Here is the townhall transcript with speaker names added based on the context provided in the dialogue. [2:16] **Mayor:** Will be noted. Will you please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance? [2:16] **Group:** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [2:36] **Mayor:** All right, jump into item two, approval of the minutes. I'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the city council meeting. [2:36] **Council Member:** Second. [2:36] **Mayor:** I have a motion, a second. All those in favor say I. [2:36] **Council Members:** I. [2:36] **Mayor:** Any opposed? Motion carries. The minutes are approved. Item three, adoption of the agenda. Are there any changes or corrections to the agenda? Seeing none. [2:53] **Council Member Walsh:** A little shorter. [2:53] **Mayor:** All right, fine. We can, but if we cut one item, that's cutting it by 50%. So, no, we cannot. But I would entertain a motion to adopt the agenda. [2:53] **Council Member:** Second. [2:53] **Mayor:** A motion, a second. All those in favor say I. [2:53] **Council Members:** I. [2:53] **Mayor:** Any opposed? We have an agenda. Item four, consent agenda. I'd entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. [3:13] **Council Member:** So moved. [3:13] **Council Member:** Second. [3:13] **Mayor:** Motion a second. All those in favor say I. [3:13] **Council Members:** I. [3:13] **Mayor:** Any opposed? Motion carries. The consent agenda is approved. Item 5A, prosecution services annual update. Mr. Olsen. Whenever you're ready. [3:28] **Rob Olsen (Prosecutor):** Well, good evening, Mayor Lusmed and members of the council and staff. I'm Rob Olsen. You haven't seen me here for a number of years because my partner, Heather Munins, normally handles the White Bear stuff, but three and a half weeks ago, she gave birth to a little baby boy, Jack. And she informed me about three months ago that she was going to take 12 weeks off. [3:50] **Rob Olsen:** And I said, "I guess so." You know, so and it's worked out real well. So, I'm just here to kind of update you and we're thinking about in the last year, one of the big changes in the last year was for years we had Tubman Family Alliance that did our victim services on the domestics. And then there was the change over to NYFS, I think it's Northeast Youth and Family Services. And we were a little, you know, a little nervous about that because we didn't really know them and it was kind of a new thing for them. But I just want to tell you it's really worked out incredibly well. They are really good at communicating and once they learned what type of services people needed, you know, when somebody is a victim of a domestic assault, say, and their partner's arrested and taken away—what kind of services? Because right then that's a really vulnerable time in a person's life. And they've really stepped up to the plate, really done a good job and much better than we ever would have expected. And they're in constant communication with our office. [5:04] **Rob Olsen:** I mean, you could just about walk to it, you know, throw a stone over there. And so, it's worked out really well and we're just, you know, I don't know—I understand there might be some ties from the city council. Whatever the decision went into the decision, it was a good decision. [5:20] **Rob Olsen:** Okay. The other thing, and you might have—I don't know if you watched the news yesterday—a guy named Drew Evans, who's the superintendent of the BCA, was on TV. Drew is a former White Bear cop. And long time ago, he lives up in Lino Lakes and they had a little problem with the DMT machines. Those are those breath test machines that they blow in. And you know, law enforcement is more complicated than it used to be. You know, back in the day, they'd arrest people, they'd write a police report. I'd just go to court and say, "Well, that's what the cop said." Now, we've got videos on everything. And we've got these sophisticated machines. [6:01] **Rob Olsen:** And they had a problem with changing out a control substance. When you run these things to make sure it works right, you have a control substance that has a certain level of alcohol in it, and you run a test on it to say, "Oh, yeah, it's working" to the control sample. So when the person blows into it, you know that it's accurate. Well, apparently there's two different types of control substances. One for this portable little preliminary breath tester that the police use on the street, another one for the more sophisticated machine that's in the booking room here. Apparently in some of the jurisdictions, they kind of mixed them up and they had different levels of concentration. And this came up in a case where a judge said, "Well, you ran the wrong stuff. I'm tossing the result out." So right away the BCA was, you know, full stop. Last Friday, they sent a big notice out to all the police stations. Don't use that thing until you know that you have the right liquid or control substance in it. I'm happy to report White Bear isn't