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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-03-19 Transcription Page 1 Council Present: Alter,Bergus,Dunn,Harmsen, Moe, Salih, Teague Staff Present: Fruin,Jones, Goers, Grace,Hightshoe,Kilburg,Havel, Sovers Others Present: LeFevre,USG, Monsivais,Alternate 1. Public Safety Calls for Service Discussion Teague: Our first item is going to be public safety calls for service discussion.And I'll turn it over to our city manager Geoff Fruin,to get started? Fruin: Thanks. I'll just do a quick-uh,quick intro. So,this has been,ah,on the pending list for a month or two and,um,you-you're getting into a-a topic that,uh,can take you down a number of different paths,right?This,uh,uh,is kind of hard to get your arms around this. So we wanted to start at a very foundational level tonight,um, and I've,ah,asked that Tom Jones from the Joint Emergency Communication Center,uh, start us off and talk a little bit about,uh,the 9-1-1 dispatch center. That's where a lot of those emergency and non-emergency calls originate. Describe for you,um, what goes on at the JECC,how it's organized,how dispatchers work.And then,uh,we'll turn it over to-to Chief Liston and Chief Lyon for an overview of calls for service.Really at the end of this,we want to make sure you can obviously get your questions answered,but,uh,anticipate that there may be follow up that you may want to continue to explore,uh,whether that's,uh,matters with police or fire,um,or other service providers.Right?You've shown some interest in talking about,uh,Johnson County Ambulance or mobile crisis.Um,there's not enough time to cover all those things in one work session,so just be thinking about any-any follow up that you may want to have.But to get things started,I'll introduce Tom Jones,uh,with the Joint Emergency Communications Center,who's going to kick things off. Teague: Great,welcome. Jones: All right. Good evening. Thank you. Over here. To start out is,um,Mr. Fruin said,My name is Tom Jones. I'm the Executive Director of the Joint Emergency Communications Center,uh,here in Iowa City.Been there since 2009.Been in my role as the Executive Director since 2012. So, uh,I've been a part of the center since inception,uh, and- and the facility being built and a lot of the opederechons up through today. Uh,just to go over a little bit,uh,outline for discussion. Uh, this is kind of some of the general broad overview I'm going to present to you folks on about the JECC,uh,and get a little high level overview to talk about the governing board. I'm going to talk about,uh, some of the advisory committees that we have that make recommendations,uh,on our policies and procedures.Emergency Medical Dispatch program that we have,uh,dispatcher training,how calls for service are assigned. Uh,let's talk a little bit about 9-1-1,uh,and the 9-8-8, kind of the partnership,how we work together,uh,what a little bit of that response looks like. And then I'll end up with some- some statistics,some five year comparison,uh,on call volume, and then the number of calls for service that-that we create. Uh,so I'll start out,uh,is a high level review of the JECC or J-E-C-C,I'll call it-uh,you'll probably hear me call it both.Uh,there's an executive director, a dispatch opederechons manager,uh,systems network analyst.Uh,we have three shift supervisors and 27 full time dispatchers. We kind of know our population here,but we serve 152,154 residents based on our 2020 census,uh,and then visitors into the community and county.We provide 9-1-1,uh,dispatch services for all public safety agencies in Johnson County. Uh,that includes five police departments, 15 fire departments,and one county wide ambulance service. We also work very closely with the University of Iowa,uh,their-their police department, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 2 public safety,and their dispatch center as well.Uh,we also partner with federal state and local public safety agencies, including our border and county partners,uh,that we share resources with, uh,mostly radio system resources. Our entity does own and operate the public safety radio system for the county,uh, and it kind of consists of 967 public safety radios and approximately 500 non-public safety radios. Uh,and then we also are connected to,uh, a regional radio system network that consists currently of approximately 23 counties. Uh,so if you think about it,our radios are kind of like a cell phone and nowadays,uh,we-we travel outside of our county borders. If we have coverage within those other counties,our radio just works.We stay on our home talk group,we still talk back to Iowa city,and Johnson County,uh,and-and the radios just- just work as if a cell phone,uh,with that technology.Leading into talking a little bit our governing board.Uh, so I gave an overview of the JECC and kind of our staff,uh,how JECC is governed. Uh,we are governed by a seven member policy board.Uh,that policy board was formed by a 28 E agreement back in 2007 and which the member entities,uh, signed off on. Those member entities are Johnson County,the City of Iowa City,the City of Coralville„uh,the City of North Liberty,and the Emergency Management Commission. Uh,those entities then have, ah, seven members that comprise our policy board with Johnson County and Iowa City, each having two representatives,uh,Coralville,North Liberty,and the Emergency Management Commission,each having one representative.Uh,I've listed the representatives,uh,in my presentation. Uh,our current chair is Meghan Foster from Coralville,the Mayor.Mayor Chris Hoffman from North Liberty is our vice chair.Royceann Porter,Johnson County Supervisor,uh, Laura Bergus,Council person for City of Iowa City,uh, Sheriff Kunkel,Johnson County representative,Councilman Shawn Harmsen from Iowa City or Harmsen, sorry, and Dave Wilson's the Emergency Management Commission representative as the EMA Director. A little bit about our advisory committees,uh, for the Joint Emergency Communications Center.We have basically two primary committees,uh,that serve and make recommendations to us,uh,on our policies and- and our operating procedures for our day-to-day opederechons,uh, for how we dispatch calls for service. Though the first committee is a user advisory committee,uh,that is comprised mostly of,uh,public safety kind of chiefs or higher ranking,uh,officials in the public agency-public safety agency departments in which we serve. Uh,so there's representatives from both police, fire and EMS,uh,on those-on that committee. That committee works with JECC staff,again,to standardize kind of our policy,procedure and response as being a county wide dispatch center,uh,serving,you know,multiple cities in the county as a whole. We want to do things one way,so we're not trying to train staff to do things multiple different ways for each department. Uh,that group comes together when,uh,we discuss policy and procedure recommendations,uh,to-to standardize on-on those procedures so that we can dispatch each agency the same way. In the end,I think as we all know,that-that prevents less mistakes and less-less thought process when time is of the essence. When we're taking a call and trying to dispatch those emergency resources.Recommendations from that committee are then brought through me.If it requires any budgetary,uh,things to budget for any high level policy and procedure changes that I would then bring to,uh,the Joint Emergency Communications Center policy board. The second committee,uh,is our Emergency Medical Dispatch Review Committee. Our EMD review committee,uh,reviews general compliance of our Emergency Medical Dispatch program. I will go into in the next slide,we'll talk further about what the Emergency Medical Dispatch program consists of.But those representatives on that committee,uh,help us go through the quality assurance side of that. We work with the Johnson County Medical Examiner-Examiner-Medical Director. I should not get the two confused,big difference in this case. The medical director,uh,on this committee and he serves on there as well,to- is again,I'll talk in the next slide when I go in depth about EMD,Emergency Medical Dispatching,um,signs off on our procedures,uh, so that we can-we can give those pre arrival instructions to callers. So This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 3 leading into that,uh,Emergency Medical Dispatch is a service that we provide at the Joint Emergency Communications Center. We're fortunate enough due to our size and due to the community size and the staffing that we have,we're able to provide,uh, a service of providing pre arrival medical instructions to callers based on a standard set of questioning or framework that is developed.And we-we try to come up with a chief complaint.And then we're able to provide a pathway to intervention,uh,to the responders before they arrive on scene. And our staff has to certify and re-certifying this every two years. Some of those pathways are,uh,providing choking,Heimlich maneuver instructions to callers,uh,CPR instruction to callers. We-we've had several dispatchers,uh,assist with delivering,uh,babies on sides of roads,um,anywhere that you can probably imagine.And also coming up with,uh,some unique ways to,uh,for intervention takes,such as tying off an umbilical cord with a shoelace. Or I've heard baling twine being used. So things like that that people wouldn't think that our-our staff do.But they are-they are trained in-in techniques in how to,um,assist callers on scene before responders arrive. The AMD program,as I said before,is signed off on by the,uh,medical director. The Johnson County Medical Director is the paid position,uh,who was appointed by the Johnson County Ambulance Service. Um,we are fortunate here that we all share the same medical director,um,having multiple entities,um,within the community,multiple public safety agencies,all being represented by that same medical director.Make things pretty helpful because he's signing off on those- on those standards,um,and what we're doing. And so all the departments know together we're-we're working on the same approved,um,set of standards. The medical director one thing they can do to,I would say,kind of enhance,uh,the emergency medical dispatch program is they're authorized to give us additional,um,instructions on some of those pre-on some additional pre-arrival instructions such as on chest pain. We-our staff can have callers recommend baby aspirin,um,and things like that. Things that you,uh,the program itself,um,does not standardize on that.But our Medical Director can give us further guidance,uh,to do that. So that-that's one example there,um,there's also some things for,uh, stroke protocols and stuff that our staff instructions that we can do,uh,with go over with callers before help arrives. So dispatcher training,um,what kind of training do these folks go through?Uh,they go through approximately six months of on the job training before they were assigned to work on their own.Uh,in the first month,they sit through kind of an in house two-week academy,uh,to learn kind of our processes,um,an overview of our systems,um,just-just kind of start getting used to that stuff. Uh,we go over some calls,we play for them,walk through the scenarios, and it just kind of gives them an introductory period before they go out onto the floor,uh,with their assigned trainer and- and start working. Um,because once-once they go out onto that floor with that trainer,um,that trainer is also working as well, so they're-you're-you're