hi and welcome back to five minutes with the chief it's been a rough time at the mesa police department over the last week as most of you already know officer brandon mendoza was killed on his way home from work early on monday morning the 12th of may i can't tell you how much the department appreciates the outpouring of support to see so many of you at our candlelight vigil to show up at the church for services or at the actual wake that we had for him and at that event you may have heard we posthumously promoted brandon to the rank of sergeant he had come out very high on the sergeants list and was very excited about his opportunity to lead a squad here in the city of mesa and i will tell you that a lot of people have asked you know why the honorary promotion at this point and i just didn't think that it was right that his family should uh not get to experience that promotion um as he was cheated out of that opportunity himself by the impaired driver the family allowed us to spend a lot of private moments with them and and to share and in in their grief and and really to also be able to celebrate brandon's uh his life and and the legacy that he left behind i think we all continue to learn incredible things about brandon and his outreach into the community he was truly a modern day uh beat cop he always had time for the kids in the neighborhood uh he bought presents for them during christmas with his own money he put boxes around the districts so people could donate sports equipment for guerrero park i think there is a move right now to rename the ball field or actually not to rename but just to name the ballfield mendoza field and try to solicit some donations for dugouts and proceeding i want to mention a few other people that were involved in this horrific incident that probably went unrecognized there was a whole group of arizona highway patrol people that that tried to stop the driver and then had to respond to this horrific scene which has been repeated now over the last week a number of times so my heart really goes out to them and i just want them to know how much we as a police department appreciate what they do and what they tried to prevent from happening and then for the the care and the detail that they provided in dealing with the collision itself monday morning when i responded to maricopa county medical center i was greeted shortly thereafter by the emergency room doctor who treated brandon and it was a very powerful moment and uh very heartfelt on his part and it was almost like he was apologetic he he wished he could have done more and i could tell that losing brandon had really taken a toll on him that day or that morning and he talked about the injuries he talked about everything that they tried to do and really the severity and the amount of injuries that brandon sustained were too much for the surgical team to overcome and try to save but i just to everybody at the medical center the doc and and all those who assisted thank you and thanks for caring so much because it was hard on all of us and and we know it was incredibly hard on you uh trying to do everything you could to make sure you survived and then finally another group of people that goes unrecognized are the firefighter the fire personnel everybody from tempe mesa and phoenix fire that responded to try to assist again with the life-saving operation and then the fire that ensued and everything that happened this community is blessed with a very devoted group of public safety professionals whether it's police fire or even our federal partners who have had an outpouring of support so i i know we miss those people but i wanted to take time here so at least the public realizes that our connectivity with those other groups is incredible and i appreciate it one of the things i learned about brandon yesterday was at the boys and girls club he did a turkey drive there every year to make sure that all the kids in some of these underprivileged neighborhoods had a thanksgiving meal i'm going to come back to all of you come october november of this year and i'm going to ask for donations and turkey donations to go to the that particular boys and girls club so we can feed the neighborhood and feed those kids uh that was something that he did and i want to carry on that legacy uh and make sure that everybody there has a great uh thanksgiving meal and we use that to again celebrate the contributions that brandon made to the neighborhood i appreciate you tuning in i want to tell you that there's more to come i'm going to talk a little bit in the next five minutes segment about our summer enforcement program that will kick off here in about four weeks what we're going to do with our massage parlor ordinance and vice enforcement that's going to ramp up over the summer and i just want to recap a little bit where we are staffing and crime wise but until then again thank you for your continued support thank you for what you do every day in trusting this police department to provide you with world-class police service until then i'll talk to you soon you