Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Police Department with Chase Amos

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Chase Amos, Public Information Officer with the Arvada Police Department, joins us to discuss trending topics in public safety. Chase shares his unique career path, from the US Foreign Service in Israel to local law enforcement in Arvada. 

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Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's podcast, where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the city team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community, from the roads you drive to the water you drink, the parks where you play to what your neighbors think. Join us as we take you Inside Arvada.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the official podcast of the City of Arvada. I'm Sean Starr, one of your hosts, and we're excited to have on today as the guest Chase. Amos Chase is a public information officer with the Arvada Police Department. Officer with the Arvada Police Department. He's been with Arvada PD for two years, following a five-year tour with the US Foreign Service working in various roles at the US Embassy in Israel, and before that he was with the San Diego County Deputy Sheriff working patrol in the city of Imperial Beach, california. So he's got a fascinating background and does great work with the Arvada Police Department and here today, as always, as my co-host is Katie Patterson. Hi, katie.

Speaker 1:

Hey Sean. Yeah, it was a great conversation with Chase to learn more about the variety of types of work that the police department does. And one thing that was really interesting we talked a little bit about the police department's activity report that they put out every week and Chase has been a big part of sharing that information with the public and talked about how, you know, that weekly report kind of helps provide a baseline of what activity looks like in Arvada. But then also talked about like the national database of crime and what that looks like to kind of compare Arvada's you know crime report with the larger database of national trends and regional trends, and so I'm really excited for the conversation with Chase. Hi, chase, thanks so much for being with us today. To start us off, just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the city.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I know that my partner, dave, was your number one choice and I'm sort of the consolation prize, but happy to be here, although Dave would love it, a nice padded room It'd feel pretty familiar to him, I think, in some ways.

Speaker 2:

He turned us down pretty quickly.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but that's what I'm here for. I pick up the pieces and step in when he can. Yeah, so I'm a public information officer with the Arvada Police Department and my position is a little bit newer. With the Arvada Police Department and my position is a little bit newer. For several years my partner, dave Snelling, was the one and only PIO for the department and as times have changed, people expect more information. Just more incidents that require talking to the public or the media sort of necessitated the establishment of my position. So I came in and I filled that second PIO seat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so let's kind of jump into one of the questions that we actually got from a listener not too long ago and they were wondering about the difference of when to call 911 versus. I know the police office also has a non-emergent line, so can you help, during this podcast, answer that question of when is it appropriate to use 911 versus the non-emergent line?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely, and it's a question we get often. We'll hear hey, I saw this, but I didn't want to bother you guys on 911 or whatever the situation is. I'll start out by saying it's kind of all subjective what an emergency is to you might be different to me, but generally speaking, call 911 for some sort of life threatening emergency or something that just happened. So think, uh, either someone's choking, you saw a car crash and it looks like it was bad. There might be injuries, um, robbery, assault, things like that that you expect you know stereotypically. You know a lights and sirens sort of police response. Other things like a cold crime. You know package was stolen off your porch and you discovered it a few hours later Things like that. You'd want to call the non-emergency line and that number is 303-980-7300. You can also go online and report some crimes through our online reporting system.

Speaker 2:

What's a cold crime?

Speaker 3:

Something that is delayed, it didn't just happen. So if you think you saw someone get mugged on the street, that's happening right in front of you. It's active You'll want people to respond to that right away. Active you'll want people to respond to that right away. If your package got stolen off of a porch at some unknown time overnight while you were at work, that's a cold crime.

