newsmaker sunday with fox 10's john hook thanks for being with us on newsmaker sunday he is the police chief presiding over the 38th largest city in the country and this is a big job for frank milstead he is the chief of police for the city of mesa he's been on the job since uh 2010 leaving phoenix pd after 25 years of service there good to see you thank you first time on the program yes sir it is tell me you did 25 years for the city of phoenix how did that translate what did you learn in those 25 years that has translated to the current position as chief of mesa phoenix was a very fast growing city fast growing police department it was very competitive inside there's an incredible amount of very bright motivated hard-working men and women there that everything would to get around to go to special assignments to get promoted everything was a competition and it was and it was a highly contested competition and i would tell you the same thing i tell anybody else the 25 years of phoenix pd was a phd in problem solving and leadership and i owe them everything that i have today to be where i am and to be prepared to lead a department like mesa how's it different in mesa you know it's smaller it's a little calmer there's a little bit more of a sense of community in mesa not as much action no not well you know what the guys in the street are running from call to call to call it is a very lean department but not as much violence and with our current policing models i think we're targeting the right offenders those who are continually committing crimes day in and day out and that is keeping the violence in the city at a record low if you told somebody from across the country i live in mesa they might what might come to mind is mormon community bedroom community suburb of phoenix do you have gang activity in mesa we do it's not nearly as intense as what we had in phoenix we have a very large gang squad there's actually three different squads that deal with gangs which keeps that at a minimum so there's also gangs you know we boarded the salt river pima indian community and there are gangs that that come into mesa to commit crimes and then go back on to the reservation and so we deal with some of those as well and we have a very good working relationship with that police department i should mention you're the vice chairman of actic which is the arizona counterterrorism information center and this is really the clearinghouse for trying to combat any any uh parts sources of terrorism that may uh creep their way into into arizona in the boston bombing as of thursday two suspects identified yes sir your sense of how safe we are compared to the rest of the country do you feel that arizona is not a target probably not a target for terrorists or do you think that that is just foolish to think that i think you're unwise to think that things can't happen in arizona i also think that it's unwise to change your lifestyle and who you are because of the things that happen in society the big deal is that if you see something you have to say something and you have to be as perceptive as you can as you're out and going to events but don't let it change your life we have that freedom to do those things is this is this something now that you preach when you go out and speak to community gatherings community forums to really urge the public to be your eyes and ears absolutely our staffing models are at the lowest they've been in years and that's in any city in the region or in the nation for that matter we do count on the public and i would credit the citizens of mesa for one of the reasons that our crime is at a 60-year low is they trust the police department the men and women on the street are working hard every day and they call us when they see something suspicious so we can investigate it let's take a look at tape number two you've had a pretty significant case a string of arsons that went over a 15-month period so you guys were chasing these guys around trying to figure out who was setting fires in mesa you ended up arresting a 20 year old a 19 year old a 19 year old and an 18 year old these are young guys the four accused of using a butane torch to set fire to cars landscaping sheds and houses you ended up kind of catching these guys right because you found a person of interest and just tailed them we did we did some covert operations working with these gentlemen we made some drug buys from them and we befriended them and that is how we begin to learn about their continuous and past transgressions what was the point of their fires do we know i think they like burning things i mean i don't think it's any more complicated than that as weird as that sounds they like burning things they liked wreaking havoc on the community speaking of covert operations when you were with phoenix pd you were involved in the serial shooter case yes dale hausner sam dietman you had to do some covert things in that case too that's when you were with phoenix pd that's correct and i i'll be honest i was only at the end of the serial shooter case the last maybe few weeks we had just come off of working i was a lieutenant at the time working the baseline killer case which we had spent nine months on he worked that case too and then six months prior to that we had worked the am rapist who had raped 11 women in north phoenix and we had resolved that case so my time as a lieutenant work in the safe city task force was very involved in some serial events going on in the city of phoenix and very complicated investigations and you yeah and you guys have to do some things i mean do you do you believe that and we're getting through this this argument right now in the boston case that there are and i think even the public will say there are some things that you've got to hold back now for me to say this is a media guy this is heresy but i do understand that there are some things you guys have to hold back to not compromise an investigation well and i think the public forgives us for that when they realize that we have to do certain things you know we we don't give up our secret recipes for solving certain crimes we do hold back information because we don't want to tip anybody off or we give out information to see what that does there's tactics that are used and everyone's forgiving if it's used properly i mean if it was just to deny people public access i think we would all pay dearly for that that's not the case the biggest case you have kind of walked into and it started before your tenure is the jodi arias murder trial right a crime that happened in mesa the killing of her ex-boyfriend uh travis alexander that's not in dispute