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November 1, 2011 EXCERPT FROM NOVEMBER 1, 2011 CITY COMMISSION MEETING Requested by Lori LaVerriere, Interim City Manager on 3/14/12 MAYOR RODRIGUEZ: Let me bring this back to try to wind this up, Chief. I appreciate your input. I think it is important that the community feels like we are acting, and we are proactive and this is part of that process for me. But, I want to try to get consensus from the board and try to give Lori some direction. I think what I'm hearing, Lori, is you are going to try to put together some sort of proposal about review, comprehensive review of some of the things the Chief has mentioned and bring it back to the Commission. Is that what you — MS. LAVERRIERE: Absolutely, if that's the Commission's desire. I'm more than happy to do that. There are plenty of resources out there and I would look for your direction. COMMISSIONER HAY: I have some questions. MAYOR RODRIGUEZ: Is that the consensus of the board? (There was consensus indicated) COMMISSIONER HAY: I don't have a problem with that because I certainly would like to see improvements on the police force. I would like to ask the question to Chief — I think we talk about four officers, four or five — what was the educational levels of those that got into trouble there. OFFICER AIKEN: Out of the four that got in trouble, I believe all four of them didn't have college degrees. COMMISSIONER HAY: They did have? OFFICER AIKEN: Did not. COMMISSIONER HAY: Did not have. OFFICER AIKEN: None of them had college degrees. I can vouch for two that they were enrolled in college taking courses at the time. COMMISSIONER HAY: They were enrolled. Okay. I guess where I'm going with this, I really don't think higher education is not necessarily, is going to guarantee better officers. I think, I think it would enhance their abilities, but to make them better officers, I don't care if you have a PhD. If your attitude is not right and if you have some baggage that you are bringing along it's not going to really improve the situation. I think what we have here as we look at this, it's a negative because the officers were let go, they were spread all over the newspaper. But, it's a negative that I should, that we really should view as a positive. I, I, think the Chief as he stated, you are going to have some bad apples and the fact that we are weeding those out, shows that our system is valid in some respect. If we have a reduction in crime here in the City of Boynton over the past several years, we've cleaned up the area. In terms of drug users we had one of the biggest drug busts here in the whole County. I think we are leading the pack. I don't want to beat up on them and I'm sure that's not the intent here. But, there's no crystal ball that we can look into that's going to guarantee us of getting good officers here. When we do find them, we get rid of them. I mean it's just — to me it's like trying to say divorce is over 50% and what do you do to ensure that your marriage is going to last. Nobody knows that except to study your mate carefully over a period of years or something of that nature. There are certain things that are just going to happen and I think we are doing a tremendous job here in the City of Boynton weeding those out and getting rid of them. Now, I encouraged what's been said here to look at it, do an in depth study, try to bring back and see how we can improve; but I don't want — my position is not to beat up on the Police Department. Not that I am saying that they are. But I do want to let you guys know I've worked with some of your officers and every time I approached them and asked them to go with me or whatever, they've done it with no problem. We've had some problems. We had some bad officers. We have some bad areas and we addressed it. So, I don't think we really need to fall off the cliff here with saying that we need, we have a big monumental problem here that we need to deal with. I'm satisfied with what we have in the procedure that — and your expertise, Matt, that you've shown over the past has been exceptional. MAYOR RODRIGUEZ: The intent — thank you, Commissioner Hay. The intent certainly isn't to beat up on anybody. The intent is to improve. We have an obligation as the Commission to always raise the bar for our citizens. What can we do better. How can we do it better. What do we need to improve on. If don't ask those questions nothing is going to happen. Nothing will happen. We'll stay stagnant. And that's what we don't want to do. We don't want to stay stagnant. We have an opportunity to improve on things. We have a great Police Department. We have a great Police Chief. I believe in the system. If we can't say there is opportunities for improvement then we've lost the battle. So, I think we are all in agreement there's opportunities and I look forward to the City Manager's response coming back to the Commission. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, guys. MS. LAVERRIERE: Mayor, may I just make one final comment too. This applies to all departments within our organization and that's something we have embarked on and it's like I said a healthy thing to do, I think. We are an organization of nearly 800 employees. There are other employees in this organization that have been fired for poor behavior or poor performance. They just don't make the news. But it happens. You have that. But overall, in the scheme of things, we have an outstanding employee base and an outstanding organization and we continue to look at why and how we do what we do to remain outstanding. MAYOR RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, Lori. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, guys, appreciate it.