instantly working. And so sometimes, um,then that becomes being trained right-right on the fly,right on the spot,um,real-time. And so by doing this two-week kind of in-house academy,we're fmding that-that the new hires have been reporting back to us,uh,they feel more comfortable. Uh,we've compared it to some of the staff that did not have that opportunity to go through that,uh since we've just recently implemented this in the last year.And,uh,comparing notes on that,it's really paid off on-on dividends before-before getting them started. Um,they go to the Iowa Department of Public Safety for a day and they take a,um,kind of advanced,I don't want to use a lot of acronyms today because-because I'll have to be explaining each- each one of them. They go to Des Moines and they get certified on the Iowa system and then the National Crime Information Center System,which is called NCIC. That's where they learn how to run,uh,driver's licenses,enter warrants,enter stolen articles,um,nun license plates. And they kind of get a one day kind of advanced training,um,on that at-at the state of Iowa in Des Moines. Then within the fust year of hire,all of our staff has to go to Des Moines to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy,and attend a 40-hour class,uh,to get certify to be- state certified to become a public safety dispatcher.Um, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 4 they can also go through regional certification courses that have recently been offered,uh,that the state hosts throughout the state. Uh,traditionally,uh,you've had to go to Des Moines to get that training,uh,but now they-they've been offering it regionally. Then new hires are monitored over that six month period by that training officer,um,and they learn the following three skill sets. They're trained in call taking,law dispatch and fire EMS dispatch. Those are the three,uh, main unctions at the dispatch center. And then within each of those three functions, obviously, uh,there-there's additional breakout.But those are the three,uh,main functions that-that we do out in dispatch. Calls for service assignment. Um, so one-one may ask,how-how do-when this call comes in,you know,what-what-what happens-what happens with that call when it comes in?Most of our calls are originated either,uh,by 9-1-1 or on our non-emergency line. Or what we-we also have what's called an alarm line. Um,most calls come in that way. Other ways that calls are generated are by officer-initiated activity in the field.And dispatchers would,uh,receive that information and enter a call for service to dispatch the appropriate resource.Um,dispatchers, they face challenges,you know,every day,almost on every call they take,because we're usually receiving,you know,little information,uh, from callers or callers who don't have kind of first- hand information when reporting an emergency. And these dispatchers there have to try to make quick decisions,uh,based on this-this little information,um,as it's explained to us and get that appropriate resource out.Um,most of the time,you know,we have goals ol�um,answering the phone within a certain number of seconds or less,90%of the time. We're trying to answer calls in less than 15 seconds. And then our goal is also to get these calls out in 90 seconds is kind of our- our primary target goal,uh,to get that help going. Um,obviously we strive for less than that,but that's-that's the goal. From the time the calls taken and received,um,you have a dispatcher who receives the call. They classify the call they enter in,um,the address of the call. They need to verify that address,uh,because obviously being a county wide dispatch center, sometimes there's the same street address resides in multiple cities. Um,I can use the example of Jefferson Street. We have a Jefferson Street in North Liberty with a Jefferson Street in Iowa City. And there are the same addresses, so our dispatchers have to make sure that we thoroughly verify that with callers. Um, sometimes the callers will get frustrated and we ask them to repeat themselves.But we're doing that to ensure that we're getting the right resource,um,dispatched to-to the appropriate jurisdiction.Um,and then after they enter that address,get that-that information,um, taken from the caller. So we get a call type,we get an address,then they're pending that call. Then that call goes to a dispatcher to be dispatched. That's kind of the quick high-level process of when that call comes through. You have a call taker who answers it. Sometimes that call taker is not the same person that dispatches that call.Um,so we do have staff assigned that their first,uh, primary role on shift is to be the primary call taker. Their number one role for that shift is the first one to answer the phone,and then they enter that information into the call, and then the appropriate police or fire dispatcher pick it up, and then they initiate the dispatch process. Now, we'll talk a little bit about 9-1-1 and 9-8-8 these are-these are kind of topics I get asked about a lot,especially as of recent.And I just want to,kind ol�go over high level,the differences here between the two.You may see me or hear me,listen to me reference in the slide,a flow chart. That flow chart will be on the next slide just to get all the information in here the way the flow chart was to for-in order to format it correctly,we had to put it on another slide so that could be clearly legible to read. So 9-8-8 call centers are separate from the 9-1-1 dispatch center. So we are two separate functions that provide-provide two different services. Um,we work with our local agencies on procedures to forward 9-1-1 calls that meet 9-8-8 diversion criteria based on a diversion flow chart.And we went live with this process in July 5th of 2023. So what we did was we worked closely,um,with the 9-8-8,uh,center here locally. Uh,we're fortunate to have one here in Iowa City that has become one of the national call centers,uh,and for this region as well. And so having that resource here,we-we worked together,uh,early on,and then also with the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 5 state of Iowa to volunteer,uh,to be part of a pilot,uh,project for the 9-8-8,um,diversion. And so we joined up with three other counties,um,met with state,uh,representatives from health and human services, State Homeland Security,9-1-1 and participated in,kind of,a several month process ol�you know,going through this flow chart,seeing what's working,how many calls are- are we getting,how many calls are we diverting from 9-1-1,uh,to 9-8-8, and then setting up that transfer process. So when that became live,uh, since the 9-1-1 phone system is different from a standard 10 digit dialing system,and being able to forward a call on a 10 digit,uh,administrative phone system is much differently than setting up how to forward calls on a 9-1-1 platform,which is a separate phone system.And so working with the state on getting the 9-8-8 forwarding set up, and then being, again,one of those first three piece apps to test that forwarding and- and take those calls,and then have our data tracked to try to develop,uh,the 9-8-8 diversion procedure, uh,that would be rolled out then statewide to everyone. So 9-1-1 calls that come into the JECC, uh,where callers are experiencing a mental health crisis. They are screened according to this flow chart and then dispatched accordingly.Again,we're not to the flow chart,but I'll refer to it. Calls where no exclusionary criteria are present are the ones that we will forward to 9-8-8. And again, we'll-we'll cover that exclusionary criteria in that-in that next slide and there's four of those under- five main, sorry. In our experience here,we're finding callers who are experiencing a crisis in calling 9-1-1. They're more in the active stages of trying to harm themselves,someone else or they're needing more immediate medical attention based on that flow chart,which then requires an immediate response,um, from- from public safety professionals,um,police, fire and paramedics.Um,then locally,once responders are on scene,we're fortune enough here in-in our communities,uh,to request that mobile crisis can be dispatched once it's- it's determined once- once officers or,uh,public safety professionals are on scene that this-this would be more of a- a suitable response or mobile crisis,then they make that request of us.We contact mobile crisis here locally and would request them to go to-to that situation and- and solve that issue. And then those,uh,public safety professionals go-go back in service. Since- so that's,kind of, a high level difference of the three. And I'm-I'm sure we'll have questions as we get into that,but I just at least want to provide that,kind of,high level of those three things,9-1-1,9-8-8 and mobile crisis because those things are,kind ol�three things that really apply to us here-here locally,um,in-in our community. And mobile crisis is especially one that doesn't apply in every community,but we're fortunate enough to have that resource here. Since the inception of 9-8-8,and us being one of the three pilot centers,we've only transferred three calls in the past four months to 9-8-8.I don't have particular data- current data from representatives at community and foundation two and some of our,uh,9-8-8 partners locally is what their call volume looks like. I can anticipate it being much higher because I know that their services are being utilized but when I talk about from our standpoint, callers calling into 9-1-1,and as we stated earlier, as we've tracked this also through our pilot project,we're finding the people that are calling 9-1-1 are more in those active stages of-of that crisis,which don't meet the-the criteria for us to forward that call to 9-8-8,9-8- 8 in turn gets a different-different type of call. They might be getting the call in advance where someone is calling because they-they might be thinking,you know,they're just-they're struggling,they're-they're having some issues,and they might be giving some thoughts,uh,to some of this stuff,um,and-and it's not happening right away. So it's more,you know,I'm thinking about it.I'm just going through some tough times right now.If things don't improve in two weeks,you know,I-I don't know what I'm going to do and they're experienced that and those people,um, are- are trained to go through and help them with that. And that would not warrant, you know,a 9-1-1 response. So the 9-8-8 center,one thing I didn't mention earlier,they can always forward a call directly to us as well through-through a screening process. And we-we have not gotten those, so most of the time it's calls again coming into us. We'll go to this flow chart next.We'll kind of go through that exclusionary criteria and we'll be able to,kind of,go This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 6 through why when those callers are those active stages talking to us why our numbers have been low to-to forward that from the 9-1-1 side. Again,it's- it's hard to see here.I don't know if any. Teague: I have one question about this. Jones: Yes. Teague: Is this a state adopted four item exclusion,or is this more of a in house exclusion? Jones: So,a good question. So this-this did come through the pilot program and so this is what we adopted,um,in house to start working through, and this is what we presented to our local responders is our process that we would be going through.Um,and then we can always make changes locally,but to start out with,kind of,a foundation and that guideline to start with,yeah, we