Well, good evening. I'd like to call the 7:00 PM Monday, April 27th regular Langley City Council meeting to order and start us off in a good way by acknowledging that we're on the unceded and traditional territories of the Ȼtsilqāthəl, Metz, the Kwikweml, and Semiahmoo First Nations. Uh, before we get started, I would just like to take a moment of silence. Tomorrow is a day of mourning, uh, and this is to recognize, uh, and remember workers killed and injured on the job. Thank you. Uh, so we have an agenda in front of us. Would anybody like to make any changes? So seeing none then, uh, who would like to move it? So moved by Councilor Albrecht, seconded by Councilor Mack. Further discussion? So seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Any opposed? So there's none opposed, so that's carried unanimously. We are on to the consent agenda. Would anybody like to remove anything? Councilor Albrecht? Uh, yes, I'd like to, uh, remove the May is MS Awareness Month. Thank you so much. Uh, any other changes to the consent agenda? So seeing none, who would like to move the consent agenda as amended? So moved by Councilor Albrecht, seconded by Councilor White. Further discussion? So seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Any opposed? So there's none opposed, so that's carried unanimously. That brings us to item 6A, which is an RCMP update. So over to our RCMP. Uh, thank you very much for having us. I'm just gonna... A couple of quick highlights, and I'm gonna roll it over to Inspector Wise for the, uh, quarterly reporting and any, uh, questions after that. So just some of the highlights, uh, for our community policing side is, uh, we're very happy to graduate our, uh, first class of auxiliary volunteers. They used to be known as auxiliary constables, but now they're simply just auxiliary, uh, uh, volunteers. We have three tiers now. So what we've done in Langley is h- had a graduation of tier one. And what that means is they'll mo- be primarily used for community engagements and community events. Uh, they get issued, uh, a navy boo- blue pair of s- um, slacks and a gray golf shirt that's clea- clearly marked auxiliary. Then as we're gonna work our way to tier three, which is closer to the, uh, old auxiliary constable program, then they'll have more of the, uh, uniform that looks operational like ours with some of the use of force tools. Right now, we're still waiting on some of the policy approval from the province on tier three. So in the meantime, we've launched tier one, and it's a excellent group that graduated on Saturday. So we'll start deploying them as early as next week at our, uh, community events. Uh, a number of initiatives, uh, we've worked through, including being involved with the, uh, Citizens' Assembly, some of the recommendations out of there, uh, direct result of this. And we'll look at bus- working on business watch as well, uh, what that looks like, how we're gonna get the buy-in. Um, right now, we're gonna be dealing with all things FIFA in the region. Once we work through that, then we'll get back to our, uh, our programs. We're gonna essentially now go right into our summer event, and it's gonna... everything's gonna go by quick. The event season is approaching us, uh, us quickly, so we're anticipating a extremely busy, uh, summer, right until the, uh, September long weekend. So after that, I'm gonna... with all that, I'm gonna roll it over to Inspector Wise, he'll just give you a snapshot of some of the things happening in Langley City. And if there's any questions at the end, we'll, we'll open it up. Thank you. Uh, is there a presentation or is it verbal? Uh, I've- I've got some slide- mostly verbal, but I've got slides to follow along. Okay, perfect. If needed. Think I'll push this. There we go. Uh, and if you had those slides, I don't think we saw the first bunch of slides. There was just one. Oh, there's just one? Okay. No, there's about... Oh, sorry. We're all good. So the, the- We're all good. ... we didn't see the first one about the auxiliary from your, uh... Oh, we- oh, sorry. Here, I'll flip back. Sorry about that. Uh, my apologies. So it was just that? Just that, yeah. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor Mahal. Um, I'd like to preface some of the information that I'm gonna provide by thanking Councilor Albrecht for the work that he does as chairperson of the Langley City Crime Prevention Committee, or what we're also referring to as the Community Safety Committee. Now, with the support that the Langley RCMP provides to that committee on a monthly basis, what I typically will do, which I'm going to, uh, say, just wanna give some context to some of the statistics that come out of the information as provided. And that context helps the committee in moving through some of the initiatives that it, uh, works through in its work here in the city. Now, with that said, through Langley City, we look at a handful of specific types of offenses or calls for service that the police address based on whether or not it affects either property or persons.Now those offenses are the type that have attracted the attention of the city over the following years, previous years, because they are the ones that gather attention, public and private, and create the concern amongst some of the citizens and the members of the Crime Prevention Committee. So, I'm going to just kinda recap the way the information is presented at the Crime Prevention Committee meetings, give you an understanding of how that information flows. So, at the Crime Prevention Committee meetings, each member of the committee, from the chairperson onward, is provided with a geographical map of the City of Langley. And that map plots out not just the number of offenses and each offense type, but where they fall within the community itself. So you can see geographically where things are occurring within the city. The committee is also presented with a graphical analysis of previous months. So, as I'm reviewing the data from month to month, the members of the committee are able to see whether or not something is rising or falling, and how it may be reflected throughout different times of the year from January to December. So I just wanted to at least explain that so when the information is presented, you can under- understand how it reflects the overall statistics within the city. So for