Speaker 2:

Even if it's really important. Yeah and yeah. Sorry that isn't.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Yeah, please don't call 911 for a stolen package and not to say that it's not important to us. We want to investigate it, we want to respond, file that report for you. It's just about allocating resources and something like that doesn't need an immediate response, but obviously we'll get to it as soon as we can.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, An officer, just like showing up at your porch with no package and you know no person that took it doesn't really make a whole lot of difference to the investigation. It's more like can you get ring doorbell footage or whatever else? Okay, Good to know. So then this time of year, a common topic is around kind of what we're already talking about with porch pirates for lack of a better term but then also just like other types of holiday scams. What should people know around the holidays about holiday scams, porch pirates, what can folks do to kind of keep themselves safe?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know. Unfortunately, the types of scams we see are pretty common throughout the year, regardless of the season. But for the holidays I like to focus on smart shopping and giving, focus on smart shopping and giving. So we are all, as people operating in the society, inundated with emails every single day about, you know, some sale, something someone's trying to sell you, and you're probably more likely to want to engage during the holidays if you're doing shopping for yourself or others. So I always, personally, if I get an email from some supplier, vendor, store that I actually want to visit shop at, I never click the links in the emails they send me. I go to the website on my own outside of that email. The scammers are getting really good at making their emails with malicious links look really legitimate and it can be really difficult to tell the difference between a legitimate email and a scam email. So if you get that email about some crazy sale, don't click on the link in the email. Just go to the website on your own. If it's a legitimate email, they'll reference that sale on the site and you're not out anything at that point. Same thing with, like, holiday giving.

Speaker 3:

People tend to feel a little bit more charitable during the holiday season, so we want to make sure that people are. You know we want to encourage people to give, but we want to make sure that they're not getting scammed in the process. So a lot of times you'll see on your social media some GoFundMe story that really pulls at your heartstrings and you want to give, which is great. But unfortunately there are a lot of scammers that recognize that and want to capitalize on that. So I'd recommend, if you are going to give during the holiday season, give to organizations that are well-established, where you can verify their online presence, their website, and if you are inclined to give to a GoFundMe campaign that you come across, just do a little bit of extra homework to try to verify that it's legitimate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's great advice because those scammers have been getting a lot better. It used to be, I don't know, five, 10 years ago. It was pretty obvious what was a scam and what wasn't, and now I think that's exactly what you should do is, even if it is from the direct retailer or direct source, just you know, go outside that email and go to their storefront website instead, and it should be on there anyway. So great advice.

Speaker 3:

And with holiday shopping again, like when you are receiving packages, I get it. It's difficult to be home when something is going to come. But if you can kind of plan and try to coordinate, okay, all of my deliveries are going to happen maybe on the same day and you can be home for part of the day most of the day, something like that or have a trusted friend, family member, be able to come pick up the package for you and, if all else fails, try to have it held at a third location. So if you think, like at the post office, the UPS store, fedex, one of those Amazon locker type places, can just make it a much easier experience for you and you won't have to deal with the headache of coming home to a stolen package.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really good advice, especially this time of year when that ramps up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it goes back to our podcast with Marco, one of our neighborhood leaders, of the value of just having neighbors that you know and can trust and do those sorts of things for you.

Speaker 2:

It's always great to have, so I know you. I think, in particular, have been. I don't know when it began, maybe like six months ago with the Arvada Crime Report. You've been publishing it on social media and tell us a little bit more about that Arvada Crime Report for folks who maybe haven't seen it yet, and when did it start and kind of what information is included.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. So. We started that actually almost a year ago. We started it in January 2024. Almost a year ago, we started it in January 2024.

Speaker 3:

And we thought it was just a way for the community to see, get a baseline of what's going on in the community. And at first it probably was shocking to some people. If you see, you know, holy cow, there were 2000 calls for service in one week in Arvada. That sounds like a lot, but if you look at it and you follow it week over week, you kind of see that our average call for service load is, you know, 1,900, 2,000 calls a week. So that kind of. If you are interested in following, you end up anticipating what to expect. So you notice if something is really out of the norm one way or the other. And then you get some context for, okay, this is what I'm experiencing myself in the city, what I hear from my friends, my family, businesses about the crime rate and the crime in the city. You have some sort of data point to compare it to. So I feel this way. I feel crime is a certain thing. What does that actually translate to on paper?

