Public Safety

Question: But when it comes to drug addiction, it’s been fought on several fronts. For example, the police department and partnerships going after the criminals, the addition of K-9 Rocky, the drones, for example, that are very sophisticated and other equipment. What are you doing differently that has helped those areas?

Answer: I think it’s just providing people with the resources and the tools they need to be successful. You look at the police department, and we’ll start with that. I mentioned in the previous question that I’ve gone on a couple of search warrants with the police department just to see what they go through there, and I remember seeing some of the equipment just was old and outdated on the first one. So we purchased new equipment for them, including something called a TRUNARC, which is actually a laser that you can point the laser at a bag of substance, and it’ll tell you within a certain time frame what’s in the bag. And what that means is that the police now no longer need to open the bag and expose the substance and potentially expose them to harmful substances like fentanyl if it’s able to just tell you what it is through the plastic bag itself. So that helps protect our officers in the work that they’re doing over there. And providing, working with K9 Rocky, which was a grant that we actually used to buy Rocky, and working with his trainer and handler, Officer Willis, to make sure that they have the trainings that they need and the resources that they need so that they can be optimal. K9 Rocky was deployed over 64, 65 times in 2024, and he’s set to meet that, I think he actually just exceeded that now in halfway through 2025. So the more successful they are, the more calls they get for mutual aid in other communities in terms of finding missing people, in terms of going on, you know, looking for substances on these raids, things like that, to give them the tools to be successful that way. And it’s not just substance abuse and drugs, it’s all aspects of the job, because you have to look at everything as a holistic approach rather than a pinpointed view. And that’s really what’s helped us out a lot.

Question: Well, you’ve also done some collaboration. For example, tell us about the collaboration with the Opioid Settlement Funds.

Answer: Yeah, we’ve collaborated with our communities in the region to work with GAAMHA on a regional recovery coach coordinator. That’s the wrong title, but I don’t remember the actual title off the top of my head right now just because there’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on. By having that bachelor’s level clinician work with people, they basically come up with a customized recovery plan, so that, you know, if we have a call for someone who’s gone through an overdose, we’ll let this recovery coach know, and they’ll work with people to be like, you know what, this is who you need to call, this is who you need to talk to, this is what you need to do, and basically come up with that plan for them. Because when you’re going through a situation like that, it’s stressful enough, you don’t need to… It’s stressful enough and we’re blessed to be in an area where there’s so many resources that it can be overwhelming to someone. So having someone to be that calming voice to be like, I’m just here to help you out, I’m here to work you through with your own situation, let’s sit and let’s talk and let’s come up with your plan.

Question: Now, other situations come up such as domestic violence, what’s been added in that category?

Answer: Back a couple of years ago, we were able to add a domestic violence advocate to the police department who’s been hugely successful. In fact, the caseload has gotten to a point now where we’re looking at ways to see if we can make her full-time because it’s something that just needs to be done here in the city. And working with the Voices of Truth, the Gardner Domestic Violence Task Force, we saw that the need was there and we found funding in the budget one year to be able to implement that on a part-time basis and she’s… Danielle Drew has taken that and run with it. She’s been a tremendous resource for us here in the city and I’m very proud of her.

Question: With respect to public safety in the city, when it comes to the police department, the fire department, various issues, staffing, equipment, and then the proactive public education and interaction. What has happened in the last few years?

