February 13, 2025 • 11 mins
LPD Major Curtis Hile joined Todd Walker to discuss new decals on the department's cruisers and other issues.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Good morning. It is eight seventeen. Todd Walker here at
Lima's morning News, brought to you by a Quick as
a week printing, and with it being Tuesday, we focus
on the city of Lima and this week is for LPD.
A Chief Baker not here today, but Major Curtis Hyle
is with us. Major.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Good morning, Hey, Todd. How's it going going well?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Sir?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Going well?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And I guess a number of things we want to
talk about. But for you, you are the major for
administrative services, and I guess that means you kind of
have to oversee all the stuff that isn't the direct
to policing, like how do we get our equipment this
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Right, absolutely absolutely. A new thing you guys might see
going around on the street right now is you might
notice that the police.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Cars look a little different. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
We took all the decaling off of the police cars
and just went back to the line of police patch
on the doors. And that's how the police cars were
when I first came around, before they started putting all
the decals on the cars. We decided to get back
to a simpler look. And we like it, but twofold,
(01:46):
we like it. However, it is cheaper for us to
outfit a car. Those decals cost money, and unfortunately it's
not a matter if it's a matter of win. When
we drive as much as we do that sometimes these
cars get damaged. And every time a car gets damaged,
it had to be redecaled, and that was a cost
that continued to come out of the budget. And with
(02:07):
a new decaling scheme we can Unfortunately, like I said,
it's going to happen, we're going to damage cars, but
we can damage quite a bit of that car without
having to spend the money to put the new decals
back on it. So it is a call savings for us,
and that was one of the big reasons why we
decided to.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Go back to the simpler look.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
And sometimes also it's a stylistic change symbolic of something else.
I don't know if that really figured into it as much,
but sometimes it can just portray project a more streamline
I guess face to the public, or maybe a little
less frills.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, well, the thought of getting back to a simpler
look that we had in the past was it did
play into it. The chief definitely liked the new idea
and I was a fan of it, and the call
savings was another thing they played into it obviously, but
we'd like getting back to that simpler look.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So and they're definitely more covert.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, they do mix in a little easier, that's
for sure. Speaking of vehicles, Major Curtis Hiles, whether SID
I'm a police department, part of administrative services is of course,
you know, procuring the vehicles. They're upkeep, et cetera. Pretty
much all of them now are SUVs, right, no more
of the old police cruisers.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The last Ford Tourists left the police department last week
to be to have its equipment stripped out of it
to be put into a new SUV. So yeah, there'll
be no more cars.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
And the other thing is these vehicles now are basically
rolling it centers, aren't they absolutely?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It the keeping up with the the changes in technology
definitely keeps our division busy with obtaining new equipment, keeping
up to date with what the officers need. And then
there's a lot of mandates that come along with it.
With our law enforcement Automated Data system, that's something where
we get information about driver's licenses and license plates, wanted people,
(04:13):
and we have to make sure that we have equipment
that is up to a security level that meets the
state standards, So those things are always ever changing.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
What other kind of technology are in those police vehicles
that maybe we don't even wouldn't even think of that
would be in there. Obviously you have a computer on
board to enter license plate or driver's license or just
any other information that the guys need to have, but
what other kind of things are in.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
There well, So with the systems that are in those cars,
officers can essentially complete an entire police report in the car,
and with that it keeps us able to be on
the street more more visible.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
They're able to.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
They're actually able to communicate with each other car car
without even being on the radio. Dispatch can send the
calls out through the computers. So say we have a
situation where we don't want someone to know that we're
coming to that house, we don't even have to communicate
on the radio.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Everything can be.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Done car to car, card to dispatch, So it things
have stepped up. And obviously the camera systems that are
in the cars are are their top notch.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So and of course the body cams figure into all that, right,
although that's not in the vehicle that's on the office
or sure, that's part of your purview, right.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes, yes, the body cameras they do, so the in
car camera and the body camera system are all the
same camera system. So, and in the backseat of the
patrol car is recorded. So if someone up a suspects
arrested and he's put in the backseat of a patrol car,
his whole encounter in that backseat is recorded also.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And those body cams and the cameras on the car,
I'm sure constantly get software updates.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Like absolutely absolutely so, and they come with a licensing
fee that we continue.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
To have to pay for, so sure, yeah. And there's
a lot of gear in the car, a lot of
gear on the officers. Sure, you know. So all of
that is under Major Curtis Hyle. He's with us here
in studio Major of Administrative Services, and that goes from
all the fun stuff like technology down to all the
absolutely mundane and day to day and nothingness like paper towel,
(06:30):
toilet paper.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Making sure we have that stuff in the building.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So you know, another thing that falls under this division
is is recruiting and hiring, so we maintain so when
someone takes the police tests, once they take that test.