Speaker 1:

So it's just another effort for us to be open, transparent with our community. And you mentioned calls for service. Is that kind of all inclusive of like fire department and any call for service from 911? Like somebody has a house fire versus like a crime happening, or is it specific, more specific?

Speaker 3:

no, that's a great question. It is just specific to the pd but it includes anytime someone calls either 911 or the non-emergency line. If an officer does something proactive, like conducts a traffic stop, that would be a call for service. It's a little misleading because obviously nobody called in said, hey, pull me over it. Just you know it happened because the officer saw something that he needed to act on or she needed to act on. It would also include our animal management officers, our code compliance officers, police service technicians. Basically any department employee that is taking some sort of action is documented in a call for service.

Speaker 1:

That's like a much bigger scope than like a porch pirate crime or whatever. You know Exactly yeah.

Speaker 3:

Call for service doesn't mean crime. It can mean many different things.

Speaker 2:

And so you've been doing the crime report weekly for about a year now. What sort of trends have you seen for the city of Arvada, both maybe in the past year, but as well as what sort of trends crime doing historically over the past five to 10 years here in the city?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and it's funny because I didn't expect it going in necessarily, but it was interesting to see. Yeah, I expect 1,900 to 2,000 calls for service, 150 crime crime reports, 10 vehicle thefts give or take. Um, so it is. It is fairly consistent with you know little little things up in flow here and there, um, and also nothing has been shocking one way or the other um in the last year. Doing that, if you and that's the thing with crime data the way you look at different things, you can kind of come up with a different picture. So with that weekly activity report, we're kind of trying to give like a 30,000 foot overview, but you can get really into the weeds by time of day, day of week, part of the city and you can really kind of geek out on the data and what you're looking for. So it's hard to really generalize trends overall because it does get so granular.

Speaker 3:

One thing that kind of helps is the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Kind of helps is the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. They're looking at nationwide data from law enforcement agencies that contribute their data to it. It's a bit of a lagging indicator because, for example, the national 2023 data just came out a couple months ago, so you're always kind of a year behind. But it is good at kind of being able to view national, state and local trends On there. It's called the Crime Data Explorer. You can narrow down, you can play with all these different variables and narrow down Like I'm only interested in Jefferson County, I'm only interested in Arvada, these types of crimes. So it is really useful, even if it is a little bit delayed. Um. So it, it is really useful, even if it is a little bit delayed. Um, and in that data that came out a couple months ago, it was kind of good news for Arvada because we became safer in their data. Uh, in 2022, we were the fourth safest city in Colorado and for 2023, we moved up to number three.

Speaker 1:

Check that out, and I think you mentioned that was cities over a hundred thousand. Right Is how they do that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, they're looking at. Yeah, for that data, they're looking at cities in Colorado, over a hundred thousand population.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's great to take a look at the data there, cause, like I feel, like everyone now with phones and social media, everything's documented and videotaped and people like oh, like crimes at an all-time high Cause it because it may be just because you're seeing it more often on your phone, when if you actually look at the data, you can kind of actually see the clear picture a little bit more.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, I think. I mean, social media is great and it's terrible, and same thing for all the different platforms we use, because it's a great way to communicate things that need to be communicated either to us, to the public or the public amongst themselves. But it does create this. I don't know this kind of bias or it takes things out of context and you really see the worst of things I think way outweigh what you're not seeing.

Speaker 3:

All the good work um, all the packages that didn't get stolen. No one's on there like, hey, my package got delivered and it didn't get stolen today, so all you see is stolen packages. You think everyone's package got stolen. So you know, as much as we can, we try to remind people to sort of view it through that perspective or those lenses, because it can be misleading because it can be misleading.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, we're like like to put it in, like to reframe it in the. In past decades, before social media, it would have been like does somebody you know tell you that they had their package stolen? That's the only way you'd hear that sort of a story unless it, you know, escalated to the level of being on the news a bunch or something.

