcement in the Twin Cities who's actively discussing the Somali gang activity. He estimates there's 300 Somali gang members in the Twin Cities and there's been at least 200 shootings in the last few years and dozens of Somali deaths. I mean, that's talking about I mean, these are Somali-on-Somali gangs. They're going after each other. They're shooting each other. It's a crazy thing, but it's much like in the North Side, black-on-black. But, Fletcher says if this doesn't get out of control, you could see that gang population tripling in a year. This is a sheriff saying this. I'm just the messenger. You're talking about this in a micromanaged type thing, and you talked about talking with other parts of the Twin Cities, but this is a big problem that has to be addressed, and you have to talk about it in reference to Somali gangs. You have to say that expression. >> [applause] >> Thank you. I think everyone probably heard his comments cuz he can speak pretty loudly. I'll just say again, this is under active criminal investigation, so I can't get into the nuances right now and make declarations cuz we're after criminal prosecution, right? And accountability on that side. So, I will say uh Sheriff Fletcher a couple weeks ago had some commentary, it was on the news and talked about it, and I also have concerns about gang violence that's happening throughout the metro area, and I've seen a lot of different phases of this now over the last 5 years. I've seen a lot of gun violence issues that's a big been going on here ever since COVID. Uh often times I talk to people about thinking about crime stats and where we used to be pre-COVID, pre-Floyd, some of those major events that we went through unfortunately, and how the crime is not really dip back down to where it used to be, and gun violence is one of those things as well, right? And so, it's complicated. Uh it's difficult for everyone to deal with right now. Law enforcement is really taxed working through it as well, but we're not going to stop, and we'll continue the dialogue and continue to move forward. Question here? >> Uh quick question. For people that got late because it started at 4:30 when people were still working, will there be a transcript and video available for us to take a look at for people that missed the initial presentation? >> The uh Jennifer, are you here? Are we going to do that, provide that? The question was are we going to transcribe this and have a video for people that may not have made it here on time or were busy working. >> Where would it be? >> Yeah, we will do that. We're taping it here through the city. Where were Where are we going to post it, Jennifer? E Dina TV on YouTube. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. We'll go with you. >> Thank you. Um you know, you guys address sort of police ideas and address maybe some of the ideas from the council. What can the people standing here do and the residents of the guiding us to support those efforts and to show up to town meetings? >> Yeah, the question was is we've had we've talked a lot about the different strategies and things here, but what can the community do to show their support and support of the initiatives and law enforcement and things that are happening? And my response to that is just stay engaged. Stay engaged. Have the conversations, you know, about elections matter, think about that. Support your police department, right? But support your law enforcement and make sure that you're supportive of those things, but really just pay attention to everything that's happening around you and stay focused on those things would be my advice on that. >> I think everybody would be paying attention what there's something else and resources. >> Yeah. So, maybe I'll bridge it and that question was are there other things that we can do to help kind of bridge and think about more resources, that kind of a thing. One of the questions I get about is staffing for the police department, right? And where are we at? So, our council authorized an additional six officers about two years ago and so we've been hiring up since that time and we're at 60 officers right now. We've never had 60 officers, we're as high as we've ever been. We're authorized up to 64. We have another officer starting in a week and then we have three more in line here probably in the next month or two. So, we anticipate being fully staffed here. As it goes Thanks, we'll take that. >> [applause] >> We have a really talented staff here on the police side and they do a tremendous work here as well. But as we talked here about regional issues and things that are going on and pressure points, do we need to staff up? Well, that's the work that we'll be doing here as well. I can't hire more than a handful at a time and if you know and pay attention to the market, cops aren't just dropping into jobs right now. And it's been that way for the last 5 6 7 years. So, it's really really difficult to recruit cuz you have to recruit the right people. This is not an easy job. And if you don't recruit the right people, you can have other problems down the road. So, we're taking a measured approach to make sure we continue with high-quality officers that we're bringing online. So, we're taking that approach. And we're obviously having success, but what does that look