took this from that- from that pilot group in the- in the recommendation. Teague: And then one last question. Jones: Yes. Teague: This is related to the three calls in the last four months transfer to the 9-8-8. Do you know if- because community is answering all of these calls for the state of Iowa. Do you know if other communities are having a higher call volume transfer? Jones: So the communities that I'm aware of that-that I have data on from the past four months,um, are the- are some other pilot centers and then a couple that they just included in the snapshot that they provided to me,um,and that was Black Hawk County,was three,um,Cedar Rapids Joint Communications Center,which is the Cedar Rapids just city of Cedar Rapids was one. Muscatine County Joint Communications was 2 and the Marion Police Department was 1.And so in addition to R3,uh,that was the total,um,calls over the last four month- four months,sorry, that PSAPs had-had referred to-to 9-8-8. Teague: Thank you. Jones: You're welcome. Salih: I have a question about earlier you said the-the people when they call 9-1-1,you evaluate the calls and after that maybe transferred accordingly.And sometimes you repeatedly asked the person to repeat themselves so you have clear idea what the address with the problem so you can handle it correctly. What about the people who doesn't speak English? Jones: So we have a service that we utilize called Language Line,and we,uh,we conference them on the phone,this service.And through,um,through their screening process,they pickup on the language detected. And because we have,um,I don't-I don't even want to guess now because I-I would be remiss if I said something incorrect. I know it's in my annual report,but our last year we had a record number of,uh,of different languages in our community, and I know it was-it was more than 10.Um,and so we-we do have that,we do encounter that,um,we conference them on the phone and we work together,uh,through their interpretation service. Salih: Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 7 Jones: Yeah. So on this-on this chart, again,I-I know it's hard to read. I'll-I'll kind of-I'll just kind of walk through real quick because there's not really a lot to it. It looks like it's a lot of information, but I can go quickly. Um, so- so it starts out,um,callers concerns. We're screening them to see if they fall under any of these categories. Suicide ideation,no action taken,mental health, including third party family mediation,youth mental or behavioral health. So if we get through any of those and the answer is yes,we move on to the exclusionary criteria. So if any of these criteria are present,does the caller need medical attention?Is the caller threatening others personal safety or property,or themselves?Is the caller on a structure,um,or a bridge?Um,has there been a welfare check requested on someone,and is there an inability to consent to the transfer?And so a lot of times we'll get that too,where the caller for any reason due to impairment or something,the caller who's calling in,the person's inability to consent to being transferred,that's being called about.If any of those questions are answered yes or unknown,we have to dispatch an appropriate law enforcement,um,EMS response. If the answer is no,um,and then we acquire consent to transfer to 9-8-8,then that's,uh,process then is initiated. So that's kind of a-a-that's the quick, um,high level walk through of that flow chart.Um,and again,a majority of all the calls that we're getting and why we experienced that transfer number to be low is a lot of times they're in- callers are in an active state of crisis.Um,and so they're either needing some, sort of,medical attention,most of the time threatening to harm themselves,um,in-in the present,um,or someone else. Um,and so that right there warrants why we send that other response.Now,could any of these ever fall under where we-we get there and it's not as bad as what it seems. I go back to, kind of,that earlier slide where we are receiving information,sometimes very little information, sometimes not even firsthand.And we're-we're trying to get help dispatched as fast as we can. So our staff is trying to make decisions off of key information that they are able to obtain in a very quick,short amount of time. Once we-once we get through that,they make that assessment that calls dispatched and a resource gets on scene and it's determined that,uh,they are not needed, that is when we go back and we have those options. If-if the responders on scene request mobile crisis for instance,then we are making that request. They've determined it's safe for mobile crisis or someone to come on scene. And when I talk about-and I don't want to make an assumption,so I'll explain.You know,the difference in mobile crisis and 9-8-8,obviously,is mobile crisis is an in person response by two people versus 9-8-8 is you're calling,and it's through the phone. And so mobile crisis locally,two people come to you,9-8-8,you're-you're-you're going to talk to someone through-through the phone. And so we do that a lot,mobile crisis is requested here a lot,um,it is a great resource that we have here locally. Like I said,I know it is utilized. I know we call and we send them at the request of the responders and then they're able to go back in service and go back to their regular duties. I'm almost ready to wrap up and then I'll-I'll-I'll either open my site up for questions or we'll-we'll move into theirs and we can do questions at the end, however-however the-the flow works for that.But I'll talk a little bit here,um,just to put some statistics at just some very high level statistics. Um,this is a- a five year,uh,phone call volume comparison, so over the past five years this is what the can volume at the- at the joint emergency communications centers looked like- looks like, sorry. Uh,the blue is 901 calls and those are both wireline and wireless combined,uh,we're on the next Gen 91 technology now, so both ring in the same way,wireless and wireline.Voice over IP calls,uh,those went away in '22 and'23,and they're all again now merged in the next gen,uh,category. Text to 9-1-1 is gray,and then yellow is our non-emergency line. That's,obviously,the one that's the highest. So that's the one that's called for,um,routine calls,um,non emergency.I'll-I'll use a light moment here, sometimes they call on one.What time the fireworks start or 4th July parade,very common question. Also,uh,no joke,people call in and want to know delivery-pizza delivery numbers,but anyways.It's a little light humor,but-but it does happen,um,on that number. And then the last category,dark blue, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 8 uh,is the alarm line. Alarm lines consist of your home security monitoring,things like that. Services Brinks home security,things like that,that are monitored by third party alarm processing services,um,we prioritize those calls highly in our center. They ring in separate, so we know when those come in,they are differentiated. And we know that there is a level of import- importance to that call over routine call, so it would be answered in a higher priority order. So over the past five years,um,that's what our call volume,uh,has looked like. Um, and then this- this slide here shows a five year,uh,CAD,which stands for Computer Aided Dispatch Calls For Service Comparison. So the,uh,-the CAD is the system that we enter in Calls For Service to be dispatched in. That's kind of our main computer-that's our business application that-that-that runs our business.Um,so those CAD calls that are entered in,which are then,uh, subsequently dispatched to,um,one of the first responder agencies,um,that-that's the-that's the number of calls that we've done over that five year period. Um,this data is from Calls For Service that dispatched personnel have created in response to phone calls coming in on 9-1-1 and the non emergency line,and then al-also with officer initiated activity,uh,those calls for service are created.Uh, also,multiple phone calls may be logged under the same CAD Call For Service,um, if it's related to the same event,uh, so accidents where there are multiple callers,um,most recently we like to-we like to coin the phrase snowpocalypse we had in January,um,that-that terrible snowstorm where we had,uh,upwards 10 plus cars in a ditch at the same location. We're not going to create 10 calls for service for that,we're just gonna log all 10 of those at that one address where everybody just decided to-to go-to go off roading,uh, and into the ditch. So sorry, just make a little light humor. It was-it was a,uh,extremely odd event.Uh,I would compare it to probably like the derecho we had,um,in 2021,um,kind of two really odd anomalies,uh,I have a whole separate presentation on the snowpocalypse numbers. It was quite impressive. Um,but 2021,um,one question,you know, folks ask me here is why-why does that number look so low? I mean,the calls were-were kind of,you know,flowing normal. We're now into,uh,2021 here, but the dispatch calls,um,look a little lower.And there is-there is a difference,it's- it was about 168,000,um,to around the 182 number there,so do the math,you're looking around 14, 15,000 calls down that year.Um,law enforcement calls alone,that time period.And again,we're kind of operating in the middle of COVID here. They were about anywhere between the-the years,uh, before and after'21,anywhere between 11-17,000 calls we were down that year. So being dispatched,not-not calls coming in on the phone,but just calls,um,being dispatched. Um,why do I think the call volume was a little higher and still doesn't relate to that?Um,again,um, medical calls were,uh,a little bit, fire calls were up a little bit,but kinda average for that time frame,maybe up 1,000- 1,500,um,medical calls,uh,the same.But,you know,we had COVID, we had a lot of calls being called in about,uh,people not wearing masks and thinking that warranted a law enforcement response,but those calls coming in didn't relate to that call for service being dispatched. So again,call volume high,we're receiving a lot of calls,but you don't see a dispatch number down here in this slide reflecting that.Um,other thing,the derecho was in that August,we took an astronomical amount of calls within a very short time frame with that derecho. Obviously,Cedar Rapids being primarily affected. We are Cedar Rapids backup,we took a lot of calls for Cedar Rapids. And then we took a lot of calls those subsequent 24-48 hours with a lot of power line or power issues sorry,being called in about when is power going to be restored. Um,I just remember going through those-those fust couple of days after that and the phone was ringing nonstop.I mean,we were doing 350 plus calls per hour we were answering. Yeah,and that was just routine even not just- sorry combined,it wasn't just an emergency call. So,um,there-there's a lot of,um,we've-we've looked into this,uh,just a lot of those,um,those factors there i-is what we're kind of correlating and again,when you-when you take only about a 14,000,um,call difference and we're down,um,approximately 12,000 of that right away,uh,in law calls between the years,uh,forward and back from us.And-and-and obviously in the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 9 COVID years,uh,initiate-officer initiated activity was down too,um,just-just to minimize that contact so that our resources and our services were-were able to respond to those real emergencies and we made sure that staff was-was healthy for that. So that's