Speaker 3:

But and now you can hear about it from like everybody in the city, right like Like that day they got their package stolen.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, you're hearing about every single story about it.

Speaker 2:

Just open next door and get a full report of all the crime happening in your neighborhood.

Speaker 1:

Which in some ways like to the crime reporting piece, like that your neighbor has a ring doorbell and can help, maybe, like identify somebody, those sorts of things become a benefit. But the good and the bad of it all yeah, a benefit. But it's the good and the bad of it all, yeah, okay, I'm going to move us on. So the PD also recently invested in some facial recognition technology. I think this is pretty interesting and some interesting stories about how it's been being used. So can you explain a little bit more about what that is and how it is being used?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely so. It's something that we had previously been using successfully and then a couple years ago the legislature created a law that restricted police departments from using it until several steps were completed. All these steps took about a year before we were able to start using it again. So the beginning of this year we were able to fully utilize it, after completing those steps, and it's been. There's been some remarkable cases and it's just remarkable how, how much more efficient it can make us at doing our job and also bring some hope to solving crimes. Otherwise, you know, there may not be any leads other than a surveillance photo or video, and that's just another tool that we're able to utilize to bring people justice, hold people accountable, and I think there's some public concern about the big brother of it all and us always watching, and I understand where that comes from.

Speaker 3:

There have been instances where it a little bit further out and say, okay, facial recognition is a tool. It is regulated by the government. We have to follow very, very specific steps to use it in any given case used. But you, as the public, trust us to do it correctly and there is oversight if we do it incorrectly. I think there's also a misconception that we are overusing it or using it too much, relying on it too much. But again, I mean, it's a tool that we use like any other. We can't make an arrest solely based off of a facial recognition hit or a match. We still have to develop probable causes. We always have to actually arrest someone for a crime and, looking at the data, from January to September of this year, we had over 16,000 investigative incidents, over 3,000 arrests and across all of that, we only used facial recognition 73 times.

Speaker 1:

So if you look at, you know, I guess, how many opportunities we have to use it versus how much we're actually using it we're using it very limitedly and strategically in cases when we need it, when it would help, and, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How do you get people's photos? What's that database kind of look like, if that's okay to talk about? No, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

No, and that's part of it too, because people are concerned about well, are you getting pictures off of social media and using that to identify someone later on? Or driver's license photos, stuff like that? And it's very simple. We are only comparing an unknown photo to a known booking photograph. So the repository of images that we compare the unknown photographs to are people that have been arrested and, more importantly, their identity is fully, completely verified by law enforcement. So in our gallery we know exactly who this person is and then we have that to compare to our unknown image. So we're not going through social media, we're not. You know, it's a very controlled data set that we're looking at.

Speaker 1:

I think that's really helpful. A while back, I heard like a story about how some facial recognition was being used at, like, concert venues and other like mass gatherings and stuff, and I think that is very different from what you all do. So I just think that's really important to clarify too. Like, if you're a first time offender that's not in the system, then that tool isn't going to help you. Um yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3:

Basically, if you haven't been arrested, your picture isn't going to be used for comparison so it's not quite like the movies like where they like.

Speaker 2:

It's the first thing they turn to of like's bring up the big screen and do the match real quick?

Speaker 3:

No, yeah, unfortunately or fortunately, I'm not sure which way, but it's not like that and on our website we'll have our full year in review with updated statistics. The ones I just mentioned, like I said, were January to September of this year, were January to September of this year, and then we actually have a video on there showing it in use when an officer is trying to identify someone that was trying to give her a false identity and in seconds was able to correctly identify the person, so that, one, that person would be held accountable, but two, so that her sister, whose identity she was trying to use, wouldn't have to deal with trying to clear her name later because her sister pinned this crime on her Interesting yeah, it seems like a good application right there.