among the groups that had put the wrong concentrated solution into the machine. You know, and I think I've made it pretty understandable, but it's just another one of those things. It's like life, you know, you're going along and everything's happy and everything's working good. But so that was a little crisis and I think there's about 275 cases in Minnesota that are going to probably have the results tossed out, which is unfortunate because if somebody's driving drunk, none of us want them out there. But we've got to play by the rules and we've got to follow the science, too. You can't just say, "Well, it's close enough for government work," like when I was in the army, we used to say. But it doesn't work that way when you're talking about putting people in jail. So, um, beyond that, it's been a good year. I mean, the system in Ramsey County has grouped our cases together in a reasonable way and it makes it a little easier for us to handle. Their scheduling was pretty erratic before that. But beyond that, we're thankful for the work that we've done. It's been a very long time that I've been involved with doing White Bear work, back to '97 with a guy named Doug Maslo that some of you know. [8:18] **Rob Olsen:** Mr. Edberg was on the school board with him a long time ago. So it's—I'm just here to answer any questions you might have and other than that, I have nothing else. [8:18] **Mayor:** Very good. Thank you for the report. Glad to hear everything's going well. Um, one quick question that I have: are arraignment calendars or some of the other kind of proforma hearings still remote or is that returned to in person? [8:58] **Rob Olsen:** Mostly in person. A lot of in person. Ramsey County has gone a little more in-person than some of the counties. There are other counties like [unintelligible] County where 85% of what they do is remote. Washington County is kind of about two-thirds remote, a third in person. Ramsey County, I'd say, is a higher percentage. I don't know if it's 50/50 yet, but it's a lot more than it used to be. There's goods and bads to it. I think when you have these outlying areas, it works great. You know, if you're driving through Cambridge, Minnesota on the way up to Mille Lacs Lake and you get pulled over for something, you don't necessarily want to have to go to the court up there, drive an hour. But I think in the cities, Ramsey County and Hennepin, they're going more and more in person. [9:38] **Mayor:** Council, do we have any questions for Mr. Olsen? All right. We'll extend our congratulations to Miss Munins on the birth of her son and keep up the good work. Thank you. [9:38] **Rob Olsen:** Thank you. Appreciate it. [9:50] **Mayor:** All right. Item 5B, Police Department bi-annual report. Chief Haggar, whenever you're ready. [9:50] **Chief Haggar:** Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you again for having me out to take the chance of bragging on our police department a little bit. I was here in April and I gave kind of an update of how 2024 went and this isn't really that much information—this is not to cover everything since January 1st, but just give you a little snippet of kind of what we're doing and kind of what's fresh in our department happening right now. I do have a few statistics at the end, but I know some of you really enjoy hearing where we're at that way. Um, so here's our new police department photo. We took a little bit of a chance this year and took a little different kind of shot. We wanted to kind of timestamp the year that we got our garage. So, we went out to our garage and turned off all the lights and took a really kind of fun professional photo out there. I'm really kind of a big fan of that photo. We took that in July. [10:58] **Chief Haggar:** It says '24. Of course, there's my first typo of the presentation. Should be just a few months ago in 2025. And here's our organizational chart. Hasn't changed much with the exception of under the administrative Captain Isaac Tuma and then administrative support. We have two records and evidence texts. We have an administrative assistant and we have a community engagement person. We've had that position for a long time; they've served a dual role and then we lost that person to the private sector and we just filled that as of last week with one of our current employees moved over to that position, and then we hired somebody to take that person's spot. Other than that, this org chart looks pretty consistent. [11:49] **Chief Haggar:** We are right now—we're supposed to have 32 sworn officers total and five CSOs. We are at 31. Really happy to say—I remember last October being here and telling you that we are backgrounding our last one and I just felt pretty proud of that. The law enforcement profession is fickle, just like we've had this discussion over the last couple years; we lost a few and now we're kind of back at it again and feeling pretty good about our future. This is my leadership team. Some of them have updated profile pictures and a couple other guys don't. But our current department staff is two captains, four sergeants. We are at 17 police officers right now, two investigators, three school resource officers, five community service officers, and then four administrative staff. [12:55] **Chief Haggar:** In the summers, we'll expand a little bit this upcoming summer hopefully to three more part-time staff for our seasonal CSO position. We have a very traditional shift work in that these are our four shifts represented here in those photos. They work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or they work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and then they work every other Saturday. And their shifts are generally 6:00 am to 6 p.m.