example, um, we recently met as the Crime Prevention Committee, and we dealt with some property offenses throughout the month of March. So we look at break-and-enters in the city. There's three different types of break-and-enters that we look at: residential, commercial, and then other types of properties. So we know what a residence is, we know what a commercial property is. An other premise would be something that doesn't fit into either category, so that means it's either something that's under construction, it's also perhaps a small outdoor building such as a garden shed, a storage container, that type of thing. So in the month of March, two residences had their, their... Two, two people had their residences broken into. So, from a point of context, what's happening with residential break-and-enters in the City of Langley? They are predominantly always occurring in a residence where nobody is home at the time. So, in the month of March, what we happened to have is we happened to have a family that decided to take a vacation. When they came back from vacation, they found that their house was broken into. Now, from a block watch perspective, or to speak to the initiatives that the Crime Prevention Committee is working on, we all may have heard of something called Get to Know Your Neighbor. In that initiative, if you have somebody checking on your property while you're away, it often leads to the prevention of residential break-and-enters. So that speaks to the work that the Crime Prevention and the City of Langley are working on. Commercial break-and-enters. So we had 10 of those in the month of March. So typically, again, what's happening with businesses within the City of Langley? Break-and-enters to a business are predominantly occurring overnight. So you've got that business that's closed. You can't break into a business when it's open, so businesses are being, being targeted at night. So, there's often a situation where a back door is jimmied, a lock is jimmied, um, sometimes a window gets broken. Um, it usually occurs, uh, um, in the wee morning hours when there's very little people outdoors. It's pitch black. In one instance, we had, uh, a rock thrown through the window that allowed the suspect obviously to gain entry through the broken window of that property. We also had another instance where, um, an individual business, a rock was thrown through the window. Now, this is a business that had been taking some initiatives. They'd put bars on the windows. The bars were in a square pattern, so the squares of the bars were about eight inches. What did the suspect do? The suspect used that eight-inch opening to reach in and grab merchandise that was on display. So, now to speak to the Business Watch Initiative that is underway within the City of Langley. The police are providing support to the Downtown Business Association to get the Business Watch program up and running. The Langley RCMP is also going to be able to provide business analysis for those owners who participate in the program, and even if you don't, you still are entitled to an analysis. So that shop owner had a little conversation that went something like this, "Keep your merchandise arm's length away from the front windows of your store." So it's those little in- pieces of information that the RCMP provides, and when that information is shared amongst the businesses, it helps prevent crime all around. We had a restaurant where the back door got jimmied at 4:00 in the morning. Uh, we had a couple businesses where it's, it's no secret that there's a lot of businesses that utilize a fenced area, a fenced compound, a back property. So unfortunately, we try to tell businesses, "Don't keep anything of value or anything that might be attractive to somebody within that fenced area unless it is also secured in some fashion," 'cause suspects tend to either wanna jump the fence or cut the fence or cut a hole in the fence and make their way into that fenced area and take what's inside that fenced area. So in one particular case, a business happened to be a used car dealership. So the person hopped the back fence, went into the sales office, managed to get their hands on a set of keys, and of course they were able to determine what vehicle that set of keys operates, 'cause every set of keys nowadays has a beep-beep fob.And it led them to a pickup truck within that fenced compound. So then they got in the pickup truck, managed to steal the pickup truck by driving it through the gate at the back of the compound. So information like that can be valuable to the businesses within the City of Langley, and our community policing officers are out there every day talking to those types of businesses, offering them an analysis for security, and this is also what'll s- shift into the Business Watch program as that gets going and we do our business analysis for those business owners. We had a business where the shop owner came in in the morning, and the business had b- broken into, and she said to the police officer after she made her report, "Why didn't my alarm go off?" She contacted her alarm company, and lo and behold, unbeknownst to her, her alarm system had actually not been working for quite some time. So she'd been going home every night setting the alarm, thinking it was working, so she found out the hard way, unfortunately, that her alarm was not working when she came in the following morning. So, getting back to that whole Business Watch thing, which I am gonna continually promote and advocate for within the City of Langley, and support, there's nothing wrong with testing your equipment on a periodic basis. Schools test fire alarms. We have fire drills. If you own a business and your business has an alarm, tell your alarm company that you're going to be testing the alarm today. Phone them ahead of time. Good piece of advice for that business owner, uh, and it w- it would be something that could be practiced amongst more businesses. We had a couple, um... We had one, one incident where a construction site, somebody hopped the fence, they're looking for either tools or construction materials. That also happened last month. Now, we also know that another category that's important to citizens is, uh, things associated with their automobiles. People have their entire vehicles stolen, people have things stolen from their automobile. Now, we're