City Council - Special Meeting

Mic check, mic check.

Mic check, mic check.

Hello, welcome to our Tuesday evening special council meeting on youth gun violence. We're going to kick things off as we always do with the Pledge of Allegiance. And we are grateful to have Lieutenant St. Laurent here who will lead us in the pledge.

Thank you very much, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.

Okay, thank you all for coming. Here's a quick rundown, and then we'll get started. So we are going to hear from presenters. They are Lewiston Police Chief Carly Conley, Androscoggin County District Attorney Neal McClain, Lewiston High School Superintendent Jake Langless, New Beginnings Executive Director Chris Bicknell, Duncans Pierre, and Christine Thibault from the Department of Corrections. So we will hear from each presenter. The chief, as you can see, will go first. And then the council will have time for questions. And then we will work through the presenters. And then I'll give some time for the council to weigh in with their thoughts. And then we will head to public comment in an orderly fashion. If we can keep chatter in the hall to a minimum, if you need to talk, please text yourselves or head out to the lobby. And this is also being broadcast online. If you miss any part of it, you'll be able to watch it later. Thank you all. And Chief, off to you.

Thank you for having me. I want to just start by saying thank you to everybody for taking the time to come out here this evening and talk about this and hear about this. It's a pretty important topic. So again, I want to say thank you for taking the time out of your summer evening to come hear about this. So basically what I'm going to do is I'm just going to speak a little bit. I have a slideshow and I'm just going to go over some of the issues that we're seeing, what I would call, you know, the boots on the ground level as far as what law enforcement is seeing. So the first slide you're going to see here is just our shooting statistics. We've had in 2026, we've had 19 shootings. And in this slide, what we're looking to just show you is sort of the comparison as far as last year. It's actually the same as last year. We break it down by month. And you can see that in April of this year, we really had a quite a bit of an increase in our shootings This next slide talks about the adult versus juvenile involvement in our shootings. I think we've been pretty open about that. We've really, really seen quite a rise in shootings involving juveniles. So in 2026, we have had seven shootings that have involved adults, and then we've had 12 that have involved juveniles. Some of the 2026 shooting statistics for the PD. So this is what we look at when we're looking at what shootings we're solving, our clearance rates, along with gun seizures at the police department. So thus far in 2026, we have solved 13 of the 19 shootings, which equates to 68%. And one thing of note for that, One thing for note of that that I would touch on is that the national average clearance rate for shootings is 31%. We need to put in a full mode instead of the slides.

Instead of no mode?

Hold on one sec.

How do they?

He's on this. We're trying to help you over here.

OK, thank you. Full mode? Sorry, I'm leaving.

Yep.

Give us one second, please.

Should we just stay on the screen that we were on?

The display settings are at the bottom. They're at the top there.

Yes, different on our screens. There we go. Thank you.

We made it. Thank you. Chief, please continue.

We'll start again. All right, so the slide we left off on was the shooting clearances and gun seizures at the police department. As I mentioned, for 2026, we've solved or cleared 68% of our shootings. Obviously, we'd like to solve all of them. That's our goal. But as I mentioned, we're more than double the national average in that regard. So we've been very fortunate. Our staff has done a great job at really investigating these and trying to bring them to closure. Out of those shootings, we've had eight adult arrests and 19. So you're looking at more than double juvenile arrests. In 2026, the Lewiston Police Department has seized 44 guns, 41 of those handguns, and then three rifles and shotguns. And the one thing I'll mention about that is when we talk about gun seizures, those are actual criminal cases where we seize guns, not guns that we have because of protection from abuse orders or yellow flags or things like that. These are true criminal cases. So as I mentioned, as you saw in the slide, you know, the true increase that we noticed was in April, right, for shootings. We had nine shootings in April. So as a result, we respond, our response to that was to, one of the things we did is we increased foot patrols in the city. In the month of May and June alone, We did more than 50 foot patrols in the city of Lewiston, reallocated our patrol and specialized units. So we have a community resource team. We have a crime reduction unit. So we moved that around. We moved some of the detectives divisions around and really focused on specific areas, specific times of day, things like that. Also worked with our federal partners that are in the building. We've conducted saturation details in the city. And then the results of that in May and June, we had 28 arrests, 21 juveniles, seven adults. We seized 11 guns and five of those were found to be stolen. And the thing that I'll just point out here in regards to the juveniles, five repeat offenders in just one month's time frame. Some of the resources and investigative tools that we use and that we work with as an agency, and obviously this doesn't encompass all of them, but one of the things that we have at our agency that we're the only police department in the state that has basically every federal partner in our building. So a lot of police departments around the state have what they call task force officers. So they assign those officers, patrol officers or detectives, to work with federal partners. So it could be DEA, ATF, Homeland Security. We do the same. FBI is another one. But every one of those individuals has an office space at RPD. So that's a huge resource to us because it's the difference between walking down the hall and knocking on someone's door and saying, we have a case that we think might be a good federal case versus calling them in Portland and trying to coordinate that way. The other thing that we have been very fortunate to have is our flock system, our automatic license plate reader. This year alone, since we've had it, it's assisted in solving six shootings and recovered three guns. And that's just the shootings and guns. It's been involved in helping us with kidnappings, domestic violence, you name it. It's been a huge resource. And then one of the other things, we don't have this yet, but we're pretty excited about getting it. We received this. This was budgeted, and it's called the Skydio First Responder Drone. So we should be getting that within the next few months. And What this drone does is it has the ability to connect to our dispatch system. So we can set it up. So for example, if we say we want this thing to respond to shootings, we want this thing to respond to assaults in progress, whatever we decide we want it to respond to automatically, it's GPS coordinated. When dispatch gets that call, that drone responds from our station is on scene before an officer can get there. So that's a huge resource to us. It also, you can set it to patrol problem areas. So if we're having an issue, for example, I can think of one area, Park Street recently has been an issue for us. We can set that drone to set up in that area at a certain time of day and it'll just patrol that area. It's eyes, for us, it's a huge force multiplier, right? We're 11 officers down, so we do the best that we can with the staff that we do, but this will be a huge resource for us. Community engagement, connections, resource sharing. We have a community resource team, and I use the word team lightly. As I just mentioned, we're down 11 officers, and we actually have one out injured, so we're down 12 officers. We have one supervisor and one officer that is assigned to that unit. Historically, we had three officers and a supervisor. So we're hopeful that we can get some men and women to come work for the police department and get that position or that unit as a team shortly. But they do a lot of work. with the little personnel that they have in there. And this is obviously, this is just a few things that I wanted to highlight that they do. One of the things that we're working on this year with the community resource team is called Beyond the Badge event. And we're hopeful that this is going to be an annual event. They've worked on this. It's going to be July 23rd in Smart Pain Park. And it's really, it's going to involve first responders. We're going to have the police department there. We're going to have UAS there. We're going to have the fire department there. We're going to have LifeLight there. And it's really just an event with a bunch of activities for the community. And like I said, we're hoping that this is a great engagement tool and really sort of just the foundation for something that we can continue to do on a yearly basis. One of the other things that We've done this year, and I hate to keep saying it, but we're down a lot of officers. So the challenge for us when we're down a lot of officers is the officers are overworked. Sometimes they're working overtime. We're not able to fill all of our special assignments to their normal fulfillment. So we wanted to come up with something where we were still serving the community as much as we can in the capacity that we're able to. So we created a program this year that is set to kick off in July. And it's a community policing program for officers. So they're going to be given a certain amount of time where they can choose their Events or activities. Um, some of those will be coordinated by the community resource team. So. They can be examples would be, you know, out on we'd like you to go out on bike patrol, you know, in the downtown streets or on Lisbon street for these 2 hours. We'd like you to play basketball at Kennedy park. We'd like they're going to come up with some, some specific events. that the officers will be able to participate in. And then the officers will also have the opportunity to create their own events. So when I say that, we have officers with a variety of skill sets. We have officers that coach soccer. We have officers that coach baseball, basketball, that like music. So we're going to give them the opportunity to sort of make that community policing their own and meet with the community in that capacity. Some of the other things that the community resource team does is they work with the LA Child and Family Wellbeing Collaborative. These are meetings with many of the community programs to discuss resources or arrange education or outreach. They work with the CDC Office of Injury and Violence Prevention, Maine Gun Safety Coalition and Project Child Safe. And then again, this outreach, education and resource sharing, it touches a lot of things, but I want to just highlight a few. So one of the things that we looked at at the police department, or we have been looking at when it comes to the violence. So obviously the first step we see that we have an increase in shootings, then we've broken it down. We've determined, okay, we have an increase in shootings and it seems to be specific to juveniles. So one of the things we look at is what are the obstacles? And really what the obstacles are that we're seeing is juvenile repeat offenders, lack of accountability in the juvenile system, challenges with detaining and committing juveniles, a large increase in non-competent designations based on age, trauma, things along those lines. And then lack of mandates, youth intervention. Sorry, I can't read this whole thing here. Youth intervention services for youth involved in the system and or found to be non-competent and resources for family assistance. So as an agency, what our response to these obstacles have been, obviously we have the initial response, right? Like our primarily goal for a police department is enforcement. It's to protect and serve. But the reality is, is that... We want to solve the bigger issue, right? Because really what we're seeing is we're sort of putting band aids on a bigger on a bigger issue. So we've really we've really in the past couple of months had, I hate to say it, but a ton of meetings with people with the other stakeholders, right, that have an investment in the system, because this really is a system issue. It's so layered. So some of the things we've done is we've had coordination meetings with the DA's office and the JCCOs. We had a briefing with Senator Susan Collins. We then had a coordination meeting with the U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson, along with District Attorney McLean. We had a briefing with one of the Maine Senators, Bruce Bickford, and his staff. We had a meeting with New Beginnings Director Chris Bicknell. And then we have meetings scheduled with additional members of the Maine Senate and other law enforcement stakeholders. And then some of the other things that we've done is we've attended every community listening session that's involved gun violence and wanted to hear from the community and other stakeholders. One of those was put on by the main wire at Calvary Church, and then we just attended another one last week at Gather to Grow that was put on by Mears and COX. So one of the things that I wanted to bring up is some of the common misconceptions. And when I say common misconceptions, these are just things that sometimes we hear from the public and sometimes we hear, you know, why can't you do this? So two of the big things is the city ordinance. And what we have is we have a curfew, and that's a city ordinance violation. And I think it can be a common misnomer that the city can create ordinances that help enforce. And while they do, they still don't trump state statute, right? So a city ordinance is a great tool for our officers, in all honesty. It gives us the ability to stop and talk to kids who are out late at night past curfew. But the reality is there's not a lot of teeth long-term behind that, right? So what happens is they get a summons for the curfew violation, they go back home to mom and dad, and there ends up being a $30 fine. So an ordinance really can be associated with a fine. It's not associated with any sort of detainment or anything along those lines. And then the other thing that we hear a lot is criminally charging parents, that parents should be able to be criminally charged. And the reality is, is we can only charge people for statutes and laws that exist on the books. Right. So I cannot deal with a juvenile that commits an assault and then charges parent because a juvenile committed the assault. The reality is we just don't have the authority to do that. Some of the community recommendations that we have, the big one is see something, say something. We rely heavily on on technology today, but the reality is, is still the best type of, we can't be everywhere, right? So we need the support of the community. When you see something suspicious, when you see something that doesn't look right, call us so that we can look into it. I mean, we had, I can give an example of three or four weeks ago where somebody called and said, there's three juveniles hanging around, one displayed a gun, They provided a description. They didn't need to give their name. We didn't need to talk to them. They gave great details. The officer went to that area, found the juvenile, got the gun. It was stolen, recovered. So that's important to us for the community to report things. And I think one of the big things people get concerned about is Not not wanting to, you know, wanting to be anonymous. And there's there's three different ways that you can do that. We have you have the ability to call dispatch. You can call dispatch or 911 and say, I don't want my name. I don't don't tell them who my who I am. And they won't and just give them the information and they'll dispatch an officer to that location and just try to provide them as much detail as you can about that. And then there's a reported tip online that we have. And there's also a anonymous tip line that we check on a regular basis that you can call the police department app. And all of these are on our website. And then one of the other things is I would say is parents are authorized to search their kids' rooms. Parents are authorized to be parents. They're in control of their family and their household. And you need to know where your kids are, know what they're involved in. And if you think something's up, something's probably up. So they have the authority to check their kids' rooms, search their kids' rooms. And if they find something that shouldn't be in their kids' rooms, they're always welcome to call us and we will deal with it. And then the other big thing is secure your firearms. People talk about where the guns come from, right? But the reality is Maine is a gun-friendly state. It's a source state. So a lot of people legally own guns, and there's nothing wrong with that. But what we see a lot is guns being stolen from cars that aren't secured. That is very important to us. If you're going to own a firearm securely, keep that secure. Solutions, and I know we don't have them all, but really, What we found and we're certainly not the experts on every level. I think you all are gonna hear from some experts on levels that we don't operate in on a daily basis here tonight, and I'm glad they're here. But I think this really comes down to legislation and policy. I believe the state of Maine is in need of policy and legislative change that will increase accountability mandates for youth who are involved in violent criminal offenses. And I think that youth intervention services, that's a piece of this too. We need effective and sufficiently funded youth intervention services to exist and be available as resources to the juvenile criminal justice system as mandates that youth involved in violent criminal behavior are required to participate in. That's all I have.

Thank you very much, Chief. If we can hold our applause, thank you. Thank you very much, Chief. Appreciate you being here. Appreciate many members of the department here and your entire department service to our city. Thank you. We will take questions from the council, and we're just going to go down the line, starting with a councillor from Ward 1. Councillor Martell, do you have anything? Ward 1. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we will still start with seven and we're going to flip that. Councillor from Ward 7. Councillor Martell, do you have anything? Thank you. Councillor from Ward 6.

Go ahead. Councillor Martell said not at this time. Thank you, sir. I had originally mailed questions, email questions to all the presenters, but the one that I want to ask Chief Conley, do you have any sense as to what makes Lewiston the attractive location for this kind of behavior? We don't see this in many other communities in Maine, and yet you allude to Maine being a gun-friendly state, which it is. Why is this happening in Lewiston? Why have they chosen us to bless with this kind of behavior? Thank you.