—somewhere in that neighborhood, somewhere around 12-hour shifts. We have two adult investigators up there on top with Jordan and Curtis. And then I have pictures with my three SROs on the bottom there at this year's law enforcement torch run. We have one VSET investigator position or specialty investigator position that remains unfilled. Here's our administrative staff with another kicker of Connie from the fire department. She's in that photo, too, and just celebrating administrative professionals day. They do a variety of activities for us. They really are the kind of the power behind the patrol and investigations. They do all the "dirty work" that has to get done—the stuff that if we don't do the dotting of the eyes and crossing of the tees, things won't make their way to Mr. Olsen's office or the county attorney's office. And the one person we'd add there, I'll show on my new staffing here. [14:15] **City Manager Crawford:** Chief, can you talk about the evidence room or are you going to get into—? [14:28] **Chief Haggar:** I have that on another slide, but that's a great reminder. These are our community service officers. On the top there, those are the five. We've been really lucky in that this group of professionals have been with us for just about a year now. Rob kind of anchors the crew right in the middle there. And then we have a few younger CSOs on each side of him. We'll run into a little bit of trouble this summer because three of those five are going to—because of the caliber that they are—I know they'll be police officers and they'll get snatched up really quickly, probably by the end of May or June. If we have positions open here, I hope it's with us, but they're great and they really work well together. [15:15] **Chief Haggar:** Here's our personnel changes. We had three officers start this summer: Dcoin on the left there, Tiffany in the middle, and Paul. Paul was one of our interns; we were lucky enough to get him in the door as an intern, then keep him as a reserve. Then after his last year of college, we convinced him to come back down and be our officer. So, we're really proud of those three starting—like I said, they're in their second phase of FTO. And then Joanne on the right, she started her second week with us and she took the other administrative position up front. She came to us from Anoka County where she had a similar position there in the court system. [16:01] **Chief Haggar:** This group of young people represents our interns that we've had over the last four or five months. As I said, we have a desire to play a long game and a short game. We want to invite as many young professionals into our department as possible because we want to show them what we're made of. It has worked with one of our officers and I'm hoping in the next couple years these interns up top will join our department. On the bottom, that's one of our CSOs, Connor Severson. He is the recipient of our grant from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. They help us pay his salary and his schooling. What makes him unconventional is that he's fluent in Spanish and I can't tell you how many times he has saved our whatever in the last year because he can talk to anybody. He's our only Spanish speaker on the department and officers call him out often when they're on the street. So, he's been a blessing. [17:30] **Chief Haggar:** So, here's our partnerships. As Mr. Olsen said, we partner even more heavily now with Northeast Youth and Family Services (NYFS) for our community advocacy program as well as with our domestic assault and sexual assault programs. And that's been since October of last year. I think the city manager would agree that this was a really positive thing. The amount of domestic assault victims that were contacted by NYFS that would have never been contacted by any service provider before—it is amazing. People that are on the edge of maybe being a victim, our officers never had an opportunity to dive deeper into those victims' lives and now they can refer them on to NYFS. [18:43] **Chief Haggar:** Jonathan Bunt, our mental health professional, as always, he's been with us now for a few years and does a great job. We're just coming up on this month doing our yearly officer check-in. Mr. Bunt will meet with every sworn officer—that's mandatory. Lexipol: we started using Lexipol to create our policies and joined a large chunk of law enforcement agencies around the country doing so. Of course, a partnership that we really value is with the White Bear Lake School District. We've been interacting with them quite a bit in the last few weeks. They're a really great partner; they do a really good job staying connected and communicating with us. We have kind of a shared plan of attack for problems that may arise. Then of course Ramsey County, Minnesota BCA, Chiefs of Police Association—these are partners that I've come to depend on for decision-making. [20:18] **Chief Haggar:** We depend on our volunteers immensely. That group on the top left is our CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) volunteers. We also have our Triad folks up on the top right working a blood drive. Bottom right is our latest class of Citizens Police Academy that we graduated this spring. Over on the left is a hodgepodge of our reserves and CERT folks working an Easter egg event. You see those yellow shirts a lot at Marketfest and our parades. They're trained in a variety of things to include CPR, first aid, and triaging. [21:00] **Chief Haggar:** And then maybe we can just have a discussion about the dog leash ordinance. You know, I watched your meeting last month and there was a lot of discussion about the dog leash ordinance and what went right and what went wrong. Certainly, I'll be the first to admit that things did not go the way we all had planned. We started the program probably a little later than we would have liked. Once we get somebody in the door, there's a lot of checks that need to be done. That process usually takes four or five months. If we started in April, we'd just be getting them on the street around now. So, we got a couple young men in the door to work as the seasonal CSOs last summer and neither one of them happened to work out for us, but we're hoping that this upcoming year we'll start the process a little earlier and we can fill the ranks. [22:33] **Chief Haggar:** We had somewhere around 200 documented visits to the dog beach last summer between May and September. That's only when somebody wants to write it down. It was mostly an educational endeavor this summer because there weren't any signs up yet. I have no desire to drop the hammer and write citations on people that didn't know they were violating the ordinance. So we did a lot of education. Then somewhere in September, Public Works put the signs out. From that point, then we decided we're going to write citations because we felt like it's advertised enough. We found that when we were there in a marked squad car in a uniform, everybody seemed to want to comply. We know that when we're not there, that's not always the case. We think that like a slow drip over time, people will just understand this is the new ordinance. [24:46] **Chief Haggar:** A little bit of kind of some things that happened in 2024 so far. We had four new squad cars budgeted for this year. They're graphed but not built out yet. We won't have all four squads ready until the end of the year. We have a new Polaris Ranger side-by-side vehicle for our seasonal CSOs. We started a new PACE scheduling software. It was a game-changer for us. This software integrates well with our finances and pay system, saving time for folks in the city manager's office. We have a few life-saving awards that I'm looking forward to giving out later this year. [26:56] **Chief Haggar:** We had a significant amount of training experience leave us in late 2024/2025. We've only had two officers leave to go to other departments, and then a couple resignations—medical and otherwise. But out the door left a lot of experience: use of force, firearms, SWAT, DARE. So we have spent the year trying to catch up. With officers leaving, you take with it all this experience and special projects that you have to teach to younger officers. [27:44] **Chief Haggar:** And then the evidence room, as Miss Crawford said—the evidence room audit. Last time I reported to you that we remodeled our evidence room. During it, we had a flood and had to move evidence out in pods. When everything was ready to come back in, our evidence custodians brought stuff back in. From what I know, we never had an audit done of our evidence room in a long time. It was in desperate need of it and our professionals up front just did a fantastic job. That project will be wrapping up probably this month or next. [28:29] **Chief Haggar:** Some upcoming issues for your radar: Bitcoin machines. I think we just need to have a conversation about that. There are cities that are outlawing Bitcoin machines by ordinance. We have had our share of frauds and scams because of these machines. Forest Lake is working on city ordinances as well. School visits: we put a new procedure in place that our officers will be visiting schools to familiarize themselves with the buildings. We want to make sure our officers know every nook and cranny of every school in our