a little bit of the correlation there,um,and with that that is my high-very high level,um,just trying to walk through everyone,what a-what kind of the quick process is of- of when a call comes in,um,what happens with it,um,what services we provide,um,and-and I-I talk a lot about the emergency medical dispatch side,um,because,you know,that is again,when a call comes in,what happens with it on those medical calls?It's a-it's a big part of the services that-that we provide is providing those pre arrival instructions,uh,to callers. Um,we-we've got many-many CPR saves,uh,been-been accredited with many life saving,um,people's lives being saved with that service,and again,just stuff you can't really,um,you know,pu-put any type of-of value on and offering that service,um,and again,as we see other things,um,transitioning,uh,through,you know,the mental health stuff and all that,what more will maybe the medical director work with us on in that process?Um,it's not kinda there today,but will-will emergency medical dispatch in that academy will they start adding,um, criteria,uh, for us to screen on and then have our medical director then authorize us to maybe provide additional steps or-or take additional steps in that screening process so.Um,with that,is it- is it-do you want me to do que-yeah,go-do questions for my part now or wait till the end. I'm-I'm gladly going to stick around as well and- and listen to- listen to police and fire talk about kind of their-the response side after they've heard from me,uh. Moe: From-yeah. From the call side. I'm-I'm curious for the purposes of comparison, for benchmarking, for continuous improvement,uh,which departments regionally are organized like the JECC fust of all- Jones: Okay Moe: And have a catchment area that's a similar size. And then how do we compare?As far as quantity of calls per population,speed of answering the calls,and speed of responding. I mean,is this something that you regularly do was- is benchmark against other departments? Jones: Yeah. We-primarily what-what we go against,um, especially when we're doing,um, staff-mg comparisons and- and we're just gonna-I'm just kind of working on completing one of these- these studies actually,um,as part of one of my goals for this-this fiscal year we're in now.Um, so- so Scott County is a good example,um,obviously being the third largest county. Um,and they,uh,-they're set up exactly structured like the JECC. They're an independent entity,uh,they dispatched for- for all the agencies in Scott County. Um,his-little history,uh, Scott and Johnson are who worked together to change the legislation,and I would code Chapter 29C to allow for that funding to,uh, fund emergency communications,uh,through-though that-through that levy- through the emergency,um,management levy. And so a lot of code changes were made by working together with Scott County. Um,I don't wanna say we were in a race,but we kind of were in a race at the same time,building our facilities. Um,we-we-we got up first,um,and then so we worked together. I worked closely with them because there's a lot of things that,um,as- as, first,when I say first,there's been consolidated communications have been going on 10 plus years in the state of Iowa,but they've usually lived within a department. Um, so like they've lived within the sheriff's office,let's say,or they've lived within the police department. At Woodbury County,it lived within the police department.In Blackhawk County,it lived within the sheriff's office. Um,Johnson and Scott went out and built their own entities,governed them,uh, independently,uh,from those entities to provide those,uh,services. So when we talk about This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 10 comparing,um,we do annual call volume very similar to what the city of Cedar Rapids as a city does annually. They are a little bit ahead of us,but we're still the fourth largest county,we're still- our-our data,um,really does still reflect that,uh,when we talk about,uh,calls for service wise, the centers that send out these. A lot of times this comes up when we're doing salary studies, right?All of this information comes into part of it. They want to know how big we are,what's the population we serve,how many agencies do we serve,how much,um, staff we do,how many call-9-1-1 calls we're receiving,how many routine calls are we receiving,and then how many Calls For Service do we dispatch? So those kind of all get sent out when we,uh,email this spreadsheet to each other and we all kinda put in our data and yes,we-we rank it correlates really accurately,um,kinda to right where we're at,um,numbers wise. Um, so Scott County,um, Johnson County,um,there's Westcom in West Des Moines that-that operates a consolidated communications center,um, separately,um,and then a lot of the other ones all still live within, they call themselves consolidated,but-but they're living within one of those,um,county or city public safety entities. Bergus: One of your last comments Tom,was about um,the possibility for the medical response that there could be additional criteria added. Were you speaking specifically about like any trends that you're seeing or were you thinking of certain expansions to types of calls? Jones: Um-what I'm seeing is-is with-with 9-8-8 and the mental health crisis diversions and stuff coming about more-it's more prevalent a lot and obviously public safety in this line of work.Um, and it's each of these-I say a governing body but like accrediting body like so- so for emergency medical dispatch,there's really two main programs that I would consider these-these certified programs. And that's the Apco one and then the International Academy of Emergency Dispatch, IED. And that's the one that we're a part of and there's power phone. Um,and these academies IED is probably the most common one. It- it develops standardized questioning for police, fire, and EMS and so-and for dispatch now,police and fire,there's agencies that do it. Those are probably the first two that-that get either done away with or changed. EMD is the one that's obviously the most simple and- and most easies to do-to do because you have one dispatch service or one ambulance service, sorry,that you're dispatching for.Um,and the way those that criteria is laid out and the way they're questioning is,um,they've came up with protocols. Uh, they've expanded into active shooter. So they've-they've developed protocol there.When COVID was out,they developed a special protocol. So again,is these-is these areas are coming up in mental health,I can see them expanding more on a specific criteria on when you would forward these calls like the 9-1-1,the-the National Emergency Number Association. They really haven't, you know,delved into this kind of the-the national body that kind of sets-kind of,some of the guidelines and recommendations for how we do business. And obviously each-each agency locally,you know,takes those guidelines and builds off of those-and-and they add more,usually everybody becomes more restrictive right.When we do this. And so,yeah,I could see them adding to it.Has there been conversation?Not really officially or you know,but-but there's been that talk that they would,you know,they're looking at incorporating this in. And so if they did, then you would have that standardized criteria such as this flow chart that the 9-8-8,uh,National Number Associate has-has came up with. And they've developed this playbook of that-that I've referred to sometimes in conversations and started out in California where they really did this in depth,significant research into it out at LAPD.And so Los Angeles Police,Los Angeles Fire, they went through this. They developed a playbook,I mean it's over 40 pages thick. They go through some of these different flow charts. Colorado kind of jumped on board next with it.And then that information was then sent to Iowa. And so when-when I got it and-and I volunteered to be one of these pilot centers and really get ahead of this. And- and primarily because I saw it,is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 11 we have the resources in our community. It is kind of one of these,it gets cutting edge stuff,we want to be ahead of it. I told folks,this is one of the things that I think we want to be the peak-we want to be the one that when you Google it,you-you see how we did it.Usually it's vice versa. I like to be the one googling about how somebody else,you know,tripped and fell and how to fix it and figured it out.But when this topic came up,we had enough resources that we felt very confident in being able to get ahead of it, especially working with community being in our backyard and partnering with them. They came out and did a lot of training for us. They've trained every one of my dispatchers minus the ones that have been hired in the last year. And- and they gave us crisis de escalation training, a full eight-hour day on it.Did a great job on it, and will continue to work with us. And again, some of these other counties don't get that luxury because they're-they're in a county that doesn't have that resource.And so people were-people were envious at fust going,oh,you've got the training firsthand instead of what we tried to do now is they took our training,have developed a PowerPoint,have videotaped it,and we will send it to another county. And- and they're watching it and trying to learn from it that way.And we were fortunate enough to,like I said,be trained in person. Bergus: Just sticking with the,um,mental health response for now in the flow chart to divert to 9-8-8. Where do most people fall out?Is it in that first step,I would assume?Not in the asking permission step? Jones: Yeah,most fall out of the exclusionary criteria.Um,so-so it's the active harm to themselves or- or someone else. Welfare check requests where-where somebody might have texted someone else and-and now we can't get a response out of them. The-the third party is now calling us, concerned for their friend or their loved one that's just received this message. And it might-the message may have been vague or specific and identified a threat or a means. And if they stated, you know,they had access to something or a weapon,then-then yes,then you're fall out of that criteria. And we need to send,you know,law enforcement to-to make sure the scene is safe before we can then,you know,intervene with-with other forms of- of de-escalation or crisis management. Bergus: And do you have-do you have the data on of those exclusionary criteria like how many calls fall out for each one?Like for example,if you consistently were not diverting calls because someone was threatening harm to themselves,that seems like that could be an opportunity to focus,you know,resources,training criteria,amendment, something you know. Or if you had most of the calls falling out at a different place. Like just in terms of trying to get that,see if there was a place to improve that referral or diversion rate.Do you have that data even if you don't know it right now or do you track it? Jones: I don't. We are in process. One thing that's-that's a challenge with our computer aided dispatch system is ways to search and track it better. So I can't search like a keyword. It has to be a disposition.And it has-we can only customize secondary dispositions. So we're starting to create those dispositions now so we can make them searchable. And then we could do a better job of reporting on that.Right now,we just kind of instructed staff through a-a shift report that we get at the end of each shift,each of our supervisory and management personnel get,we asked them to document if we've had that call. And then it will have to be gone back through and manually tracked by our operations manager. So that is something that we are working on trying to find a better way to do it.Because I am getting that question more and more as of recent,and I know it's going to be an important one to have answers to on those numbers. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 12 Moe: What is the process after an event has happened,after emergency has responded, and they have the information,how does it get back to you to know whether or not that diversion tree or decision making tree worked or didn't work or led to the wrong response or the right response? Jones:Right now they have notes. The responders,they close out their call for service. They type in their notes. If it's not done in and it's done in a different system,we don't see their in house records, they're in house records management system.We can only see what's in the dispatch calls for service. So if they type in any details in the call notes,we would see that.But if it's done in a subsequent narrative or supplemental report,we wouldn't see that. We can create-like I mentioned about the secondary dispositions,we can create a secondary disposition and just make sure that we try to train the resources on using that secondary disposition to clear it as- and they do like say mobile crisis or whatever that referral was and then we can track it. And we'd have to go back as of right now,we'd have to go back in and then read the notes manually because we would only get record and make it searchable of that it was dispositioned as mobile crisis. So we'd have to go back then and reread all the notes of that call to say,hey,what went well,what didn't in the screening process,what did you end up with once you got there?We'll talk a little bit about in the medical side and sub call types.I know that Chief Lyon will hit on that a little bit when we talk about. We're-we're going to give you a vague call type because we don't dispatch by sub call type in order to get the-the call out quicker.We just-we just dispatched by a primary call type. And then when they get out there, it may say fire was dispatched to a sick person.And then they get out there and-and they just find out that someone had a severe headache. And someone then goes,well,you know,why did they get dispatched to a sick person for a headache? And the way that without going real deep in the woods,the way that-that priority dispatch system works is there's four major priority symptoms. And then a chief complaint. And when you don't match those up,then you just it falls under sick person and then it goes into then you find out. Then we would relay. It's for a headache. It's for,you know,nauseous. And- and some of those major priority symptoms are breathing difficulty,levels of consciousness issue,any serious hemorrhages and chest pain. So outside of those four major priority symptoms,you know,then we're trying to develop,what is that chief complaint? Harmsen:You may have just answered this,but do you have and the answer might be that you don't know this.But do you have a feeling for like on a daily or weekly sort of average,how often you would,the call center gets a call that would even activate the 9-8-8 tree,the-the flow chart that you put us. So obviously if somebody calls in and says,hey,my cars on fire,that probably doesn't activate that 9-8-8 tree.But do you have a feeling for like the mental health kind number,just sort of a ballpark,what kind of volume are we even talking about? Jones: I-I don't have that level of answer. I don't have that level- Harmsen:Which is why I said you may have just answered that near last day answer,but I was just curious if maybe. Jones: Yeah,again,something we are focusing really toward that-that we just need to also develop more of an in house process to know-to be able to flag which-which calls that they use that criteria on, and then we can go back and-and look at that better right now. You know,I would say your- your top calls are,you know,medical attention,the threatening harm to themselves,welfare checks,that's a big one.And those are coded, so obviously we,and I believe that the chiefs will report on their reports. I believe I saw that as one of the statistics. You'll see a number of how This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 13 many welfare checks they're-they're going on and then what level of detail was that welfare check. Harmsen: Okay. Okay. Thank you. Jones: Yep. Teague: Thank you,Tom. Jones: Yeah,uh thank you for, for the opportunity and to present and give you uh,a high level overview of the JECC. And I will- if there's any questions coming up at the end,I'll be able to answer more, if these guys generate any more. Teague: All right. Yeah,yeah [inaudible]. Teague: Welcome. Liston: Thank you,Dustin Liston,Chief of Police. Um,this first slide just will direct you to,uh, a lot of the information that you might have questions on. I'm sure most of you have looked at our annual report.You can find it here. One of the other documents I want to direct you to is the Preliminary Plan to Restructure which was published in 2020. That's also on our website.I'm gonna go to a slide from that real quick.I should have put this first,but um,if you might recognize this from the preliminary plan, and this is our continuum of responses to crisis calls. So we have four distinct steps on here,and I'm gonna go through what we cover in each step. The first one is prevention and all the steps that the city not-certainly not the police department,but the city has taken to prevent calls for service. And those are the investments in all of our um,uh,nonprofit partners, our investments in community,our investments in shelter house. These people get in front of a lot of these calls,and we've had this conversation in the past. Some of these are hard to quantify how many calls for service these organizations have prev-prevented.I have no doubt they prevented many calls for service for the continued investment and our partnership with these.Uh,the next step is divert,and one of the things you'll notice,not every single call that call goes to 9-1-1 turns into a call for service. What time does the parade start,things like that. So they are certainly the- the call takers and the dispatchers themselves are diverting calls. They're further diverted by,um, some of the things that we do,um,our supervisors will divert calls that they notice,and that doesn't sound like something we need to respond to. Some of the times we can handle calls.It became popular during COVID,just handling it with a phone call instead of responding in person. Some people obviously prefer that during COVID. Uh,some people prefer in person response obviously,and will accommodate that.But if they would prefer a phone call,we do that as well. Um,the,the diversion as well as with our um,non law enforcement response, street outreach has been a huge help in that. They work closely with our community uh,outreach.Um, both our swom community outreach,Kevin Bailey,and then our non sworn staff are community outreach assistants.Uh,they spend a lot of time working with our unhoused population and there's been a ton of success stories that we've talked about in the past. They've got well over 100 housed people. Um,our mental health liaison,those guys have been going strong. I-I shared with you the numbers last month. Um,they've responded to over 320 calls last year,and that was primarily just with Joa and now that we have Katie on board,those numbers are going to increase,especially once we get them paired up with a co-responder,we expect those numbers to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 14 grow exponentially. Um, GuideLink referrals. I had an interesting email shared with me the last couple of days,Abby Frenzy sent an email saying that many of their walk ins,she's learning, have been referred to uh, GuideLink by law enforcement. So we may not be dropping them off at GuideLink,we are. They had 70 referrals for- for the first quarter from law enforcement,but there were over 12 that had said they were referred to GuideLink by law enforcement. And as Tom was going through his presentation,one of the things that struck me,the 9-1-1 and 9-8-8 um, pilot program and the low numbers remind me of the,um,the expectations that we had of GuideLink with our,um,with law enforcement diversion from jail and hospitals.When it gets to our level or in- in the 9-8-8 9-1-1,it gets to 9-1-1, sometimes it's past that level. So I think that could explain some of the low numbers with the-with the pilot program. I know that's been our experience sometimes when we're involved. Um,it's past the GuideLink level,but they're a very high bar,um,it-it's a voluntary service. So,um,that-that's one of one of the things I wanna make clear,and I also think it's proof,and I know Sarah would be happy to share the numbers,they are through the roof,9-8-8 has been uh,wonderfully successful. I think we've done a good job as a community and we were the first ones to put it on our patrol cars. I think people know 9-8-8,so I don't think as many people,I'm not saying it doesn't happen,but as many people are calling 9-1-1 when they're trying to get a hold of 9-8-8 and I think that's something as a community we can be proud of. Um,the next one is co-respond and that's the-you're well aware of our uh,work with that. This is-this is the year we're going to roll that out. Officially,we've been doing it,we've been-between the no-non police response and the police response on our co-responder.We will now be able to pair those up with our staffing levels and they're gonna go to more calls.Now they go to calls where they just absolutely believe they are necessary. Um,I think we can agree that many calls could probably use someone with their experience,even if it's not someone absolutely in mental crisis so I-once we get them paired up with an officer,those numbers will go up.Uh, street outreach is the same thing. Street outreach kind of does a co-response sometimes with Sergeant Bailey. And then the last one is stabilize and connect.And that's when we do need to respond. Um,we're gonna go over some of our calls for service here and you're gonna see some medical calls. Tom was talking about the sick person,and when I see that I'm like,why the heck are we responding to sick people?But and uh,the fire-uh,Chief Lyon will certainly talk about this,why the fire department's responding to sick people?Often- Oftentimes we're there,or we can get there quicker,and our Narcan saves alone really justify that response. Um,we have well over 20 Narcan saves.We're often the first one there with some equipment.Now,we're not paramedics,we're not EMS,we're not Coralville.Who they are?EMS,their fire-their police department is we are not.But in some cases,and again,Tom would be better able to tell you how they determine which sick person calls. I think it's about it. If there's other factors taking place where they're not sure the scene is-is safe and the fire chief can talk about how-what our role, the police department's role in providing scene safety for EMS and fire. Those are the four steps on our,ah,continuum response. These are things we've been doing for a while.Uh,the city Manager put it on paper and put it in the-the preliminary report a few years ago.But there's something we've been doing and we really take seriously.It's actually on page 44 of