I honestly don't have the answer to that.

If I could, Mr. Mayor, if anyone in this room has the answer to that, that to me seems like one massive step towards solving this problem. If we can figure out what is encouraging this behavior and stop that encouragement, there are a lot of different pieces to that, but that seems to me to be key.

Thank you. Councillor Noble.

She already answered my question. It was about foot patrols. Thank you. No problem.

Sounds good. Thank you. Councillor Roy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief Conley, thank you for that. A couple of questions that I came up with during your presentation. And I think I know the answer to this one, but I want to put it out there for everybody. Can a city go above and beyond what the state has on the books for laws as far as charging juveniles? Can the city as a body come up with maybe some laws to hold? That's the path we want to go.

So they can come up with ordinances, but they'll never be more restrictive necessarily or punitive, I guess is the word I would say, than a state statute. And District Attorney McLean may be able to answer that a little bit better.

And I will ask that at that time. That's one of them. I do have a couple more that I saw.

Okay, right here. Now, can you hear me? Can you hear me now?

Oh, wow. Hey, all right. Usually I have this booing voice. Anyways. All right. What happens if parents are scared to search their kids' rooms? What can they do for assistance?

I mean, we would certainly assist parents with that if they needed our help. I We are always a phone call away. And we have officers that, you know, we have a community resource team. We do have avenues that if they're uncomfortable calling, you know, the 911 emergency line, that we can connect them with somebody.

Thank you. Let's see. Actually, I will hold with that. If I think of any more, I'll try to come back. Thank you. Councillor Harriman.

My questions have been answered. Thanks.

Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. I just would like to thank you for being here tonight and presenting all the facts. I really don't have any questions. You've answered most of the questions that I would have asked. Thank you.

And last but not least, now the Councillor from 1-1. Councillor Nugent.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chief, for being here today. I do have two questions. One is the escalation of crime. So basically, we deal with quite a bit of joyriding in the city, and I'm wondering if there's any indication that there's crossover from, let's say, car burglary and joyriding into some of these gun crimes? Is there a connection, so to speak?

I would say for the most part, no. There may be a few cases, but I agree. We've definitely had an increase in stolen motor vehicles, specifically with the youth this year, but we don't necessarily see them, the same groups being involved. There may be a little bit of crossover, but not for the most part.

Okay. And the second thing, and I just, I don't know if you're able to verify this or not, but from my understanding... Five of the arrestees this year were age 20, young adults, of which three of them had aged out of the foster care system. One of them had been involved in a shooting when he was 18 as well. And I believe all of these children had had struggles within the LPS as well. So I'm just asking if there's like a connection between maybe the continuum of care for people who are struggling in our community, to the adult crimes that they were also committing most probably as juveniles.

So I can't speak to all of what you mentioned. I'd have to research that. But I can tell you that I can think of a few off the top of my head that we've dealt with and charged as adults that we dealt with as being involved in shootings as juveniles also.

Okay. Thank you very much. Counselor Roy, back to you.

Let's see if this is on. All right. Cool. Thank you. One of the things, I don't remember if we've done this before. Have we ever had like a gun buyback program? Has that ever been done?

no so we have not and i and i can tell you that we have looked into that we've talked with atf we've talked with some of the individuals that do that um and there are some challenges with that and uh what they've seen in the past is is not necessarily getting the guns back that they'd be looking for um what what they see is you know shotguns and you know, grandparents' rifles that people are hanging onto that they're turning in. They haven't seen the results that we would be looking for, the handguns being turned in that are involved in violent crime.

Thank you. Any other councillors have anything? Chief, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

We will now... If we can hold audience applause and everything else. Thank you. We now have Neil McLean. DA McLean, thank you so much for joining us.

thank you all it's a a pleasure to be here with you unfortunately to discuss a difficult topic that's uh a big problem in lewiston and we're trying to get a hold of it but i do appreciate being invited to participate in the conversation and offer some information from the district attorney's office i do like to begin these conversations about violent crime increases, whatever is happening in Lewiston. Just to say that I hope everyone appreciates it would be much worse than it is right now if we did not have Lewiston PD doing a fantastic job with it. With the limited resources you just heard Chief Conley talk about, that is a serious issue. But nonetheless, I know they're out there every night and all day long working on this issue. So I was asked, I guess, first to just talk about what the DA's office does to give a breakdown of what that is. And I think it's most easily described as our primary role is to uphold the law, protect public safety, and pursue justice on behalf of the community. That's what we do every day. We try to do the best job that we can, but that is what we're tasked with doing. We work very closely with law enforcement. We work with Lewiston PD on a regular basis. We handle every criminal case that... Every criminal case that comes through District 3, District 3 is Oxford County, Androscoggin County, and Franklin County. But we handle every criminal case other than murder and some of the felony drug charges. Everything else is ours. It is a lot of cases. We work with Lewiston PD. We also work, and I think it's important to keep in mind, with 30 other law enforcement agencies. So with the limited resources we have, we're not just supporting Lewiston. We're supporting every town and every law enforcement agency across three counties. And that is important to remember because we too have some resource issues, and I'll get to that momentarily. What it is we do with every single case that comes through is we are specifically tasked with reviewing and filing charges. We're responsible for all the discovery related to those cases. related to those charges, which is an increasing task on our office in the current era of litigation. But we have to review all charges. We're responsible for all the discovery that comes in. We think about law enforcement collecting evidence, which is true. And law enforcement does not work for me. They have a very capable chief here, Chief Conley, and every department has their own chief. But we are nonetheless, in the eyes of the court, we are responsible for law enforcement. So we are responsible for every piece of evidence that comes out. Something's missing. It's not right. It's us in the DA's office and the case itself that suffer. Not suggesting that's an issue, but it's another large task that we're responsible for in every case. We're responsible for negotiating all cases prior to trials. We conduct all hearings and trials of every case that go to hearing or trial. We support every victim and survivor. Very limited resources in the staff that we have to do that, but we're responsible for every bit of that task as well. We're responsible for all of the sentencing that happens if we're successful at a hearing or trial or plea negotiation. And we handle every appeal and post-conviction review that comes through. So those seven tasks all in and of themselves, very detailed and time-consuming tasks, we take care of with every individual case. In D3, District 3 right now, that includes about 3,250 cases that we're responsible to do every one of those things for every one of those cases. So it's a huge caseload. That just describes the cases that are pending before the court. That does not include all of the filings, all of the different cases that we process that don't get plugged into the court. So your prosecutors are busy every day, most weekends and well into the evening hours trying to keep up with this task. And this is all important to the violence because it goes to the resources we have to apply to any individual task that we try to be involved in. We have 16 prosecutors to handle those 3,250 cases. Two of those are drug prosecutors, so they only handle drug cases, which means we really have 14 prosecutors to handle all of those cases. Just by way of a quick comparison, we are the third busiest court in the state right now. Lewiston Court is. And if you look at District 1, which is York County, they have 19 prosecutors. If you look at Cumberland County, they have 20 prosecutors. So we're at a disadvantage just based on the numbers we have. But what makes it even worse is we can't compete right now due to pay parity and, quite frankly, caseloads and a desire to be a prosecutor in today's day and age. We don't see the same passion any longer, the same desire to join our office. So right now, with that same caseload number I talked to you about, we have eight prosecutors across all of District 3. That means that my deputy... who's in the back of the room, is we don't have a prosecutor in Oxford County right now. So the deputy, Josh Kleingolden, is pretty much covering all of Oxford County. I'm covering Franklin County solo, and that leaves six prosecutors to handle the third busiest court in the state. Those 1,833 of the cases are specific to Andrus Goggin. What we have done, because we are aware of the gun problem in addition to all the other problems as we have created a unit of sorts where we've assigned two of our best prosecutors to assist Lewiston PD with all gun violence cases. So if you imagine we only have six, we're assigning two just to this issue right here. They also have to carry a caseload outside of this, but they are primarily tasked with this. They're available to law enforcement 24 hours a day. They're on call. Law enforcement has their numbers. So they're taking calls at two or three in the morning when these gun cases arise. They're helping with search warrants, but they're deeply involved. And again, that's the best we could do with the limited resources. We have two prosecutors assigned. Deputy Klein Golden also helps out with that. The two prosecutors are Alexander Winter and Brie White, and they do a fantastic job of addressing this in the best way that they can with the limited resources. What do we need to do an even better job of We need more prosecutors. It's as simple as that. We need at least another prosecutor in all three counties. We could use two new prosecutors in Androscoggin County just to be able to keep up with the cases. So what you'll hear sometimes is people will say, well, Just lower your caseload. It's up to you. You're the one that puts the cases into the court, processes and files them. But that's not really true. That's a lazy answer. And I'm glad to have that conversation with the people that say it because we don't pick crime. We charge crime when Lewiston or any other department sees it. They don't pick crime. They're not out there committing it. They're addressing it when it's committed. And it's our responsibility to support them and support you all. And we do it. We don't refuse to prosecute any type of crime because I've heard loudly from all of you that you don't want me to do that. So we put our cases forward. We do the best we can, but we need more prosecutors. Eight prosecutors for a district like this is impossible. We have lost a prosecutor to a better paying job in another state criminal law office, the public defender's office. We lost out. on a higher because they could simply make more money and work a much smaller caseload. We've lost a prosecutor to what we refer to as the contract attorneys because the state of Maine pays them $150 an hour. The prosecutor we lost was making just shy of $40 an hour. So we lost that prosecutor. We lost a prosecutor One of the best prosecutors we had, arguably as good a prosecutor as there is in the state, we lost that prosecutor to burnout. And before anybody thinks burnout is something someone should be ashamed of, it's really not. The caseloads are overwhelming. And what you'll see with prosecutors who really care is they care about their cases. There's an ethical requirement that we do our job properly. In every case, to protect the rights of the accused, the victims, we represent the court. And as I said, we have those massive obligations, seven different obligations with each individual case. And when a prosecutor feels like they're failing at their ethical duty, it creates, it can be really demoralizing. But when you're dealing with three or 400 cases, it's also overwhelming. So add all of that up. And sometimes it can get the best of the best of us. And we've lost prosecutors for all those reasons. And we're having some difficulty filling them, again, going back to the pay parity, because we can't compete. When I go to hire somebody and I tell them, come work for me, I'll pay you much less and give you a much bigger caseload. Nobody's all that interested. And they know it. They know they'll make more money in the other offices. They know they'll have less cases. They'll have a better quality of life. And it's a really difficult time to be a prosecutor, a criminal prosecutor. And we need the legislature's help with that issue, both the new prosecutors and the pay parity. I can say just. ironically, I did just receive a text from somebody in the legislature who has worked with us in the past and they still understand the need to address this pay parity and have just now suggested they will revisit it. But we need that to happen or we're going to lose more prosecutors and we're not going to be able to fill the spots. So I think with With that in mind, we have a wonderful relationship with Lewiston PD and most of our police departments. We have had a few of the prosecutors go on the saturation details with them to get out there and be with them to answer legal questions or to see what they're doing, to understand what they're doing. We've had people within our staff who are county employees as well as prosecutors, do ride-alongs. We think it's important to know what Lewiston PD is doing and be able to experience it so when we see their cases, we better appreciate what we're seeing. We've met with them, as Chief Conley pointed out, to discuss gun violence, juvenile incompetency, and drugs and everything else within the community. We regularly communicate and work together. We've met with our federal partners. They've offered some ideas that we'll follow up on, in particular with the juvenile competency issue, which is playing a big role. Some thoughts on how maybe we should be looking at our own experts to combat some of the evaluations we're seeing. We'll look into that, but we are constantly working to do better in the areas where we think we're lacking. So I guess other than that, again, When we get back to the June. So we do not have a juvenile prosecutor in any of the three counties. You have Josh Klein, Golden, myself and a couple of other people who assist when we need it. But you don't have anybody dedicated to it. We should have a dedicated juvenile prosecutor there. because we're so overwhelmed, we don't get to do the training some other people get to do. Training opportunities pop up and it's like, well, geez, you have court that day. We don't have anybody to cover court that day. So we're falling behind in some of the training that's so important to keep up with the latest strategies and latest developments. But again, your prosecutors are showing up every day to work and working really hard in the face of all of this. So I'm a fan of the work they're doing. I know you don't get to see it every day and sometimes you see the outcomes and you're not happy. But boy, if you saw how they got to the outcome and how hard they're working, I think you'd be a fan as well. They do a tremendous job with very little. We've looked, one of the prosecutors who is really dedicated to this issue provided me with some Some educational programs that we should consider and we'll look into those. I think one of them is called the great program and it's a gang resistant education and training program where you can use uniform law enforcement to work with elementary and middle school kids to talk to them about how to avoid this kind of behavior. I think some of these may be federal programs. So we'll look at funding. We certainly don't have funding for it. We're funded by the county. There's the OJJDP, which is the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency. That is another organization we've heard of recently that we may see if there's anything they can offer us. These would be for programs to deal with children after they've been involved or maybe even before, like the GREAT program. That would be maybe a proactive program. approach. And there's a focus deterrence program as well that we'll look into. So those are things we will continue to look into to try to do a better job. The last thing I'll say, and we've talked about the juvenile gun program, is we hear a lot of people talk about the children. And I went to a meeting a couple, a week or so ago, and I heard somebody say that the children are not the problem. So when these cases arise on my desk, the children are the problem. And they're not children. They're juveniles. We should call them what they are. Because when you call them children or kiddos, which I see way too often, you're minimizing the significance of what they're doing. So I am a single voice within the system. I'm not saying the other prosecutors don't do the same thing, but we don't have the support for maybe some of that ideology with others. But I think we should be calling it what it is. These juveniles have committed very serious crimes that endanger the lives of other people in the community. They endanger their own lives. Some of these kids that are involved in it, or these juveniles, sorry, they're involved in it. They may be the shooter one day, they'll be the victim the next day. So we have an obligation to all of them. And I think we're failing them if we continue to treat them like children. The other thing we need to do is we need people in elected positions to take this serious, not fight amongst each other or themselves, not be divisive in nature. We need people to come together and go, this is a problem. We need to unify to come to terms with how we address it. Stop blaming it on specific groups, but also stop pretending it doesn't exist where it does. We have to call, you know, if you know where it's happening, who's involved, we need to call that out. How do we fix the problem if we're not addressing the regions or the areas that the crimes are occurring? We need to be professional and thoughtful about it, but we also can't, be divisive when we try to make a difference in those communities, because those communities deserve their children to be safe and to live. They don't want their children to die at the hands of a juvenile with a gun. But we need to be open about the conversation. It's not a politically correct conversation. We need to have it. We need to be honest about the language. We need to be honest about the facts and we need to do our very best to address it. Because the way I look at it is I'm a father of four kids. My four kids are your kids, neighbors, friends at the playground. They may be your college friends someday. They may be your colleagues. We're all in it together. there is no distinction a gun doesn't know a distinction a bullet doesn't know a distinction we as the leadership should stop making those distinctions we should be addressing it for the problem that it is and being honest about where it's happening what's happening because that's how we're going to fix it and the last thing remember there was an old saying that it takes a community to raise a child I never really agreed with that. I understand the concept. The community does need to provide things to make the community safe, playgrounds, athletic fields, but the community does not need to raise the child. The child needs to be raised by their parents. And we need to start expecting that parents will be more involved early on because if the parents are doing the best that they can, if they need some support, we should be there to give it. But that's where a juvenile's life or track begins. And if they get out in the world and they've never been told no, they've never been told what you're doing is wrong, they've never been punished by their parents for misbehaving, they're not going to listen to me, they're not going to listen to Louis Dimpedian, they're not going to listen to anybody in this room. And that's the problem we're running into right now. There's very little respect for Lewiston PD when they're out there, very little respect for us in the courtroom, very little respect for the courtroom process itself much of the time. I think all of that begins in the home And it goes to, if you're seeing guns, you've got to call that in, look out for your own children, give them the guidance they need. We'll deal with it the best we can in providing services and resources. But once it, again, once it arrives on my desk, I'm I'm the mean step parent because it's now time to start talking about accountability, responsibility and punitively what needs to be done to make sure these kids don't kill somebody or kill themselves. And lastly, Carly was so right. people need to fund this stuff we don't have a lot of money but if we don't start changing some of the laws and statutes out of augusta and if we don't start funding the resources we need those two things if we don't do it because we don't like to spend money we might as well just watch this escalate even further so we need people to take it serious in augusta we need them to help us out with funding and statutes i'd love to revisit the competency statute The chronological immaturity is a concept that I really struggle with. I think I will read an incompetency evaluation and go, great, kid's competent. I'll get to the last two pages and chronological immaturity will undercut it almost every time. We should revisit the definition at the very least, remove it. I'm all for that. I know that won't have a lot of support, but we need to start doing a better job. Remember, juveniles, we're not hurting them when we hold them accountable. We're helping them because we're keeping them from continuing to do the things that are going to hurt somebody else or themselves.