she killed him the question is is it going to be first or second degree murder and is it going to be the death penalty i want to take you back to that case this is tape number one if you will just to take you back as to where we've been in that case the arias jury losing another juror the judge made the announcement ladies and gentlemen as you know juror number 11 is ill the court has excused him from further participation in this trial meanwhile more tough questions from jurors aimed at psychotherapist alice laviolette an expert witness testifying for the defense lavila said jody was a victim of domestic violence and labeled travis's insults directed at her as quote an assassination of the soul this juror's question read by the judge compared travis's violence with jody's on the one side we have demeaning multiple verbal slurs a slap a shove a choke hold and a lunge perpetrated on jodie on the other we have a gunshot to the head a four inch deep slit throat at this one time this is uh this case is sensational have you ever seen anything like it has mesa ever seen anything like it no this is probably the second most significant case to come out of mesa in recent memory mikel begs mikel biggs yes and it's an unsolved missing child but this case because of his salacious nature i think the police work sometimes gets overlooked in the work of the lab people your guys my memory who did the interrogation on that case detective flores unbelievable job excellent interrogation the way that he was able to lock her into stories and then let her work her way back out of them and then lock her into another story was very well done do you watch it with interest or do you kind of is it when you're on the inside you kind of know the nuts and bolts and you don't need to follow it every day you know i do watch what goes on every day somebody from the public information office is usually there in trial paying attention what's going on are you being asked for interviews as well yes and i've just been pushing those off to the public information officers you're talking about the inside editions and those kind of right there's there's no need for my input on that in my opinion maybe when it's over just to talk about the great work that they all did that might be something that's appropriate but just to speak on the news isn't really my piece do you think just give me a guess do you think she may get the death penalty over this i do you do yes you don't think the jury's going to be swayed by all of this stuff oh there's a lot of misdirection going on no the only reason i say that i is really the jury questions those questions lead me down a different path than i get when watching the trial let me ask you a little bit if we can roll tape number three your department is boy you've got about 1200 men and women in your department yes sir but compared to phoenix that's about a third roughly of what phoenix pd has so just in numbers i mean does does everybody kind of know each other in that department where in phoenix that may not be the case yeah that is very true and i think that's part of the reason there's a lot of camaraderie at mesa in a more of a family atmosphere it's really illustrated we actually have a family appreciation day when the the community comes out and provides food and entertainment for the officers one day we put it at our training facility there were 3 000 people 3 500 people at it this year those kind of events didn't happen at phoenix there wasn't that close-knit group what is a certain one thing as as chief where you look at it and say boy before i leave this job we are going to solve this what is this i hope it's staffing i hope that we can get enough men and women out on the street where there's agility in the workforce that the officers when they want to take a vacation or get time off they can they can actually leave and get away from the the day in and day out grind of the duties and i would like to see us catch up on our technology we continue to push technology but we're stifled in its growth strictly by budget issues there's an interesting piece of technology that you guys have been working and that's this fingerprint recognition technology that you guys started off as i recall was six units correct and now you've expanded that basically this gets out of the name game right correct where a suspect gives you a false name and you got to figure out who is this guy or who is this woman tell me how that all works it's two finger fast id it's a company called morpho is it in your cars in fact when i left the station today headquarters they were installing more of them as as as of today i think we're up to 30 units that are out in the field now they're in the cars and use when you say the name game i don't think a lot of people know what that is but people do lie to the police about who your kid is about who they are but with with putting two fingers it runs it through our automated finger indexing system uh and it will tell us who you are whether you are wanted what your past transgressions are if you have a record what not so for those people who are not identifiable or trying to lie to the police to conceal something this is a great way to and again it's about efficiency let me ask you since we're in the middle of this immigration debate what happens in mesa if you come across somebody let's say through that fingerprinting say we we have really high degree of of suspicion that this person is here illegally what happens in mesa versus well you don't even need to get in versus phoenix but what do you do in mesa well i can tell you this today uh we have not had to enforce any part of 1070. i don't think that we've made one arrest reference 1070. what the community wants from us and i think what the politicians want from us is that we work off of a criminal predicate if you're a criminal and it doesn't matter where you're from they don't want you in the community we want to arrest you and get you out the law is very interesting in the fact that you can't use language you can't use skin color you can't use a lot of the things that people would jump to conclusion that you were here illegally those biases cannot be used you're forbidden from using them actually correct so let's just deal with crimes we do roundups with ice ice comes in to mesa and we pick up violent gang offenders are there a fair amount of illegal immigrants here in mesa yeah sure i think they're in all of our communities i mean there's 11 but they say there's 11 million illegal people in the country so we all got to have our share i can tell you this though that out of everybody that we book into the mesa