the preliminary report if you wanna look at it,there are several pages on it and I think it's important. Let me go into our calls for service.Excuse me if I'm talking fast,but I didn't know Tom was gonna spend an hour up here.Um,so the-this is the last five years of the Iowa City Police Department's calls for service. The-the-the green color,the big,uh,line is all calls for service together. That's both officer initiated and community generated. Uh,the blue-the dark blue is just community generated. That someone calls 9-1-1 or calls the JECC and we get sent a call. The- that other color of blue is officer initiated,not traffic stop.Like an officer rolls up on something and we'll have a list of what those could be. And then the last one is traffic stops. One-one of the things I wanna point out,I think we're doing a great job and I think we are preventing calls. Our This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 15 offs -our community generated calls for service are still going up. Um,our traffic stops are s- are going down,certainly went down'22 and'23,um,but our officer initiated things that officers. These are foot patrol things,those are staying pretty steady.Any questions on this slide before I move on? Salih What happened in 2019? Liston:Which year? Salih: 2019,what happened? Liston:Well,that was before my time,but a lot of things were happening, apparently you can see,look, the traffic stop numbers were very,very high. Um,2020 happened and that changed- changed everything certainly with traffic stops because officers weren't,we didn't want to engage with the public quite as much. We got back a little closer to normal.But I think-I think the officers understand the direction of what is expected. And we-as I've told you before,one of our main um,community complaints that we-we receive is traffic. Um,one of the things the city has made an effort to do is um,road calming,speed bumps,things like that,and that's really helped. I think that plays-plays a part,but we're,there might not be as much of a focus on traffic stops as there has been in the past. Salih: And do you say like maybe before 2019 was the same and now it's coming down like now since 2020 or how it was before 2019? Liston:I don't have those numbers.I would-I would assume,and this is just a guess,I'm just guessing.I would assume they're similar to 2019 number. Fruin:Yeah. That's-that's accurate. The-the 2019 numbers would be-if we,if we added another five years,2019 wouldn't look like an outlier. I don't think particularly with the traffic stops,the-the, ah, 10,000-15,000 traffic stops a year was probably pretty normal,um,through that entire decade. Salih: Yeah,that's good. Bergus: Small clarification chief on the years that we're seeing. Are these fiscal years or calendar year? Liston: Calendar- calendar. Bergus: Okay. Thank you. Harmsen: Good question. Liston: These are,I think there's 24 of them up here are top calls for service for all those years combined. Um,9-1-1 hang up,and we do not respond to every single 9-1-1 hang up. Sometimes mom gets on the phone and said,you know,baby daughter got a hold of the phone and if- if we- if dispatch is convinced, sometimes they won't send it out or,we can make contact via phone and clear those up,but-but a lot of times we can't and the county attorney just sent me an example of a call about two weeks ago where was a 9-1-1 hang up,and it was a very violent domestic incident. So sometimes-so we do have to go check those out. The ones that we can't obviously verify.Um, traffic stops,obviously you saw the numbers. This is just going to be 2023 because I recognize This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 16 those numbers from the traffic stops or it's around there. Um,one of the things I wanna point out, so,mental impairment is our 24th most popular call,or most frequent call,I should say. It's not popular most frequent and,um,that would be one where,um,we would likely send our co- responder,our Mental Health Liaison out of. Some welfare checks,we could some welfare,check is someone wandering in the street or a-a young child. They could be anything,but some of those could be mental health calls and that's the challenge that I hope,uh,Tom made clear is how hard, how challenging it is for call takers to figure out what the heck is going on when limited information and their goal is to get a call out within 90 seconds,they're constantly updating that. While an officer is rolling to a call, sometimes a call type will change or there will be more updated information that helps us.But as a person who has responded to many calls for service, it's very rarely,uh,exactly what they say.And that's not the fault of a dispatcher,that's not the fault of a call taker,it's not the fault of the caller. Sometimes a caller doesn't know what's going on. They're like,I see something,I don't know what it is, someone needs to check it out. And these are our top officer initiated calls for service excluding traffic stops. So these would be the- the third smallest. Um,I can't tell what color that is. It looks like some type of blue right,the community-the officer initiated. Salih: Yeah.Blue and gray. Liston: That's what these are.Um,so what's out investigation for a follow up so an officer handles an original call, clears it up as report,but then he might need to go find some witnesses, speak to the neighbors,canvass,the things like that. Uh,one of the ones escort relay,that's typically what our community service officers are doing. Those are our non-sworn personnel sometimes they're shuttling paperwork to the courthouse,they're delivering cars to the shop,um,things like that. Parking,that's another one where our community service officers help us out a lot on they're able to enforce parking.Paper service warrant that's someone checking on someone who has a warrant,if there's any other. Some of these are kind of hard to sort out. If you see any that you want me to clear up,let me know.But again,these are top- from 2023 are top officer initiated calls for service and one of the things I want to point out,um,we utilize mobile crisis quite often. The mobile crisis handled about 1,200 calls for service last year. We're handling 65,000 calls for service. I-I think they're doing a wonderful job,but it's still a small percentage of the calls for service that we handled and our co-responder,our mental health liaison,and they handled 320. Again,I anticipate that going up,we've got a lot more coverage now.We've doubled our coverage with the addition of Katie. So I anticipate that going up but it's still kind of a small percentage. And if-the one thing I just want to leave you with before I open up with questions,I do think some of these services that we're investing in are doing a wonderful job and they're reducing our calls for service,but it didn't-but it's not having it over-the demand is still there. And that's something we continue to monitor.We continue to monitor and we want to make sure we're the right size agency we've got the right people going to the right calls. And that's one of the things we keep- continue to look at. I-I wonder what it would be like if we didn't have all these services here. I'm afraid our call numbers would be a lot higher. Harmsen: So-I do have a clarification, foot patrol is that just anytime an officer decides to just walk through the pet mall? Liston:Yep,exactly. Yes. Harmsen:I didn't know if that automatic contact during a foot patrol or just the act. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 17 Liston:No-no,it's just the act,put themselves out on it and then some people would call that community policing.You can see that it's probably about the seventh or eighth one down that's going to the- the gas station and talking to the clerk and just you know doing-just reaching out. Some people would consider foot patrol,community policing but foot patrols, Typically downtown at Ped Mall. Harmsen: Thankyou. Salih: That is something Judge was the business check open? Liston:Just-just checking on a business similar to that community based contact just check a business that's open checking on it. Teague: So I-I think it just needs to be stated that this is um, anytime an officer has made somewhere initiated a Judge. Liston: This is not getting a call from the Judge. This is them on their own,like I'm going to take this upon myself to do. Teague: All right. Salih: Yeah. Liston:Intoxicated pedestrian is our 24th.I would have thought that might have been higher but I'm glad to see it's not so. Teague: All right- all right.I don't think any more questions. Liston: Thank you. Teague: Welcome. Lyon: Good afternoon,Mayor and Council. Scott Lyon,Fire Chief. I'm going to share with you a little bit of- of the backstory of EMS and Iowa City and how it works,how it's set up. The Iowa City Fire Department is a first responder organization. We are a non ALS,non transport organization. Everyone is trained to the emergency medical technician standard. Chapter 132,the Iowa code explains how EMS works in the state of Iowa. There-there are a bunch of different varieties on how it can work, ah,but-but that's the-the chapter where-where this is covered. The Medical Director Tom talked about,you can see here is Pete Georgakakos,he works over at the University. Tom alluded to the fact that we are super fortunate to have one medical director for all of Johnson County. I-I come from a place where that was not the case and depending literally on the side of the street you are on,would dictate the type of care that you were going to receive. This is fantastic,what we've got going on here,but the Medical director um,really-really tells us, within our scope of practice,the things that we can and the things that we cannot do. So they really set the curbs for us as EMS providers. The tiered response system here in Johnson County, it's operating exactly as designed. The Iowa City Fire Department is a first response organization with the goal of getting there quick getting there as fast as we can. Stabilize life threatening injuries,or-or defibrillating cardiac arrest patients,CPR,that type of thing. Stabilize a patient. Johnson County Ambulance arrives,helps with stabilization further,and then transports to the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 18 hospital. So that-that is the model. And from- from my perspective,the-the model is- is working and it's working pretty well. It's very busy,but it is working well nonetheless,so the same time periods that the chief share- shared with you on total calls for service 2019-2023 the orangish color is this other calls for service basket. And in the fire business that can be all kinds of stuff. That could be someone stuck in an elevator,ah,someone stuck their-their head between the railing somewhere,all- all kinds of good stuff falls into that bucket. The-the next one is fire,so a report of something on fire the smell of something being on fire I see fire I'm driving down the street and I think there could be a fire. That's-that's-that bucket there and-and the-the EMS bucket you see there that is-that is growing. Interestingly enough when Chief Liston was talking about the 2020 data,you kind of see a similar thing here with some of our interactions that it appeared occurred here in Iowa City.EMS being a very face to face business and people probably just didn't want to be around other people too much.But in the background there,you can see the total costs for service,they're-they're increasing,and that's indicative of lots of lots