Thank you. Dean McClain, thank you very much for being here and thank you for your entire team and all the work you guys do. I appreciate it. We're gonna start on this side of the table. Ward one, Councilor Nagy, did you have any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I do. About the funding sources. So the county pays for staff at the VA's office?

It does. We are a hybrid office, is how I refer to it. The attorneys are all state employees, and I'd love to change this as well. I'd love to have us all under the state umbrella so we can properly be funded. But instead... The attorneys are funded by the state. Everything else is funded by you all. The county of Androscoggin, Oxford, and Franklin, which is a huge burden to put on you all. We do our best not to spend a lot of money, but we know reassessments are out there, taxes are high, people don't have a lot of money. And we're asking for money to be able to do what we need to do. And it comes from the county. So not specifically from Lewiston, but as I understand it, Lewiston pays a big chunk of that county budget.

We not only pay a big chunk of the county budget, but it also increased by 20% this year for our taxpayers. Are there cases in which municipalities pay for, for instance, an attorney?

The attorneys are all licensed and we are all part of the attorney general's office. We've had police departments very kindly offer to offer. We'll give you a prosecutor. We'll put it right here in our building. But it's not something we can do to the best of my knowledge. And if we did, we need the approval of the attorney general.

And the last question I have is just so when cases come to you juvenile cases come to you. They're, they're handled only as criminal cases correct. Are there referrals to is there any system of family or juvenile courts that are that are not. I assume normally you're dealing with only felonies. If you could just speak to how that's divided out.

No, we deal with every juvenile crime that comes in. We have juvenile community corrections officers who oftentimes will review the cases, the low-level cases in advance. And I should, I think it's worth noting, we have some really incredible juvenile community corrections officers here in Androscoggin County. I know they work really hard. and they're very supportive of what we do, and they've met with Lewiston PD. But they will review cases, some of the low-level cases up front. They may handle them through resources and diversion programs before they even get to our desk. But if a juvenile doesn't cooperate and or there's a history there, we get everything from a disorderly conduct to a bag assault with a weapon. The interesting thing about the juvenile system, as well as you can get the same sentence for all of those, they carry classifications on just like they would with the adult, you know, class ABC, D or E. But you can get the same sentence for a class E disorderly conduct that you can get for a class A offense, which is a commitment. So it's a completely different beast, which is why we need a prosecutor who really understands the code, Title 15. And right now, we understand it, but we're switching gears to adult, juvenile, adult, juvenile. And it's really something that deserves specific focus.

Thank you.

Counselor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of the information that you did. It was a lot. It's a lot to digest. I think you have said it very direct and very clear. Your office is doing everything they can when criminals get to your desk, but you're lacking staff. And I think a lot of that, as you shared, is pay scale. The truth is, is Augusta needs to do better. We're saying that as loudly as we can. You hear that we're suffering here in Lewiston. You hear our DA's office basically crying out that they are overloaded. If you don't help us, shame on you. So the person that sent you the text, which you do not have to share the name with me, nor am I asking you to, But I hope that as soon as you leave this table, they set up a meeting with you because we need it. Thank you.

Thank you. And I know this wasn't a question, but I do feel like it's important. I'm speaking about Andrew Scoggin because that's where we are and that's what you all care about. But I do think it's important to say this is true of every district attorney's office. They all need So it's a much broader problem. And I just think it's important, especially when other people are listening, that people don't think I'm saying this is just our problem. The help is most necessary because it affects every prosecutor's office across the state.

Councillor Longchamp.

Thank you, Mayor. So I would also just like to say that I don't think this is just a problem that's happening in Lewiston. I think it's happening throughout our state. So again, the state needs to do better in helping. Thank you.

Councillor Harriman, did you have something?

Yes. Thank you. Thanks for being here. I wondered if I could learn more about the non-competent designations. Who makes those and what happens when that designation is made and are you seeing that happening at a different rate than in the past or has it been fairly steady?

So it's different from when I handled juveniles 15 years ago. So yes, uh, I haven't done juvenile specifically, uh, for about 15 years. So when I don't know how recently it's changed, uh, but this, this system, uh, and the way the evaluations are interpreted, uh, does seem very new to me and I could be wrong. It could be five to 10 years old, but it's, it's newer than when I last did it. And I think what's problematic about it is. It runs through some of the same criteria that the adult system would do. The ability to help your attorney, to understand the charges, to understand what people are doing, to be able to communicate with your attorney, to appear in court. All of those things, just like they might be in the adult analysis, are there. But those are the parts that I regularly consider. that I see frequently, I should say, seem to be met. But the juvenile, what I see that's different is that chronological immaturity component. And I think when they get to that, again, if I'm speaking freely, I mean, sometimes they'll include things like, the juvenile misbehaves at school. They don't pay attention. And I'm thinking, you just described my children. But what ultimately happens is it turns into a non-competent because of an age. And I think that's really dangerous because we're failing the kids when we do that. Understand, I'm not picking on the people that are making the analysis or the good heart or the intention behind it. I just really believe, and we're seeing the escalation now that we're failing the children, if that's what you want to call them, the juveniles, the kids. But it's really that component. It can be trauma. It can be trauma you experienced when you were three years old that, you know, now 15 or 10, 14 years later, they're using as part of an analysis to find incompetence. I My assessment is, and it's state forensics that does, it's a state entity. And again, I'm not picking at any individual analysis, an evaluator, but they do them. They make their analysis. They're very educated. They know the psychology and all of those things that one might say I don't. But I also feel sometimes that what I'm actually seeing are juveniles duping, malingering, doing... saying what needs to be said to get to an outcome. And once we get to that outcome, I think it starts to become a slippery slope. If they make that finding of incompetent and we, we get to revisiting and I think it's 60 days, 180 days a year. But after the year, and that's if they find there's a substantial likelihood that they will they might be able to be competent. So they have to make that finding as well. And that is in there a lot. The part I don't understand is you see a 13-year-old kid get that analysis and when i read it the reason they're finding is chronological immaturity and i am not a doctor but i'm thinking in a year they're going to be 14 they're still going to be incompetent so i don't know why you're putting us through the nonsense of uh they might be because really it's 14 and under i've seen them in that 15 to 16 range using the same language um And I just think it's a system that we should all take a step back, relook at it, apply it to the way children, juveniles, adolescents are acting today, and really ask ourselves if we're helping them or if we're not just making more excuses for them. Because this is the other thing I'll say about that, Counselor Harriman, is... The other thing we see, and we see this way too often, is somebody will be incompetent, put back out on the street, put right back in the same environment they just came from. The same neighborhood, the same family, the same friends. Nothing's changed. We're setting them up for failure. They fail again. We've seen it where, and I think Chief talked about someone who'd been caught and released five times. We're seeing incompetence one, two times in the juvenile system. And when they turn 18, two months later, they're competent. And my thought is they were always competent, and we failed them, and now they're going to prison. And I think that's the problem with the system right now.

Thank you.

Councillor Roy, and if I can get Councillor speak directly into the mic so the entire audience can hear. Thank you.

Thank you. My questions were answered at this time. Thank you. Councillor Noble.

Mine were also. It was just about how they figured out the competency part.

Councillor Chittum.

Thank you. I appreciate your presentation. I understand that the district attorney's office is underfunded, understaffed, overworked. This discussion tonight is specifically about gun violence in Lewiston. And first question to you is, do we see gun violence in South Paris, in Oxford, in Auburn, or is it nearly exclusively, if not exclusively, a creature of Lewiston, Maine?

I think in Lewiston we have, or in Androscoggin County, I didn't break it down by city, but in Andrew Scoggin County, we have 29 juvenile cases pending that involve firearms. They're not all violent crimes. They might be concealed weapons, but 29 pending. The other two counties, a much lower number, but it's also a much lower population. It's a much more rural area. Quite frankly, they're probably doing things with guns they shouldn't be, but nobody knows because they're out in the woods. But when you're in downtown, In a highly populated area, and you're firing off guns, people notice people hear it and they want law enforcement to do something about it. And then they want us to do something about it. So, I think the answer is, we see it more here, but that's probably because it's in a highly visible populated area.

Okay, thank you. Well, that sort of leads into my question about what about Lewiston is an attractor for this kind of behavior, which is a question I'm going to have for everybody. Everybody in this room, actually, we have 150 people in this room, 150 minds that we could be applying to solve this problem. I don't doubt that we're all trying, but we obviously need to try harder. And I don't think It would be wonderful if we could throw money at this problem. That's a poor phrase, but we do not have the money to do that. That's a constraint that our citizens have given to us. We need to figure out a way to address this problem without financial resources, at least financial resources coming from Lewiston taxpayers. We've already cut budgets to the bone. We've seen dramatic increases.

Excuse me, Councillor, there's going to be time for general comments later.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for bringing me back on track. Yes. What specific actions can the City Council of Lewiston, Maine do to assist you in performing your duties and your responsibilities?

I'm not sure directly how much can be done, again, directly with our office. But I think the things that are helpful, and we've heard lots of people talk about these issues, but it would be to provide alternatives for kids within the community, whether it be fields, after-school activities. I know that a lot of that is being done. But things that occupy kids directly, adolescents, other than social media. If you can pass an ordinance that they can't have a phone and look at social media, that would probably solve a lot of your problems. But if you can't do that, then you have to offer them alternatives. They're kids. And I know I was just saying, I don't like to call them that, but before they get to my desk, they're kids. And again, I have my own. And they're silly and they do stupid things and they make stupid mistakes, but they should do it in a way that doesn't endanger everyone around them. They should ride a bike without a helmet and not shoot a gun in downtown. But if we can offer them things to do Or you all can do that. And again, I'll say it, and I mean, no disrespect by this, but if this committee can stay together and not infight over things and really remember that we're all trying to do the same thing and help the kids out in the community. There are things that can be done after school basketball, extracurricular activities, whatever you can be done that may not even be super expensive, just opening up options to them. Work programs, things that help build some instill within them a desire to work and make money for themselves, things that they can do around town. I know I've had a conversation with somebody about something like that, even if it's school kids helping with graffiti or trash. I mean, things that you can get them out there, get them working, build that part of their personality or that part of their character. And provide them things to do that are fun. I was at the Basilica and my family, we were getting ready to go into church. And I saw three kids playing soccer in the parking lot that was completely lined with vehicles, losing the ball under the vehicles and then being worried they might get in trouble to go grab it. And all I can think is there's got to be a better place for them to play soccer because it's pretty clear they want to. So I think if we provide them the things that they need to be able to be active in healthy activities, I mean, I know that's a simple answer, easier said than done, but I think that's a part of it.

Thank you. And one follow-up question. These children, these kids, these juveniles have spare time. Juveniles do silly things in spare time, but they also are incentivized. Have you, in your experience, found that there are drivers of this behavior? For example, I'm leading the question now. Do we have drug activity that's encouraging our youth in Lewiston to go down these paths that we're trying to block off so diligently right now?