It's sent to us from Civil Service and Administrative Services
Division handles the entire hiring process, from getting them through
their physical agility test to the background investigation, which is extensive,
(07:00):
setting up interviews, getting light detector tests, psychological evaluations, medical physicals.
So exciting things happening around the police department, though recruiting
is up. We sent four new officers to the Ohio
State Higway Patrol Academy on Monday, so they will finish
their training hopefully in about five months. They'll return to
(07:22):
us for their street training with their field training officers
and then we can get them turned loose on their
own ready to get back on the street. We're swearing
in another officer on Friday, and we have several more
that have applied. We gave another physical agility test on Saturday,
and I believe some more applications have come in, so
(07:42):
we'll have to schedule more of these things.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So that's awesome. Do want to get to a point
that Major Hyle wanted to talk about and it got
brought up during the last time we had a significant
snow event. The city is set up for people to
park on one side the street or the other depending
on the day, to help with the plow snow removal
(08:05):
and also probably help with the police or fire or
first responders to be able to respond. You want everybody
on one side of the streets or the other right.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Absolutely so even numbered days of the week. So let's
take Valentine's Days Friday the fourteenth, I believe, so just
low shout outs and nobody forgets that Valentine's Day will
be an even number day, Friday the fourteenth, So you
would park on the right side of the street. On
an odd number day like the next day, Saturday the fifteenth,
you'd park on the left side of the street. That
(08:36):
gives snowpliles an opportunity to clear the roadway on one
side of the street. So fire trucks obviously fire trucks
are big. We need some room to get them through
so they can clear that one side of the street
and everyone move over to the other side, and then
we clear that side of the street. And that comes
back to a thing where strategic planning within the city
(08:57):
like departments working together being better together. So if we
can work as a police department along with the street
department to make sure these roads are cleared and along
with the community, everyone working together.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
It makes things better.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Helps the fire department, helps the street department, helps the
police department, and it helps the citizens in that neighborhood
to be able to get through that, to get down
those roads, to get to their driveways, to be able
to park, and then they have a clean street.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So yeah, going back to the recruiting angle, I know
it's been a real struggle in recent years to even
get people to show an interest, let alone apply and
go through the process. But that seems to be easing
a bit here over the last I don't know, six months.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Or so, I would say, yeah, over the last six
to seven months, things have gotten things have gotten better.
We've seen a real increase in numbers. So to be
able to hire that many officers all at once and
send them to the academy has been a rarity for us.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
So how many vehicles do you have operational at any
one time?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Well, we would maintain a fleet of about thirty two cars,
and typically we would have eight to nine of those
cars on the street at a time, so that would
be including patrolman and supervisors.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
So yeah, right, so a lot to keep up with,
and that means you got to have some mechanics and
guys in ought to fix things.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, we keep some repair shops busy maintaining cars because
when you think about it, we're the only department in
the city that functions.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Vehicles twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I mean, the fire department obviously has vehicles that are
able to respond twenty four hours a day, but they're
not on patrol like police cars are. And there's a
lot of police cars that are on the street twenty
four hours a day, around the clock.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So that really puts some wear and tear on these cars.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So I mean, it keeps us busy making sure that
we got tom maintained, making sure everything works on them,
all the equipments in them for the officers.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So it's an ongoing task for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
How long do you expect at least cruiser suv to last,
whether in days or years or miles.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I would say a patrol car that is assigned.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
To patrol two to three years, two to three years.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
By the time the mileage in the in the wear
and tear on that car. You think about a car
that's on the road twenty four hours a day. You know,
sometimes people forget about just how many times that door
opens and closes, how much, how long someone is sitting
in the seat of that car. So and then another
thing that people forget about is a mileage is there's
sometimes cars are sitting on the side of the.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Road and they're just idling for hours.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So the hours on these vehicles, they build up fast,
they build.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Up fast, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Major Curtis Isle, I'm a police. We appreciate you coming
in this morning.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Thanks thanks to I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It's eight twenty eight. News is next.