city. [30:32] **Chief Haggar:** E-bikes and scooters: we know that's an issue and the council has raised concern. Every other agency in the state is trying to figure out what we can do about that. Motorcycle laws also came into effect this summer regarding splitting lanes—that is on our radar. Looking forward to our girls' spring personal safety clinic. We like to get senior girls who are ready to go to college in for safety conversations. The Suburban Ramsey County Law Enforcement Memorial Service is going to be our turn in the spring at St. Mary's. Snow plowing is an upcoming issue; we have a good relationship with public works to make a plan ahead of time regarding parking issues. [32:18] **Chief Haggar:** Our new parking ordinance is top of mind. We installed those new parking signs around the high school. I'm getting calls and emails all the time—people who are happy and people who are extremely displeased. We think it was the right decision based on the level of activity at the school. I'm also really proud of the fire department vs. police department basketball game we just had. No need to talk about who won [police], but it was a great event. We’re going to try to do that year-round with volleyball and softball. And of course, recruiting is always on the horizon. [33:46] **Chief Haggar:** Activity preview: between January and October, we’re seeing a 65% increase in traffic stops and a 40% increase in arrests. Case numbers are up 26%, parking citations up 191%, and community events up 11%. Do we have more crime? No. I think we just have officers that are finding more stuff. Our four sergeants are doing a great job incentivizing officers to get out there. George Floyd era and COVID really took a bite out of law enforcement activity. We’re just getting back to normal. Thank you again and I’m open to any questions. [35:50] **Mayor:** Chief, I'd just like to say thank you for your work. You do a really great job at keeping our staff engaged and proactive, which can be challenging with battles in the court system out of their control. I'm really pleased to see those data points. Thank you for the work you continue to do for the city and Gem Lake. [36:21] **Mayor:** Very well said, Chief. Thank you for the report. I'm encouraged by the statistics. It's nice to hear that law enforcement feels like they're returning to a sense of confidence in their role. Thank you also for the feedback on the dog beach. It’s a new law and it takes time to shift culture. My question on the recruiting for the seasonal CSO: what was the turnout last year? Were we just scraping to find a warm body? [37:46] **Chief Haggar:** Well, law enforcement in general is very difficult to recruit for. Our officers on the top end earn around $110,000, and we still have a hard time filling those positions. The seasonal CSO job certainly isn't that pay, nor should it be. Finding people willing to do that job for a short period is challenging. Also, we started late—the college kids probably had jobs for the summer by the time we started. We’re committed to making this program work. I don't think we were able to give it a real try last year. [39:09] **Mayor:** Good. We look forward to that this year starting early. I still support that. Council, do we have questions for the chief? Council Member Walsh. [39:45] **Council Member Walsh:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just on the dog beach and the mini-bikes—I saw some email exchange last week. You’ve been trying to stop people. What is the citation dollar amount for the leash law or the e-bikes? [40:01] **Chief Haggar:** For the leash law, we issue an ordinance citation. Some of the problem is that when we issue a city ordinance violation, it's a misdemeanor offense. Sometimes we write a state citation instead of a city ordinance because a petty misdemeanor doesn't require a court appearance; they can just pay the fine. When the new parking ordinance was created, we turned those into petty misdemeanors. If you write a citation for a person with a dog off-leash, it's a misdemeanor and they have to go to court. We wrote very few at the end of the summer—around seven. Regarding e-bikes and motorcycles, state law says you can't ride a motorcycle on a path. It’s a challenging discussion because e-bikes have pedals (even if not used) and e-motorcycles don't. Our officers absolutely will stop them. [43:28] **Council Member Walsh:** What's the dollar amount on some of those citations? [43:32] **Chief Haggar:** I'm looking for a bailout here—I'm not 100% sure. 50 bucks? Usually, if it's not an egregious violation, that's what you get. [43:47] **Mayor:** One quick follow-up for our City Attorney. Is it state law that says a city code infraction has to be a misdemeanor? [44:02] **City Attorney Anderson:** Mayor and council, no. The council can dictate in its ordinance if it's a petty misdemeanor. The default is that all ordinance violations are misdemeanors unless you say otherwise. Typically, you want those kinds of violations to stay as misdemeanors so that