will be noted. Will >> you please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance? >> I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, jump into item two, approval of the minutes. I'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the city council meeting. >> Second. >> I have a motion, a second. All those in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. The minutes are approved. Item three, adoption of the agenda. Are there any changes or corrections to the agenda? Seeing none. >> A little shorter. >> All right, fine. >> We can, >> but if we cut one item, that's cutting it by 50%. So, no, we cannot. But I would entertain a motion to adopt the agenda. >> Second. >> A motion, a second. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? We have an agenda. Item four, consent agenda. I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Motion a second. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. The consent agenda is approved. Item 5A, prosecution services annual update. Mr. Olsen. Whenever you're ready. Well, good evening, Mayor Lusmed and members of the council and staff. Uh, I'm Rob Olsen. You haven't seen me here for a number of years because my partner, Heather Munins, normally uh handles the White Bear stuff, but uh three and a half weeks ago, she gave birth to a little baby boy, Jack. And uh she informed me about three months ago that she was going to take 12 weeks off. And I said, "I guess so." You know, so uh and it's worked out real well. So, I'm just here to kind of uh update you and and we're thinking about in the last year, one of the big changes in the last year was for years we had Tubman Family Alliance that did our victim services on the domestics. And then there was the change over to NYFS, I think it's Northeast Youth and Family Services. And we were a little, you know, a little uh nervous about that because we didn't really know them and it was kind of a new thing for them. But I I got I just want to tell you it's really worked out incredibly well. uh they are really good at communicating and once they learned what type of services people needed, you know, when somebody gets is a victim of a domestic assault, say, and their partner's arrested and taken away and what kind of services because right then that's really vulnerable time in a person's life. And they've really stepped up to the plate, really done a good job and much better than we ever would have expected. and uh they're in constant communication with our office. I mean, you could just about walk to it, you know, throw a stone over there. And so, it's it's it's worked out really well and we're just, you know, I don't I don't know. I understand there might might be some ties from the city council. Whatever the decision went into the decision, it was a good decision. Okay. Uh, the other thing, and you might have, I don't know if you watched the news yesterday, a guy named Drew Evans, who's the superintendent of the BCA, was on TV. Drew is a former white bear cop. And, uh, long time ago, he lives up in Lino Lakes and they had a little problem with the DMT machines. Those are those breath test machines that they blow in. And you know, it's in the law enforcement is more complicated than it used to be. You know, back in the day, they'd arrest people, they'd write a police report. I'd just go to court and say, "Well, that's what the cop said." Now, we've got videos on everything. And we've got these sophisticated machines. And they had a problem with changing out a control substance. When you run these things to make sure it works right, you have a control substance that has a certain level of alcohol in it, and you run a test on it to say, "Oh, yeah, it's working." to the control sample. So when the person blows into it, you know that it's accurate. Well, apparently there's two different types of control substances. One for this portable little preliminary breath tester that the police use on the street, another one for the more sophisticated machine that's in the booking room here. Uh apparently in some of the jurisdictions, they kind of mixed them up and they had different levels of concentration. And uh this came up in a case where a judge said, "Well, you ran the wrong stuff. I'm tossing the result out." So right away the BCA was, you know, full stop. Last Friday, they sent a big not notice out to all the police stations. Don't use that thing until you know that you have the right liquid or control substance in it. Uh I'm happy to report White Bear isn't among the groups that had put the wrong concentrated solution into the machine. uh you know and and I hope I I think I've made it pretty understandable, but it's it's just another one of those things. You know, it's like life, you know, you're going along and everything's happy and everything's working good. But so that was uh a little crisis and it I think there's about 275 cases in Minnesota that are going to probably have the results that will be tossed out, which is unfortunate because if somebody's driving drunk, none of us want them out there. Uh but we've got to play by the rules and we've got to follow the science, too. You can't just say, "Well, it's close enough for government work like when I was in the army, we used to say." Uh but it doesn't work that way when you're talking about putting people in jail. So, um beyond that, it's been a a good year. I mean, we've the system in Ramsey County has grouped our cases together in a reasonable way and it makes it a little easier for us to handle. uh their scheduling was pretty erratic before that. But beyond that, uh we're thankful for the work that we've done. It's been a very long time that I've been involved with doing White Bear work back to 97 with a guy named Doug Maslo that some of you know. >> Uh Mr. Edberg was on uh was on the school board with him a long time ago. Uh so it's I'm just here to answer any questions you might have and uh other than that, I'll I have nothing else. >> Very good. Thank you for the report. Glad to hear everything's going well. Um, one quick question that I have. Are are arraignment calendars or some of the other kind of proforma hearings still remote or is that returned to in person? >> Uh, mostly in person. A lot of in person. They've Ramsey County has gone a little more in-person than some of the counties. They they think I I don't know. And there's other counties like county 85% of what they do is remote. Washington County is kind of about twothirds remote. a third uh in person. Ramsey County, I'd say, is a higher percentage. I don't know if it's 5050 yet, but it's it's a lot more than it used to be. Uh there's goods and bads to it. Uh I think when you have these outlying areas, it works great. You know, if you're driving through Cambridge, Minnesota on the way up to Max Lake, and you get pulled over for something, you don't necessarily want to have to go to the court up there, drive an hour. But I think in the more in the cities they're go Ramsey County and Henipin they're going more and more in person. So >> council do we have any questions for Mr. Olsson. >> All right. We'll extend our congratulations to Miss Mons on the birth of her son and uh keep up the good work. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. >> All right. Item 5B, Police Department by annual report. Chief Haggar, whenever you're ready. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you again for having me out to um take the chance of bragging on our police department a little bit. Um I was here in April and I I gave a kind of an update of how 2024 went and um this isn't a a this isn't really that much information. That's not this is not to cover everything since January 1st, but just give you a little snippet of kind of what we're doing and and kind of what's um fresh in our department happening right now. I do have a few statistics at the end, but I know some of you some of you really enjoy hearing where we're at that way. Um so here's our new police department photo. We took a little bit of a chance this year and took a little different kind of shot. We wanted to kind of timestamp the year that we got our garage. So, we went out to our garage and turned off all the lights and took a really kind of fun professional photo out there. I'm really kind of a big fan of that uh photo. We took that in July. It says 24. Of course, there's my first typo of the presentation. Should be uh just a few few months ago in 2025. And here's our organizational chart. uh hasn't changed much with the exception of under the administrative uh captain Isaac Tuma and then administrative support. Uh we have two records and evidence uh texts. We have an administrative assistant and we have a community engagement um uh person. We we've had that position for a long time. they've uh served a dual role and then we lost that person to the private sector and we just filled that as of uh last week with one of our current um employees moved over to that position and then we I'll tell you a little bit later that we hired somebody to take that person's spot. Other than that, this org chart looks pretty consistent. Um we are right now we're um supposed to have uh 32 sworn officers total and five csos. Uh we are at 31. really happy to say I remember I'm not going to get too boastful because I remember last October being here and telling you that we are backgrounding our last one and I just felt pretty proud of that and and the law enforcement um profession is fickle just like we've had this discussion over the last couple years and we lost a few and now we're kind of back at it again and feeling pretty good about our um future. Uh this is my leadership team. Uh some of them have updated profile pictures and a couple other guys don't. But our current department staff is uh two captains, four sergeants. We are at um 17 police officers right now. Three school we have two uh investigators, three school resource officers, five community service officers, and then four administrative uh staff. Um in the summers, we talk about it a little bit. In the summers, we'll expand a little bit um this upcoming summer hopefully to uh three more part-time staff for our seasonal cso position. Uh we have a very traditional um shift work in that these are our four shifts represented here in those photos. Um they work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or they work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and then they work every other Saturday. and their shifts are generally 6 6:00 am to 6 p.m. somewhere in that in that neighborhood somewhere around 12-h hour shifts. We have three, as I said, three adult investigators up there on top. There's two um with Jordan and Curtis. And then I have my three picture or pictures with my three SRO's on the bottom there at this year's law enforcement torch run. We have one VSET investigator position or specialty investigator position that uh remains unfilled. Here's our administrative staff with uh another kicker of uh Connie from the fire department. She's in that photo, too, and just celebrating administrative um professionals day. And they do a variety of activities for us. They really are the um kind of the power behind um the patrol and investigations. They do all kind of the dirty work that has to get done, the the stuff that if we don't do the dotting of the eyes and crossing of the tees of our department and our case load. Um things won't make their way to Mr. Olsson's office or wouldn't make their way to the county attorney's office. And um the the one person we' add there, I'll show on my new staffing here. >> Chief, >> yes, ma'am. >> Can you talk about the um evidence room or are you going to get into >> I have that on another slide, but that's a great reminder. Um these are our community service officers. Um on the top there, those are the five. We've been really lucky and that this these this f this group of um professionals have been with us for I don't know just about a year now. And um Rob kind of anchors the the crew right in the middle there. Uh and then we have a few of younger officers csos on each side of him. um we'll run into a little bit of trouble this summer because three of those five are going to because of the caliber that they are I know they'll be police officers and they'll get snatched up really quickly probably by the end of May or June they'll be snatched up and if we have positions open here I hope it's I hope it's with us but they're they're great and they really work well together. Here's our personnel changes. We had three officers uh start uh this summer. Dcoin on the left there, Tiffany in the middle, and Paul. Paul was one of our interns that we started our internship program, and we were lucky enough to get him in the door as an intern, and then keep him as a reserve. And then after his last year of college up in North Dakota, we convinced him to come back down and be our officer. So, we're really proud of those three starting starting, like I said, they're in their second phase of FTO. So, they started this summer. And then Joanne on the right, she she started her second week with us and she took the other administrative um position up front uh to help to make four of the administrative professionals we have up front there. And so she came to us from Anoka County where she had a similar position there in the court system, I believe. and this group of young people. Uh this represents our interns that we've had over the last four months, five months. As I said, uh we have a desire to play a long game and a short game. And so we want to invite as many young professionals into our department as possible because we want to show them what we're made of and we want to show them what the kind of department they want to work for someday. um it has worked with um one of our officers and I'm hoping that in the next I don't know couple year I hope we don't lose anybody but the reality is we will so I'm hoping in the next couple years these uh interns up top will uh join our department and then on the bottom that's one of our csos Connor Severson and he is the recipient of our uh grant that we've had now for just over a year where the Minnesota Department of Public Safety is willing to play uh excuse me pay police departments for unconventional law enforcement um students. So, they help us pay his salary and they help us pay his schooling. Uh it's a really good program. What makes him unconventional is that he's fluent in Spanish and I can't tell you how many times he has saved our whatever in the last year of of our life here because he is uh so fluent in Spanish he can talk to to anybody and it's it's been really great. He's our only Spanish speaker on the department and officers call him out often when they're out on the street. So, he's been a blessing. So, here's