city jail only about six percent five and a half percent of those are out of status and if you look at the number in the county jail the maricopa county jail everybody that gets booked in there from all over the region because all the police departments use that jail i think it hovers around nine percent so a lot of times you'll hear people say that illegals are responsible for 90 of the crimes well that's not true and then the numbers don't bear that to be true when we come back with chief milstead the chief of police for city of mesa we're going to talk about a story that that we were involved in just a few months ago about a guy who was taken down on the hot pavement outside of golfland sunsplash and get the chief's take on that story and where that case stands now back on newsmaker sunday with chief milstead injured visit phillipslaw.com phillips law group arizona's law firm an ugly custody battle why did you recant the partners svu viewer discretion advised monday at 7. family guys rules for good parenting build self-esteem everyone's going to make fun of me come on who's going to make fun of you hey fatty i hear you're going to fat camp supervise playtime hey lois that not stewie kid fell over and teach valuable lessons i thought if you do something wrong you're supposed to get punished oh chris not if you're white add some laughs to your parenting formula i didn't ask to be in this family with family guy your discretion advised a full hour week nights at five on my 45 yep yeah yep mm-hmm love that andy right solid fellow seems smart enough i went to cornell you ever heard of it he has got this very likable way about him even a lot of men can't resist a man singing showtubes attend the tale of sweeney todd characters that are just your type five times a week on the office a full hour weeknights at nine on my 45. on newsmaker sunday with mesa police chief frank milstead on june 10th of last year a guy by the name of chris simpson was taken down by your officers outside of golf land sun splash he's now suing for 17 million talking about the burns that he suffered and his attack attorney buddy rake we interviewed as well on this piece i want to show you just a little segment of it and then i'll get your reaction to it because you were part of the original piece it was a long story that that we aired on fox 10 i was a reporter on the piece take a look at this this is about the take down in mesa mesa's golf land sun splash a place for family and fun where memories are made on june 10 of last year chris simpson hoped he would create a lasting memory here with his dying father but the only lasting thing from that day are horrible scars from burns chris suffered on hot asphalt after he was taken down in the parking lot by mesa police i thought it was over i thought they were taking me out you know chris planned to meet his father in the park that day his father was dying of pancreatic cancer chris was already in a fragile emotional state i was a little depressed despondent i mean i i didn't feel very good about myself you know i wasn't i was depressed he snuck into the park that day without paying stole a piece of pizza chris was not on drugs he wasn't drunk but when his father failed to show up chris began acting out he made a scene when he jumped into an inner tube in the lazy river fully clothed he made bizarre statements such as i'm a lifeguard and i'm a thousand years old chris refused to get out of the water i'm at mesa golf land i have a gentleman that will not leave the park where is he at he's currently in the lazy room the rest of the story goes on that your officers wheeled him out in a in a wheelchair and then he ends up on the hot pavement when he refused to comply with commands by your officers that's correct and then we interviewed you about it and said well did they follow protocol and you stand by your officers don't you yes sir they did everything by the book i actually think they did more than a lot of people would have done i mean they actually went and found a wheelchair when he was uncooperative and wouldn't walk and rolled him out and he was soaking wet in clothes and when he started to lash out tried to strike the officers he did try to strike them yeah they tried to i think it was a head butt they cheated or kicked at them and they had to they had to make a choice you know you have different levels of force that you can use you can one of the officers i think actually threatened to tase him and he said something like go ahead and light me up or something uh yeah give me the lightning give me the quote you're right give me the lightning and he and the officer says well you know this obviously isn't a great idea so how do you know when you're when you guys are out there and you dealt with this in phoenix how do you know whether guys on drugs or they're mentally ill how do you know what you're dealing with well you don't most of the time and in fact this guy albeit he allegedly wasn't on drugs and that he had some mental issues those were not even diagnosed by the professional medical staff that saw him over and over during the next period of days that he went to hospitals they missed it as well so i mean for my officers to miss it it's not surprising tell me what just give me an overarching on this you know we get called on stuff lawyers will call us plaintiffs will call us and they'll say look i was harmed this this and this by the police is there a cautionary tale for the media on something like this well if they call you first i would find that unusual because i think all police agencies especially in the west here we're very professional we we have professional standards bureaus we have internal affairs bureaus we do investigate those uh complaints against our office and this was this was handled internally as well you guys had an internal investigation that's correct and we there's there's this isn't tv there's no cover-ups we hold our people accountable to the highest level we have to be you know municipal policing only works off of one system and that is a level of trust you can have all the laws in the world but if nobody believes you're enforcing them correctly you are powerless as a police department and the reason that we have such a great relationship with our communities here in arizona is because our officers are honest they're forthright and they have a trust level with the communities let me ask you a bit about your predecessor george gascon who was a guest on this program several times before he went to oakland i believe or san francisco george gascon was an interesting guy because he got very involved in the politics of sb 1070. he