Good morning. It is eight seventeen. Todd Walker here at
Lima's morning News, brought to you by a Quick as
a week printing, and with it being Tuesday, we focus
on the city of Lima and this week is for LPD.
A Chief Baker not here today, but Major Curtis Hyle
is with us. Major.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Good morning, Hey, Todd. How's it going going well?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Sir?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Going well?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And I guess a number of things we want to
talk about. But for you, you are the major for
administrative services, and I guess that means you kind of
have to oversee all the stuff that isn't the direct
to policing, like how do we get our equipment this
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Right, absolutely absolutely. A new thing you guys might see
going around on the street right now is you might
notice that the police.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Cars look a little different. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
We took all the decaling off of the police cars
and just went back to the line of police patch
on the doors. And that's how the police cars were
when I first came around, before they started putting all
the decals on the cars. We decided to get back
to a simpler look. And we like it, but twofold,
(01:46):
we like it. However, it is cheaper for us to
outfit a car. Those decals cost money, and unfortunately it's
not a matter if it's a matter of win. When
we drive as much as we do that sometimes these
cars get damaged. And every time a car gets damaged,
it had to be redecaled, and that was a cost
that continued to come out of the budget. And with
(02:07):
a new decaling scheme we can Unfortunately, like I said,
it's going to happen, we're going to damage cars, but
we can damage quite a bit of that car without
having to spend the money to put the new decals
back on it. So it is a call savings for us,
and that was one of the big reasons why we
decided to.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Go back to the simpler look.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
And sometimes also it's a stylistic change symbolic of something else.
I don't know if that really figured into it as much,
but sometimes it can just portray project a more streamline
I guess face to the public, or maybe a little
less frills.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, well, the thought of getting back to a simpler
look that we had in the past was it did
play into it. The chief definitely liked the new idea
and I was a fan of it, and the call
savings was another thing they played into it obviously, but
we'd like getting back to that simpler look.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So and they're definitely more covert.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, they do mix in a little easier, that's
for sure. Speaking of vehicles, Major Curtis Hiles, whether SID
I'm a police department, part of administrative services is of course,
you know, procuring the vehicles. They're upkeep, et cetera. Pretty
much all of them now are SUVs, right, no more
of the old police cruisers.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The last Ford Tourists left the police department last week
to be to have its equipment stripped out of it
to be put into a new SUV. So yeah, there'll
be no more cars.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
And the other thing is these vehicles now are basically
rolling it centers, aren't they absolutely?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It the keeping up with the the changes in technology
definitely keeps our division busy with obtaining new equipment, keeping
up to date with what the officers need. And then
there's a lot of mandates that come along with it.
With our law enforcement Automated Data system, that's something where
we get information about driver's licenses and license plates, wanted people,
(04:13):
and we have to make sure that we have equipment
that is up to a security level that meets the
state standards, So those things are always ever changing.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
What other kind of technology are in those police vehicles
that maybe we don't even wouldn't even think of that
would be in there. Obviously you have a computer on
board to enter license plate or driver's license or just
any other information that the guys need to have, but
what other kind of things are in.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
There well, So with the systems that are in those cars,
officers can essentially complete an entire police report in the car,
and with that it keeps us able to be on
the street more more visible.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
They're able to.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
They're actually able to communicate with each other car car
without even being on the radio. Dispatch can send the
calls out through the computers. So say we have a
situation where we don't want someone to know that we're
coming to that house, we don't even have to communicate
on the radio.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Everything can be.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Done car to car, card to dispatch, So it things
have stepped up. And obviously the camera systems that are
in the cars are are their top notch.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So and of course the body cams figure into all that, right,
although that's not in the vehicle that's on the office
or sure, that's part of your purview, right.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes, yes, the body cameras they do, so the in
car camera and the body camera system are all the
same camera system. So, and in the backseat of the
patrol car is recorded. So if someone up a suspects
arrested and he's put in the backseat of a patrol car,
his whole encounter in that backseat is recorded also.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And those body cams and the cameras on the car,
I'm sure constantly get software updates.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Like absolutely absolutely so, and they come with a licensing
fee that we continue.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
To have to pay for, so sure, yeah. And there's
a lot of gear in the car, a lot of
gear on the officers. Sure, you know. So all of
that is under Major Curtis Hyle. He's with us here
in studio Major of Administrative Services, and that goes from
all the fun stuff like technology down to all the
absolutely mundane and day to day and nothingness like paper towel,
(06:30):
toilet paper.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Making sure we have that stuff in the building.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So you know, another thing that falls under this division
is is recruiting and hiring, so we maintain so when
someone takes the police tests, once they take that test.