also familiar with a campaign that the City of Langley utilizes with posters. We often call it the poster campaign. So there's a series of posters promoting, uh, fraud prevention, mail theft prevention. There's also an auto theft prevention and a theft from your auto prevention poster. Now, the information on those posters is very valuable, and also comes with the support from the Langley RCMP. So unfortunately, 17 people had items stolen from their vehicle in the month of March. Now, this data does fluctuate slightly from month to month, but let's give some context to what's happening with people who have stuff stolen from their vehicles. Number one, lock your car. The biggest thing that the police see is a person who phones to say, "My items were taken from my car, and I just don't know if I locked it before I went to bed last night." Second of all, quite often, vehicles that are having something stolen from them, it's because the owner left something of valuable in plain sight. Don't leave change in the cup holder. Don't leave your valuable, uh, sunglasses in the cup holder. And then apart from that, even if it's out of sight, if it has value, don't leave it in the car. So, it's, it's interesting to see how many people leave their wallet in their glove box or their center console. So the problem with that, of course, is not only have you had your car broken into, and now you're gonna make an ICBC claim, but you've had your driver's license, your credit card, your debit card compromised, and it just compounds the problem that you've run into. Uh, license plates. That's a tricky one, because it's very difficult to prevent your license plates from getting stolen. Um, license plates are often stolen from cars that are outdoors, so if you live in an apartment building or a townhouse complex or a single family residence where you're not parking your car on the street or on a driveway, you're less likely to have your license plate stolen, or anything else for that matter. Um, the other thing we find is work vehicles. That's another tough one. So, a work van, which to somebody is more than likely going to contain tools, is a target for people who wanna take something from the vehicle. So little pieces of information that we like to tell people is, um, lock your car. If you have an alarm system or an anti-theft system, make sure that that's engaged. Don't leave items of value, either visible or non-visible, in the side the vehicle. Six people had their entire vehicle stolen in the month of March. Not a high statistic, but if I were one of those six, I'd still be disappointed to find my car missing when I came out o- from my house in the morning. So, one of those thefts is the one that I spoke about, where the gentleman broke into a used car dealership and was able to access a vehicle and take the entire vehicle. Car thefts occur... Predominantly, we see a couple different trends. Older vehicles, so the old Honda Civics, there's still people driving old Honda Civics, they are a prime target for auto theft because they're s- simply easy to steal. No anti-theft devices. So it's amazing that something as simple as a, I'll use a brand name, that's a club, a steering wheel anti-theft device, uh, an alarm system, you know, it's amazing how many thieves actually have told the police they got turned away because there was a red blinking light on the dashboard that indicated to the thief that that vehicle was likely equipped with an alarm, so they can simply move down to a vehicle that is not equipped with an alarm.Locking your car, again, not only prevents theft from the vehicle, it'll also prevent your entire vehicle from going missing. But I think Councilor MacWhit have a related question or comment. Uh, thank you. Yeah. Just, um, through the mayor to OIC Dos Anjes, I was wondering if, um, while we're getting the update about, um, crime prevention measures, if we could maybe have the LA3, um, box ticked so that we could see... Um, I believe that's for Langley City-specific data, just so I can kind of peruse the Langley City data. Yeah, I'm not sure if you tick the LA3 box zone, if this is an active or, um, a responsive chart where it'll, um, isolate Langley City data, just so I can digest that while we, uh, get the presentation. Sure. The, uh, the slide is not live or active, but I can- Okay. I can... I'll highlight it for you, so... Thank you. Zone 3 is, uh, Langley City. And for Langley City, uh, I've got the mouse there, uh, 2,354 calls for service from the period of January 1st to March the 31st, so for that quarter, uh, period. Um, in, uh, within that, uh, as far as our, uh, trend analysis goes- S- so just, just for cohesiveness of... I- I think it was more for just if it could be up while we're getting the crime prevention tips. Sure. If that is not available, then so be it, but we can get back to overall trends maybe. Mm-hmm. But let's finish the thread on crime prevention, if that's okay. Okay. No problem. Cool. So one of the final property crime offenses that attracts a lot of attention are arsons. So a lot of concern over fires being deliberately set. So in the city of Langley, there are few arsons. One that's a concern is dumpster fires. For some reason, people like to light garbage dumpsters on fire. Part of the RCMP's support for that type of thing is, we tell businesses, "Lock your dumpsters, keep them locked, keep them closed, don't have them accessible or open, particularly when the business is closed overnight." Crime, then we transition into persons offenses. So persons offenses take on a whole different connotation, because it affects... It's, it's crimes against people. So one of the biggest things that we like to look at, we look at assaults. Assaults are a concern. The word assault in itself can be a very concerning word for people, so I like to put some context into assaults in itself. A simple push or a shove is constituted as an assault in the policing world. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything severe. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's injuries to it, but from a policing perspective, a pushing and shoving match is something that lands in this category. And I think it's important that the citizens of Langley and Mayor and Council understand that assaults take on different meanings depending on the context in which we refer to them. Now, the other thing that's important to understand is, by and large, the majority of assaults that happen, not just in the city of Langley but in most communities, occur between people who know each other, people who have some type of relationship. In the majority of the city of Langley's assaults, the people involved, the two parties, are in a cohabitative situation. So you have a marital relationship, you have roommates, you have boyfriends, girlfriends. You have those cohabitating relationships where the people know each other and they know each other from, uh, a minor degree of knowledge of each other to s- having spent many years living together. So I think there's importance, it's important value in understanding that that context in which the assaults are occurring. We had some roommates. We had a couple roommates where a dispute over property in the house went from a verbal argument to a pushing and shoving match, and then unfortunately, somebody ended up calling the police. Uh, we had two people who ended up not... Th- they, their, their relationship soured many, many years ago, but unfortunately, they just randomly crossed paths on the sidewalk in the city, and one didn't like the other, and a pushing and shoving match occurred. So that was something that also led to the police's attention. Uh, we had a couple students at a local school, and it's kind of like, "Okay, we're gonna take out our business on the playing field at the end of school." These are the types of things that we're seeing for, uh, the most part with the assaults in the city of Langley. Harassment. Harassment is a category of offense that has, uh, been of importance to, to, uh, the citizens of Langley. So what constitutes harassment? It's that ongoing, continuous, unwanted form of communication. Nowadays, electronic communication constitutes the majority of harassment. Now again, let me throw some context in there. The dozen harassment complaints that came into the Langley RCMP last month, all of which were between parties who know each other. Now, again, they know each other from a great deal of knowledge. So we had a couple who-...who is going through a divorce, and unfortunately, the communication got a little nasty between the parties as that divorce proceedings continued on. All the way to a very, very minor knowledge, um, a, a homeowner contracted a gentleman to do some work at their residential property. The business relationship didn't go too well. The homeowner chose not to pay the contractor, so the contractor decided to constantly start messaging the homeowner saying, "You know, I'm taking you to court. You're gonna end up paying up," and on and on the harassment continued. So not a personal relationship, but more of a business relationship that went sour that led to a series of ongoing communications. The key, of course, is that when the police get involved, it's important that everybody understands that all form of communication must stop and go through legal channels. So we did have a couple people who chose not to follow the police directive, and they were actually charged with criminal harassment last month. But again, what's important to understand is that for the most part, the parties know each other in some form or another. Another type of persons offense, uh, that we've seen, uh, we had a dozen threats reports. So threats come in two forms, threats to property and threats to a person. So for the most part, we did have, uh, um, another business relationship, similar situation, where a person hired a contractor to work on their house. The contractor said, "If you don't pay me, I'm gonna come back and take back all the work that... I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna completely destroy all the work I did." So that was a threat to damage the property of that person's residence, again, between people for the most part who know each other. A bro- the brother threatened to harm his sister as a result of a dispute in the family home. Sometimes we have partners who, for whatever reason, are separating or divorcing and things just don't go too well during that separation, so threats end up getting levied, one against the other. Uh, we had a gentleman who took his car into a automotive shop for repairs. He was not satisfied with the work that was done, so he threatened to come back and damage the automobile repair shop. And then, of course, we had a customer who was in a licensed liquor establishment, who had a little bit much, too much to drink. The bartender cut him off and said, "I'm sorry, but you have to leave. You've had far too much to drink." He did not like being cut off. He did not wanna leave the bar, so he threatened to punch out the bartender. That definitely got him thrown out. So not all parties in a threat situation, from the examples I've given, always know each other, 'cause that client in the bar did not know the bartender. But again, for the most part, uh, what I try to convey is that there is quite often a relationship of some form or another between the parties involved. Now, there's a category that comes up every month, and it also warrants some explanation and some context. We refer to it as sexual offenses. There are not a lot of sexual offenses that occur annually within the city of Langley. In the month of March, there were three. A lady came forward and wanted to report an incident that occurred 15 years ago, so we- we call that a historical sexual offense. So from a police perspective, there's no immediate threats. There's no danger. The people involved have not had any interactions for 15 years. It's not even clear if the people currently live in the city of Langley, but the lady was able to say that what happened 15 years ago did happen in Langley at that time. We had a young lady who engaged in a sexual relationship with an older boy. Unfortunately, sometimes what happens is, those younger generation people don't fully understand consent or the fact that there is an age for consent, and that was the case in this situation. So again, I like to give context to some of the information. Is there a public safety concern? No. That's important to understand. Then we had a situation where, um, and I hate to, uh, I won't use a, um, ph- phrase... You can, m- you can make your own judgment on this one. Uh, the female wife did not wanna have sex when they went to bed that