Police Reports for July 2021

Training:

• Members attended monthly training for canine, bomb squad, tactical team, honor guard training, and dive team. (56 hours)
• All sworn members attended in-house Active Bystandership in Law Enforcement (ABLE) training. This covers the skills and human factors for our duty to intercede responsibilities. This was taught by two certified NL instructors. (184 hours)
• Investigators attended online training for sex offenders’ motivations, interviewing skills, and  investigation (32 hours)
• Chief attended an online course for Budgeting for law enforcement (4 hours)
• New hire, Justin Jacobi was firearms and taser certified. He will leave for the police academy at the end of next month. (20 hours).
• Four members received training on being administrators for the new RAVE system through the JECC. This system is replacing the WENS system for emergency and public notification. (4 hours)

Public Relations:

• We had our Community Outreach Officer coordinate a Day of Service request from Grace Community Church. Members toured the facility and chalked the walk to show support for all of the NLPD officers and professional staff.  Thank you, members of Grace Community Church
• Our Community Outreach Officer attended the city sponsored ambassador’s night meet and greet.
• We assisted with the Johnson County Kids Day at the fair. An officer displayed a patrol car with other public safety vehicles.
• Officers were invited and attended the Arlington Ridge Bike ride.
• An officer attended the Bike Ride at the Rec center for the slow roll across the city.
• Officers stopped and handed out stickers and mingled with folks at the NL community events this month.
• During some extreme hot weather in July, officers purchased cases of water and made it available to hand out to members out in the extreme heat.
• We have provided several tours to the public of the new police station.
• We completed 8 child seat safety inspection.

Equipment: 

• We purchased a carpet cleaner and tile scrubber for the new PD.
• We demoed the MILO system as a training tool for a judgement simulator. We will also be looking at several other products. The Lt drove to Rochester, MN to demo their virtual reality judgement simulator by Apex, they have in-house.
• Officers attend a demo for the Bolo Wrap in Coralville, which is a non-lethal tool that can wrap up a person’s arms or legs when they are being combative.
• We received the drone that will be housed at NLPD and the procedures are in place. This was purchased with EMA, NLFD and NLPD.  It was requested to find a subject in Johnson County that fled a scene and armed.  The drone was deployed in a field, by the certified pilot who was on duty, and located the individual and provided commands to surrender. The individual gave up and was taken into custody without incident.
• We purchased additional wall protectors for the new PD. The chairs in some offices are damaging the walls. These will be a vinyl protector that will affix to the wall that will protect the drywall.
• We continue to measure and order load bearing vest for the officers that have requested them. These are custom fit to their ballistic vest, but is used to get some of the weight off of the officers’ duty belt and distribute the weight across their chest and shoulders.

Enforcement/Crime:

• We had 51 firework complaints between July 1^st and July 5^th. This is down from 126 calls in 2020, but close to the 2019 calls which were 49.
• We have been working the GTSB contract. Officers are coming in to enforce traffic violations and working joint projects with other agencies.
• A sex offender that was in violation of the registry compliance rules was believed to be hiding at an apartment complex from a tip we received. Officers surveilled this building until they located the man. He was taken into custody without incident on the arrest warrants.
• Several narcotics warrants were executed this month by the drug task force members resulting in narcotics and weapon seizures as well as criminal charges.

Department Admin:

• High School Intern Makayla Bronson finished her summer unpaid internship for 44 hours.
• Ames Helzer submitted his 2-week resignation to become a trooper with the Iowa State Patrol. We wish him well with his new position.
• Completed the drone policy and updated several policies for the Peace officer Bill of Rights and the Back the Blue legislation.
• Chief met with Tricon and the building architects to try to finish the items on the punch list since we have been in the building for 1 year. There are approximately 25 items still remaining on the project.
• Iowa Acts Updated Law information was condensed to just PD information and provide to all staff members. This was training provided by the Attorney General’s Office for impact of the last legislative changes.
• Continue to work through technical issues for the use and reporting of the self-initiated contact card. We will use this for the Dr. Barnum Study.  We received the data once a month and are now going through to make sure the data is accurate and showing up in the correct sections.
• A joint meeting was held with other entities and the Mobile Crisis Director in how we can enhance that program and better serve our communities. More meetings will follow and a tour is scheduled so they can see what the NLPD’s facility has to offer.

Respectfully Submitted by Chief Diane Venenga and Alisha Ruffcorn 8/3/2021