Speaker 2:

Good example. Wanted to ask you briefly about code enforcement. So City of Arvada has code of ordinances that everyone has to follow. One that I'm familiar with is like dogs being off leash. They can't be off leash in public spaces, in our public parks, in our trails. It's against city code to have your dog off leash in those public spaces. How do you enforce those codes citywide? Because you're not exactly patrolling the streets looking for folks breaking our codes. Huh.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so yeah, leash law. It's obviously a very contentious topic in the public.

Speaker 1:

But not to Sean. To Sean, there's a right and a wrong here.

Speaker 3:

No, I mean myself too, personally, of course. Yeah, we're not out patrolling for generally any of sort of these code violations. If our AMOs or animal management officers see a leash law violation, they'll address it, but more likely than not, how it comes to them and not just leash law but overgrown weeds or bushes in someone's yard, an unplowed sidewalk in front of someone's home, most of those calls for service come from a community member calling to say, hey, this is going on. Would you mind talking to my?

Speaker 2:

neighbor tell that person to leash their dog. That sort of thing and I think we discussed before we started recording of. If you see your neighbors like sidewalk not shoveled or you see your neighbors weeds growing out of control, the recommended step is for to go over there and talk to them first about it before contacting police. That's kind of like a next step if you can't resolve it on your own.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and we don't want anyone to put themselves in a situation they don't feel safe or it's risky, but we do think that you have neighbors and you need to be neighborly and it goes both ways. Hopefully you're the neighbor that does shovel their sidewalk, but maybe you didn't, because you were sick or out of town, and I would hope that my neighbor would give me benefit of the doubt if I was in that situation and, before calling code enforcement on me, they might come over and knock on my door One maybe to make sure I'm okay, I'm alive, but also just to have that conversation, and I would appreciate someone doing that to me versus immediately calling for code enforcement.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that also reminds me a little bit of our conversation with Marco again, knowing your neighbors and just making those connections and he talked a little bit about even like conflict management and stuff like that, and I think in a very similar vein. It's like we're all just human. Let's give each other benefit of the doubt first and some grace, and then, you know, things escalate, of course yeah.

Speaker 3:

There's not enough of that these days.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it gets easy to stay in our little home holes, I don't know. Um. So another uh program that you all recently announced is the auto theft reduction and recovery program and that's going to help with some vehicle tracking vehicle theft tracking. So can you tell us a little bit more about that program?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the police department received funding through CATPA, the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority, to start programs like this or invest more in programs like this. So we're starting off small. We have a limited number of GPS trackers basically air tags and tiles that we can install in people's vehicles in the community. So we'll have two install events, one on January 18th and the other on April 12th, and people can learn a lot more about the program by going to our website. You have to pre-register. There's some things you have to agree to, forms to fill out, but ultimately, yeah, you'll come out on one of those days. We'll put one of these trackers. You get to choose which one you prefer an air tag or tile. We'll put that on your car for you.

Speaker 3:

The pushback we've already kind of received is another big brother tracking you kind of thing and, to be clear, we don't have any access to the tracking information until either you give it to us in the event your car is stolen, and even then you don't really have to give us access to the device. We would just expect that if you have one of our trackers in your car, that when your car or if your car is stolen, you let us know where it's tracking to and then we can attempt to recover it. In the same vein, we absolutely do not want people whether part of this program or just if you've already put an air tag in your car to ever try to recover a stolen vehicle on your own. Just always call law enforcement and provide us that information and we'll do our best to do our job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a good reminder for folks, and I think there's also some qualifications around that program because it's pretty limited.

Speaker 3:

So the way you can be eligible for the program, you have to either live or work in Arvada, have been the victim of an auto theft or own one of the top 10 most stolen vehicles, according to Cat Paw, and we'll have that list on our website.

