Finance Committee — 09/15/2021 Page 5
Jim Testaverde, Deputy Police Chief
Yes Ma’am. | apologize. You're absolutely correct. The $2,500 is the initial cost to do the unlimited service
and the other $1,000 that we're asking to be appropriated is to actually start to use the translation while we
wait to see if we get the grant.
Alderman Harriot-Gathright
Okay.
Mayor Donchess
Alderwoman Kelly.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you. So you said this is a one-time fee to get started but its $1.90 every time you use it?
Jim Testaverde, Deputy Police Chief
Yes Ma’am.
Alderwoman Kelly
Is that where you're hoping that grant money will cover.
Jim Testaverde, Deputy Police Chief
Yes, Ma'am.
Alderwoman Kelly
And | know you talked about it being in the front lobby. I'm just interested in terms of where you guys would
use it. Would be over 911, would it be during interrogations, like how would it...?
Jim Testaverde, Deputy Police Chief
It would be it would be all inclusive. So if someone walks into the front lobby, we're going to have devices in
records and reception in order to bring an officer out in order to communicate. If an arrest was made and we
need translation services or interpretation services in booking, we're going to use it in booking. If Detectives
are working a case and they're going to do a very formal in depth interview, it can be used during the interview
process while it's all being video recorded. Officers can use it street side. It will be used by Domestic Violence
Victim Witness Advocates. Any need we have within the agency or if requested by another agency, we can
easily because we're talking about cell phones and we can just drive them right over.
Alderwoman Kelly
I’d like to follow up.
Mayor Donchess
Go ahead.
Alderwoman Kelly
| mean, | think obviously, it makes a lot of sense given some of the priority, again, that the department has put
out. | guess my concern is a little bit of around the if you're paying for each time. There's a really hard - how
are you going to know how much it's going to cost and do you know...?
Jim Testaverde, Deputy Police Chief
Yes. | can give you a ballpark answer. So what we did was from January 2019 to mid-May when we started to
crunch these numbers, we ran the amount of interpretations that we did and it came out to be 237. Of that, the
average time duration was about 43 minutes and we based those numbers and just to the multiplication on the