So I don't know if I can speak to that on the grander scale, but do I see it in situational instances? Of course, there's drugs, there's peer pressure, there's social media, there's all kinds of bad influences out there. Once they leave their home, which again, is why I think that nurturing begins and should stay on some level within the home, because once they get out, they're exposed to a again, bad influences, peer pressure, a desire to elevate themselves within the community. I talked a little bit about not being afraid, not being politically correct and being afraid to say something. I had a conversation once about how to fix things and I used the terms gangs and I was told to stop saying that because that encourages people to think they're in a gang and I'm thinking they are in gangs. I don't know what part of that you don't understand, but We need to call it what it is. And that's what they see. So they see that. They see a free pair of Nike sneakers to do something stupid that they otherwise can't afford. And that's an adolescent thing. We all could fall susceptible to that. It's economics. It's poverty. It's being in an area, a very urban area that doesn't have a lot to offer for outdoor activities. But yes, you see that on a small scale. Drugs is always a problem. drugs come with guns, guns come with drugs. So they do interrelate, I think, on some level. I don't know on what percentage of cases. Thank you very much.

Councillor Martell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, District Attorney McLean, for being here, your presentation. First question. So I was told, I guess you're the best person to answer this. I had a conversation and someone relayed to me that they believe there were statutes from Augusta that limit how long a juvenile can be held prior to conviction and sentencing on a crime is there any any truth to that or is there anything i guess that what i'm trying to dig down on is how are these kids shooting up our city on friday and back at the dinner table on monday so consistently or maybe not at the dinner table but out shooting again on monday

No, and I think that's one of the greatest frustrations.

And I think you will hear a speaker that will know much more about the statutes as they relate to DOC. I think they will have probably a better, more meaningful answer. You can hold a kid. A kid can be detained at Long Creek pending hearing. It's just about the criteria that needs to be met. And the juvenile justice system is about least restrictive. So as long as there's an alternative, and I think, again, personally, maybe to a flaw, as long as there's an alternative, an aunt, a cousin, a friend that's responsible, The JCCOs are going to do their best to find a place for them not to be in Long Creek because there is a belief that they don't really get a lot of positive experiences in Long Creek and they are still juveniles. I'm not defending it, but that's I think that's sort of the philosophy. So, no, I don't. There is no rule that says they can't be detained until a hearing. In fact, it does happen. But there are. There are trigger dates, you know, after they are picked up, 48 hours to be seen by a judge. Quite frankly, if a juvenile is detained, there are regular reassessments or we revisit it every 30 days. Next juvenile date, we're looking at it again and saying, did you find a place? Are there some resources that we can put in place while they're out that will be helpful? Someone here mentioned to me ankle bracelets. Or ankle monitors, I should say. We used to use those in Waldo County. They're effective. But you need somebody to pay for them. You need somebody to monitor them. It's usually one of the departments. Typically, it's been the sheriff's departments in places I've been. But that's worth a discussion. The problem is nobody believes pre-commitment. Nobody... in a meaningful place, position. I do believe there are juveniles that belong detained until hearings, absolutely. But I think most people, with some exceptions, believe it's not a good place. We should get them out, get them to a place where they can rehabilitate while they wait for the hearing. Of course, they're innocent at that point. They haven't been adjudicated of anything. And that is what you see. You see them being released, usually with conditions of release, with a JCCO to monitor uh monitor them while they're out that is another thing we i did not address but it goes to this point we need dhhs to step up when people are found incompetent i think we have a horrible system in place to uh to help kids uh just because they're incompetent doesn't mean they should just be thrown back out on the street and dhhs to do should do a better job of working with them And resources generally, we need, whether it be an ankle monitor or some other system in place, those are resource driven. And again, those cost money, but those are the things I think would make people feel safer.

Thank you. I do believe that there is some flawed logic in that. So we want, especially for juveniles for the criminal justice system to be rehabilitative. And that makes sense. But the idea that we're going to avoid. holding these juveniles at all costs and for every possibility. So the, at least myself, I struggle with the idea that, okay, so it's not good for these kids. There's not a lot good happening for them if they're at Long Creek. There's not a lot of good happening in our community when they're released back out to it. And when bullets fly and they don't discriminate against who they hit, I think at some point we have to look at the good of the community over the good of the individual, the good of the many over the good of the individual sometimes. And, you know, I hear you talk about programs and alternatives and options. You know, the carrot and stick approach only works when you have a proper stick. And I think that, you know, so an example like ankle monitors sounds like a great idea, could be expensive. If kids are shooting up our city and they're not being held accountable, For doing so, if they cut off their ankle monitor, they're very expensive ankle monitor. What's the punishment for that? I would argue that shooting at someone is worse than cutting off an ankle monitor. So, if we're not holding kids or juveniles, we're going to have time for general comments later.

Do you have any other questions?

I do have another question. You and the chief spoke about Augusta and legislation and statute. What's the most, can you point out a couple statutes right now that you find make it difficult to prosecute or hold some of these more serious violent offenders? You're talking about the juvenile offenders? Yeah, what could be changed that is in place now that would help you do your job and protect the community a little bit more from your job?

To be clear, it is a system problem. When I was giving those examples, that's the system speaking. You did a very good job of making the argument we make when we're before the judge. Those are the arguments we make, but those aren't necessarily the arguments that win. The statutes, as I said, I'd love for us to revisit the competency statute. I think that's providing a lot of problems right now and I think it makes sense to revisit the language at the very least the requirements the detention so JCCOs are very limited in how they can detain somebody they're very strict criteria on what they can do to hold somebody that Lewiston PD or any other PD picks up at 2 in the morning. And if they don't meet that criteria, they're sent back to the home. Not because the JCCL wants to, but because it's not within the statute for them to hold. So that's something that we should look at. We have the ability to override them, and we do. We do it respectfully. We do it in communications. Our prosecutors regularly will say to law enforcement, we'll override them. Only problem is we only override them until the next hearing 48 hours later, because then it's the same process. And if we haven't checked those boxes, we've made the community safe for the weekend, in our opinion, but we haven't made any long term game. So maybe revisiting what that looks like, maybe restructuring. how a JCCO can give them more flexibility about detaining people initially. It's not just the gun charges. It's a kid out stealing a car and driving it and not stopping for law enforcement. And you pull them over and again, that should be a felony, but if they are released, they're going right back to the home they just snuck out to, to steal the car. So we should look at that statute. I think a lot of statutes need to be looked at, but

And then lastly, real quick, so do these non-competency tags, definitions, or so once a juvenile has had that, that they're not competent, does that follow them for further cases? So is that if, say, it's a crime one deemed not competent, when they come back, if they come back, say, three weeks later on another case, felony level or gun related or or not crime uh i imagine is that the first thing the defense attorney goes to is like this person is not competent is that does that hurt in future charges and future prosecutions i think if they're within the year of that finding it does okay but that's true of the adult system as well by the way so it's not on a case-by-case basis it can stay with that defendant throughout multiple charges

Usually if they have multiple charges pending, if I'm hearing you correctly, we would do it for all of them. They would all be dealt with as a global or as an aggregate sum.

Thank you very much.

Councilor Nagin, back to you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to follow up on the competency piece as well. So just to verify, if a juvenile is deemed to be incompetent, that means they're incompetent to stand trial? or they're incompetent to be held accountable through the criminal system?

They're held incompetent to appear for a hearing, to be part of the hearing.

So a case that's brought forward for somebody who's decided, when somebody has been deemed incompetent, they never actually go through a trial process at all. So there's no alternative sentencing or any of those pieces?

Unless they regain competency. There are things, I think this goes back to DHHS, and again, I'm not the expert, as I should be, because it's not a caseload I regularly carry, but I think they are, in the interim, the judge does have the ability to order some DHHS or involvement that would provide some structure, or treatment maybe. Things that might, so if they're found incompetent, but the the evaluator says these three things might help them regain competency, then a judge can order that they maybe have those treatment options available to them. It doesn't mean they get them, but I think that's something the court might be a question for the court. I think that frustrates them some.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm just very surprised that it actually stops the criminal justice system and then also doesn't force alternative treatment. It pauses it.

I think the language they use is it pauses it.

Thank you. Counselor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is quite disturbing and it seems like that's...

Sorry, D.A. McLean, do you mind turning off your mic while you're not speaking? Okay, thank you.

It appears as though that may be one of our biggest issues that we're running up against. So I would ask, how do we go about trying to get a meeting with the right people to see how we can tweak some of these laws and policies. Again, I don't think this is something that should wait a year or two years. I think this is something that if possible, we get that meeting going right away. So I don't know how we can help as council to make that loud and clear, but I'm pretty much suggesting that loud and clear.

If we can have the audience members refrain from speaking, we're going to have public comment later.

So we in the past, Lewiston PD and my office has met with our delegation in the past. The Lewiston delegation from Augusta and discussed things. I think we did some legislation for guns in school and Jake was a part of that as well. So we've had success doing that so we can meet with the delegation. But what we ultimately need to do is find someone within the legislature that is willing to propose a bill for that change. So I think we typically do it.

Thank you. So that would be my suggestion is that we find someone that is willing to do that if that is our only path forward and get that ball rolling. Because again, that seems like that's a pretty big wall that's holding up a lot of accountability, which is a serious problem. And I really appreciate the statements that you said that accountability to me is a form of caring about someone. Um, if we continue to, um, let these juveniles, um, in my opinion, fall through the cracks because we're not holding them accountable is showing them really that, that, that we don't care. Um, so thank you.

Uh, further questions from the council. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you. We will now hear from our very own Superintendent, Jane Klinglis, if you can please join us.

Let's start by saying thank you to everyone for being here. Being mindful of time, I think community voice is incredibly important. I was looking over my slides as we were listening. So without being repetitive, I've removed a number of things. But if anyone has questions following or down the road, please feel free to reach out to me. But I do want to be mindful of time. I want to start by saying we can't give up on our kids. They are the most proximate to their choices. And we have to remember that There's no place to send people that it just fixes everything. So we have to be mindful. Also that kids influence each other more than you may realize. I know from a school perspective, we hear a lot from kids who have seen something, who have said something. And so it's a powerful tool. We're growing that in our community. We've worked with LPD on it as well. And that research tells us, I've done a lot of looking lately, that success can be found in communities that are facing these kinds of challenges through multi-sector collaboration amongst all of us, everyone in the room, families from parenting all the way up through schools, businesses, and others. I do want to talk about some of the lines that we can draw as a school. And I'll spare the legislation conversation, but whoever gets elected, I have a number of things I'd love to submit for legislation. But just to start with, what lines can a school hold? We became frustrated, the school committee and I, and school leadership, with the fact that there has been a number of tools stripped away from us, but there's... The one tool that remains is that you can take kids through a due process that has intervention layers at school, intervention layers with me, and then ultimately you can take kids to what is considered a quasi-judicial process, which is a disciplinary hearing with the school committee. There's a number of steps involved, but anytime there is a firearm or a serious violent incident that connects to our kids, and I have to think of the kids sitting next to maybe one of your students in math class on Tuesday after being released, we've decided that that's not an option. And so we have taken steps to draw those lines. It's not perfect. I don't think expelling a student fixes everything, but I do think we need to have lines and we'll continue to work through that. When students are expelled from Lewis and public schools, there is an opportunity for a re-entry plan and we have not given up on that investment. And so I wanted to share that. It's nice to say that we draw a line, but it doesn't fix any problems. And so we continue to work with specific re-entry plans with kids that we develop together with them, knowing their full situation. There are volunteer requirements, counseling requirements. Often we do have opportunities for teaching and learning. and share some novel experiences with community partners. And there's still an opportunity for some kids to earn at least a limited amount of credit because we don't want them to just work on self and lose full progress on school because what happens is they'll drop out. And we've just reinvented the same issue likely down the road. But also note that some kids have done something or things that's gotten them to a point where they have work to do before they can even access the reentry plan. So it's not really common knowledge unless you're living it as a student or if maybe you're a school committee member who has held the line. But there are steps to these processes and we do work hard to hold those lines. I also want to share some things that I'm hearing. I had a kid tell me recently who was involved in a firearm incident, which I have a unique role in which I get to talk to them as students and try to figure out what's the next best thing for them. And I'm also the person who makes the decision whether or not they go to a disciplinary hearing. But I do try to build relationships with the kids and really just talk about what's going on in your world and try to navigate and problem solve everything that we can. But I had a kid tell me recently who was involved in a firearm incident that the way he gets guns is he profiles vehicles. he looks for things that are unlocked he's not stealing money he's not anything else just look for a firearm but he said he'll look for trucks and trucks are commonly unlocked and people with trucks are more likely to have guns this kid is 12. 12 years old he told me this so please lock up your firearms don't leave them in your vehicles get them locked up and put away Everyone's posting with the guns. We're seeing this rampantly through schools. It causes a lot of issues, as others have mentioned. And so if everyone's posing with a gun or something that looks like a gun, others want to also look that cool, feel that awesome, have that sense of adequacy. It's a problem. Some of those kids are posing with a pellet gun or a BB gun. And others are posing with 45s, handguns that can take someone's life. Absolutely. I had one kid tell me that he shoots buildings because an adult told him to. And I say, we need to find out who these adults are that are taking advantage of our kids. And I'm talking intentionally taking advantage of our kids, not just any kid, usually kids that have a low cognitive ability who really want to fit in anywhere they can. They're carrying guns and they're carrying out tasks for other people who are asking them to do it. So they feel cool. So they feel awesome. They have no intentions of killing someone, but if they can light up a building at one o'clock in the morning, and people think they're awesome for doing it, they'll do it. We need to continue to track this and solve these problems. I've also had kids tell me they just don't feel safe. We've had kids that we've had to search and take things off of, never firearm in the school, but we do search, and we've done many searches. But oftentimes we find kids with a knife. Why are you carrying a knife at school? It's because I don't feel safe when I'm walking to or from school. And so these are concerns that we just can't allow it. Something that humbled me recently that I want to share with the entire group is an old approach to instead of saying hello or hi, how are you? And I forget where this came from, and I apologize to whoever this originated from. But the greeting was, how are the kids doing? And it made me pause. Imagine if everywhere we went in our community, we said to each other, how are the kids doing? Because if they're not okay, we have a lot of work to do. And if they are okay, then we have to maintain that effort. I'm an educator, so you're going to hear it from me. I do have thoughts. Obviously, ensure healthy relationships exist. Start by talking to the kids. They're the ones most proximate to it. And it's not a ton of kids. I know that I live in a world where there's a lot of stereotypes of those kids, those people. It's not that. It's actually a little more mixed than you think. I'm not making accusations, but a little more mixed than a lot of people think. And it's a relatively small group of kids. And I think we need to build in more sense of adequacy in our community where kids can develop their identity and grow through that. We need to find a way to wrap around supports. As Neil mentioned, we know the high-risk kids who have been involved in numerous, numerous things. And so from Chief and Neil and others that are going to speak tonight, we need to find a way to wrap supports around those kids and do something differently. And then I challenge everyone to take 10 good minutes to get to know a kid that you don't already know, because it's worth it. When you sit and talk with a kid who might be troubled, who might be a great kid, might change your perception of that kid or a specific population that are our neighbors. But 10 good minutes talking with a kid. I learned a lot about a kid who got shot recently. It was a great conversation, but he was there and that happens. I'll take questions. Again, I took some slides out. One thing I'd like to mention before I take any questions, though, the working relationship that we have as a school system with Neil and Lewiston Police Department and our JCCOs is without its flaws. We talk all the time. Whenever we need something, we talk to each other. We communicate. There are limitations and constraints because of rights and whatnot, but we work together all the time.