our partnerships. Um, as Mr. Olsson said in his presentation, we've we partner even more heavily now with Northeast Youth and Family Services for our community advocac advocacy program as well as with our domestic assault and sexual assault programs. And that's been since October of last year. So, we're right at a year. and and I think the city manager would agree with Mr. Olsson and I that um this was a really positive thing that happened in our community. Um the numbers I know will come out once they kind of give them to us for the whole year that we're here, but um the amount of domestic assault potential domestic assault victims that were contacted by NYFS that would have never been contacted by any service industry or service provider before. That is amazing. um people that are on, you know, on the the edge of maybe being a victim, maybe needing their services, our officers never had an opportunity to share or dive deeper into the into those victims or potential victim's lives and now they can. They can refer them on to NYFS. They invite that. They want to be involved in in those types of fringe scenarios and um they really help us out. uh Jonathan Bunt, our um mental health professionals. Um as always, he's been with us now for a few years and does a great job. We're just uh coming up on this month doing our yearly officer check-in. So, um Mr. Bunt will meet with every police officer, every sworn officer that we have and um that's mandatory by us and that's a that's a policy change that happened here in the last uh two years. Lexapole. We started using Lexipole as our to create our policies and kind of joined a large chunk of law enforcement agencies around the country doing so. Of course, a partnership that we really value is with the White Bear Lake School District. Um, besides just working with them with our SRO program, um, certainly if uh if you have any ability to watch the news, you know that we've been interacting with them quite a bit in the last few weeks. Um, they're a really great partner. they do a really good job um staying connected with us and communicating with us. Um so we have kind of a shared uh plan of attack for problems that may um arise out of the school district. Then of course Ramsey County, Minnesota BCA, Chiefs of Police Association and the Ramsey County Chiefs of Police Association are partners that I've come to depend on because they all have more experience. Most of the people in there have more experience than I do and I I rely on them for decision- making. We depend on our volunteers um immensely, especially that group up on the top left. That's our that's a bunch of our C volunteers, community emergency response team. Uh but we also have our triad folks up on the top right. They're working a blood drive there in our public safety classroom bot on the bottom right. That's our latest class of Citizens Police Academy that we graduated um this spring. And then over on the left, that's a kind of a hodgepodge of our reserves and and ser folks that were working an Easter Easter egg event last spring. So really rely a lot on them. You see those yellow shirts a lot out at Marketfest and our parades and really anything that we do with the community. We rely on our C volunteers. They're trained in a variety of things that um will help them out in the field to include CPR and first aid and uh triaging and things like that. Um really really a valuable group. And then maybe we can just have a discussion about the dog leash uh ordinance. Um you know, I I watched your meeting um on last month and and there was a lot of discussion about the dog leash ordinance and what went right and what went wrong. And certainly I'll be the first to admit that things did not go the way we all had planned. Um, you know, we started the program uh probably a little later than we would have liked. Uh, I think we were kind of waiting on uh, you know, kind of be cemented in that this is what we're doing uh, in in the late spring. And once that's happened with a a police department, there's a lot of checks that need to be done before we can get somebody in the door. And then there's a lot of checks that need to be done before we can get them on the street. And that process usually takes four months, five months. And so if we started in April, that would mean we'd just be getting them on the street somewhere around now or September. So, we took um you know, we we got a couple young men in the door to uh work as the seasonal csos for us last summer and neither one of them happened to work out for us, but we're hoping that um this upcoming year we'll start the process a little earlier and we're hoping that we can fill the ranks full of um young women and men who who have a desire to have a decent part-time job with our police department. We had somewhere around 200 uh documented visits to the to the dog beach last summer for somewhere between May and in September, basically the summer months. Had about 200 visits there. Um and those are documented. That's only when somebody wants to write it down that we were there. But of course, probably double that or three times that of the amount of times that officers were actually in the say in the uh vicinity and and checking out the dog beach. Uh we it was mostly an educational endeavor this summer in that there weren't any signs up. The only thing the only time people knew that we changed this is in you know our Facebook and uh in the papers. So people have been coming there for years and and um we're nothing but not accommodating in the city. And so what we knew is that I have no desire to drop the hammer and write citations on people that didn't know they were violating the ordinance. So we did a lot of education down there and told people what was happening. Um, and then somewhere in September, maybe the very late August is when uh they public works dropped the signs, put the signs out for Dog Beach. Somewhere late summer and from that point then we decided we're going to write citations because we felt like it's advertised enough and um we felt like we did our due diligence to inform people. So, we found that when we were there in a marked squad car in a uniform, everybody seemed to want to comply with the leash ordinance. Um, we also are aware that when we're not there, that's not always the case. We do think that like a slow drip over time, people just understand this is the new ordinance whether we're there or not. And we know that um it will need some attention by uniformed professionals down there to to ensure compliance. But we do think over time that it'll just become the new norm. So that's our uh my perspective. I'm certainly open to questions maybe afterwards on um on more on the dog leash ordinance. Little bit of kind of some things that happened in 2024 so far for us. We had four new squad cars uh ordered or budgeted for this year and ordered. They're they're graphicked but they're not built out yet. Takes quite a while to build out a car. Uh we we probably received these cars in I don't know April or May and uh they're just graphic now and and one I think is in the shop trying to get built out to be ready to go. So we won't have all four squads ready until the end of the year. I'm sure hopefully by the end of the year we have a new Polaris uh Ranger sidebyside uh vehicle um for our seasonal CSOS. Uh sometimes we wrote them down in in parades and other events that