Pledge, Prayer, 4-Way Test: President Gary McCauley
Welcome guests Michael Spera, Dick Mason, MJ Agostini
Sergeants Report: Pete Zucco
Card Game Winner: Charlie R
Raffle Winners: John A, Charlie R, Nathan
Happy Bucks: CB: for the beautiful day; KC ditto that; CR: son from New Zealand going to NCAA mens basketball tournament with the team in Buffalo; MS: happy to be here; KR: sunshine; SF: happy to see Police Chief Spera here; DL: Covid seems to be gone and normalcy is back; DM happy to be here; JW: Tom Brady un-retiring; MD: guests; P&PD: guests, spring season; GM: guests and the great day
Outreach, Joan M: its recommended we donate $1,000 to Ukraine relief via Rotary
Summer Concert Series: John G will head this up again as we sponsor the upcoming season
Nominating Committee: the committee consisting of Charlie N, Bill, Mike and Gary have a slate to vote on next week: President, Pat Devito, Vice President, Alan Schwarz; Treasurer, Kathy Callinan; Secretary, John Giannini; Sergeant-At-Arms, Pete Zucco
Program: Gary introduced our speaker, OS Police Chief Michael Spera
Chief Spera gave a very informative talk complete with handouts. Michael is also in charge of Emergency Management for the town which was "consumed" by Covid-19. It took lots of organization vaccinating over 26,000 people and many tested. The state modeled their vaccination processes at Rentschler Field at Pratt & Whitney after Old Saybrook which says a lot about the success of our program. Old Saybrook got about $1million back for the vaccination program.
Chief Spera is very accessible, many people have his personal cell phone number. Arrests went down during Covid because largely, people stayed at home. This is true of residents and non-residents. Statistics are based on service population not resident population because our area is a popular destination that draws visitors. There were 44,584 emergency calls to the communications center which speaks to the accessibility of emergency services.
Chief Spera's vision of the future is One Team, One Goal - the theme for 21st century policing. The department is getting more diverse hiring women and minorities. Its no longer all white men. Total transparency and fairness are vital. A 15 second video clip probably won't tell the whole story of a given interaction. Police speak for people who can't speak for themselves
Chief Spera showed retail demographics. The top 7 retail outlets does $2,976,500 weekly gross which means lots of people from out of town are shopping here. Law enforcement actually promotes this by making people feel safe to come here. Body cams record every minute and are subject to review.
The police department raises money for the community. Lights for the high school football field, helping families in need, Thanksgiving saw 800 turkeys donated and $6,000 was given away.
Patrolman and Patrol Sergeant pay scales were discussed. Salaries are in line with area towns.
Mike discussed a range of related topics including the departments full time staffing, time on the task - a breakdown of time spent in the process from prisoner processing, court time, etc., supervisory structure and officers' years of service.
As a society we have to decide what we want in terms of law enforcement and where do you draw the line to avoid escalation.
Chief Spera took several questions.
Shredding Day, April 9: John Aforismo
There are 21 volunteers and 4 students signed up to help
Lawn signs were made and will go around town Saturday
Social media publicity was done, Chamber of Commerce sending out notices to members
John is mailing to 120 businesses
Wine & Beer Tasting and Silent Auction, May 6: Marty
We are up to about $10,000 in committed sponsors which is great! We must focus on ticket sales and auction items. Dick Mason from Clinton is selling tickets - a big thank you to Dick! We have not yet resolved the issue of getting a permit for the event but Gary and Marty are working on that.