Thank you very much, Superintendent. I appreciate you being here. Councillor Martel, we're starting with you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Superintendent. What did I write down? I have a question. You know what? I'll hold it for now. Thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate what you do in the schools.

Councillor Chittum.

No questions. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Councillor Noble. Counselor Roy.

One of the questions that I have, are there any incentives for maybe some teachers to build up some pickup sports after school? Can we look into something like that that helps maybe keep kids in a good activity after school?

The easy answer is yes. It does take money and space, but we have afternoon programming that goes well into when community partners have kids in their spaces, and they're keeping kids later in the evening. And so I think the key is getting kids... that need that thing to do in the space where it's already happening i think the city's done a good job committing resources i know we as a school system have continued to seek grants and the school committee has supported after school programming and summer related programming so i think it could always get better um i do look at things like some of our sports teams the numbers are just abysmally low um and and i think that's a maybe a generational thing Like it's way more interesting to make sure your posts are active and you know what's going on with everyone than it is to be on a practice field and be two hours without it. But just another notice to everyone that there'll be no cell phones in the high school next year. That's a law that's been passed and we'd move forward with that. I do think that would be helpful, but I agree. We just got to get kids engaged. And when I talk about sense of adequacy, I really mean it can be almost anything. If you build a birdhouse or a footstool or something and you can bring it home and be like, I did this, that matters. And our kids right now, they're stuck to their phones and they're not doing those things. And so their sense of adequacy is how awesome did someone or how many likes did they have? Or it's so superficial. Like we got to get deeper with our kids. Yeah.

Thank you for that. I actually have that with businesses, maybe sponsoring an internship or a mentorship with some of the stuff that they do within the community. One of the other questions I have is, have we looked into why when we expel youth and all that stuff, are we looking deeper into why youth are going down that hole and maybe trying to figure out how to prevent others from going down that

So the short answer is yes. The long answer is really long. Every kid is an individualized scenario. One thing that I want to really spend more time on, if there are researchers in the room, and I know Bates has been helpful with this kind of conversation, is second generation males, especially, seem to have a different kind of need to please their peers than I've seen before. And so I want to know more about that. But those kids are also role models for their younger siblings. And I want to understand that influence and how that's happening. We are seeing, for better or worse, I've been in administration in Lewis Public Schools since 2012. So in that timeframe, I've spent a lot of time with kids who are now the adults that Neil's mentioning, the young adults and their siblings who are some of them currently in school. So I know a lot about the family dynamics and it all plays in. But I will say this, all the things we can identify for the vast majority of them, we're not feeling what their needs are. From counseling to trauma to adequacy, you name it, there's a lot going on. Test. Can you hear me now? Testing. Test. Can you hear me back there?

All right. A couple more things that I thought about. I'm glad you touched upon Bates College. Maybe, you know, partnering up with Bates College to invest a little bit in the community with the school system to try to build those after-school programs and all that stuff, too. I think that's something that I was thinking about. Let's see. How about peer-to-peer? Peer-to-peer homework help. You know, stuff like that. Because, again, if we... get a lot of our youth engaging with other youth, maybe work habits and healthy boundaries and all that stuff. Maybe that might be a way to go to.

Yeah, all good ideas. Happy to explore those.

Councillor Harriman.

I don't have any questions right now. Thanks.

Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Langless, do we still have truant officers?

So the question was, do we have truancy officers? And so the answer to that question is no, but yes. So we used to have a dedicated person many years ago that this is part of what they did as a job. Now it's morphed to school administrators. Oftentimes we'll go with an SRO to try to contact a kid we've been missing for a while. But truancy is a serious problem. And when I talk about whole community, I don't mean just it takes everybody for that afternoon on the field. I mean the the standards that we hold for each other are incredibly important and kids are watching all the time and so when they feel safe because people are drawing lines they they'll behave that way it's it's it's a really interesting piece at least more so um as it relates to truancy it's just i'm trying to connect the two because if you're not going to school and having a responsible routine for yourself or as a parent making sure your kids get to that space we're missing big pieces of why kids often start misbehaving in school because they feel lost academically. And so that's another piece of community effort. I'd love to see chronic absenteeism and truancy be reduced, but it's gonna take everybody to be like, hey, why aren't you in school? It's not acceptable that you're not. And that's going to take a parent getting up. Right. Like so many of us in this room have kids that have are still growing or grown. And, you know, I'm a superintendent. This morning, my kid was here to do a workout as a summer program. He did not get up the first time I knocked on the door. He did not get up the second time. He got the third time when I ripped the blanket off of him. But that's that's my job. As a dad, right? Because he's going at 7 o'clock for workouts. But that's my job as a dad. And we have a lot of kids that their parents, they don't even know that that's a thing. They don't realize that there's something at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning that their kids should be there for. And they're definitely not getting them up for it. So we've got to do better across the board.

Thank you. So we don't have a truancy officer. We are hopeful that the parents will do a better job. And I'm hopeful, too. And I know how critical that is. But the reality is, is it's not happening. So I think we need a truancy officer to make sure that if a kid is not attending school after so many days, they're the ones knocking on their door like we had years ago. I think that was very useful and very helpful from what I could see. The second question I have is, The small group of individuals that you were saying, you know, are basically the ones committing these gun violence. Are they in school that you know of or are they kids that are not currently going to school? Well, not this summer, but.

I looked over some things. I think I have my data accurate, but I'd have to dig some more. I believe there's been one student that's had anything gun-related in the last two years that was not already expelled from school for other violent acts.

The other thing I would just suggest, and I'd like to ask you if you think it would be helpful, and it seems as though the answer is probably going to be yes, I hope. It seems like when you identify kids that are struggling and you know may go down a path, we need some sort of system to prevent anything further from happening. And I don't mean just an organization that comes up tomorrow and says, oh, I'll be great at it so they can get a ton of money or. But I think we need real professional people, case management people. Once the school identifies the students to step in, I believe that would be really helpful. We can't lose sight of helping these young people. Thank you.

I would agree, just real quickly. If someone called me tomorrow and said, we have this program, what kids do you think should be in it? There's plenty of people in this room that could probably tell you exactly who could benefit from additional supports, but we do need the system and the resources. And from a truancy officer perspective, I want folks to know that we mail a letter to parents and we let them know after 10 absences that your child is truant. and that if you don't send your students to school, you'll be fined up to $250. We have to submit the language to the district attorney's office, who is already 700 cases behind, and to prioritize a truancy case for a $250 fine is not making the priority list. That's not on them. That's just a reality. I just want to share that up front with people.

Councillor Longchamp, did you have something else?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. So what I would just say to that is, we probably just need a truancy officer that can go knock on the door after a few days of making no, uh, you know, having no contact with this kid so that they can see what condition they're living in or what is going on. And then DHS needs to do a better job at helping also. Thank you.

Uh, any further counseling agent, did you have something?

I did. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, um, how many students have been expelled this year?

This year, I think we're approaching 15.

15. And were all the expulsions based on violent acts?

Yeah, yes, all violent acts. But I do want to clarify, too, we've crossed a bridge. So I don't know if the legal team wants to block their ears, but we crossed a bridge as a school system and said, even if the violent act happens outside of school, but it has the opportunity to disrupt the peace and uselessness of the school itself, we are still carrying that forward. We're not waiting for it to happen at school. If it happens, it happened. And we're taking action on that.

Okay, and just as a follow-up on that, what is LPS's responsibility for placement of that child in an educational system once they were expelled from school?

So in statute, you have limited responsibilities. If there's an IEP, you have some instructional obligations. If they do not have an IEP, your responsibility is to have a reentry plan. We go beyond that and provide supports to try to maintain opportunities for volunteering, experiences, learning, counseling, but that's all off-site. They're not allowed on school grounds.

Thank you. And the last question I have just to follow up with all of those pieces is what are the processes in which we as a school system identify at-risk youth and what tools are we using in order to avoid the expulsion, which then, and I'm just going to use this But in most cases, unless there's incredible engagement from the parents of that youth, basically throws that kid away.

So there's this traditional constructs to identify at risk. grades, attendance, skipping tardies, things of that nature. We go beyond that with some of our systems with behavioral analysis, trajectory or projection to graduate or not, and where you're at in that pace. There's a metric for that in our system. But we've also done some things that are not traditional. Our SROs have done some great things in the schools. It's interesting to see in the schools. I know some people have bigger feelings about SROs in a different light, but I watch our SROs get fist bumps and hugs and all kinds of things in our schools, and I think that's an important step that we've taken. We also have been working with community-based organizations who have brought staff into our schools, so kids who have a hotspot moment, they can go see someone. You're going to hear from Duncan, so I'm sure he'll talk about some of the things that he's done in collaboration with with school and kids who are facing or have faced consequences with school and community. So we're looking to fold in as many people as we can and break down the barrier of it's a school, so you can't do that here. We're saying it's a school. How can you help us get in front of some of these situations?

So ultimately you're providing additional resources outside of family and recovery courts, which are clearly are not, either not functioning in this state or not fully functioning.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Superintendent, you mentioned 15 students have been expelled this year. Can you give us a breakdown based on school? Were most of those in the high school or were some in elementary or middle?

It's a great question. So you cannot expel a student who is fifth grade or lower unless it's a gun-related incident. We've had only one expulsion this year that was actually a fifth grader. So for the younger ages, everything else has been middle and high school. And that's really about the constraints. We've had some situations with very young kids that they're not gun-related, but we have experience. I'll say this, if the next session is willing to hear some language around some things we might be able to do as a school system to help mitigate, I have ideas.

Thank you. Further questions from the council? Superintendent, thank you very much for being here. We are now going to hear from the New Beginnings Executive Director, Chris Bicknell. Thank you for joining us, Director Bicknell.

Thank you for inviting me. I was invited here because of my experience and expertise in systems and funding. And so that's primarily what I'm going to talk about. I believe that the responsibility for solving this problem, the financial problem of getting money to resolve this, sits with state and local officials, period. I do know that without significant investment in multiple organizations, different domains that this is not gonna get resolved. And I did hear the mayor say that he has heard clearly from the citizens of Lewiston that he doesn't want municipal dollars being spent. If you don't wanna spend money on this, you're not gonna get a solution. That's just a reality. One contributing factor to the inadequate response is that the city of Lewiston does not have a public health department. This is a public health crisis. This is not a criminal justice crisis. These are children who are living in fear in the community. And they are children. They are not juveniles. When a child witnesses a friend die, they do not respond from a logical place. They do not respond from an adult thinking process. They are developmentally different from adults. They are incapable of making rational decisions about their behavior when they are in fear, period. Whether or not the city hires a public health official to kind of oversee this process is not in my power, but engaging with the main CDC and the Office of Injury and Violence Prevention and the Children's Cabinet are critical for this city to engage with. They have... the capacity to engage in this conversation. To this end, I reached out to the Children's Cabinet. What I heard back from the Children's Cabinet's representative was they don't have discretionary dollars to invest in this. I personally have a problem with that. These are state agencies that do have discretionary dollars that they're choosing to administer in different ways. And so I feel putting pressure on the state departments that have responsibility here, we're talking about the CDC, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Public Safety, those departments have the capacity to make internal changes and assign personnel to different tasks to address this issue. If the Children's Cabinet, in fact, doesn't have any money and it's a dead end, there are pretty much two other courses of action to acquire this money, maybe three. One is the opioid response funds. The state has spent 1.4 million of 3.4 million in opioid response funds. There's plenty of money there. The city has $631,202.18 in unspent opioid response money that can be spent to help resolve this issue. The second option is seeking foundation and corporate support. I don't think that any foundation or corporation would invest in something that this community is not willing to invest in itself. And so you need to get beyond the fact that you don't want to spend money. There's a problem in this community that requires resources, and that means money. The third access is there's something called the JJAG, the Juvenile Justice Advisory Group, and they do have some discretionary grant funding. And I haven't reached out to them personally, but there are folks in the room who are connected, as I am, who will be looking at those dollars and the potential for some of those dollars to be addressing this situation. Those are the three sources of money that I've been able to kind of research and find out there. My recommendation is that this community respond to this as a public health emergency and that it has a public safety component. Like I'm not denying that these children are shooting guns in the street. Like that has to stop. Absolutely has to stop. So there is a public safety component to a public health crisis. And all of the issues and concerns around how do we detain kids or hold kids accountable, I think are all valid. But trying to treat children like adults is not a response that's going to get you the result you're looking for. I think the city should immediately hire a director of public health to begin coordinating this response. The city should immediately approach the Children's Cabinet and the CDC to ask formally for funds and resources. The city should petition the state to release some of their opioid settlement funds, and they should release some of their own opioid settlement funds. I also think that there are community partners who are doing work with these young people in the community that are being effective, but they are doing it with existing resources that they are stretching to meet a grand need in this community. And if those community partners had funding, they could expand the response and go deep into community to help support the families and the siblings and the kids that are suffering here. This is about fear, children in fear. And really, there's someone had mentioned a child and L.A. child and well-being collaborative. That's a really great group. There is a lot of brainpower in that group. That group can create a strategy that the funding that is brought to bear can be used to effectively mitigate this problem. And that's kind of where I sit.