Speaker 2:

And it's a state program. So you might not have the full picture of the plan for this program down the line because we only have a couple hundred, the plan for this program down the line Cause we only have a couple hundred. But is it like, hey, if this is a good source of information, if this is working out, then hopefully maybe we'll get more and continue being part of that program going forward after this kind of first trial period.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, essentially cat paws, always working with local law enforcement to one to provide the funding and create programs like this. So, like I said, this is we have a limited amount this go-around.

Speaker 2:

If we see good success with it in terms of people actually wanting them, it's something we would pursue in the future to be able to offer more of Gotcha, yes and provide the opportunity to you to clear up any misconceptions or maybe things that people don't know about our VATA police department in general, questions that you frequently get that you want to clear up. So the time is yours, chase, to provide that clarity on those issues.

Speaker 3:

Well, we could probably do a whole podcast just on that topic. I don't know. I would say there's a lot of negativity towards law enforcement in society these days. I would want people to know, and to really think about it, that behind every badge, every uniform you see is a real person, One of our community members. You know the community is us, we are the community, Um and and they show up every day because they want. They want to make our vat a safer and they want to make our community a better place to work and live. So we know that we have a very supportive community and we never take it for granted. So, on behalf of our officers, the department, I just want to say thank you to the community for their ongoing support and for always having our backs.

Speaker 2:

And if you're interested in being part of the Arvada Police Department. I know you're always looking for some good folks to join the team.

Speaker 3:

Yes, we are hiring. It feels like we're always hiring. Now, again, no secret. It's been difficult to recruit and retain officers, not just in Nevada, not just in Colorado, but around the nation. There's some good news there, though. So about a year ago, we had a I want to say 37 officer vacancies, and now, about a year later, we're down to 26. I know that doesn't seem like a huge change, but we are dealing with difficulty in recruiting people, and then people wanting to stay and do the job after they've seen what it's all about, and you also have to deal with people retiring that have had a 30, 40 year career. So it's always a moving target, but we are making great strides in bringing our department to full staffing and we are hiring. So check out our website.

Speaker 1:

Nice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we have meetings occasionally with you and Dave as part of our larger communications team and it's always good to get that perspective of like okay, these are the issues that the police department is dealing with right now. Puts things in perspective for what's really important and what is really an issue.

Speaker 3:

When you're talking some of the park stuff that I do, so well, we're all one team, we all do a little bit different things maybe, but you know, I think we're all here to serve the community of Arvada, Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally. Do you want me to do lightning?

Speaker 3:

round Sure, go for it.

Speaker 1:

You always do lightning round, so my turn. Okay. So set of quick questions just to help folks get to know you a little better. So first, what's your favorite thing about Arvada? It can be a place fact hidden gem.

Speaker 3:

That's easy the new In-N-Out, because I no longer have to go down to Lakewood.

Speaker 1:

You're a big In-N-Out fan. Okay, I don't think I knew that I might be keeping them in business.

Speaker 3:

That's great. It could be a problem, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I haven't even been. What was your first, last or best concert?

Speaker 3:

My last concert was Elton John in Scottsdale.

Speaker 1:

Ooh fun.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was cool. The farewell tour? Yeah, it was good, way great.

Speaker 1:

What brought you to Arvada?

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's not a quick one, but no, I've been here for two years and I was previously overseas working at the US Embassy in Israel, and when our tour was up I was going to be leaving federal service but my husband was staying in and we really had our pick of the country to go to and we kind of had our hearts set on Denver. So I just started looking for law enforcement jobs in Denver and found Arvada and luckily wound up here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, glad to have you. What was your first job?

Speaker 3:

I worked at a pizza place Nice, just at the register. What was your first job? I worked at a pizza place Nice, just at the register. I can't make a pizza you weren't flipping the dough. No Dang, no doubt there.

Speaker 1:

And what's your favorite project that you've done since you've been with the city?