like moving forward and do we have to add up our resources? And that's the work that we'll do with council here over the winter for sure to talk about that. Okay, I think we're going to take I see one more question here. Over there. Uh this is Assad, and I didn't see Assad earlier, and I just saw him. So, I would have introduced him before, but uh Assad is one of the leaders that I've worked with here in the community of Edina. He's uh tethered, he has kids here, he's very embedded in the community. And so, these difficult conversations that everyone's involved with, Assad and I have had a number of conversations similar to this. Um but I look to him for a lot of advice and leadership here, too. So, he wants to say a couple of comments, and I'll let turn the mic over to him. >> Thank you very much, Chief. So, I just want to clarify a couple of comments that were being made. First of all, I didn't even know there was a meeting planned today until I was on the highway coming here 15 minutes ago. So, I wonder how many others in Edina's Somali American community members were even aware of a meeting existing this afternoon. The second question I want to clarify is it's unfortunate what happened here at Yancy Park, but it's really simplistic view if it feels like 108,000 Somali American residents in the state of Minnesota feel like they're on trial. The rhetoric that's going on in the community is not helpful. If we're looking for solutions, we've been working with the chief and the city of Edina for the last 2 years. When we talk about the Centennial Lake incidents that were happening, there were nights, four or five nights a week that we were out there at Centennial Lake sitting till 11:00 p.m. making sure that safety is a paramount important for all of us because we're also Edina residents. Safety is also important for us. So, I just want to make sure that it doesn't feel like someone is doing something and they're not at the table. This is all of us. This is all of our community and I just want to make sure that if we are having a conversation, it doesn't feel like it it's focused on a community that sometimes it feels like we're not part of the community. Yes. I'm not going to respond, but I just want to make sure that you guys are also aware that it's not we're sitting on the sideline. So, that's all I'm going to say. So, thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Yeah, I'm going to turn over to >> Last thing I want to say on that point, again, I've been working with SATA and a number of community leaders to kind of again work through these difficult challenges. In my experience in law enforcement, when we talk about youth that get involved in this kind of a thing, it tends to be a smaller percentage. It feels like a biggest percentage, but it's a smaller percentage typically. Not the whole community. So, I want y'alls to walk walk away with that from again from my perspective. So, with that, the mayor wants to say a couple remarks and then we're going to close it up. >> Just a follow up to the gentleman in the red hat who is leaving right now leaving right now. Last Friday and this is reinforcing of what a side had to say. Last Friday Commissioner Edelson and we were one of our state reps here Shirley Joachim. We were part of a probably 15 No, probably 25 people have met and I'd say about half of them were Somali Americans and then this this topic came up as a source of conversation kind of a side sidebar conversation to the main meeting but I can tell you that all of these Somali American leaders that were from across the metro are really concerned about this as well and want to make sure that we get this these issues addressed. So I think we're getting really effective assistance from leadership in the Somali American community. We're getting help from the religious community with the Imams, the elders in the community, the moms in the community. I think we're we're we're going to all work on this together. And that's the way the way we've always done it in Edina. Let's get through this together. Let's get through this together. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Couple last things here with some questions that were asked earlier just finish it off here. Our Citizens Academy if you want to know how to get involved and just learn more about what's going on our Citizens Academy is a phenomenal opportunity to engage our officers. Just look online for that. You can volunteer. You can also stay engaged with our staff that way. Think about community engagement. We have a lot of volunteer opportunities. Nick Donny who is our community engagement officer talk to him a little bit more about some opportunities that way as well. So just think about those opportunities to stay engaged with the police department. We have a fund a crime fund board public safety fund board that also helps with offering us assistance and volunteering opportunities. Rob sitting right in front here is our president raising his hand. Awesome guy. So think about those kinds of things in terms of support and again just bottom line stay engaged. Stay engaged and we're going to keep working hard. So thank you all for coming. All of our officers and staff will stay here for any questions you might have. Have a good night and we'll be in touch. >> [applause]