Thank you very much, director. We're going to take questions. We're going to start with Councilor Nagin.

At the moment, I actually don't have any questions, although we're long overdue for a conversation. Thank you.

Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So what I'm hearing from you is that it seems as though there's a funding issue. Correct?

Correct.

Thank you. That's really all.

Councillor Harriman.

Thank you for being here. I guess my question is, in your work with New Beginnings, do you see much overlap between the youth that you serve and the youth who are involved in these activities? Or is it kind of separate groups of people? And do you have any insights as to why the answer might be the way it is?

We see a slight amount of overlap. Our outreach team goes out throughout the city. But the young people who seek services at New Beginnings are not the young people who are involved in these activities. And so I'm one step removed from this. And that's why I'm not offering solutions, because I am not a gun violence expert and I do not primarily work in this area. particular neighborhood or community. And so I don't want to step on other people's toes who are much more deeply connected and understand the problem better than I do.

Thank you.

Councillor Roy. Thank you. I just want to say thank you for putting this together and taking the time to really dig deep and come up with your thoughts. Thank you. Councillor Noble.

My questions were about the program, but he's not here to talk about that. So.

Councillor Chittum.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Bicknell, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate your perspective that more money could help solve the problem. Thank you for your viewpoint.

Councillor Martell.

uh yes thank you mr mayor um i struggle to to square some of some of what you said so we just got done listening to the superintendent explain to us how a 12 year old seems to be using pretty high level logical and deductive reasoning skills figuring out where to best find a gun whether that's in a pickup truck and whether they're unlocked or whatnot. That doesn't necessarily scream to me a juvenile that's incompetent of making competent decisions is what I believe I wrote down what you said, or a child living in fear that seems like a criminal mindset that is reasoned and logic based and results driven. Could you help me square those two things?

Sure. I didn't say that children are not excellent creative problem solvers. I did not say that children who are backed into a corner and have no adult supports can't get their needs met by strategies that don't meet adult expectations. I see every day in my life children who have little to no support structure in their lives, who do the absolute best that they can to solve the problem that they are presented with and can argue me up and down until I am exhausted and can no longer keep up with their circular argument. That does not mean that they are developmentally thinking the way that adults do. The biology of children is very different from the biology of adults. The human brain does not finish developing in a female until age 24 and in a male until 26. At the age of 13 or 14, we are talking about children who are terrified. I don't know if anybody in here has seen a friend of theirs die in the streets before the age of 16. I have. My response was not rational. I was terrified. I had no adults in my life to protect me. I did what I did to protect myself out of fear so I wouldn't be the next one. I luckily survived that. These kids are facing the same thing. They don't know what the fuck's going on. They are doing what they can to keep themselves alive based on visceral reactions to horrible realities in the street.

I appreciate you coming tonight. I fundamentally disagree with everything you said.

Any, and I appreciate your fervor, but if we can refrain from profanity here, that would be great. I'm sorry, I apologize to everyone.

You are good.

Further questions from the council? Director Bricknell, I appreciate your service to our city. Thank you so much, and thank you for being here. We are now bringing up Duncan's Pierre from Restorative Justice Project. Thank you so much for being here, Duncan's.

Good evening, y'all. How you doing? I'm here as a father and as a husband, even though I work for Restorative Justice Project. I'm actually on vacation, you know, spilling the T-shirt and shorts. But I work with these young people in this community every single day. And what I'm seeing is they don't lack for accountability. We live in a society that enforces that. What I'm seeing is a lack of support. As the superintendent mentioned, a lot of these youth are expelled. So if I'm 12 or 13 and I spend the day not in school and my parents are at work, the people who are supposed to be supporting me, what am I supposed to do? I find myself outside with another group of expelled kids. So for me, I saw this coming a few years ago and I thought to myself, how could I intervene? Even though, like I said, you know, I work with youth. I try to go above and beyond what I do just as a private citizen. And I think my call to action to the community would be to anybody who cares enough, because that's not going to be everybody. But if anybody who cares enough to want to come into the community and support these youth, as I mentioned, we're talking about 29 youth, maybe in peripheral like 50. You know, if you took them to McDonald's, sat them down, had a conversation about like, what's your life like? What's going on around you? You know, what are the things that you've seen and how has life impacted you? And for me personally, as my testimony, as a man of faith, there are things that I didn't know as a young child that I had to grow to understand. And it took people to come into my life to help and support me, to get me where I am today. And I'm very grateful for those people. And I'm hoping that as a community, we can have some people, because we don't have money. So we can wait for the money. We can wait for the legislators. That's going to take time. But as of right now, what we can do tomorrow, We can go out on the street and talk to some kids. We can try to take the effort to find out who they are and spend some time with them. Today I was supporting some young people, took them to McDonald's. We were making a bench. There's so many things that we could potentially do within your scope and power of influence. So that's all I got to say. Thank you guys for giving me the time.

Thank you very much, Duncan. We're going to start with Councillor Martell. Do you have questions?

No, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Councillor Chittum.

Thank you, Mr. Pierre. No, I have no questions other than how do I get in touch with you?

We will coordinate that. Councillor Noble.

I don't have any questions at this time.

Councillor Roy.

Councillor Chittum beat me to it.

Councillor Herman, yes.

Thank you for being here. I guess in your experience with the youth you work with, In your experience with the youth that you work with, do you see any... I'm sure there are some common threads of things that they're experiencing. Are there any that you see that we could just, as a community, be aware of, to look for, and possibly support them through whatever challenges they're facing?

What I would say is there's actually not a lack of resources that could help them, but it's a matter of are they engaging in those resources, right? So take an expelled kid who has a reentry plan. how do we get them to engage in that reentry plan that will actually help them get back in school? You know, what are the supports that they need to calm their body, calm their minds, you know, work through and heal through some of the trauma that they experienced so that they can get to the point where, you know, they could go back to school, get an education, do the things that they need to succeed in life. Like we have, we know what they got to do. It's just a matter of helping them to do it. And I don't think this is my personal opinion. I don't think that it lies on the professionals that, I'm grateful for all you guys, but I'm hoping to plead to your humanity as people, not mayor, police commissioner, superintendent. It's your humanity that cares for a 13-year-old who shoots a 14-year-old that says, yo, this ain't right. What can we do to intervene in their lives to help them? And that is supporting them so that they can engage in the counseling and the school and the parenting. Thank you.

Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, thank you for being here. I think it's going to take a lot of, uh, we're going to have to come up with lots of different ways to, um, there's many layers to this and you're absolutely right. Um, I see you almost every day at the store, uh, with a lot of the teenagers, um, that come in that I love dearly, uh, And then I think care about me too. But you're right. It is taking a moment. I will say that it does make a difference. And although we're here to really touch on gun violence, but, you know, a lot of the kids that are committing these crimes, they don't have good mentors. And although we can sit here and say, well, it's not our responsibility. They're not our kids. It is our responsibility. It doesn't take long. I'll share that. I know it makes a difference. And it is a part of. really getting to hopefully solve some of these bigger issues that we're having. So I'm grateful that you spend so much time in the downtown area. I'm grateful that you are a man of humanity and you really care about our youth. And it is a large part of helping solve this problem. So thank you.

Councillor Nagy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for being here. One of the things that you brought up, it resonates completely. The piece that you're talking about with the 13 and the 14-year-old, that was my neighborhood. One of the things that I've heard repetitively, not only it's a question of fear, as Superintendent Langless had said, but it's a question of care. Right. I've heard kids literally saying nobody cares if I carry a gun. Nobody cares where I'm at, what I'm doing at any given time. And so I think you've made a lot of good points. I think the challenge is getting kids to engage in systems that improve their lives, deal with the trauma that they're dealing with, all these other pieces. And unfortunately, we don't have a mandate to make that happen. And so you're right. More people cared. I think it's possible, but there has to be a way to let our kids know in our community that they are our kids and we do care about them.

Further questions from the council? Duncan, thank you so much for being here. We will now be joined by Christine Thibault, who's also bringing a colleague. They're both from the Department of Corrections. If you can please introduce yourself once you're ready.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Christine Thibault. I am the Associate Commissioner for the Department of Corrections Division of Juvenile Services. For those of you that aren't familiar with that branch of the department, we oversee juvenile community corrections, which you've heard about a little this evening, and Long Creek Youth Development Center, which I'm sure you're all familiar with. But the big secret that I like to let out of the bag is that we also invest $4.6 million in the community and many of the programs like mentoring, restorative justice, MST and FFT for the clinicians in the room, things that we're hoping will keep youth out of the system as well. So that's what the division does, but I will allow Jill to introduce herself as well.

Thank you, Christine. My name is Jill O'Brien. I'm the Director of Government Affairs for the Department of Corrections, which means I go to the legislative committee hearings where they're debating the bills that we were talking about. There are bills that the department once passed over the course of the session, and I work with all of the different divisions of corrections to identify what's working, what's not, and coordinate with other agencies. As Christine mentioned, the Department of Corrections is involved through our juvenile community corrections. So juvenile probation is administered by the Department of Corrections in Maine. And we also run Long Creek Youth Development Center, which holds both detained and committed youth. So detained youth are those that are going through the juvenile process, but no determination has been made yet as to whether they committed a juvenile crime or not. And then the committed are those who have been found to have committed the offense, and a judge has a few options. One of them is to commit the juvenile to Long Creek, to the Department of Corrections custody, and usually until a certain age, be it 18, 21, or for six or nine months, whatever period of time the court decides is appropriate. As Christine mentioned, we spent $4.6 million statewide for community programs and over 1.4 million of that for region two, the region that includes Lewiston. And we fight every budget cycle to keep those programs going. It's not a matter of the state having a lot of money that they're just not giving out. The budget is tight there too. And we find this extraordinarily important and Christine has done a lot and the department has done a lot to make sure those programs keep going. we heard about this meeting and we inserted ourselves because we think we're an important part of this process. And I think Christine can clear up. There's some, uh, The juvenile court system is complicated and the determinations the judge makes about competence are based on experts' opinions of competence. So without delving into the specifics of each case, that's hard to do. And legislative changes can be challenging. And there's been a push over the last few years to have detention to be a more difficult thing for a judge to order. And so that's a policy decision that you can all tell your legislators how you feel about it.

So just to give you a little bit of my background, I've been working in Maine's juvenile justice system for 30 years. And I see juvenile justice as an art. And the art of juvenile justice is figuring out that individual kid, much like Superintendent Langless said, each kid comes to us as an individual. Some of the youth we see, I would describe as normative delinquent behavior. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand if you broke the law when you were a teenager, but Statistics say most of us did, and we were fine. Those youth we like to divert. We don't believe they need the courts. We don't believe they need expensive programming to fix problems that may not exist. So we like to divert them with as light a touch as possible, and we rely on our community-based organizations. Secondly, we see kids that aren't really risk of causing problems in the community. big problems, but they have huge needs. And you've heard others this evening talk about the needs, housing, poverty, mental health, substance use, those challenges that we have, that we see in the Department of Corrections. Those youth need a lot of services and support, but at the end of the day, they're not likely to be long-term recidivists. a small number, and I'm pleased to tell you that I think this is a minority of the youth that we see in juvenile justice, are youth who are very high risk youth for reoffending. And that's part of our job is to do assessments and figure out what's the youth before us. Is this a high needs kid? Maybe DHS needs to do more. If there's a risk that that youth is gonna continue to be a, a danger to themselves, as well as all of you, we want to take a different approach and address those risks. And science tells us, and there are programs that tell us what works. And so we're really trying to prioritize what we know works for those high-risk kids. And you've heard it from others before me, mentoring. That is a big one. Engagement requires us to find the right people. Although we may all want to reach out to the kids in Lewiston and help, we know that there are individuals that are younger, that are more in line with their cultural backgrounds, they're going to be more effective. So we spend time trying to find the right kid, the right supports for the right youth in our mentoring programs. Restorative justice. Mr. Piers works for Restorative Justice Project of Maine. We help fund them. We actually have a contract with them to provide restorative justice for all of region two, which includes Lewiston. we have adopted new models of supervising youth. And we supervise, DOC supervise youth from the point of arrest all the way until they leave the juvenile justice system. So if they're on conditions of release, if they're on probation, if they're at Long Creek, that juvenile community corrections officer is the constant most of the time, not always, but most of the time, the constant through that youth's life. So we focus on... JCCOs as coaches, not referees. We want to provide supports. We want to provide incentives. We want to help reduce the risk by increasing strengths and assets. And we also have family-engaged case planning. That's part of the Annie Casey Foundation program that we're working with, juvenile probation transformation, and it relies heavily on family engagement because we recognize that youth will always have their family. They'll always go back to their family, so we need to work with them as a whole unit. Just to give you some numbers, today there are 49 residents of Long Creek. And there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about what happens at Long Creek. And I won't pretend that it's all wonderful, but there are good things that happen at Long Creek. 49 of the residents today, of those, 20 are committed, as Jill said, they are youth who've been adjudicated and sentenced to stay at Long Creek and do a rehabilitative program. and 29 of those youth are detained. And to circle back to a question that was answered earlier, are there limitations on how long a juvenile can be detained at Long Creek? Yes, but it's a very narrow limitation. If a youth is under age 12, which would basically be an 11-year-old who's at Long Creek, that youth can only be detained more than seven days if both the prosecutor and the defense attorney agree. I'm happy to say we do not have any 11 year olds at Long Creek. We do have youth who've been there for a day and then they're released by the courts or sometimes by us. And we have youth who've been there over well over a year. One of the benefits of Long Creek and this kind of ties in the competence issue Even if a youth is in the juvenile process and a competence determination is being made, the judge hasn't decided yet, they're still doing the evaluations, that youth can be detained at Long Creek. Recently, within the past year or so, there has been one youth who is there for a very serious crime who was found not competent, but possibly could become competent. DOC worked with the State Forensic Services, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Behavioral Health, and our clinical providers, WellPath, who do a tremendous amount of work with all the youth there to develop a system for establishing competence for those juveniles And so that juvenile was first found not competent, but possibly could be competent. At the next court date, the court found that that youth was competent as a result of the services that were provided to that resident while at Long Creek. So there is a lot of good being done there as well. Our system is complex and I'm gonna repeat what you've heard several times tonight. We're proud to work with local law enforcement, community programs, the schools, because we recognize this is not a problem that we are gonna solve alone. This is a big community problem. I will defer to Jill about any legislative questions or did you wanna add anything?