happen downtown. We started a new pace scheduling software. Uh it's not that interesting, but for us it's kind of a g was a gamecher for us. We were using some kind of outdated uh technology, old scheduling software. This new pay software integrates well with our uh pace with finances pay system. So our officers can just enter their time actually their time is entered automatically for them just off of out of the scheduling system software right into the city's um system of pay and save some time and took a lot of effort from um from folks up in the city manager's office and um and from some of our leaders who took the lead on that PACE project. Uh we have a few life- saving awards that I'm looking forward to giving out later this year, but we've had officers that have uh played a direct role in in bringing people back and saving their lives, and I'm really proud of that. We had uh a significant amount of trainers training experience leave us um in late 2024, 2025. We've only had two officers leave to go to other departments and then we had a couple resignations and medical and otherwise. But um out the door left a lot of experience, a lot of um use of force experience, a lot of firearms experience, a lot of SWAT negotiator experience, a lot of dare officer experience. And so we have spent the year kind of trying to catch up and make up for all that lost experience that leaves your uh leaves your department. It's kind of the un um I don't know the maybe didn't people don't assume that with um you know all the departures of law enforcement officers all over the state and country that with officers leaving you just you take with it all this experience and all these special projects that they know how to do that you have to kind of play catchup with younger officers and teach them how to do all these new things. So that's taken a big part of our year. And then the evidence room as as Miss Crawford said um the evidence room audit. So last time I reported to you that we remodeled our evidence room and a property room and we and we did that partially with a grant and partially with the the money that um Department of Public Safety got us last year in a grant. Um and then after that happened, you know, of course during it happened, we have a flood and so we deal with that. And then uh we had all our evidence out in the garage in pods. Um when everything was ready to come back in, then our evidence custodians who are front office staff um kind of slowly but surely bring stuff back in. Um from what I know, we never had an audit done of our evidence room. Um I don't know, are we like a 100 years old or something? I don't know how how old the department is, but it's a long time. So, it it was in desperate need of it and our uh professionals up front there just did a fantastic job. There's a lot of pieces of evidence that you need to be very careful with documenting and um that project will be wrapping up probably this month or next. So, really kind of proud of of that work. send us some upcoming issues I just want to kind of put on our on your radar as to things that uh maybe will need some discussion or just maybe are going to take a lot of our time and energy. Uh the first one, Bitcoin machines, you know, I suspect the council knows this, but kind of like cash machines where the deal with bitcoins and they're in several places throughout our city and I think we just need to have a conversation about that. There are cities that are going to outlawing by ordinance bit Bitcoin machines in their city. Um we have had our share of frauds and scams because of these Bitcoin machines and uh you know we're trying to work through them but you know we haven't brought anything to you yet because we haven't kind of got our our heads wrapped around this issue entirely. And I know that like I said Forest Lake and some other local um departments are really kind of working through this as well. They're working on city ordinances up in Forest Lake. I know that uh school visits, we put a new uh kind of a procedure in place that our officers um uh on the regular will be visiting schools, not to necessarily kiss babies and shake hands, but to familiarize themselves with the buildings themselves. We know that if something horrific happened at a school that needed immediate police attention, there's a possibility. I mean, that is a monstrosity up north here that we have. and uh we want to make sure our officers know every nook and cranny of every school in our city. So, especially our dayshift officers, we really they've been spending a lot of time at our schools. Um and then a lot of the training that we do, specifically um our mass um casualty event or um high-risisk security event, we train in a different school every time because we want to make sure that we cover all of our schools. So, ebikes and and scooters, we know that that's an issue and I know that the council has raised uh their concern about that. We just like I think you guys discussed it like every other agency in the state are just kind of trying to figure out what can we do about that and may be settled on the on the state end and not necessarily ordinance end. But, um I'd like to get ahead of it. I don't actually I don't think we could get ahead of it now. I think we're behind it, but I'd like to be a frontr runner in that and try to decide what it is that we can do with that motorcycle laws that just came into effect this summer where motorcycles can split lanes and that kind of thing. I I don't know. I get that other states have done that and they have there hasn't been complete tragedies from it. But I think that is on our radar moving forward of what potential issues that could cause. um looking forward to our girls spring um personal safety clinic that we have in the spring. We started it again last year after a hiatus of about six years and we started again last year and I'm looking forward to that um in the spring again. We like to get senior girls who are just about ready to go to college in and just have kind of some safety conversations with them. The Suburban Ramsey County Law Enforcement Memorial Service is passed around every year from agency to agency. It's going to be our turn in spring. I I might be in here to see you before that, but it might happen um before that. I'm not sure. Um and it's our turn, like I said. So, I think we're going to go next door here in St. Mary's and and have the service over here. Uh snow plowing is always an issue for us in the summer, but it's upcoming issue for us. And we we we have a good relationship with of course with uh Paul and with the um folks down at public works and we like to make a plan ahead of the ahead of time to make sure that we're staying ahead of things and we're being a little more aggressive as I'll show you a bit later. We're being a little more aggressive on um parking issues, especially during snow events. Uh then our our new parking ordinance is certainly on our top of mind for us. uh we installed uh those new parking signs around the high school and I know that's made a little bit of noise um with some of you and with me as well. I'm getting calls and emails all the time about it about people who are extremely happy about it and people that are extremely displeased over it and and that that's the I guess that's the problem with government, right? You can't make everybody happy. We think it was a it was the right decision