During the 06/22/2022 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, Police Chief Todd Thomas provided a brief update regarding some of the things that are going on in the police department.
Attached to the agenda was a picture of the new squad car design. The change was minimal and had currently been applied to two new sedans that SROs were using. Some of the lettering was larger and the gray stripe had been removed because it looked outdated. [I’ve included a picture from the APD’s Facebook page showing the old design for comparison.]
Chief Thomas said they considered a couple different renderings but settled on this one because it was the most popular. He thought it looked professional and was a little cleaner than the old design.
Eventually, the new design will be transferred onto all of the squad cars as they are replaced, but it will take a couple of years.
He moved onto a staffing update. Currently APD had three open positions and had hiring processes going on for two of those positions. The candidate pool had been getting smaller over the last couple years to the point that, in the last couple weeks, they created a recruitment team. He said they had several officers and a couple supervisors join the recruitment team, and the team was going to try to come up with some new creative ideas to conduct recruitment and bring in more applicants.
APD had already tried doing everything that other agencies have done such as providing incentives for lateral transfers and bringing in new employees, but the department was still struggling as everyone currently was with finding employees. However, APD was doing pretty well compared to a lot of other agencies that Chief Thomas had talked to and was not at a critical stage. The summer months were a better time to be short on officers because the School Resource Officers are not in schools and are available to help with patrol and investigation; because of that, they essentially had an extra 12 officers to cover patrols. He hoped that the open positions would be filled before fall.
Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) asked if, at some point, the committee could get an update on the activities of the special traffic unit.
Chief Thomas said he was planning to have the officer come to the committee in the next month or two, but had wanted to give him a few weeks to get his feet under him first. The officer was starting to set up some programs. They were also working on setting up a city email address where people could send in complaint and creating a tracking program for that. The officer was also working on some research for College Avenue designs.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=951451&GUID=1EFC03B9-890F-40E3-9D30-E3A0C70D7A82
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