It's sent to us from Civil Service and Administrative Services
Division handles the entire hiring process, from getting them through
their physical agility test to the background investigation, which is extensive,
(07:00):
setting up interviews, getting light detector tests, psychological evaluations, medical physicals.
So exciting things happening around the police department, though recruiting
is up. We sent four new officers to the Ohio
State Higway Patrol Academy on Monday, so they will finish
their training hopefully in about five months. They'll return to
(07:22):
us for their street training with their field training officers
and then we can get them turned loose on their
own ready to get back on the street. We're swearing
in another officer on Friday, and we have several more
that have applied. We gave another physical agility test on Saturday,
and I believe some more applications have come in, so
(07:42):
we'll have to schedule more of these things.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So that's awesome. Do want to get to a point
that Major Hyle wanted to talk about and it got
brought up during the last time we had a significant
snow event. The city is set up for people to
park on one side the street or the other depending
on the day, to help with the plow snow removal
(08:05):
and also probably help with the police or fire or
first responders to be able to respond. You want everybody
on one side of the streets or the other right.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Absolutely so even numbered days of the week. So let's
take Valentine's Days Friday the fourteenth, I believe, so just
low shout outs and nobody forgets that Valentine's Day will
be an even number day, Friday the fourteenth, So you
would park on the right side of the street. On
an odd number day like the next day, Saturday the fifteenth,
you'd park on the left side of the street. That
(08:36):
gives snowpliles an opportunity to clear the roadway on one
side of the street. So fire trucks obviously fire trucks
are big. We need some room to get them through
so they can clear that one side of the street
and everyone move over to the other side, and then
we clear that side of the street. And that comes
back to a thing where strategic planning within the city
(08:57):
like departments working together being better together. So if we
can work as a police department along with the street
department to make sure these roads are cleared and along
with the community, everyone working together.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
It makes things better.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Helps the fire department, helps the street department, helps the
police department, and it helps the citizens in that neighborhood
to be able to get through that, to get down
those roads, to get to their driveways, to be able
to park, and then they have a clean street.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
So yeah, going back to the recruiting angle, I know
it's been a real struggle in recent years to even
get people to show an interest, let alone apply and
go through the process. But that seems to be easing
a bit here over the last I don't know, six months.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Or so, I would say, yeah, over the last six
to seven months, things have gotten things have gotten better.
We've seen a real increase in numbers. So to be
able to hire that many officers all at once and
send them to the academy has been a rarity for us.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
So how many vehicles do you have operational at any
one time?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Well, we would maintain a fleet of about thirty two cars,
and typically we would have eight to nine of those
cars on the street at a time, so that would
be including patrolman and supervisors.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
So yeah, right, so a lot to keep up with,
and that means you got to have some mechanics and
guys in ought to fix things.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, we keep some repair shops busy maintaining cars because
when you think about it, we're the only department in
the city that functions.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Vehicles twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I mean, the fire department obviously has vehicles that are
able to respond twenty four hours a day, but they're
not on patrol like police cars are. And there's a
lot of police cars that are on the street twenty
four hours a day, around the clock.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So that really puts some wear and tear on these cars.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So I mean, it keeps us busy making sure that
we got tom maintained, making sure everything works on them,
all the equipments in them for the officers.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So it's an ongoing task for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
How long do you expect at least cruiser suv to last,
whether in days or years or miles.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I would say a patrol car that is assigned.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
To patrol two to three years, two to three years.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
By the time the mileage in the in the wear
and tear on that car. You think about a car
that's on the road twenty four hours a day. You know,
sometimes people forget about just how many times that door
opens and closes, how much, how long someone is sitting
in the seat of that car. So and then another
thing that people forget about is a mileage is there's
sometimes cars are sitting on the side of the.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Road and they're just idling for hours.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So the hours on these vehicles, they build up fast,
they build.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Up fast, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Major Curtis Isle, I'm a police. We appreciate you coming
in this morning.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Thanks thanks to I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It's eight twenty eight. News is next.
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