based on the level of activity that's going to take place at the school, not only during school hours, but um around the clock and around the weekend. So, we think it'll be a good idea. And as I said, we're nothing but not um cordial and accommodating. And we um we will be that way with this new parking ordinance as well. And I'm really proud of fire department, police department basketball game that we just had. No need to talk about who won, but it was a great event. It was really a lot of fun and what we what we did we had a couple ringers on our team so that's what it was and I wasn't one of them but uh what we decided we're going to do is we're going to try to do that year round and we're going to try to have a volleyball game we're going to have try to have a softball game maybe during Manito days and it'd be fun just gives us an opportunity to just kind of unwind and have fun with our public safety partners and then of course recruiting is always a problem and it'll always be on the horizon. And it'll be always be something that we have to deal with and so our minds are focused on that as well. Some preview of activity. I mean just between January and October in April of last of this year I came in to tell you about the 30% and 40% increases that we had from 23 to 24 in our activity. And now I'm here to say so far we're on a 65% increase on traffic stops and a 40% increase on arrests. Case numbers on 26%. Our parking citations are up 191% and our community events are up 11%. So what's that to say? Do we have more crime in White Bear Lake? No, I don't believe we do. I think we just have officers that um just finding more stuff. So they're just involved in more activities. uh we have uh kind of some new different strategies on how we're doing it. I have a group of leaders, specifically my four sergeants who are doing a great job incentivizing their officers to get out there and and make sure they're they're being heard and making sure that we're making a difference with um the traveling public that comes through our city and and with the folks um that live in the town that that um I don't know need to be held accountable for their actions. So really proud of that. I think that in April when I come back and talk about the increase that have has been made since 2023, I think it we're all going to be a little bit shocked that we we increase that much. And um I don't think the average member of our maybe your constituents would say differently. I don't think they're feeling it. They're not thinking, oh my gosh, what are the cops doing? I just think that we're rising back up to levels that are pre-COVID and COVID and George Floyd era really really took a bite out of law enforcement and um their desire to be active. So, we're just getting back to normal. That's my opinion. But I'm really proud of our officers. I'm really proud of our group of leaders for u pushing this through. I think that um we have a really incredible department that way. And with that, open up to thank you again and open up to any questions anybody might have. Uh before the council jumps in, Chief, I'd just like to say thank you uh for your work and you do a really great job at keeping our our staff engaged and wanting to be out there and be proactive, which can be challenging when you have kind of uphill battles in the court system and other things that are out of their control. But, um I'm I'm really pleased to see those those um data points and it's fun to see the fun side of police and fire. So, thank you guys uh for coordinating all that and the work that you continue to do for for the city and Gem Lake. >> Thank you. >> Very well said, Chief. Thank you for the report. Um couple comments and a couple questions. First, I'll just say I'm encouraged by the the statistics that you showed. Um with some of the increased rates, I agree. I don't doesn't feel like we have more crime, but it's nice to hear that law enforcement from a boots on the ground standpoint feels like they're returning to a sense of confidence in their role. uh that they won't be constantly second guessed or get into trouble legal or otherwise. So, I think that's encouraging for for our officers in the community. So, well done on that. We appreciate that. Um I want to thank you also for giving us some of the feedback on the the dog beach. Um my only comment on that is simply to acknowledge that I understand that's a difficult kind of needle to thread. It's a new law. It's not in our nature to be heavy-handed and punitive, and we're trying to educate and and that takes time to shift culture. So, I think we made some progress this summer. Hopefully, next summer, if we have a dedicated cso role, uh that can kind of augment some of the sworn officers that frankly have other important things to do, um I think that'll go a long way. My question on the recruiting for the the cso seasonal, what was the turnout last year? Was that considered a desirable role? Were we just scraping to find a warm body that wanted the job? Help me understand that. >> Well, kind of two sides of it, I guess. So, one side is probably not law enforcement in general is very difficult to recruit for. um our officers on the top end. It's all public records on the top end there's somewhere around $110,000 to to be a police officer um a seasonal CS and and we have a hard time find filling those positions. It's very challenging to find police officers now. Um the seasonal CSO job certainly isn't that pay, not even in the same arena as that pay, nor should it be. um and sort of find people that are willing to do that job um for just kind of a short period of time is is challenging, not impossible, challenging. Um also, we started late, so we can't you know, the college kids probably had jobs for the summer by the time we started. So, I think that um you know, we're committed to making this program work. And um in that regard, I think that we started the right way. We run it for a summer. we we continually find challenges over the summer because what we perceive as being a complication of that role, then I think we'd have to look in a different direction maybe. But it does feel fair to give it a give it a real try and I don't think we were able to give it a real try last year. >> Good. We look forward to that this year starting early and seeing where it takes us. So I still support that. I think it's good beyond just the dog beach. We've got an active community. We've got ebikes. We've got all kinds of things going on, a busy marina. So just having that dedicated person is good. So I don't I I mentioned that because we didn't do that as a dog beach police patrol. It's much much broader and that one component is the dog beach. So we'll see where it takes us next year. >> Thank you again for the report. Council, do we have questions for the chief? Council member Walsh. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just on the on the dog beach and the you you mentioned a little bit about the ebikes or not ebikes so much as the minibikes. I think it's the miniikes that are really the ones. I I saw some email exchange last week, I think, that you were involved in. So, you you've been trying you've been stopping people. Um what what's the the citation? Can you just describe both the dog beach because you said you eventually started doing some citations? I assume they're just like administrative fines or can you just talk about what that citation looks like for those? >> Sure. for the leash law. We uh issue citations and they're an ordinance uh citation and um it's you know some of the problem that we run into and maybe Mr. or city attorney Anderson would um have an opinion on this too but some of the some of the problem and actually maybe even Mr. Olson's office. But some of the problem is when we issue a citation for a city ordinance violation, it's a misdemeanor offense. And so it's okay, but you know, sometimes we we give a parking ticket for a guy who's parked somewhere for an extra 10 minutes and we give him citation. He's going to take a day off of court to day off of work to go to court because a misdemeanor offense, you must appear. And and we got some guidance from Mr. Olson's office uh and Heather one time to uh hey how about writing a a state citation because if you write a state citation instead of a city ordinance it's a petty misdemeanor and they don't have they can just pay it by fine right >> and so when the you know for example when the new parking ordinance was created we took that into account and we and we thought okay let's turn our ordinances those ordinances into petty misdemeanor so they won't have the same consequence for people getting those citations. So that that's one thing. So the other thing, you know, if you write a citation for a person that don't have doesn't have their dog on a leash, it's a misdemeanor offense. They have to go to court to to explain to the judge that they want to, you know, plead guilty and and give some money. So that's that citation. Now, we wrote very few at the end of the summer. Um I think that um Mr. Copy said, um last month he said that we wrote seven. And I think we might have written more than that, but um we I think our seasonal cso maybe wrote seven citations in the short time that they were doing that after the signs were up and we were writing citations. Uh I don't have that number for you. How many citations we brought? Not a lot. I mean, it's a little bit more than seven. Not a not a tremendous amount more. As far as like the ebikes and the scooters and whatnot, um there there's already state laws that say you can't ride a motorcycle um on a path. you know, if you do ride a motorcycle on city street, it has to be appropriate uh for street use and and you have to be a licensed driver and be able to drive that kind of vehicle. We're all seeing it, right, where the ebikes are out there and know they have pedals on them. People feel, okay, that's the same thing as a e motorcycle. And so they're kind of riding that two right next to each other. And I think in their heads they kind of think, yeah, they are the same. And it's it is a challenging discussion to have to go, how much different are they? because one has pedals on it that aren't used and the other one doesn't have pedals. So like they're they they go about the same miles and you know same speed and kind of handle the same way and they look roughly the same. One just looks a little bit more like a motorcycle. So that one's no good. But the ebike is is okay. Our officers are all over them. If we see somebody doing that, they absolutely will stop them. We last summer we had a string of it kind of going up and down Bald Eagle by the high school and we it was just a you know a handful of young men usually and we dealt with that appropriately and worked a deal out with their parents and kind of tried to stop them from doing that. So get a lot of questions about the the e um you know vehicles if you will on on our paths. Same rules apply for a motorcycle that does an e motorcycle. You can't ride them up on the path. Only a ebike can be up there in a scooter. I don't know if that answered your question. >> What's the What's the dollar amount on some of those citations? >> I'm looking for some a bailout here. I'm not I'm not 100% sure what the dollar amount is. >> Like 50 bucks, 85. I mean, >> fine. 50 bucks. >> Yeah. >> And usually if it's not an egregious violation, that's what you get. Now, if you got some dog that's chomping on somebody, that's a different story together. Thank you. >> Okay. Sorry, I didn't know that answer off the top of my head. >> One quick follow up on that for our city attorney. So, is that a creature of state law that says the city if you have a a code infraction, it has to be a misdemeanor? >> Uh, mayor and council, no, that's actually not. And the council can dictate in its ordinance if it's a petty misdemeanor. There are some ordinances that where we say expressly violations of the parking ordinance, for example, are a petty misdemeanor. Um the default is that all ordinance violations are misdemeanors unless you say otherwise. Uh and I can't remember how we drafted the leash violation law, but um typically uh you want those kinds of violations. This brings me back to my days as a prosecutor. So jump in, Mr. Olson, if I if I'm wrong about this, but the nice thing about having uh uh off leash violations as a misdemeanor is if if a dog bites somebody, there's injuries, there's victims, they damage property, then they're going to come into court, um you can make sure the victims have a say, they can get what's called restitution, um and other things. So, it's always nice to have that um option. And then for certain instances, I know when they do go to court, I'm guessing there's negotiations and there's ways to plead it down to a petty misdemeanor, but they do typically come with a uh required court date if there's um victims and those kinds of things. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that refresh my recollection on that back and forth that we had when we adopted that because from my standpoint, if it's a run-of-the-mill, you don't have your dog on a leash, that shouldn't be a misdemeanor. And I assume when those are those are written, our prosecution prosecutors take the facts and circumstances into account the analysis and what our intent was. I understand we want to reserve that ability for extreme circumstances or things where there there needs to be restitution. Um but from my standpoint, yeah, it should be it should be a petty misdemeanor. If it's one guy in the lake and he's playing fet playing fetch with his dog, he's violating the law. Misdemeanor can be a pretty serious offense. So, um, thank you for that explanation, council. Any other questions for Chief Council Member Edward? >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Chief, I've got a couple of topics. Um, so I want to fully recognize I I do recognize you have been educating us, as has the city manager, about the challenges of keeping a full roster of sworn officers and um nonsworn staff. So, we've had um significant difficulties in recruiting and hiring, onboarding. There's a ton of chop and churn. It's no easy task. So, as I as I ask this question, I'm not coming from a space of of negativity, but when you were talking about one of our officers speaking Spanish, we are are like the rest of the state of Minnesota, the population of White Bear Lake has changed in the last the demographics have changed in the last 20 to 30 years particularly um in it varies a little bit by ward, but somewhere between one and five, maybe even one in four of our citizens is a person of color. Many of them speak English, but inside of that population, um you have other languages spoken. And then even among the white population, we have