Speaker 3:

Last year we did a documentary project with a British production company. They had just randomly reached out about a few-year-old homicide that we'd had in the city and it was kind of like, is this a scam? At first, kind of back from the beginning. But looked into it and they were legit and they had a genuine good interest in the story. They weren't trying to exploit the victim or the family's pain and suffering in the case. So they came out. We filmed for a couple of days and it turned out really well. They were able to tell the story about exactly what happened. They highlighted the great police work that went into bringing that offender to justice and getting some you know as much justice and relief for a family in a situation like that as you can. So that was really. It was just nice to be able to tell that story and see the good work that our cops did in that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's such a unique project too. That's cool. Yeah Well, thanks, chase, for coming on today. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me Appreciate it. Thanks for accepting our invitation. Yeah's cool. Yeah Well, thanks, chase for coming on today. We appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me Appreciate it. Thanks for accepting our invitation.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, anytime.

Speaker 2:

All right, before we let you go, I wanted to wrap up with our news and events segment as a reminder. We love hearing from our listeners. You can always reach out to us by texting us using the link in the show notes or by emailing us at podcast at arvadaorg. We love hearing your feedback about what you enjoy and maybe some ideas about episodes that we could do in the future as well. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the show as well. And then some news items coming up here that are relevant.

Speaker 2:

Right this time of year is Trees Across Arvada is still going on. That's our annual sale for folks in the community to purchase drought-resistant trees that they can then plant in their yards. So you purchase now, by February 1st, and then you pick those trees up in April from the Majestic View Nature Center. You can visit the link in the show notes or you can just Google Trees Across Arvada to go to the webpage where you can order your trees. The city's boards and commissions applications are still open. Those applications will be open through January 6th. You can visit the webpage at arvadacogov slash boards for more information. We are looking for folks to join festivals, parks planning, sustainability, transportation and the retirement plan board, so got a variety of different boards available and check out the website for more information. It's a great way to volunteer and contribute to the community.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and those boards and commissions are always looking for people with different kind of life experiences and backgrounds. So really encourage folks to apply, even if you don't maybe have a background in planning or transportation, but are interested in the topic. And then, additionally, as you likely know, our very own council member, lisa Frey, was recently elected to the Colorado House of Representatives, and so that means that there's a vacancy on our city council to fill her seat, and so we just wanted to explain a little bit about how that process will work and the timeline for things. Her seat, and so we just wanted to explain a little bit about how that process will work and the timeline for things. It does move relatively quickly, so folks who are interested were invited to apply. That application was open over the last month and then, after an initial screening, they moved to an interview process with the other council members to fill the vacancy and then they'll appoint somebody to that seat. The council members will, and that'll just be until the next election cycle in November, and so applicants who will be interviewed actually this coming up Friday, december 13th, and they may announce that vacancy being filled as soon as the same day. And so more information is on the city's website and an announcement is made that'll get posted as well for folks to know. And then, additionally, the city has an ongoing search for a new city manager, and one part of that process is a public open house for the community to meet the finalists, and so more details will be linked on the city's website for that as well.

Speaker 1:

And thank you again to our guest today, chase Amos. It was really great having him on, and be sure to listen to our next episode. We're excited to do something a little bit different for our last episode of the year, and Sean and I have given ourselves the task to go back through and listen to all the interviews we've done so far this year and try and pull out some favorite moments and things that we think you all might be interested in getting a refresher on. Or, if you just are starting to just becoming a listener, you can kind of get little snippets of past episodes you might want to go back and listen to again. And so, as always, please stay in touch with us.

Speaker 1:

You can visit us on our website, arvadacogov slash podcast. Send us an email at podcast at arvadaorg, or send us a text. The link to text us is right there at the top of the show notes. Ask us your questions and we'll try to answer them next time. Thank you, as always, for listening. Please promote the show, subscribe, rate and review the podcast. And today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services.

Speaker 2:

And I'll leave you with the fun fact for today's episode the Arvada Police Department was founded in 1945, and at the time it only had two members the chief and the deputy chief.

Speaker 1:

Whoa.