we joined late. will they send out a recording or notes of this meeting?

Hi Helen! A recording of this meeting will be posted on the Town website.

Thank you for holding this review and open format with the community. This is the first one I’ve been able to participate in. I suggest you link to the Police Reform page on the Bedford Police Department site.

Thanks for the suggestion Karen!

If anyone wants to make additional comments after this evening’s zoom ends, please email bedfordprrcc@bedfordny.gov

ryanjackwitz3@gmail.com

I have a suggestion to have the officers get out of their cars!! :-D It would be great to have them walk around our towns and parks. It’s hard have them connect with the community and it would be nice to become familiar with each other’s faces.

Thank you Karen! This came up a lot in the community survey, and is a recommendation under the community engagement tenet.

Well, each other and see each other’s faces!!

Wonderful, thank you. Great job everyone.

This was echoed equally by the police officers, who look forward to connecting with people as much as possible during COVID, and even more so in the road ahead.

Perfect!

Ryan brings up a great point… find advocates to help spread the word.

Do we have a need for filling all these positions? Or could we save money by reducing the number of police officers?

good question, Jody. I am curious of their answer too.

Thank you, Ellen, Kitley, Chief Padilla and everyone involved!

This is my first time hearing Chief Padilla. It was interesting to listen to him.

It’s in the executive summary as well as the recommendation timeline. :)

We learned a lot about roles and coverage: at any given time 24/7 we need an officer in each hamlet, plus dispatch. The Chief and Detectives are police officers but have specific roles. So 4 officers for dispatch and patrol 24/7 is at least 36 officers, plus 2 Detectives and 1 Chief, and only 36 would mean that even with no sick days or vacation days for any of them, there’d be overtime involved.

Thanks, Heather. There are also union considerations involved in terms of numbers of officers on the force.

Thank you Ellen and all of the volunteers and police officers who devoted their time to this important project!

thank