uh folks from other places who do not speak English as a first language. That strikes me as a challenge and it's an additional expectation. But how do you think about um our hiring practices, our recruiting practices, the needs that we have for having a fully capable staff able to address the major needs of our of our community? Because I'm going to guess that Spanish isn't the only language that is in need at various times and particularly those times of vulnerability. How do you think about that? What plans are you making as you think about recruiting and job descriptions and all of that kind of stuff in a proactive way? How are we preparing for because that that ship is has sailed. It's we already know what's coming. >> How do you think about that? >> Uh Mr. Mayor, um council members, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Um, as I teach at a few universities and colleges in the area, I see it from that end and I see I regularly teach at Century College and I teach the classes that are right before their skills academy. So I get them the last semester before they go. And what we find oftent times is that we're somewhere around 40% diversity in those classes and then they go to skills and they come out the other end and we're not seeing 40% diversity in our workforce in law enforcement. So I don't know what the disconnect is. I don't know what's happening there. I I can only speak to what we do in in the city of White Bear Lake. And um I can say my um colleagues and I that work for suburbs are clamoring for diverse populations to apply with us and to hire with them. Females and and diversity were cl we're all begging for it because we understand that that ship is maybe it hasn't sailed all the way but it's sail it's starting to and we we think we can still jump on and we can um get upgraded. Now having said that I think that we at at our department um not a big fan of you know keeping score diversity-wise but our last 10 hires have been a pretty diverse group of people between females and people of color and I think we've done a good job especially for a suburb. I think one of the problem is getting to know these young women and men who are getting into law enforcement. um if they have any type of diversity attached to them, whatever that be, they're not looking to the suburbs to work. They're looking to Minneapolis, St. Paul, Henipin County, Ramsey County, and and so all of us are kind of left trying to court people that come out to our suburbs. I mean, you know, we're seven miles away from St. Paul, but it feels like forever to get to here from if you're an officer in St. Paul, and it's a vastly different community that you police. So, I can't speak to why some um a person of color wouldn't want to be in White Bear Lake. Um I don't think we send any vibes out to any certain groups to try to deter um pe folks from coming here. Uh in fact, I think the opposite is true. I'm I'm I I get to see them right at I'm going to the source, I guess, is what I'm saying. And and I know that um and all suburban police chiefs are feeling the same way as I am. So maybe Miss Crawford has a I know she plays a big part in our recruiting and our decision-m when it comes to that. So I wanted to be clear my question was aimed more at language capabilities that when we are dealing in in emergencies times when people are assaults u of all kinds having language capability is a critical that's a core competency and so I wasn't so much aiming at uh racial or gender diversity but I am talking about language capabilities in these moments And how do we think about that? Are do we have any other language capabilities besides Spanish? Do we have any officers who speak Mong or other languages already present? >> We do. We do have officers who speak Mong. We have um we have three Asian-American officers that work for us, two African-American officers that work for us, and um and then it's one Spanish speaker. So again, you know, this grant that we uh with both feet jumped into was because we want to encourage young people who speak a different language, who have a different set of experiences uh in their life to apply with us simply to make us a more rich uh police department to just give us more experiences and more capabilities to your point of speaking different languages. Uh, Council Member Edberg, I would add uh to that it's not only the police department that we we have language barriers in. It's uh the license bureau and we do have a a Spanish uh speaking employee there. We did have a a full um Spanish speaking employee uh but she she has moved unfortunately and sometimes she'll come and work for us seasonally which we greatly appreciate. But um we're definitely seeing it there too. all of our job descriptions um uh uh under the former uh city manager uh they were all adjusted as a uh um what is the the desirable qualifications uh to be multilingual and so that's a desirable qualification in uh any of our job categories um here at at the city. So it's something that we for sure look at. It's not the only thing that we look at when we're making hiring decisions. Um, I suspect it never will be, you know, the only thing that we look at, but when it when it works, we're thrilled. Um, if it doesn't, then we we do have interpreter services that we can can reach out to as we need to. So, >> are they on contract? Are they we go to the formal? What do we >> I would need to dive deeper into that. I know that I have contacts in my calendar um in my um not calendar, but in my Outlook uh account for that. Um, but I would need to do a deeper dive on on that for you. >> I appreciate the information. Thank you. So, second topic, Chief. Um, appreciated the data on interactions with um uh with law enforcement. Do you have a sense of where we're at specifically on DUIs in the last year or two and whether those are all right? We see we get a weekly report. It tells us how many um arrest citations, traffic stops, all that kind of stuff. So, I don't keep track of that day by day, week by week. My observation is that DUIs are not massively increased, but is that the case? What what what's the situation about DUI specifically? >> Uh and if you don't have the information right now, I I it's not fair to expect you to have that. So, but I'm welcoming your >> whatever your perception is and and perspective. >> I want uh Mr. Mayor, Councilman Edber, I want to brag and say that I know all those numbers off the top of my head, but I did actually do some research because I anticipated this a little bit. So, um you know, we always kind of hover post COVID, we always hovered around 100 DWIs a year, somewhere in that ballpark. 2023, we had 82 DWIs, we had a little dip. In 2024, we had 96. We had quite a jump. And so far in 2025, we have 123 so far. So, we're drastically outpacing the last two years just like with all of our all of our other numbers. Um, so I I I anticipate a 50% increase from last year in DWIS because I anticipate we'll get to 140ish, 145 maybe. Um, a lot of times the holiday season get gets even a little bit more. So, maybe we'll get to 150. That'll be a really positive number. It will be the highest number that we'll we will have had for a number of years, probably seven or eight years. Um when I came here in 2014, one of the one of the bragging rights that uh that time Chief Swanson gave me was that we had 300 DWIs uh the year before that. And I was a little bit of a DWI guy. Little did I know I was going to turn into a house cat and just sit in the corner of my office and collect sun. So, I don't do any traffic stops anymore, but that was one of the one of the selling points that she had for me. I know Mr. Olsson, do you have anything to add about DWIs? >> I was going to say in 2009 in the city of White Bear Lake, we had 383 DWIS. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. You know, I mean, it was and and what's nice is in the statewide, I think we were hovering around 40,000. It's now less than half of that. And so I think the, you know, all the advertising and maybe all the arrests, you know, all that that's happened has DWIS are about half of what they were 20 years ago, you know, 15 years ago. So it is, it's still a lot. I mean, 150 people out there driving drunk and I am floored and amazed at how many people drive. 20.33, it's just incredible. But th those are obviously the very seasoned alcoholics. Um, but anyways, it is it is better even though we we hear it about it a lot, but it's it's it's certainly half of what it used to be. So, >> how much of that do you attribute to it's okay to speculate? You mentioned 2009. In 2009, Uber, Lift, certain readily available. >> That's a huge part of it. That's, >> you know, hailing a cab back then was kind of tough. You called the 1-800 number. It took some time. Now it's an app on a phone and five minutes later you've got a ride. So I mean I think >> I think that has had to be a big part of it because we used to have a a certain officer who retired a few years back would sit down by St. Mary's Church and he'd just sit at that corner far enough back and boom run the stop sign and and we had one one officer who was one of our sergeants now. He was on pace to do a hundred that year except he uh broke his thumb in November and got stalled at 93. So anyways, it was it it was uh kind of so I think it's probably Uber and I think it's also just the public the advertising all those ads you see uh about it. Anyways, >> thank you. >> So if I could follow that though, so the consumption of cannabis has been legal in Minnesota for almost two years now. What percentage of our DWIS? Okay, recognizing that even 140 is less than half of what we were at. What are we finding uh in terms of the number of DUIs that get cited and and charged that are affiliated with cannabis use? >> I would say less than 10%. Okay, >> Mr. um Councilman Edberg, um I have a drug use DWIs. In 23 we had eight. 24 we had five and so far we had seven this year. And out of those drug um DWIs, I was a DWI guy back in the day and I wrote one marijuana DWI. And I sat down with my officers and my sergeants today. And we started picking our brains and we we asked each other, "Do you remember the last marijuana DWI?" Not just you, but anyone wrote. And uh nobody could remember one that not one of these were marijuana DWIs are all methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin, things like that. Marijuana DWI is extremely challenging to write from a practitioner's end. Uh the rules are different for marijuana when it comes to driving than any other drug or alcohol. It's just like they have their own lane for marijuana that makes it extremely challenging to write a DWI on marijuana. I will say that last year I heard from um uh the folks that know this with the state and they said that 60% of all DWIs that that required blood or urine 60 60% of all the DWIs have at least two drugs you know alcohol and something else in their system or if it's a drug at least two drugs in their system. So what we know about regular DWI with alcohol we know that the majority of them include marijuana as well. So, which one impaired you more, the alcohol or the marijuana? I don't know. But it's a very challenging DWI to write for marijuana because of the the probable cause you have to have in the science. >> You talk about writing it, try proving it. >> You don't have a standard. The only ones I've ever gotten convictions on are the guys that get out of their car and it's like Chichin Chong. The officer will say, "You should have been driving. You think you're high? Oh, no. I was way too high to be driving." It's not very hard as a prosecutor to prove that case. But beyond that, very difficult. Very difficult. >> Any other questions from the council? >> All right, Chief. Thank you for the report. We appreciate it. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. >> All right. Item six, public hearings. We have nothing scheduled. Item seven, unfinished business. Nothing scheduled. Eight, new business. Nothing scheduled. Nine, discussion. Nothing scheduled. It's a light agenda tonight. Item 10, communications from the city manager, Miss Crawford. >> Uh, uh, just one update so I can honor Council Member Edberg's request. I'm a short meeting. Um, >> I'll keep going. >> By the hour, >> I will, uh, >> we're definitely not. >> Um, I will not be at the next council meeting. I'll be at uh, the International City Managers Association conference. Uh, yep. Down in Tampa. So cons um assistant city manager Jupa will be in my seat for that and we will have a first reading not a public hearing but first reading of our tree ordinance uh revised tree ordinance. So just a heads up that's coming but the public hearing will be at the second reading uh which will be uh in November. So that's what I have tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you Miss Crawford. Any questions for the city manager? >> Well before we adjourn, welcome high school students. I think this is the first large pack uh group of high school students of the school year. We're glad to have you here. Who is Mr. Malum? >> Nice. Nice. He may have tipped you off on my little spiel that I give, but I think it's I think I'm up to 23 years ago. I can say I was in Mr. Malum's class sitting where you are in this very council chambers listening to a council meeting for the very same assignment. Um it was interesting to me. I hope you found it interesting. I was ready to say, "Boy, you guys got lucky." Because I thought we were going to get out here about 7:30. But, um, Chief, I won't blame you. I had lots of questions. So, I won't say you rambled. And it was only one typo, so that wasn't so bad. Um, but thank you for being here. You you got to see We didn't really make any decisions tonight, so we didn't get any debate on policy or anything like that, but you got to see one of the most important touch points, which is um law enforcement and and getting report on how things are going. Um, so I'll leave you with this. I would encourage you as you get older to participate in local government in some capacity. Doesn't have to be running for office. There are various volunteer boards. Rob Olsson just left, but when I was in law school, I was a student prosecutor for the city of White Bear Lakes. There's another touch point for those of you that are daring enough to go to law school. Um, but there are lots and lots of ways to get involved in the community, volunteer positions. So, uh, I'd encourage you to do so and thank you again for being here tonight. And as soon as I hit this gavvel and we adjourn, you guys can come up and any one of us can sign your pieces of paper. So, thank you again. And with that, I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> A motion to second. All those in favor say I. I. We're ajourned.