night. The husband did wanna have sex. Unfortunately, it didn't go well, so a call was made to the police in that situation. So again, the context is important. Is there a public safety concern? Is there a, uh, is there a concern in other ways? Yes, so there we have a situation that's occurring in the present day. The police...... put a variety of mechanisms in place to ensure that the, the victims are supported. Sexual offenses are very important to the police, as they should be to the citizens of the City of Langley, and I always like to draw that context so that you understand the, the situation. Thanks. Uh, and just quickly before I get to Councilor Mack. Uh, this is from a procedural standpoint, uh, for community spotlights for overtime, so I would just like to move that we waive Section 23-5, which is the time limit for this. And I'll see if there's a seconder so we can continue. Seconded by Councilor Car- Solli. On further discussion, seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Opposed? It's carried unanimously. Councilor S- uh, Mack. Thank you. Through the Mayor, to, um, Inspector Wise. I was just curious in terms of, um, I believe that it would be in possession of child sex abuse material for f- um, five over a three-month period, and then there was, uh, making and distributing, I believe child sex, uh, or I believe child pornography that would be. Child sex abuse material distribution for s- um, seven over a three-month period. So I'm wondering if we can get a little bit of context into those 12 incidents regarding, um, the making and distributing or possessing of child pornography or sex material. Uh, thank you. I, I don't have the context for that information at the moment, so... Oh, I see. Yeah, I can, uh, uh, elaborate on that. So what we have now are, um, there is a ICE section, uh, child exploitation, out of our headquarters. So there will be triggers for certain types of offenses of, uh, an email or a chat that could be shared, and they get triggered. And what happens is they get scored in one of those categories. So sometimes it could be somebody actually out creating child pornography, and other times it could be, uh, unfortunately it's usually boys that take, uh, photographs that are, uh, not appropriate and think it's funny to share with one another. Now, sometimes that gets captured in that, in that same category, so then we'll get those investigations and we'll kinda tr- try to figure out what it actually was. So when we get, when we get those numbers, the ones that are, um, actual, um, distribution of pornography, uh, is fairly low. It does happen, but we gotta, we gotta weed through each and one and that is one area where our calls are going up just because everybody is online, and what's not captured in here is, uh, in, in this particular presentation, there's been about a 30% increase in those ICE files because everybody's addicted to being online. And then we've gotta filter through what is and actually isn't child pornography or their re- uh, distribution. We can get more details or, uh, stats on that, but that is one area that's, uh, definitely going up for us. Uh, thank you. Through the Mayor, just as a follow-up, my understanding is that, um, generally speaking across western Canada, there are high rates of, um, I guess, predatory child acts, whether that's making and distributing child pornography, being in possession of child pornography or luring, um, and those types of ch- child-associated crimes. Um, I, I, my understanding is that in western Canada it's in higher frequencies than, say, eastern Canada. Um, do we have any information on maybe larger mitigation methods that we're kind of imploring to try to tackle that? Um, and then I wanted to clarify, you said it was 30% increase in ICE files that we're seeing? Yes, at Langley Detachment over a year period, approximately 30% increase we had. Okay. Thank you. Thank you- Yeah, so, so thank you for that question, actually. Really good question. So yes, absolutely, uh, calls have gone up, and as far as, uh, separating between western and, uh, eastern Canada, I don't have that information before me, but, uh, we can get it. Now, as far as combating, uh, the sex trafficking, human trafficking, and online sextortions, yeah, it's a high priority for every police agency, because that's the way the world is changing. At our divisional headquarters, they've got a specialized team that sets up to screen them, and then when they get filtered to us, uh, we also, uh, have our own specialized units in an area that's gotta, uh, grow, and as Inspector Wise passed over to me is the AI component of it. Uh, we're finding a lot of it's not even ra- actual human-created, it's created by AI, and then sourcing and tackling that, which has also become a challenge, uh, for us. We could probably, down the road, uh, with our, uh, sex crime, uh, offense investigators have a presentation just on that area of, uh, public safety. Yeah. Thank you. A- and I think just, um, final, like, comment, um, and maybe a suggestion. I- I've brought this up before, um, but especially with the increasing rate, I know that there are, um, certain incidents where it's, um, like a false report, so to speak. So not every single, um, crime stat rel- relating to this is, um, a, an actual incident. However, um, seeing that there is an increase in incidents, e- especially something that, for me, is so, um, like heinous and damaging, um, I do wonder if there is something that the RCMP, um, should be putting out in terms of, um, talking about like, say, a press release? Talking about these are the mitigating m- um, measures that we're d- we're doing. Also, this is the technology that we have to find you, and if you are participating in this activity, this is the risk that it runs, and we are looking into this and we're, we ha- are dedicating, you know, X resources, um, towards stopping the making and distributing of child pornography, and this will not be tolerated in Langley. So I wonder if, um, something like that, like a newspaper article, something, um, should be done.Yeah, absolutely awareness in this area is, is good. The one focus we've taken is in the schools, younger and younger. Uh, with our school resource officers, the presentations, making them aware. Uh, yeah, absolutely, there's predators online every single day, uh, trying to take advantage