Just that certainly not every youth's experience at Long Creek is wonderful. For detained youth, it is a stable environment staffed by people who care tremendously for the youth. It is without a doubt disruptive. By the way the system is set up, youth at Long Creek If they're detained, their home schools are still responsible for their education, so it's remote school. That's disruptive. For committed youth, Long Creek has an accredited school. There are a lot of wonderful things going on there, but certainly it is disruptive and better for people to remain in a home that is supportive. Happy to answer questions I can about the legislative process and the department.

Yes, we will now take questions from councillors. Councillor Nugent.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have a couple of questions about when you're releasing juvenile. It's I guess it's a procedural question, but in many cases, it seems that we release juveniles before they appear before a judge for especially for like, let's say, misdemeanor crimes. If you, for instance, stolen a vehicle, right, which we call joyriding, you don't actually appear before a judge before you're released. Is that is that correct?

It's complicated. So we are subject to all of the laws that are in the juvenile code, the same laws that govern the DA's office. And there are clear statutory guidelines on when a youth can be detained at Long Creek. The first, you need to have a criteria for detention, which means the youth has to have had felony level allegations or they violated the condition of probation or condition release. Or they have a failure of warrant. There are certain criteria that exceptions, but by and large, if a youth commits a misdemeanor level offense and they don't have history in the system, the law does not allow that juvenile to be detained. If it's a felony, then detention is possible.

Thank you very much. Second question would be when a determination of competency or non-competency is found, can that be challenged or is that just accepted as what it is?

The competence determination is made, in my experience, should be made solely by the judge. And often it's with a hearing, not always. Sometimes it's very clear one way or the other, whether the juvenile is or is not competent, but a judge makes a determination on whether the juvenile is competent. If the juvenile is found not competent, and not likely to become competent, the judge has three statutory options. One, the judge could place the juvenile in DHHS custody. Two, they can refer the juvenile to the Department of Health and Human Services for what's essentially voluntary services. So DHHS works with the family to provide whatever they need. or the judge can order nothing. At the end of that decision, between those three choices, the juvenile charge is dismissed. So there's nothing further pending in the court now Could an attorney for either side appeal a competence decision to the Supreme Court? Yes. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any appeal on a juvenile competence determination, but in theory, yes.

And the last question that I have is if we're releasing juveniles that have committed misdemeanors before, well, basically without holding them, do we then determine after we release these juveniles if their home life is stable and supportive and their community situation is such that their likelihood of recidivism is low, or do we not care about juvenile misdemeanor crimes as far as determining those pieces?

We definitely care. So the youth gets referred from law enforcement to DOC and the JCCOs will do an initial meeting with the family, talk about what's going on, asks about strengths and challenges in the home. And if it's a minor offense and the DA approves, we can divert that case and handle it informally. If there appears to be a need for more intervention and perhaps court-ordered services, then the case goes on to court. But every case that comes to the DOC, we do what's called a youth level of service inventory. It's a risk assessment that kind of helps us identify which youth are doing okay, don't really need a lot of intervention, and those that need more.

Thank you so very much for all that. Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. Could you remind me of that dollar value, the amount of money that is going out to organizations? Can you remind me of that four point million that's going out to organizations?

Yes, Counselor. Statewide, $4.6 million in fiscal year 2026, and for Region 2, it was $1.4 million.

And what organizations is that being given to?

There's approximately 10.

May I have the names?

New Beginnings, we support New Beginnings Shelter, Tree Street, Spurwink, Maine Behavioral Health, Restorative Justice Project, the statewide regional care teams, Preble Street, etc.,

Was that 10?

We have a few others. That you can't share? No, I'm happy to keep going. Please. Youth Advocate Program, Tree Street, Journey.do, Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, several community programs.

Thank you. How do you track the success coming from those programs? Do you and how do you?

So we certainly, Christine, would you like to?

Yeah. So we have a fabulous contract manager who keeps reports. She requires monthly reports from all of those organizations on the number of youth they've served, a program like MST, multisystemic therapy. We don't necessarily get into the details of what that was about, but that whether the youth and the family engaged in the services or whether they were closed out prematurely for some reason, we keep that kind of data. All of the programs do have to provide some documentation of how they're using the funds that we allocate to them. So sometimes we ask for receipts and documentation on spending.

Thank you. I know there are a large number of folks that disagree or would rather not see Long Creek exist. I think Long Creek is very important. I did a lot of volunteering there. And I think it's very important to have a safe place for juveniles to go when they have committed crimes. So I hope Long Creek plans to stay for a long time. I think it's very needed. I did have one more question. But I can't remember.

We can come back to you, Councilor. Councilor Hammond.

Thank you both for being here. Counselor Najeen touched on this a little bit, but when you make the decision to release someone, release a juvenile to their family, you mentioned that that family engagement is important. What happens if the family, for whatever reason, whether it's lack of resources or whatever reason it is, they're not really able to support that juvenile in the way they need? What sorts of options are there then?

So one of our contracts is with two separate agencies, the Opportunity Alliance and WINGS. They cover different parts of the state and they have high fidelity wraparound programs. That is a system that's designed for exactly those youth to help identify natural supports in the community, support parents as best they can, but supplement where the parents are not able to do all that they need. Mentoring programs, we have the youth advocate program. And even though they are very, very caring and they do a great job, they are struggling with staffing. To echo another concern that you've heard several times, their staffing is difficult for them to retain and keep long term. But those kinds of things we do, we recognize that not all parents have the resources that the kids need.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Roy.

Thank you. One of the questions I hope that you might be able to answer is what is the approach if you have a youth that goes before you and you let go for doing a crime and then they come back within a month or maybe even a week or two? Is there an approach that you follow? Because we heard earlier that we're having repeat youth out there and it just, they keep, the youth keep getting let back into the city. So...

So every youth who is arrested by law enforcement and detained at Long Creek appears before a judge within 48 business hours. That judge can decide whether to release the youth at court on that day, and sometimes they do. The judge may order that the youth be detained at Long Creek, but allow the JCCO the discretion to release that youth once services are in place. or the judge can order that the youth be held with no right to release, meaning only a judge can now release that youth from Long Creek. So if the JCCO happens to have that discretion, usually what happens is we have a team meeting where we pull together attorneys and JCCO, if there's a community case manager, The expectation is that within five days of that original detention that the JCCOs have pulled together the supports for that youth and everybody comes together to make a release plan. So is it perfect? Absolutely not. But we certainly do look at all of the factors and the risks of reoffending. I had a psychologist tell me once the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So we look at, you know, the history and the domains, not just what's happening on the streets of Lewiston, but what's happening in the school, what's happening in the home. What are the support resources? So it's not a knee jerk. We're going to release this youth and hope for the best there. It's a very thoughtful decision making process.

Thank you for that. So going into that, what are the rehabilitation services that you have at Long Creek to help prevent patterns?

So thank you for this opportunity to debunk some myths. So as Jill mentioned, youth are there either on a detained status or on a committed status. Youth who are detained have not yet been adjudicated. They are presumed innocent. They have due process rights. We don't dive into the behaviors that they've been alleged to commit. What we do provide to youth who are there in detained status is clinical support. Pardon me. Clinical support. We have on-site and on-call clinical behavior specialists. We have a psychiatric nurse practitioner, doctors, doctors. dentists, all of those services that help stabilize the youth in that environment, we provide to the detained youth. So if they're having a mental health crisis or engaging in self-harm, we respond to that. We have an excellent team of WellPath clinicians that respond to that immediately. Once the youth is adjudicated and if they are committed to Long Creek, we do 30 days of assessments on education needs. Oh, let me back up. Detained youth, as Jill said, they remain the responsibility of the homeschooled. But the home school can choose to have them attend classes at our internal school, AR Gould, and award credits. And most of the time, that's what the schools will do, just because it is less disruptive than sending in independent teachers. So for the detained kids, they get education, they get stabilization, mental health stabilization, medical needs. They get to be part of all of the activities that are going on in the facility. They're not precluded from having visitors or engaging. And we had a fun summer fun day last week. They get to participate in all of that stuff. The only thing they don't get is an exploration of what led to that criminal conduct. That happens exclusively with youth who are committed after they've been adjudicated and after there's been an assessment. We have sexual behavior treatment, if that's part of the issue. Substance use treatment is almost universal, not always, but the youth who are detained do get substance use education as well. They get some of that work. Certainly anger management, we have a tool called the SAVRIS that assesses risk of violence. And depending on how the youth comes out on that assessment, we do different types of intervention around helping to prevent future violence, self-regulation skills, trauma work, all of the things you've heard about. But But that, again, is a very thoughtful and well-informed process. It takes about 30 days to really gather psychological testing, education testing, IEPs, if they have them, from schools. So there's a lot that happens there. You don't read about that in the paper, but there is a lot happening there.

Thank you for that. And two really quick questions. One, what happens if they don't participate? Is there fallback or is there like away repercussions? Thank you.

Well, certainly we can't force a youth to do something they don't want to do, but we try to incentivize them. So we have level systems. We have, you know, the higher you are on the level, the more privileges you get. We have an earned living unit for those youth that are really engaging. They get to wear jeans and they get to walk through the halls unescorted and they get a lot they get more off-grounds privileges and do more activities so yeah we can't you know any of you have had teenagers try and force them to do anything but you can incentivize and and we do as best as we can to incentivize teenagers and then my last question would be um in your experience when do behaviors become patterns In my experience in speaking with many forensic psychologists over my career, what I believe, and I'm not a psychologist, is that there are indicators that a youth is going to be what they call life course persistent. And some of those are perhaps the most predictive is very early onset of violence. I'm talking, and I've seen this in my, prior to coming to DOC, a youth who was, six years old and choking out another girl at the daycare with her necklace. That kind of behavior, which is not normative and is very early onset, tends to be a predictor of a youth who's probably going to continue to be disruptive into adulthood. And this is why getting a history and an accurate history is so important to us is You've heard someone else say, I think it was Mr. Bicknell or one of the others, teenagers do stupid things. And sometimes those stupid things result in consequences they didn't intend that are very bad. But when you look at that youth, you have a different lens of this is probably not going to be a life course persistent offender. We need to help them deal with what they've done and accountability might be apologizing. Restorative justice is a form of accountability, but it's a different approach than those that we can identify, again, with the assistance of psychologists and experts in that area of those youth that are going to be problems into adulthood.

Thank you. Councillor Noble.

I heard you talk about the wraparound services, FFT and MST. How long does it take for those services to be put in place for the support of the family?

It depends. So right now, the state of Maine, the Department of Behavioral Health Services has a system that has just been in place as of February. Some of you may have heard about a federal Department of Justice action against the state. And as a result of that settlement agreement, The Department of Health and Human Services is required to do what's called a single assessment for any youth that needs that level of care. They need to first get an assessment by Accenture. A center determines whether they're eligible for MST, FFT, those kinds of services. And if so, then the services are paid for by MaineCare. If the youth is not covered by MaineCare, DOC provides funding that we will pay the cost of those services for non-covered youth. That's much quicker than having to go through that process. Thank you. I think on, and I have heard, again, that it varies from region to region on availability of those services. I think in what I would call the rim counties, Oxford County, Waldo, Washington County, some of those counties, I think the services are less accessible.

Councillor Chittum.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I'd like to say that I wish there were not a need for the Department of Corrections at all. I wish that you were both out of jobs. I bet you do too. The most important thing I've heard you say tonight is this $4.6 million state community programming. That applies before the situation. Most of what we've heard about from many speakers tonight, yourselves included, happens after the fact. And the goal here is to prevent the activity, the gunfire, the violence in the first place. So I'm encouraged to hear about this $4.6 million. My question to you is, is this a legislative budget that is given to you? Is it 4.6 year after year? Is there hope for growth of that? I want, obviously, more of that money to come to the organizations in Lewiston to address the problem that we're gathered here tonight to address gun violence by youth in Lewiston. That's my question. Is there a chance of getting more money to come to Lewiston to address this? Thank you.

Thank you for the question, Counselor. We absolutely advocate for more than this every year. We put into our budget what we would like to see. It doesn't always make it into the final budget that's presented to the legislature. And then what the legislature decides is never as much as an agency asks for. So I would encourage you all to reach out to your legislators and tell them how important community programs are.

Just to follow up on that, could you offline give me the account number, the accounting, the specific asks to go to our legislators with? You have my email address. You can get that to me afterwards.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Councillor Martel.

Thank you, Ms. Mayor, and thank you guys for being here tonight. So just in my own personal experience, I remember growing up and being a teenager. It seemed like there was much more punitive behavior punishment, accountability for crimes and poor behaviors. It seems at some point there was a shift made to, I hear you use terms like restorative justice and moving towards trying to keep juveniles at all costs for any reason out of Long Creek or being detained. When did that transition or when did this movement towards this type of, I don't know, adjudication or dealing with juvenile crime, when did that shift happen and how long have we been trying to operate under that plan or that path or that strategy?