Answer: I mean, there’s been a lot for sure. If you look at the police department, I’m gonna start with them. We’re just about back at full staffing. There’s been some changes that we’ve made in terms of removing the police department out of civil service so that we can hire directly from places like the Fitchburg State 4 plus 1 program in criminal justice, which means it saves the city money and that we’re not sending people to the police academy because they’re already academy-trained through those programs. But it also makes it so that we can direct hire people from the area. We were seeing a drop significantly in the number of local candidates who were taking the civil service test. And so by being able to direct hire, we get a more localized police department, a more trained police department. And we’re getting that department out there further into the public. We have the junior police academy in the summertime where people who are interested, students who are interested in potentially becoming police officers in the future or learning more about the field can work for a certain period with the police officers at Gardner PD to see, you know, what it’s like to be a police officer and what they work with and work hand-in-hand with the police department. We do that also with our senior citizens police academy, our regular police citizens academy, where anyone of any age can basically go see what that work is like there too. We’re also increasing our outreach. Again, got to give a shout-out to Lieutenant Chisnowski and his team, Officer Stain, Officer Lateroute, with the programming they’re doing with our students in the school with programs like the Elk Safety Day and everything like that where they’re bringing the police department out in the community and having the, they call it the coffee with the cop hours at the various different places around the city, be it with the Gardner Housing Authority or the Senior Center. One year we did Pool Party with the police where the state police dive team came out and did a demonstration at the Greenwood Pool, making it so people know what services are offered and also so the police department can interact directly with the members of the public. At the fire department right now, we are also back on track for full staffing with the people we’ve had in the academy, but we’ve also got our SAFE program, the S-A-F-E, the Student Awareness of Fire Education classes. We’ve also expanded that now to a Senior SAFE program, which is where we do fire safety programming for our senior citizens in terms of upkeep of your smoke detectors in your home, different resources to have if you have an accident and you can’t reach a phone, was there a button that you can call, push or something like that. That’s really what we do with all of those things. We’ve updated a lot of our fleet, if you will, with the fire and police as well with new hybrid cruisers at the police department and a new ambulance rescue truck engine and a new ladder truck on the way at the fire department. The roof has been replaced at the fire department where it used to rain more inside than outside and rain events. We had the insurance company following a wind issue with the roof come and fully replace the roof, so now we’re working on new installation techniques to make it so that the building is more energy efficient. There’s a lot that we’ve done. I mean, we’ve got K-9 Rocky that we’ve already talked about at the police department, but we’ve also got the fire K-9 Sully, who’s our comfort dog at the Gardner Fire Department, that if you’re dealing with a stressful emergency situation like that, sometimes people just need to get their minds off of something, and that’s where Sully comes in. We’ve got a new comfort dog at Gardner Elementary School that the Rockwell Committee was able to fund that just got put into service at Gardner Elementary School recently, too. So there’s a lot that we’ve been able to do to work towards that, and then working with our schools on our drills that we run, our fire drills, our active shooter drills. Even working right now with our master plan on a municipal vulnerability preparedness plan that in these emergency situations, if this were to come up, how would you address that if that situation were ever to arise? And I think, you know, one of the things that I personally feel the need to say is one I’ve got to thank the teams that we’ve had at our police, fire, and dispatch, and animal control, and all of our public safety personnel, because we’ve got a really professional team that’s really dedicated to the city that lives here, and they’re willing to help people understand what it is that they’re doing. One of the things I’ve kind of carried over with me from my town administrator days in Rutland is in order to be a certified town administrator, you need to have taken a professional development class that all of your department heads would be required to take. So that’s a tabletop exercise in which you’re dealing with a hypothetical situation on how you’re going to deal with this type of a situation that’s there for the public safety personnel. And I remember sitting in that first one when I was in Rutland and kind of taking those ideas when I’m talking to the chiefs here and figuring out, you know, if we were to deal with a situation like we saw in Leominster with the floods, how would we deal with that? If we were to deal with another ice storm, how would we work through that? And are we set up in the best optimal way that if something like that were to happen, do we have all of the necessary resources and equipment to be able to handle those situations? And those are the conversations that we constantly have.

Answer: Let’s talk about public safety. The chair city has focused on public safety in a number of areas. Regarding public safety, what has Gardner accomplished?

Question: We’ve done a lot lately. I think we, you know, the new fire apparatus that we’ve purchased through the American Rescue Plan funding that we have, that’ll be a new engine, a new ambulance and a new rescue truck. We’ve started saving for a new ladder truck. We’ve purchased new cruisers for the police department, most of which have been hybrid vehicles. They also meet the requirements for what a police officer needs in terms of speed and durability capacities and things of that. We’ve got, we’ve reinstated our canine program with Rocky and Officer Willis. There’s a lot that we’ve done here. The drone that we now have in terms of really helping our public safety and it’s just thinking how can we make things better for our officers. One of the biggest pieces of technology that’s been helpful for the officers in our Investigations Bureau is the new device that if we run into a situation where there’s drugs involved, we can now scan the packages with this device without having to open the package and it’ll tell you what the substance is within the package. That way we’re not having any contact with the substances that are there. If there’s fentanyl there, we’re not having any worry of any contamination with the officers. It’s just something that finding what new technology ways makes it safer and more effective for our officers to be a part of.