of things,um, just not isolated here to Johnson County. I can tell you the Des Moines Fire Department,a non- growth community,is seeing record call volume as well. So,not a-not a big surprise. Any questions about the-this slide. Moe: Please go ahead. Go ahead. Bergus: Thank you. The Police Department calls for service,you know,trending down a little years, trending up the check,total calls being relatively steady.Is there anything that you're aware of as far as behavior within the community or at the dispatch level that would sort of cause that? Lyon:No,I-I really can't point to anything specific.No,I wish I could. Bergus: Okay. Lyon: That'd be great. Harmsen:My question is just do these numbers include mutual aid with other departments and other community? Lyon: These are accurate numbers. Harmsen:Yeah. Lyon: Uh,the-the next slide I'm going to show you,and,uh, Tom kind of talked about this,Chief Liston kind of talked about this also. So when-when we're talking about emergency medical dispatch, and that's what I'm going to talk about. The-the fire side of the house is pretty-pretty evident when there's a house fire. They-they put that out as a building fire.But in the EMS world,um, we-we have these-these,again,these-these buckets of calls,that-that this is how the calls come out.And there-there are 30 different possibilities that that will,um,a call will be dispatched as- as and I went out and pick the top 10 sick person. That's kind of what we've already talked about, is that the-the specificity of what's wrong with the person at the time,it's just not there when the call is dispatched. Falls,I-I can tell you this is super common in- in fire and EMS that falls is-is always your-your top,you know, 1,2,3,uh,type-type of incident out-out the door,breathing problems, so on and so forth.You can see how-how this happens or how-how this is laid out. So this is what we are dispatched for. So when-when the radios go off,the overhead speakers tum on,AT say "Our city fire department,you're needed for a sick person at the comer of walk and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 19 don't walk" Okay. If we move forward to the situation found,I-I think this is a little bit more illustrative of-of what actually happens out there. So this gets a little bit more granular as-as to the-the situations that we're actually encountering. So that sick person call could-could easily actually be one of these as the-the actual problem by-by the time we're-we're done with the can. Again,this data, from my experience, is-is-is pretty standard.Um,there-there's nothing here that-that-that really surprise me. Um,you know,we-we talk about intervening on calls and where can we do that. The-the alcohol use intoxication,uh,problem nature,okay. That we found many many times by the-by the time we are intervening as a fire department,that there are co- problems that are associated with the-the issue. So with alcohol,it might be seizures or some type of malnutrition. Some other,um,side problem typically exists. So when we-when we get to this point of being on scene,being in someone's living room,um,most of the time,um,there's - there's -there's something serious going on.Uh,that's how kind of this all breaks out and,um, you can see,you know,some of these behavioral items that-that are out there,anxiety disorder, unspecified. Again,we-we don't diagnose,that's not what,what EMS does, especially at- at our level at the fire department.We treat signs and symptoms of what we see,and then we-we provide the care that's appropriate for,um,for that situation. Specific questions about what we are dispatched for versus what we we're-what we find. Harmsen:Just a clarification,the last slide,was that percentages? Lyon: Yes,sir. Harmsen: Okay. And then, er,this is per year?Yeah,per year,kind of percentages,just making sure I understood. Uh,and then altered mental-mental status unspecified would that be,uh,depression, suicidal ideation?Where would that kind of because we were talking about some of the 9-8-8 mental health interventionist on-with those kinds of things,where would those show up on this data? Lyon: So altered mental status unspecified could-could be a variety of things. On-on the final back side at the hospital where-where the person is treated,where the answer is revealed,they could say this person was hypoglycemic,that they had low blood sugar. Harmsen: Okay. Lyon: That this person was unresponsive because they-they had a seizure,they're no longer seizing and we get there and it's kind of that question mark. So that's where some of the unspecified nature of- of this takes place. When I fiinctioned as a paramedic,part of our job was to dig deeper into the problem and,you know,give medications a benefit to help solve the issue we believed was going on. Harmsen: So where would-in this,or does it even-if I were to try and say,where would some of these 9- 8-8,uh,diversionary possibilities,like would they live in any of these categories?Understanding these categories aren't exclusively for those. Lyon: Yeah-yeah absolutely. Um,they-they could live in a couple of places. Um,most of them are- are fairly benign,to-to be frank with you on-on the 9-8-8 side. Yeah. Pro-probably suicidal ideations with-without some of the exclusionary criteria that we just talked about. Harmsen: Sure. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 20 Lyon: Um,that's-that's-that's where it gets tough is-is to figure out the right place for an intervention. Um, so honestly,in- in many of these pieces,you could probably pluck some of that out of there. Um,rarely do we receive a call,uh,a- a behavioral emergency call where there's not a secondary problem going on. That is super super raze. Moe: With the-I'm curious about the way you're counting because of the overlap of you servicing Iowa City and some and then Johnson County ambulance being the whole county. And how is-how do you count? Lyon: Sure. So we- every year it's a calendar year is how we count. Moe: Yeah. Lyon: Uh,and as calls come in,it's- it's literally 1,2,3, so on and so forth type of counting method.Now, one of the-the challenges that we have are-are overlapping incidents. So,about 48-50%of the time when there is one call going on in the city of Iowa city involving the fire department,there's at least two calls going on. They each get assigned a unique case number or an incident number. But the-the-the JECC,they have their own numbering system.And then through our records management system we have a numbering system. Um,so that's- and again,that's not real uncommon. Moe: Okay. Lyon: Anything else I can answer for you guys? Bergus: So,how often do you interface with mobile crisis?How often do your staff engage them? Lyon: Um,it's-it's-not-it's rare for- for us to fire a department to-to,um,interface with mobile crisis. Bergus: And maybe this is a question for you and Chief Liston.But if,um,I'm thinking since you're- you've got a lot of medical issues that maybe sort of co exist with some behavioral issues,would your staff ever engage mental health professionals like mobile crisis to be there dealing with the behavioral part while you're dealing with the medical part? Lyon: Yeah,I-I-I think a-a collaborative decision would need to take place with us and Johnson County Ambulance. Um,but,um,yeah,I-I don't see any reason why we could not do that. Bergus: Am I hearing that,that they would be the ones to decide if mobile crisis would come in? Lyon: Typically,the way EMS works is that the highest certified provider,highest level of certification has ultimate patient care responsibility. So once they are on scene,they do assume care of the patient. Bergus: So if there's a case that's,um,not-there isn't necessarily a medical situation that would have them come in and sort of take over. Is the fire department like,are your staff aware of mobile crisis? Are you trained in bringing them in and how they might be able to assist? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 21 Lyon:We're-we're certainly aware of mobile crisis. Um, again,unfortunately,it's- it's a-a real anomaly for us to show up as a fire department because we-we respond only to emergency lights and sirens calls.With-with the exception of like public assist,help somebody who has fallen down to stand back up,uh,maybe a chirping smoke detector,that type of thing. Uh,for us to respond,it's a lights and sirens response. The vast majority of the time they've gone through the EMD process. Bergus: Okay. Lyon: And it's been coded as truly an emergency. Bergus: Thanks for that distinction. Lyon: Sure. Teague: Thank you much. Lyon: You're welcome. Thank you. Teague: Great. All right,Council,any discussion on this? Moe: I appreciate this,and I think it'd be helpful to share this video with people with questions. They want to go into the weeds on how this all works. So thank you. Teague: Yeah,I would agree it was very helpful just to kind of walk through some of this,especially with the lens of 9-8-8.Just trying to figure out,you know,where do they fit,um,especially after calls have gone out. So I really appreciate you all coming in and doing this presentation. Bergus: Yeah,thank you for that level setting for us,that's great.Maybe just a quick comment to kinda bring it back around with the meeting that-that we had Mayor with Geoff.And kind of,what do we want to talk about next?What do we want to learn more about?I think this is identified kinda the universe of things minus Johnson County Ambulance,right?And if we bring it back to that overarching question that we've been talking about for a number of years of like Chief Liston said,kinda matching the response to the call. You know,do we want to look at opportunities for something like welfare checks or something like you know other kinds of calls that maybe are low-hanging fruit,most obviously coated.Understanding all the,you know, complexities and how call types are assigned.But-but are we going to keep talking about it?I hope so.But where do people want to go with that? Teague: I guess,um,and I don't know if Tom in your presentation, if there are opportunities or a group that looks at you know,all the calls and try to determine how from the beginning you know that 9-8-8 can be diverted. And you did mention again the accredited body. They've been having conversations about,you know,how do we divert when there's a mental health need when someone like community can be involved.I guess my question would be to either of you,is there opportunity for you to look at services and or those found situations to determine,you know, what could have been done a little different,but that would have to be understanding when the call came in as well as now that you've been there,you know,what response can you give,or how can you include community crisis at that point?Yes,please. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 22 Lyon:Not sure if that's how it works. There's one thing that I-I think this is a great time to discuss and that's Johnson County Ambulance.Um,we have a fantastic relationship with Johnson County Ambulance. Uh,we met just a couple of weeks ago,myself and the director. Um,and they're kicking off their initiative of mobile integrated health,and community paramedicine. Um,that is truly,uh,leading edge stuff that-that they're getting off the ground here in Johnson County. Thi- this discussion about community paramedicine has been going on in Iowa for a decade. And it's- it's- it's actually going to happen here in Johnson County. That service really doesn't take care of the call at the time of-of the initial interaction.What that-what that really does is helps with a lot of the high volume users of the system. Um,in the conversation that I had with Fiona in my office not too long ago,um,we're defmitely partnering and sharing information the best way that we can. I know that they're having some struggles with funding and getting this program off the ground. Um,if there's one thing I could point to today that would make one of the biggest differences in our community would be the community paramedicine, and mobile integrated health model. Moe: I'm excited about this too,and to put a point on it,just so everyone understands,there's a small group,but I don't know exactly how small that group is of people who need a lot of help,and you're going repeatedly to the same people and perhaps doing more preventative care,having a one on one relationship as opposed to sending whatever.How-how do you track the success of that?It feels right,it sounds right. How do you figure out?What- it seems like it's important to also set up the sort of monitoring and success of that. How do you do that? Lyon:Well,I think one of the metrics that-that you use is-is how many times are they activating 9-1-1? Um,not so long ago we-we had a- a user of the system that we were seeing a lot,and,um,I-I had questions. So I drove out to-to-to the residence,ended up going to the hospital with the- with this person to-to try to understand what-what the issue is.And this was the patient the citizen that can be helped out with a mobile integrated health approach where it's lining up the- the,um,uh,mental health worker, food services,whatever other counseling services are needed, um,home health care.Uh,that's that's really where it's at the monitoring piece. It's probably that they don't call 9-1-1 as much. Moe: And because this would be an initiative by Johnson County Ambulance,it would be a county wide thing.Right?And not an Iowa city specific thing.Is that that's currently being built? Lyon: It is. The last time that myself and Fiona talked,the ambulance director,they-they had one staff member completely trained to-to the level that they need to be. And I think part of the question at that time is where do we go next?And par-part of this conversation,I believe has to be the high users of the system,and how do we be-best serve those folks in our community?And I think this is how you do it. Moe: I like it. Bergus: And we know that collecting the data on that to be able to track the differential in,you know, going to the emergency room all those times. Activating emergency services all those times led to,I think a lot of the conversations around guide link and having different types of interventions. So thank you for. Lyon: Yeah,you're welcome. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 23 Bergus: Highlighting that. Lyon: Super excited with the-the program and working any way we can with Johnson County Ambulance. Moe: Thank you. Teague: Any other discussion? Bergus: So we're gonna keep talking about it in the fixture? Harmsen:I mean,I'd like to say there's a lot of information,a lot of good information here that you know, it sounds like,um,as we look for ways to make sure,bottom line,we're all like in the interest of making sure that members of our community get the best possible services for their needs at the moment,right?Um and so if we're looking at-we're looking specifically,uh,focusing in on those incidences which would benefit from the 9-8-8 system and ways to see a greater engagement with that from members of our public.Um like I said,I want to sit with this,my first take on this is that-and one of the reasons we're having this discussion is wondering if that level of that something in the 9-1-1 response is going to offer us the ability to change those numbers somehow,right?If that's the place to engage that,and make that change. Um,and I think that's something that-that I don't have an answer for,like just based on tonight,but something to think about.I'm not sure if that's it or not but,um,it doesn't sound like from this.Like once,it gets to kind of that 9-1-1 point that-that might be the place to insert the lever and-and you fmd that leverage point.But that's kind of my first take on this in terms of talking about it more.But I-I think,you know,obviously want to reflect a little bit more on what we-what we learned here tonight.But,um,whether it's through this or some other way,I think in general it's,you know, ways that,um,that we can do that,that we can promote the 9-8-8,that we can promote diversion programs. Continuing with-I'll be really,you know,I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens when we start to have the-the ride along program with the-the mental health liaisons, uh,and to see where that kind of goes and-and how that might actually help with some of this. Um,but you know,I'm encouraged,though by-especially I know that we didn't have Sarah here tonight.But the data we've gotten,you know,in other ways about the-the volume of 9-8-8 and about the di-the different ways that interventions have been happening differently.Um,that's good. That's to the good. I think we're on a good path and I think we-just in general terms,need to keep talking and keep-keep prioritizing.I mean,that's-I think that's something that I would definitely agree with so. Moe: I'm very interested to always be checking in on our emergency services to make sure that there's continuous improvement. That's not a criticism that-that anything is broken,but it should always get better every single year. And the way we know it's getting better is by tracking stuff,which I think in our budget discussions,there was a lot of discussions about data analysts.Whether there was one in the police department,maybe the fire department needs one,maybe the City Manager's office need one.I think we-we make decisions when we have good information.And I think that's something that as we think of budgets in the fixture,having that data,because we do. There's things that sound good, and they feel good,but we should also have the data to say it's actually working or not and then adjust. So and I'd be something that I would like to talk about is how we're tracking this. Bergus: Uh-huh This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 24 Teague: I would definitely say the data is very important.And I think there were some walkaways that you all even,you know,mentioned that you would like to kind of capture,um, in some of the things that you are,you know,um,gathering.A-as far as next steps,I-I think when I-when I heard,you know,the initial 9-1-1 call and how- if it's a mental health,how they have the four pillars that they kind of look at to determine if it can go to mobile crisis or the 9-8-8 number. Or if it can go to-or if it's no,it needs to go straight to,um,the emergency service provider. So I would just say that is one thing that I wanna kind of keep knowledge of,what's happening,what's changing.Um,and what you all are seeing,which is really an update,uh,with intentiona- intentionality on just trying to figure out what are other communities doing that have a similar system.Um,because I think that's where the-where it really starts at- it starts with the numbers and how you divert so. Yeah. All right,thank you all for coming if nothing else. Salih: I-I just want to say laughing.Yeah,I understand. This is not with tracking but like seeing like the number of the police stop and everything. I-I also,I'm interesting some another time to see like the people being-not arrested stop,I mean. The people being stopped by racial. I know that we have that somewhere with the human right sometimes we get it here.But you know,uh,just for like some kind of complaining that I-I being seen.I would love know those,you know, stopped by racial sooner. Thanks. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 25 2. Clarification of Agenda Items Teague: All right. We're gonna move on to Item Number 2: clarification of agenda items. Bergus: I'll be recusing on the Charter Commission appointment. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 26 3. Information Packet Discussion [February 22,February 29,March 7,March 14 Teague: Okay.Item Number 3.Information packet discussions. February 22nd? Harmsen:No. Moe:None. Teague: February 29th? Moe:Nope Harmsen:No. Teague:March 7th. Harmsen:No. Teague:March 14th. Harmsen:No. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 27 4. University of Iowa Student Government(USG)Update Teague: All right. We're gonna ask for USG to come at this time,um,so that as item Number 4. We'll get an update from our University of Iowa student government. Salih: Early. Teague: Welcome. LeFevre: Hi,Council. All right,so as you can see,uh, spring break has ended. Uh,students are back in campus. Um,hopefully, a lot of us had some rest and relaxation. Um,importantly,uh,the women's basketball team, as always we talking about women's sports,uh,won the Big Ten championship against Nebraska 94-89. Great success,obviously. Uh,they scored the Number 1 spot in the March Madness.And they will be playing,uh,Holy Cross Mar-,uh,UT Martin this Saturday at Carver.Um,hopefully we win. If we don't,that's going to be very disappointing. The men's team,on the other hand,will be playing Kansas State tonight at 8:00.Um,yeah,Let's hope they win,please. Um, important USG news election season has started,uh,March 1st. This is the fust council meeting,but since then,but,uh,we have three presidential tickets,which is the most we've had in about six years,so great success there on the front.We love seeing students very engaged, as well as I want to say six or seven,uh, Senate tickets in total,as well as some independence. So that's going great. Monsivais: Two weeks ago USG was able to host,uh, four alumni who human spoke to us.And kind of give us a little bit of hope about what the,um,post,uh,undergraduate world looks like for us. So they have careers in consulting,law,governmental relations. And so it was good to hear from them,get advice from them, and also just talk about what they did in their role in USG. Um, University Housing and Dining is,uh,presenting in USG Senate tonight to discuss research on meal plans and determine their efficacy. Any changes will be introduced in the fall of 2025.And this feedback,the purpose is to align it with any IMU renovations. So yeah. LeFevre: Thank you. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024 Page 28 5. Council updates on assigned boards,commissions,and committees Teague: Thank you. All right.Any council updates on assign boards commissions or committees? Moe: Yes. Uh,February 27th was the Johnson County paratransit advisory committee meeting or seats. Um,the-they're gonna get an electric bus too.Hopefully,it's coming April 15th.Um,their ridership is up. They're about 450-500 trips per week day. Um,it's a 20%increase from last year. So there's an increased interest in that. There's been also some ARPA funds that have been spent to help get more rides,uh,faster. Um,however,that does go away,seats will continue to operate, but they lose ARPA funding.Um,the-they're taking-they're taking surveys right now just to get member input,And they are also taking applications for their board. Um,specifically seeking people who are users of seats to be on their-on their board. Teague: Hearing no other updates.We are adjourned until 6:00 P.M. when we'll come back for our formal meeting. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council work session of March 19, 2024