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CN)CITY OF SOUTH BEND 1 OFFICE OF THE CLERK
<br /> that disease is actually on the rise due to different things that buildings are made out of this day
<br /> and age. It used to be carpets were made out of cotton and wool. They're made out of basically
<br /> gasoline now. Those things are carcinogenic when they burn, as are pretty much all of your desks,
<br /> the chairs, et cetera. So, when these things burn, our firefighters are subjected to those
<br /> contaminants. So, what we want to do is identify what the highest risk is to our firefighters to be
<br /> able to focus that prevention program and early detection program to minimize that risk to our
<br /> firefighters.
<br /> Scott Ruszkowski,Police Chief for the City of South Bend with offices located at 701 West Sample
<br /> Street, stated, Thank you for the time, Council. I know you've already received this in advance. I
<br /> can read this to you, or I can allot the ten (10) minutes of time to you guys to ask questions. I'd
<br /> like to yield any remainder of my time to Code Enforcement Director Skibins, for her time. She
<br /> probably has a lot more.
<br /> Committee Chair White stated, If you could give a summary that is before us. I do know that the
<br /> PowerPoint was submitted,but it'd be very beneficial to just give a summary.
<br /> Chief Ruszkowski replied, Yes, ma'am. So, with that, obviously within the past couple weeks,
<br /> you've seen a lot of the stuff that we,as the Police Department,have been doing. Some of the stuff
<br /> that people may not know about is some of the stuff that we put in for our accomplishments. I
<br /> know that members of the Health and Public Safety Committee, and many, if not all Council
<br /> Members, have asked me either directly or indirectly, the things that we've been doing. With that
<br /> being said, some of the things that we'd like to highlight, obviously, the Detective Bureau. We
<br /> organized that this year. We actually implemented and started using it in December of 2018, but
<br /> full implementation occurred in 2019, our Shooting Response Team. The Shooting Response
<br /> Team goes to all shooting calls, again, based on severity. Some are accidental that we do know
<br /> right away, or maybe intentional self-inflicted that we do know right away, and that would not
<br /> require our Shooting Response Team. However, they respond to those. That's immediate
<br /> engagement, immediate advocacy if necessary, immediate witness statements and things of that
<br /> nature. So,it's dealing with the trauma right then and there,instead of typically,what would happen
<br /> before is, for example, we had a shooting on a Friday, and our detectives would not get the case
<br /> assigned to them until at least Monday, sometimes Monday afternoon. So, use your imagination.
<br /> If that was you and one(1)of your family members that happened to, and you didn't hear anything
<br /> from the Police other than the reporting officer at the time for two (2), three (3), sometimes four
<br /> (4) days after an incident. That is a disservice to our community. That is a disservice to the victim
<br /> and everybody else that's involved. That's why we implemented the Shooting Response Team.
<br /> He continued,Also,with that,a lot of people don't know that it's immediate contact with our SAFE
<br /> Team, our Street Outreach Team, which could potentially, hopefully, and it has worked in
<br /> preventing potential or likely retaliation in many of these incidents that we've had. So, we have
<br /> had, thus far, sixty(60) criminal assault shootings in our city this year alone. The implementation
<br /> of our Shooting Response Team and our Street Outreach Team has been effective. I can't give you
<br /> numbers because I don't know how many we have prevented retaliatory-wise. We also began a
<br /> testing and evaluation period for ten (10) hour shifts within our Detective Bureau. We're looking
<br /> at a huge, hopefully a huge decrease in overtime costs. Where we had before, where detectives
<br /> were called in, especially on violent crimes,not just shootings,but other violent crimes,robberies,
<br /> et cetera. If we're able to overlap those shifts, maybe in the latter hours of the afternoon, which is,
<br /> by data, we have those occurring, they're able to respond to them while still working instead of
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