of, uh, not just, uh, the vulnerable elderly people, but young children as well. Mm-hmm. And sometimes children preying on children. Um, absolutely, um, that is one of our strategic priorities too, is the awareness around that. And as technology arrives, like, uh, Inspector Wise pointed out to me, AI is, uh, where we're really starting to see a big, big uptick. It destroys people's, uh, lives. And then we get into that whole question of s- social responsibility. What is the responsibility on some of these AI companies? As we saw in the tragedy in Tumbler Ridge, uh, now, uh, the AI companies are recognizing, "Yeah, we should have done more to alert the police that this was happening." Other parts of the world, like United Kingdom, I believe are slightly ahead of us, where laws require such companies to re- to report to police. And I know on, for the federal government and provincial government, those are areas of priority. As these trends evolve and technology evolves, our laws also need to evolve and, and keep up. And we're gonna, we're gonna see a big push, uh, for years to come in that area. Thank you. I really appreciate it, and then just a, uh, uh, point of privilege. My camera isn't working, and I keep trying to turn off my microphone, and it's, it keeps turning back on by itself. Oh, well, we'll get, uh, yeah- It's still. ... Mr. Fluck to look at it. Okay, awesome, thank you. And yes, this is all very good information and discussion, and also just being cognizant of the time as well, uh, we'll continue on with this. Thank you. Uh, just couple of last little persons offenses that often raise people's concerns. So as Superintendent DiSange brought up earlier, uh, extortions. Now, if, if, if the, if it's learned that an extortion occurred in your city, based on the media attention that South Asian style extortions are garnishing these days, and it's important to understand that other types of extortions occur. Few and far between, but sometimes, um, you might have an image that ends up in somebody's hands, and that person is now being asked to provide, uh, f- money, a payment, uh, eh, or that image will be released to family, friends, or put out on the internet. That does classify as an extortion. There was, there's only one. There's probably one in March, and they're few and far between in the city, but I think the context of understanding that when the word extortion is m- mentioned, it's, it does not necessarily mean it's a South Asian businessman style of extortion. Last but not least, I'm just gonna touch on robberies. So when you hear the term robbery, we're not talking about bank robberies. It's a term that the best way to, to contextualize it, it's theft with force. A theft with force does not always also mean a weapon. So when a shoplifter runs out of a store, and a staff member runs after them to try to recover the merchandise, if the shoplifter fights back when the employee grabs the shoplifter, that is classified as a robbery. Sometimes an injury will occur, sometimes not. Sometimes the merchandise is recovered, sometimes not, but for the most part, there were only four robberies in the city of Langley in the month of March. There are often very few robberies. By and large, there are always a shoplifter fleeing from an employee of the store. Uh, a, a threat of producing a weapon also constitutes a robbery, or a threat of the use of force in conjunction with that theft constitutes a robbery. So when that shoplifter flees from the store, and the employee is giving chase, if the shoplifter says, "Stand back, or I will do A, B or C, I'll punch you, I'll stab you," that also is constituted in our database as a robbery. We don't like to see store employees get hurt. We work very closely with a lot of the store management here in the city. We work with loss prevention officers, and we work with the security companies who are also hired by some of the stores in the city to help educate and inform as to what's going on, so that they can better secure merchandise and prevent shoplifting. Um, that's kind of my summary of persons offenses and property offenses, and how you can put them into context within the statistics that the police provide. I really appreciate that thorough, uh, review. It really does add a lot of context. Uh, was there anything else that you wanted to review, um, before we open it up for questions? Uh, any other general statistics? Are we in a good place? I think we've given you enough numbers and- Okay. (laughs) I think so. ... questions. Uh, so we'll go to Councilor Solian first, and then we'll go to Councilor White. Uh, through the mayor to the presenter, thank you so much for that. Um, with the information you guys had ar- up earlier, um, my memory's not very good. I'm, I'm trying to recall what the different LA zones are. Uh, I saw LA1 through 5, then 8. Um, if you could just kind of run through that. I, I, I'm trying to figure out what LA4 is, as it looks like it has more crime than Langley city itself.Yeah, no problem. So that's just how the, the, uh, zones are broken up within Langley City and Langley Township. So Langley City is zone three. Uh, LA4, zone four, will be North Langley, the Willabury, uh, sorry, Willoughby area. And then we s-start to slide down south and, uh, going out east, zone five, will be the Aldergrove area. Uh, just to follow up then, is, is Willowbrook included then, in LA4, or is it just Willoughby? Sorry. Five is essentially Walnut Grove. I see. Four, North Langley, so everything north of the City of Langley's city limits. Three is the City of Langley. Uh, one is Aldergrove. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilor White. Thank you, Mayor Bohal. Um, thank you for your presentation. Um, I'm all into those kind of details and understanding it. It gives us really good context. I have two qu-quick questions. Um, one, I'm curious whether or not there's been any, um, review done post the, um, uh, work that we did in our downtown one-way strip area. Um, whether or not, uh, uh, crime stats are down, um, occurrences, uh, have been reduced, um, you know, any of those kind of stats that we would monitor here. Um, you know, often there are septed processes we go through, and we, we, we, we counsel during, uh, development, um, sessions and, and, uh, offer advice, you know, RCMP offer advice to, uh, homeowners on things that they can do. Well, this was a massive, um, you know, w-project that we did. It looks great. People are engaging. I see it engaging. I'm just curious whether it, it, we see how things have translated when it comes to crime in that particular area. So we're still early since we've evaluated it- Yeah. ... to really do a deep dive into the da- into the data. Yep. The one that jumped out at me was when we see our, uh, cause for disturbance or, uh, bylaw offenses. Yep. And that's primarily arou-round, uh, gonna be for the most part, our mental health or social nuisance calls for service. So we did see a shift in that with some of the strategies. Uh, some of the other ones, it's still early, but we'll evaluate as we go. Yep. We s- we prioritize and str- and pick our, uh, strategic priorities, and then we measure. So we probably need like, a three to six month, uh, timeframe to get a, a better assessment- Assessment, yep. ... of, of, of those initiatives. Great. And some of the other factors, like Inspector Wise m-mentioned, seasonal will impact as well. Yep. We do get an influx of our transient population in the- Yeah. ... in the, in the warmer months. Thank you. And, uh, I'd, I'd be interested to kind of really see that, um, because I think that helps, uh, as we communicate with our public and in the area, uh, just the improvement and the impact that these kind of, um, uh, upgrades and projects can provide within our community. The other question I have is, and, uh, Inspector Wise, you, uh, spoke about public safety, um, uh, and, and using some of the illustrations that you provided, you, um, there were comments that, "But this is related to this particular category, but there's no, uh, issues of public safety that are involved in that." And I'm wondering whether or not there's a scale that monitors that, uh, the, the issue of public safety. And, and that's a topic that comes up, people are concerned about it, they're... You know, it's a very, very subjective thing, but, um, do we monitor things that way, where we evaluate the perception of public safety and the reality of that public safety? Um, and, and there's... So that's the essence of my question. Thank you. Uh, over to you, if you have a response. Uh, as a note, the city does a community survey. Usually every f-three to four years, we ask that question, "Do you feel safe?" But you may have better data than us. Yes. Now... Thank you for the question. If Dina Kay were sitting beside me, I would defer to her, because the work that Dina Kay has been doing in conjunction with the Citizens Assembly through the work from the University of the Fraser Valley, public safety and the perception thereof was a large proponent of the work that the Citizens Assembly has been doing. They would have a better answer than I can provide, but, um... You wanna add to that? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. The one thing I'll, I'll say about that, that we've learned is, if you ta- and we see this all the time, if you take a neighborhood that's a part of Block Watch, compare it to one that's right beside them that's not part of Block Watch, when that neighborhood is connected and everybody's talking, uh, to one another and kind of watching each other's backs, the perception is a lot lower. Then you, if you go one street over and they're not a part of programs like Block, Block Watch, the perception could be a lot higher. A lot of it just comes to engagement, getting the facts and the context around it. And conversely, there are some trends that do, uh, go up and where we need people to come forward. It's just, the key is constant communication and going, going back to the, the, the context around it. Thank you. Uh, I think Councilor James has a question.Yes, I do, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And, uh, thanks for your presentation. This has been very informative. I'm just, uh, it's small on the screen for me, attending virtually, so just piggybacking a little bit on Councilor Soliom's question, does Zone 4, which my understanding is Willoughby, do they have more calls for service than Langley City? Yes. Uh, we do now. Uh, the, the, and, and the biggest reason for that's simply gonna be population, uh, a very high dense population there. So it has shifted where for quarter one, the month of January, February, March, uh, Zone 4 being the Willoughby area had more files, being at, uh, uh, 2632 versus 2354 in the city. Thank you, Superintendent. I just wanted to make sure that my eyes were seeing what they were seeing. Um, I just have a follow-up question as well. Um, can you explain or can you share the call for service stats between the city and the township now? So I'll turn it over to OIC. Yeah, no problem. So yeah, just again, for the quarter, uh, a total of, uh, 8395 calls for service for our detachment, 2354 were in the, in the, uh, city versus 6041 in the township. Uh, I don't have my calculator, uh, in front of me. I'm gonna call it about, uh, 29. Uh, uh, it's 28.04%. (laughs) Okay. Okay, I was, I was not too far off. I was gonna say 29. Yeah, so about 28.4, uh, percent, uh, in the, uh, in the city. Thank you, Superintendent, and thank you again for your presentation. Thank you. Uh, any other questions, comments? Okay. Uh, you, it was a very thorough presentation. Really, really a lot, uh, to digest. I really appreciate you taking the time, uh, to talk us through this. Uh, it gives us a lot to, to think about and be able to provide some context to the community. Yeah. And just in, in closing, back to, uh, Councilor Ma- Mack. We do have an interactive version of this map as well. So in the future, if council has any specific questions, if you tell us in advance, we could prepare the specific information. Yes, go ahead, Councilor. Thank you so much. Uh, through the mayor, just as a fol- a final follow-up, can we get the slides, and then, um, would it be possible for you to tick off the LA3 box and then send that over to us, just as a follow-up? Yep, absolutely. Okay. So just, l- you want just LA3? Yes. Okay. Thank you. We'll get that to staff. Perfect. Thanks. Uh, so we're on to item 7A, so the next regular council meeting is May 11th, followed by the 25th. Is there any council advisory body updates? Councilor Albrecht. Um, yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, we had Earth Day this past weekend. I don't have a report