I want to thank all of you who were able to join me on Feb. 4 for our virtual 2021 U.P. Public Safety Forum. We were able to spend almost two hours together going over 2020 crime stats, calls for service data, and staffing information for the Police Department. We also covered several topics around police reform—ideas that are being talked about locally and nationally.
If you were not able to join us and are interested in reviewing the information that was shared, I created a recap of the presentation and placed it on our website.
Also, during the forum I shared information about our upcoming series of discussions called “Conversations with the Chief.” Each of these virtual meetings will be dedicated to a single topic where we can dive-in and share, listen and learn from each other with the goal of making U.P. a safer community for everyone. For our first Conversation with the Chief, we will be discussing the topic of social justice and criminal justice in U.P. Our meeting will be Thursday, March 4, at 6 p.m. If you would like to join us just email UPPublicSafety@cityofup.com and we will send you a Teams invite. We also encourage you to send us your thoughts and questions for upcoming Conversations with the Chief. In the future I hope to cover topics around police staffing, traffic concerns, property crimes and more.
Until then, be sure to watch future Chief’s Corner messages for information on our next Citizen’s Academy scheduled to begin in April. And as always, stay safe.