Town Council Work Session

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Leesburg Town Council 8h 0m 5 speakers 5 agenda items transcribed 2 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the proposed auxiliary police program and its intended duties?

Kelly Burk 2:28

I'd like to call to order tonight's town council work session of November eighteenth, twenty twenty four. The first item for discussion tonight is the authorization of the auxiliary police officer program. Jean.

Thea Pernat 2:46

Good evening, I'm Chief Pernat, Thea Pernat with the Leesburg Police Department. I do have Lieutenant Bob Thompson with me here tonight. And also represented our members from human resources, our our finance department, and the town attorney's office. They've been assisting us on on developing this program. So I want to talk to you about what an auxiliary police program would look like for the Leesburg Police Department in the town of Leesburg. So the first question of course is what are auxiliary police officers? And we do refer to them often as APOs, because it's a little bit of a long terminology to keep calling them auxiliary police officers, so you may hear me say that tonight. But what they are is certified ver volunteer law enforcement personnel who assist full-time officers in both operational and administrative duties.

Thea Pernat 3:28

They can bolster our department resources during emergencies, special events, or even peak demand periods. They have distinct uniforms and are limited in their law enforcement authority to ensure clarity for the public. And the program we are proposing is based on successful models and other jurisdictions in alliance with the Virginia law permitting auxiliary police forces. So their primary responsibilities, what we would like to use them for, is traffic control, event security, and low risk service calls like parking enforcement. or lost property reports. They can help administratively and on community-focused tasks like fingerprinting or potentially child safety seat installations. As with the uniform, any cruisers they operate would be unmarked or would be distinguished with a magnet that identifies that they are being operated by auxiliary police officers.

Thea Pernat 4:16

And these responsibilities are designed to free our full-time officers up for critical policing activities. What we would require from any volunteers is that they commit to sixteen hours a month. or 192 hours annually. And of those at least 24 hours we would ask that they dedicate to special events such as our Independence Day celebrations, the Taste of Leesburg, the Air Show, and our other community parades. This ensures our auxiliary police officers are actively involved in key community activities while maintaining a manageable time commitment. So what will they not be doing? They will not be detaining, issuing summons or arresting individuals. They will not handle high risk incidents. We do not want to put those m them in that situation.

Thea Pernat 4:57

And they would this would limit their liability, ensure that they focus on more supportive, non confrontational roles. So for training and and funding, the auxiliary police officers must meet Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services certification requirements by completing fifty-five training objectives, which includes topics like professionalism, criminal law, communication, and defensive tactics. And just like our newly hired officers, they are also expected to complete field training aligning with any of their assignments and responsibilities with the Leesburg Police Department. Initial auxiliary police officers we would ask be already certified, either former or retired Virginia law enforcement officers, so that we would only require Leesburg specific training, field training to get them started.

Thea Pernat 5:45

From there, um the volunteers would for certification we can run our own auxiliary police officer training academy. We could do that in-house, or we could potentially partner with some other regional law enforcement. I have already talked to other two other chiefs in the area to see if this is something they were interested in. That way we could come share our resources, specifically our training officers for this program. Another agency in the area, an example is they run their program over an eight week period it's a total of ninety six hours just for their training academy and that includes eight hours weekly and in the evenings and then they do eight