City of Bloomington, MN Q & A with BPD, 9 Sep 2020

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From YouTube: Q&A with BPD: Funding and Training

Description

In this episode of Q&A with BPD, Chief Jeff Potts answers your questions about Police Department funding and officer training requirements.

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Hi everyone, my name, is jeff potts and I am the bloomington police chief. We have been getting a lot of questions.

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Over the last few months about how the bloomington police department.

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Operates about some many questions about the bloomington.

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Police department, we are very excited that there's a lot of interest.

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In the community about the bloomington police department, so as a bloomington.

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Police chief, I am committed to increasing communication.

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And transparency with our community and I look forward to using this forum.

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To answer your questions.

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So the bloomington police department's budget is set.

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By essentially the city council, now the process for setting the police budget.

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Is a long process and somewhat complicated the bloomington police.

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Depart police department budget comes from the general fund, which is set by the city council.

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Most city departments are funded from the general fund. Now the funds.

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From the general fund come from your property taxes.

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Both the residential property taxes and commercial property taxes.

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And even rental property taxes, all pay property taxes and those are what fund.

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The general fund, the police department, goes through a process to set its annual budget. It takes nearly a year. We work with the.

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City manager, the rest of the executive leadership team to set that the priorities that go into that are.

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Our population size, the number of crimes that are occurring.

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And any other kind of unique situations that arise during the year.

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At the end of the year, typically, in december, the city council adopts the.

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General fund and the police department's budget comes from those funds. Another primary factor in the police.

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Department budget is a number of staffing that we have.

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Currently, we are authorized for 123 full-time officers and another 35.

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Non-Sworn officers, we also have currently have a grant to.

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Increase our authorized strength by one officer.

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Where, where he works exclusively on dwi enforcement, so total we have 124.

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Officers and about 35 non-sworn officers included.

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We take training very seriously at the bloomington police department.

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When we hire a police officer, their first six weeks.

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Are spent in an academy where we teach them about use of force.

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About our policies, implicit bias, procedural justice.

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Very important topics that take six weeks of time.

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After they're done with the six-week orientation training, all new officers.

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Regardless, if they come to us with experience from another department or no experience, they go into what's called a field.

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Training phase and we pair them up with an experienced.

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Officer that officer is called their field, training officer or fto.

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And the fto spends about 16 weeks with those officers.

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Training them on how we expect them to conduct their work as a police officer.

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Here in bloomington, they usually rotate between three and.

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Four field training officers, so they get a little bit of variety in the style and.

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The different uh strengths of our of our officers, but.

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It takes 16 weeks of training before we.

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Will then let that officer go out and do solo patrol.

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Throughout that time, they're being closely monitored by a supervisor.

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Our field training program has a supervisor that oversees that program.

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Along with our patrol commanders, both day and night, who are closely.

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Monitoring the progress and the abilities of those new officers.

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So only when we feel comfortable and the officer feel come feels.

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Comfortable will they go out and do solo patrol work here in the city of.

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Bloomington now, in addition to the new officer.

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Training, we train our officers all throughout the year on a variety of.

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Topics we train them on crisis intervention. We.

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Train them on the appropriate use of force. We train them on how to appropriately use their firearm.

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The state requires officers to have 48 hours of continuing education credits.

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Every three years now here in bloomington, as I said, we.

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Take training very seriously, so we oftentimes will double or triple.

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The state required mandates for training. That's how serious we are at making sure.

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Our police officers are properly trained to handle the situations here in.

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Bloomington, so that we can do whatever we can to ensure positive results. Well, thanks for sending these questions.

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And giving us an opportunity to answer them for you here today.

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We look forward to doing this again in the future. It's either going to be.

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Myself or other members of the bloomington police department staff that will be here to answer those questions, so please send us whatever you have.

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If you have questions, please send them to the email address below.

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And we will work to answer those questions. Additionally, if you have.

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Feedback for the bloomington police department on what we're doing well or concerns that you have. You can certainly send those to the web link.

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Below to wrap up here today, again, we are committed to communicating with our.

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Community in an open and transparent way, we look.

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Forward to doing additional videos in the future, where we have an opportunity.

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To answer your questions or address your concerns and the bloomington police department will continue to do that into the future.

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Please stay safe and stay healthy.

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