if a dog bites someone or damages property, you can make sure the victims have a say and get restitution. [45:14] **Mayor:** Thank you. That refreshes my recollection. In my view, a run-of-the-mill off-leash violation shouldn't be a misdemeanor, but I understand reserving it for extreme circumstances. Council, any other questions? Council Member Edberg. [46:02] **Council Member Edberg:** Thank you, Mayor. Chief, the population of White Bear Lake has changed. Somewhere between one in five or one in four of our citizens is a person of color. We have other languages spoken. How do you think about our recruiting practices for language capabilities? Are we prepared for that? [48:13] **Chief Haggar:** Mr. Mayor, Councilman Edberg, I agree. I see it from the university end. We see 40% diversity in classes, but we aren't seeing that in the workforce. Suburban police chiefs are clamoring for diverse populations. One problem is that diverse candidates often look to Minneapolis or St. Paul rather than the suburbs. However, our last 10 hires have been a pretty diverse group. [50:48] **Council Member Edberg:** I wanted to be clear my question was aimed more at language capabilities specifically. Besides Spanish, do we have officers who speak Hmong or other languages? [51:24] **Chief Haggar:** We do. We have officers who speak Hmong. We have three Asian-American officers, two African-American officers, and one Spanish speaker. This grant we jumped into was specifically to encourage young people who speak a different language to apply. [52:03] **City Manager Crawford:** Council Member Edberg, it's not only the police department. At the license bureau, we have a Spanish-speaking employee. All of our city job descriptions were adjusted to list being multilingual as a desirable qualification. If we don't have a speaker on hand, we have interpreter services we can reach out to. [53:13] **Council Member Edberg:** Are they on contract? [53:23] **City Manager Crawford:** I would need to do a deeper dive on that for you. [53:35] **Council Member Edberg:** Appreciated. One second topic: DUIs. Do you have a sense of where we're at in the last year or two? [54:38] **Chief Haggar:** I actually did some research on this. Post-COVID, we hovered around 100 DWIs. 2023 was 82. 2024 was 96. So far in 2025, we have 123. I anticipate we’ll reach 145 or 150 by the end of the year. That will be the highest number we've had in about eight years. Mr. Olsen, do you have anything to add? [55:57] **Rob Olsen:** In 2009, in the city of White Bear Lake, we had 383 DWIs. Statewide, numbers have dropped significantly—likely due to advertising and services like Uber and Lyft. Hailing a cab back then was tough. Now it’s an app. [57:40] **Rob Olsen:** We had one officer who was on pace to do a hundred in a year but broke his thumb in November and got stalled at 93. So it’s probably Uber, but it’s still amazing to see people driving with a .20 or .33 BAC. [58:01] **Council Member Edberg:** Cannabis has been legal in Minnesota for almost two years now. What percentage of our DWIs are affiliated with cannabis use? [58:20] **Chief Haggar:** Less than 10%. In '23 we had eight drug-related DWIs. '24 we had five. Seven so far this year. I asked my officers today and nobody could remember the last marijuana-specific DWI—they are almost all meth, fentanyl, or heroin. Marijuana is extremely challenging to write for from a practitioner’s end. However, 60% of DWIs that require blood/urine tests usually show at least two drugs in the system. [1:00:01] **Rob Olsen:** You talk about writing it—try proving it. There is no standard like a .08. The only convictions I get are the "Cheech and Chong" cases where the driver admits they were way too high to be driving. [1:00:29] **Mayor:** Any other questions from the council? All right. Item 10, communications from the city manager. Miss Crawford. [1:00:45] **City Manager Crawford:** Just one update. I will not be at the next council meeting; I'll be at the ICMA conference in Tampa. Assistant City Manager Jupa will be in my seat. We will have a first reading of our revised tree ordinance. The public hearing will be at the second reading in November. [1:01:33] **Mayor:** Thank you, Miss Crawford. Welcome, high school students. I think this is the first large group of the school year. Who is Mr. Malum? Nice. He may have tipped you off, but 23 years ago, I was in Mr. Malum's class sitting where you are for the very same assignment. I hope you found it interesting. We didn't make many policy decisions tonight, but you saw an important touchpoint with law enforcement. I would encourage you to participate in local government as you get older—it doesn't have to be running for office. As soon as I hit this gavel, you can come up and any one of us can sign your papers. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. [1:03:04] **Council Member:** Second. [1:03:04] **Mayor:** A motion and a second. All those in favor say I. [1:03:04] **Council Members:** I. [1:03:04] **Mayor:** We're adjourned.