on how successful it was. I heard it was quite good. Uh, hopefully next meeting I'll have a better update. Thank you. Thank you. Any others? So seeing none, thereon the bylaws, item 8A. So the bylaw is that the bylaw cited as 2026 tax rate bylaw 2026 number 3336 be read a first, second, and third time. Is there a mover and seconder? Moved by Councilor White, seconded by Councilor Soliom. Further discussion? So seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Any opposed? So Councilor Mack's opposed, so that's carried. Uh, we're on to 8B. So it's that the bylaw cited as City of Langley Affordable Housing Reserve Fund bylaw 2026 number 3320 be read a final time. I'll move that. Seconded by Councilor Mack. Further discussion? So seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Any opposed? So that's carried unanimously. Uh, onto the actual policy, uh, that council policy CO89 affordable housing reserve fund deposit and use of funds be approved. Uh, I'll move it. Is there a seconder? Seconded by Councilor Mack. Further discussion? So seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Any opposed? So that's carried unanimously. Uh, that brings us to motions and notices of motion, so Councilor Soliom. Um, just gonna, uh, move my mo- should I just read it out, or? Yes, just read it out. Yeah. So, uh, my motion is titled Cost Benefit Review for Contract Decisions Policy. Uh, so whereas City Council is responsible for ensuring prudent, transparent, and evidence-based decision-making in the expenditure of public funds, and whereas council must be able to evaluate the relative costs, benefits, and service impacts of proposed contractual changes compared to existing arrangements, and whereas the absence of a clearly identified status quo or continuation option limits council's abily- ability to assess whether proposed changes represent best value, and whereas providing comparable cost estimates for both existing and proposed service models enhances accountability and supports informed decision-making, therefore be it resolved that staff be directed to include, as part of all future service contract renewal processes, a clearly defined status quo option that outlines the estimated costs and service levels of continuing existing arrangements for a comparable term, and further that such analysis be presented alongside any proposed changes to ensure council has a complete basis for evaluating alternatives prior to making a decision. Thank you. Uh, so I will second that. Is there any further discussion on your end, Councilor? Yeah, I have a little explainer, or I can just read out real quick. Um, so the purpose of this motion is to help council have a fuller picture when we make decisions about major contracts. Economists often talk about opportunity costs. When we choose one option, what are we giving up by not choosing another? That principle applies directly to public decision-making. A new contract may offer new technologies, better service, or other improvements, but council also needs to understand what is being traded off compared to continuing the existing approach. We all really, uh, we already deliver some services in-house and contract others out.It's in those contracted services where this gap tends to appear. Once we go to market, we may, we are not always given a clear picture of what it would cost to continue the current approach or what service level that could provide. This motion does not assume that the status quo is better. It may not be. In many cases, changes may be the right decision, but without a defined baseline, council cannot properly evaluate the cost-benefit trade-off. We need to know not only what a proposed option costs, but what the alternative would have cost and what service differences come with that choice. By requiring a clearly defined status quo option with estimated costs and service levels, this motion ensures that future councils can compare proposals against a real baseline. It strengthens transparency, accountability, and decision-making. Ultimately, this is about making sure the council has the information it needs to understand the full costs of its choices before making them. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, Councilor Mac. Thank you, Mayor Bahal. Um, I wanted to just thank, uh, Councilor Solian for bringing this forward. I think it is an amazing motion. Um, I'm very ha- pleased with it. I think that a good example of where some information was lacking from council would be with the, uh, waste contract renewal. Um, I think that certain, um, provisions within the lapse contract also could have been better communicated, so I really appreciate that we're looking forward and looking for improvement, so thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you. Uh, any other comments? So I appreciate it. It's a similar thing, uh, they do at the Mayor's council as well, and, uh, it's all about, uh, how we continually improve as an organization, so I think this is a great motion. So I'm not seeing any other comments, so I'll call the question. All those in favor? Opposed? There's none opposed, so it's unanimous. That brings us to correspondence. I think Councilor Albrecht, is there a motion you'd like to make on the, uh, MS, um, letter? Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, the request was, uh, (clears throat) and again, I think it was done in previous years where, um, May 30th, I believe, is World MS Day and, um, uh, apparently, we've lit up the spirit stage, uh, with red, uh, on that, on that particular day, and, uh, I was hoping that, uh, we could do it again this year, as long as there's no conflicts with anything else. So would your motion be to receive the letter and direct staff to... Staff to, uh, light the spirit stage, uh, in the color red to, uh, acknowledge MS, W- World MS Day. Okay. Uh, on World MS Day or for a period of time? Uh, I, I guess- No, it, it says May 30th here- Okay. ... in the correspondence. Okay, so it's to light it up on May 30th. Seconded by Councilor Mac. I just want to make sure. Miss Cusack has that. Okay, further discussion? Seeing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor? Opposed? It's unanimous. We're at the end of the meeting. I'll move that we adjourn. Seconded by Councilor James. I'll call the question. All those in favor? Opposed? Have a great evening. Thank you.