got kind of front and center that's really not your style is it and is that by design that you don't want to you want to stay out of the political as much as possible i do and by design i haven't been in the media a lot i try not to make this job about me because it's not about me it's about the men and women that i represent and it's about the community in which we serve and the debate that sheriff joe arpaio and george gascon got into i don't think in in the long run it wasn't healthy for any of them and it definitely wasn't healthy for the community or the state what did you learn from that well you learn a lot of things but the big deal is you were watching it from phoenix at the time obviously did you say boy if i ever become a chief i'm not going to get involved in stuff like this absolutely it doesn't it's not again it becomes about you and it looks it's a media frenzy and it's distracting to the mission which you're trying to accomplish and what makes me successful is the mesa police chief is the men and women that work for me without their hard work i am not successful if you've been around a while in the valley frank milstead's father was ralph melstad the head of dps colonel milstead and when we come back with frank we're going to talk a little bit about what you learned from your father on newsmaker sunday with frank milstead chief of mesa police back in a minute next time on svu blair underwood guest stars that did not happen why haven't you arrested him an ugly custody battle why did you recant with partners taking sides this guy never touched his wife until last night but was this really an assault on order svu viewer discretion advised monday at 7 on my 45 with tracy gone tgs will be hearing another best of special actually legal says we can't use the word best next time on 30 rock monday at 10 on my 45 thinking of bankruptcy need to stop creditor calls is really possible to raise the bills and get a fresh start yes it is we can talk to your creditors today call 1-800 bankrupt on the next big bang theory i move our relationship terminate immediately seconded there being no objections breaking up is hard to do hey oh no knowing the law is so important i gave you a whole lesson in the law free it could really come in handy are there any other crimes you guys want to admit to duh my 45 is your one-stop shop for all things court divorce court judge alex and back-to-back episodes of judge judy makes me feel cozy and comfy a good time was had by all courts in session on my 45 starting at 11 am all objections are overruled deco newsmaker sunday with mesa police chief frank milstead i met you first on a ride-along yeah when i first started here in phoenix i was 93 and i did a ride-along with you and i can't remember what we did but we went out in some gang-infested area i believe we were in fact i think we had a cameraman on the hood of the police car which was real advised that's right getting a shot of you driving that is exactly right good memory yeah i was ill advised but we did it anyway right uh and that may have been rick davis actually and his his father of course uh passed away in the line of duty for correct police let me ask you you've been in the you try to stay out of the out of the media but you got involved in this thing with your your top-ranking female police officer kathy kirkham and she ended up terminated but this is somebody you were close to at one point where does that case stand now it has been resolved uh it's settled yes and that's it yeah we'll learn about it shortly yeah that's all i'm gonna really comment on that it's just an unfortunate set of circumstances your dad was also in some controversy during the evan making impeachment he became embroiled in this whole thing when he was director of dps what did your dad teach you because he saw a very high profile coverage and some of it not very pleasant no and i think everyone gets tossed into barrel now and then especially when as you rise up in organizations you become a larger target i'll tell you a regret of my father's was and it was actually written about when i became the chief in mesa which i found odd and paul rubins was the one who wrote the story out of new times sure and and he there was a picture of my dad uh at [ __ ] peak my dad was a very avid hiker and athlete and he had his shirt off i remember that picture sure and he said you know i wish i had never done that and this is actually when he was he's been gone now for 17 years and these are conversations we had while he was passing on and he said you know that was one of my big regrets that i ever did that he goes and so staying out of the media is i think better to a point but on the other end people need to see your face and know who you are and have that level of trust for you so when something odd does happen something unusual happens they at least are familiar with you and know you so it's not such a surprise so you're finding that balance yes sir what would you like to tell the people of mesa who maybe haven't had a chance to meet you or talk to you what would you like to let them know about what's happening in your city well the first thing is this is the best job i ever had i've never worked this many hours i've never worked this hard but to to lead an organization of this magnitude is a true dream and i owe that to the mayor and city manager for selecting me to to run the department but we are very careful about our staffing model and our crime models because we have limited lien staffing response times response times are great we're around four minutes we're right at the national average even with reduced staff yes we continue to we're in the process now of pushing more officers out to patrol uh they're running call to call to call but our decision i suggest you can operate leaner and meaner well it takes a toll because it takes a toll on the men and women that are doing the job there's no agility in the workforce it's hard to get time off it's hard for them to do other things but on the interim we've asked them to work on street-level drug arrests we've asked them because drugs drive crime in the city and right now property crime and violent crime in mesa is at a 60-year low let me just ask you quickly we got a wrap do you believe drugs should be legalized do you think that would take pressure off or would it exacerbate the problem no i think they should not be legalized and i think it's going to be worse as the more and more happens one more question will you come back absolutely okay great to see you thank you great to see you appreciate your time and thanks for joining us on newsmaker sunday this week you