Police Chief Todd Thomas gave an update on several police-related items to the Safety and Licensing Committee on 02/23/2022.
NEW SQUAD CAR MARKINGS
He said the new markings on one of their squad cars and would probably end up updating 7 or 8 more. [He shared pictures with the committee, but those pictures were not included in the meeting details available for download, and I don’t see anything on the police department’s Facebook page either.] The purpose of these new markings was to make those particular vehicles stand out from the other police vehicles. The new markings were for command vehicles and vehicles that have special equipment in them, so that if they have a large scene or respond out of the area to assist another jurisdiction, it will be clearly visible where the equipment and command vehicles are. They were not, however, going to be changing how a majority of the APD’s squad cars looked.
CRISIS RESPONSE TEAM
He also wanted to update them on the newly created Crisis Response Team. The team had been in place since the first week of January when Sarah Peterson a clinical therapists started working with the police department. The first couple weeks involved working out a lot of logistical issues and making sure that HIPAA regulations were followed correctly, and Sarah’s work remained confidential.
But they did hit the ground running. As of the time of the meeting, she had already had 42 personal one-on-one, face-to-face interactions. These were calls with people who were suicidal or in crisis that would normally have been responded to by a police officer or several police officers. She had been able to go to these either by herself or accompanied by an officer for her safety, meet face-to-face with the individuals, and connect them with resources.
She had also done 29 phone consultations. Just the day before they had a situation at a local emergency room that involved someone with some significant mental health issues who gets extremely violent. The officers were starting to use her services more and called her. She responded right away and went to the hospital to help them.
He said that, thus far, the program had been outstanding. They knew she would be busy, but they didn’t know she would be that busy.
Thus far it had been very positive and she brought a wealth of knowledge to the department and the officers. She regularly gets phone calls from officers seeking guidance, and she had already started working with the APD training staff to help them put together some training for how to deal with people in crisis. There had already been positive changes and he only saw things growing.
Alderperson Michael Smith (District 10) asked if they were planning on hiring another person since it sounded like she was already overworked.
Chief Thomas said this was a 2-year pilot program. Appleton’s portion of the cost was $50,000, and Outagamie County contributed $25,000. The main funders of the program were United Way and the Brighter Ideas Fund of the Community Foundation.
They had somebody from the University of Wisconsin system who was doing statistical analysis and data gathering for them. Once they put the numbers together, they were going to approach the county about making it a full-time position and grow the program into something like what is in place in the Wausau and Green Bay areas, each of which have robust programs with several clinicians.
Alderperson Alex Schultz said he thought he could speak for everyone in the room about how pleased they were that this position was created. They could see it was needed and they were incredibly satisfied to see that this was in place and the police department was responding a little bit differently to problem clients in the community.
Alderperson Smith said that the chief had mentioned Sarah going into situations all by herself. He didn’t know exactly what that meant and wondered if there were parameters and safety precautions built in to keep her from going alone into situations that were too hazardous.
Chief Thomas said they had a lot of safety protocols in places. There were situations in her former role where she would respond and talk with clients whom she already had a relationship with. Those were low risk people that she was perhaps just checking in on every month or couple weeks.
The police department always had a co-responder for unknown situations, where they don’t have enough knowledge about what is going on or if it involves a person they are not familiar with. They took safety very seriously both for her and for the people they were interacting with. That was the benefit of the co-responder role; the officer can be there but when they realized they didn’t need to take the lead, Sarah could take the lead and the police officer could move into the background and let her do her work.
STAFFING
Chief Thomas also wanted to give a staffing update because he knew there were a lot of media stories about police departments struggling to find good candidates and operating understaffed. He reported that the Appleton Police Department was not experiencing that problem.
They have been getting extremely qualified candidates and are fully staffed. As of the day before, they had an officer from another jurisdiction accept and offer with them, and they had two other offers out. One of those offers was for an officer from the Phoenix area who was just finishing up his testing. He was a great candidate with a diverse background.
They were at the point where they were starting to hire people to fill openings that would be coming up in the next few months. Additionally, lateral hires had been outstanding. He said he just went through their seniority list for the last five years and they had only lost one officer to a sheriff’s department while they had hired twenty officers from other agencies. So, they had twenty officers come to them from other agencies while only losing one. HE thought that said a lot of about department.
He said they had no concerns about the quality of the candidate, and they were really thankful. A lot of that had to do with the community. When they go out and do recruiting, they talk about the community as much as they talk about the department. They try to sell the department, but they also make sure candidates know about the Fox Cities and the City of Appleton.
Alderperson Smith finished things up by asking if Chief Thomas could give an update on the shooting on West College Avenue, but Chief Thomas couldn’t say anything more than that they were actively working on it without jeopardizing things.
View meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=913979&GUID=1F45D625-A395-4F0C-984D-3C6DF96B819B
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