I'm going to try to answer this as best I can. I think some of you that were around in the early 90s remember the super predator scare and that there was actually a researcher who said that youth in that period of time were without a conscience, without a soul. They were just awful, and we were going to have a bloodbath in 10 or 15 years when those youth grew up. And even though that's what the data said, that's not what happened. And what we've actually seen is a sharp, inconsistent decline in juvenile crime in the community. In my experience, punishment and accountability are terms that often people ascribe their own meaning to. Accountability doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean nothing happens. In my experience, if you have a youth who has harmed their neighbor and you say to that, and the judge says to that youth, you're gonna do four days at Long Creek Youth Development Center. Or you're going to sit down with that neighbor and apologize to them, and you're going to do something to repair the harm that you've done. I can't think of a single juvenile that will pick the restorative justice. They will pick the easy way out. So I think if you think about accountability in terms of helping the youth grow from their mistake, that doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean the kids like it. but it means we are giving them tools to grow from that mistake, not simply imposing a discomfort that doesn't get us where we want to be, which is a reduction in that behavior. So in my experience, accountability is oftentimes more painful for youth if it's restorative, if it's talking about behaviors. Show me a teenager that wants to sit down and talk about their sexual behaviors. as a condition of probation for an offense they might have occurred. They will take a month, a year at Long Creek rather than do that treatment. But that's accountability is you harm someone by this behavior. Here's what we're going to do to make sure that doesn't happen again or at least reduce the likelihood of it.

Thank you for that. My question, though, was when did the shift in approach start and roughly how long has that been?

So I've been in juvenile justice for 30-ish years, and I would say that it has been a good 20 years since we learned more about adolescent development, more about, as Mr. Bicknell said, about brain development. And so I would say that the switch from a punitive model to a more holistic model was probably 20 to 25 years ago.

And you're suggesting that there's been a stark drop in juvenile crime since that's been the approach?

I'm not suggesting it. The data clearly shows it.

It just feels like the situation that we're dealing with, at least here locally, doesn't seem to reflect that. And that's kind of the square I'm trying to circle. That's all. I'm not questioning your data or what you're saying. I'm just trying to make sense of it. It seems like we've got a juvenile shooting once a week, if not more often. in Lewiston, and Councillor Trittum stated, or at least pointed out that this seems to be more serious in Lewiston rather than other cities, so maybe there's other reasons for that, but when I'm reading the news each day, it doesn't particularly feel like we're seeing less juvenile violent crime. That's all. Thank you.

I will say the data does support your assertion that there is more gun violence and it is certainly not unique. to Lewiston, but it is more common in Lewiston. And I won't even venture a guess as to why Lewiston as opposed to other communities. But I do think one thing that has changed tremendously in my time in the system is that the availability of weapons. And you've heard that from others as well. I think guns were less available to youth 25 years ago than they are today.

Thank you both for being here. If I heard you right, there's approximately 50 youth at Long Creek at this moment?

49, yes.

Yeah, okay, 49. And then the breakdown by county, is that proportional by population or is one county have proportionally more? Are you able to share that?

I do keep that data, but I don't have it at the top of my head. I will say that there are fewer detentions when you get into Region 3, which is essentially the top seven counties. And I suspect that's because law enforcement, unlike having county jails where law enforcement can bring someone they've arrested to the county jail, If a youth is arrested in Caribou, they've got to be brought to South Portland. That, I think, is a natural deterrent for law enforcement to call and request that a youth be detained, unless they really, really need to be detained. So it is less, the data, it's not proportionate per county by any means, but I will say that Augusta South is probably the bigger two-thirds of the, at least two-thirds, if not 75% of the population.

Understood. Thank you. Further questions? Yes, Councillor Longchamps, did you have something?

Thank you, Mayor. I would just like to thank you ladies again for coming here and contacting us to be a part of this meeting. It's definitely not an easy meeting. I believe in Long Creek, I think you need to continue doing what you're doing. And thank you.

Further questions from Council? Thank you both for being here. Yes, a huge round of applause for all of our presenters, please. We will now take comments from counselors. Counselors, I am not timing you, but if you could keep it to three minutes, that'd be great for general remarks. We're going to start with the counselor for Ward 1, Josh Naging. Counselor Naging.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So first and foremost, I want to thank everybody for coming tonight. I'd like to also say that the availability of guns in our community that youth have is a major problem. That is... uh, one tier, uh, of the issue. Um, if kids don't have guns, which they shouldn't have guns ever have guns, then they can't commit crimes with guns. So, uh, we need to figure out an angle there. I would also say that there are huge gaps in, uh, supports for at risk children before they become, uh,

children who are shooting at children.

And unfortunately, these are kids. They're 100% kids, but they're committing adult crimes. And that's very challenging for this community. People don't feel safe. Kids don't feel safe. We've got a problem there, a huge problem. And we don't have the financially to fix this. So we do need to work together to ask for more financial resources to deal with some of these things. And there are systemic issues with all of these pieces. When you're not compelled to improve the life of a child because they haven't committed a crime big enough, we're literally letting those children die just continue a path that leads to danger for themselves and others. And it's just not correct. But I appreciate everybody coming forward today to present. I still have a lot of questions about how we make sure that we both keep kids and our community safe because there are glaring gaps in that system. Thank you. Carl.

Chancellor Longchamp. Carl, is the public going to get a chance to speak tonight?

Yes, yes. We're moving quickly towards that. If you can take your seat.

Could you also give us a break, maybe a five-minute break? I think Carl could use it.

You could take a break right now, sir, and we will get back to public comment. We will get to public comment in a little bit. Thank you. Please take a seat. Thank you. Councillor Longchamp.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We've heard a lot tonight, but I'm not sure that we've heard of anything that will really immediately help us with the current situation. We're experiencing gun violence almost daily. It once was really... More so happening at night, now it's happening in the broad daylight. You heard our chief say that we are 11 officers down. Everyone is understaffed. In my opinion, and no one's going to like to hear this, or not no one, but there will be some people that are not fans of this, but I believe this is a call for our National Guard to come and help us. I would, I'm hoping that Governor Mills will sit with our law enforcement, our DA's office to really come up with a plan. We need a deterrent out there and our officers need to focus on violent crimes. This to me really calls for state help. Again, There's really no real target when these young folks are shooting. They're shooting at cars, apartment buildings. There are families living in the downtown that don't have the financials to move like some of us that are sitting in this room. They are stuck there. A lot of people are poor. There are families that are staying in the back of their apartments to protect their families from a stray bullet. That's unacceptable. We have to do something. And the National Guard could come and help walk around our streets and let our police work on other crimes. We are 11 officers down. We need to do something to help protect the citizens here. So I am hoping that Governor Mills would take what I'm asking into serious consideration and help us here in Lewiston. That's all I have for now. Thank you.

Councillor Harmon.

I just want to thank everyone who came out tonight, both to present and answer questions and those in the audience. I definitely learned a lot about this topic and I look forward to continuing to work on solutions.

Councillor Roy. I just want to thank everybody that came out to offer up some great insight into some backgrounds. I would really like to hear what everybody else has to say right now, because I think together we can gain some ideas. I know I've got some ideas to work on some community, you know, resources and programs and incentives, and I'd like to hear what everybody else says. So I'm going to pass that.

Councilor Noble. Councilor Chittum.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. There's been a lot of discussion tonight. I hope that the folks in the audience have learned as much as I have about some of the intractable problems that we're facing. I think the most concrete suggestion that I heard tonight, and I would urge everyone in this room to take it home and spread it, is to lock up your guns. Do not leave your guns on the front seat of your pickup truck so that a 12-year-old can be told by an 11-year-old, there's easy pickings. That's your fault if your gun is stolen. And I'd like to see some consequences for people who have guns stolen from unlocked vehicles or people who have their guns in their vehicles anyway. That's the most concrete item that I picked up from tonight. And I hope all of you have learned something. Thank you.

Councillor Martell.

Thank you. I want to speak on guns too. Here's the thing, every juvenile that's going around in our community carrying a gun or shooting a gun is already breaking a law. Any adult that has put a gun in the hands of a juvenile broke a law doing so. More gun laws only serve to disarm law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves. The people that are running around breaking these laws right now, are comfortable breaking the laws that are in place. I see no indication that new or furthering laws are going to change that. The only people that new laws affect are law-abiding citizens, and I think it's clear that the people committing these crimes aren't, by definition, law-abiding citizens. Everyone wants to say a lot of times I hear it's not political. Kids shooting kids shouldn't be political. This shouldn't be political. This is a political issue. The problem that we have This problem didn't happen overnight and isn't going to be solved overnight. And there's a certain ideological, political slant that I believe has fostered the environment that created this situation and allowed it to worsen. So two things. Almost universally, our speakers tonight said legislature, Augusta, laws, representatives coming from the state. So as far as the public goes, two suggestions. There's probably two things that the normal JQ public can do. that's see something, say something, and then get out and vote in November for candidates to go to Augusta to represent us that are going to take public safety. I'm not campaigning. Go out and vote for people that are going to take public safety seriously. That's what you can do as a public.

I appreciate everyone coming tonight. Thank you for the presenters and making time this evening. Thank you for you all making time this evening to come here and thank you for I don't know how many people aren't watching online, but thank you very much. Public safety is the shared responsibility and these conversations are important. There's many conversations happening at this time and I am encouraged by it and I hope more people get involved. Thank you all. And I want to thank the councillors as well. And a huge shout out to staff for making it possible to meet here, both city staff and school staff. So a couple of things for public comment here. So first off, if there are some of the presenters, if they're still here afterwards, you can feel free to come up to them and ask questions after public comment. And then Jake, sorry, Superintendent Langless, are those note cards? Yes, so we have, if you have questions for the presenters, we are going to compile questions and then, you know, kind of publish an FAQ later, so next to Superintendent Langless are note cards with pens, so feel free to come and fill out one. And so, yes, we're starting public comment in just a few seconds. So I want to remind people that this is a city council meeting. There will be no campaigning, no profanity. This is a special meeting. So we need to be on topic about youth gun violence. I urge all of us to be respectful and courteous and a good example for our youth. Please continue, sir.

I guess I have to push the button again. Yeah. Charles Arthur sold 70 Horton Street, 12 offices down. One is on medical leave, but yet they're using a drone. They bought the drone and the insurance on that drone will be $85,000 a year. Wow. I think that would get us a couple of offices, maybe one or two. Another thing is that the cameras, I was out two nights ago, because I'm 73, by the way. I took a nap, and I was out a nice night, full moon, and I'm on the corner of Horton and Ash, and a ruckus breaks out. Eight people fighting in the street under a camera, city camera. So I flipped my vehicle lights, hoping to get the attention of who's ever watching the camera. But then after 20 minutes and a girl getting her head beat up on the asphalt, I had to go make a phone call. And then they showed up. How nice. Maybe nobody's watching the cameras. Maybe it's because of the laxity of no policing. But you can spend on a drone. Another thing is that no money. The superintendent of school going on almost three years ago bought a million dollar building at the corner of Sabatis and Main Street because the roof blew off. And CMMC, I guess, was selling it for a million dollars. Now the city's now, and it was used for radiation treatment. So now the city's got to do the cleanup on it. And then prior to that, because I'm 73, there used to be a retreading plant for tires in there.

Can you please get back on topic? Excuse me? Please stay on topic.

I am on topic. That is a million dollars that could have went into policing. The school budget's a disgrace. Now, about people, civiltry. Not seeing too many police officers out on the streets when people are passing on the left and the right, speeding up the street, hear it all night, squealing out around corners. The society, I look at it, is almost useless in Lewiston. Now, the only bright star I saw tonight was a counselor from Ward 2, Ms. Longchamp. When she first came into the neighborhood in the city, she had children who, let's face it, they were hungry. That's time. Thank you. That is time.

You are done. Thank you. We're going to the next person.

Good.

We are going to the next person.

I would also ban Facebook if you would.

Yeah, let Jeff have a turn. Thank you. No, I'm gone.

Further public comment. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jess. I live in Lewiston. I'm feeling very frustrated because I've heard the kids, the kids, the kids probably about like 50 times tonight. But where are the parents? I don't see any of the parents here of these kids. I don't see any of us going into these neighborhoods, walking around and trying to invite some of these people in so that way we can kind of ask them what's up. You know, why can't we start a little committee to go into Kennedy Park? you know, have like trust activities. We play kickball, you know, frisbee, disc frisbee. You know, you get an extra five points if you get it in off a tree. When these kids, you know, and that doesn't cost anything. We can get Play It Against Sports or some of these other people to donate kickballs, basketballs. If there's someone in here who knows how to skateboard, we'll bring these kids over to the skate park and teach them how to skate. But we need to get the parents more involved, and we need to hold them accountable. Personally, my whole entire life, I've had to be held accountable for more than I should have had to be accountable for. I'm a new beginnings kid. Look at me. I'm doing okay. I'm not out shooting people up when I'm 16. But as a community, we all need together, come together and come to a board and just kind of bounce some ideas. It's not going to hurt. What's the one thing that connects all of us? Music. I personally would like to go out into the park and play music and bring these kids in and teach them a skill. You know, youth-built programs need to be brought back. You know, where they're in the classroom one week and on a job site another week. And then they get paid a little stipend. So it's like a little bit of cash in their pocket. But you know what? They're being taught a skill and they're being taught education. And I don't know where the funding went for that. But I mean, we need to bring it back and we need to get the parents more involved. Because tonight I've only heard the word parents maybe used five or six times. So, you know, it really, really, really has to do with the parents because they need to step up. They need to be here for their kids. You know, these kids are not coming from a good background. They don't have any role models. Like, what are they going to do? They don't know how to do any of this that we were talking about. They need their parents. They need a role model. They need a big sister, like a big brother club. You know, like there's so many solutions that we can do where it's not going to cost any money. So that's all I have to say. Thank you very much for everybody coming.

Thank you. That's time.

Have a good night.

Hey, guys. Janet Bowden, Ward 2. We finally got an emergency meeting tonight. I'm not going to hold back my feelings. I don't think this is because Carl woke up and decided to lead because residents, this is actually because residents and a counselor pushed hard enough that he had no choice. A month ago, we had a community meeting and Carl didn't show. He actually said he never planned on attending because there was a Republican gubernatorial candidate and a conservative news outlet that organized the event when he wouldn't step up. So he picked politics over people, and since then, downtown hasn't gotten any safer. It's gotten worse. The month of June alone has resulted in 11 incidents involving juveniles with guns. We can all see that this isn't just bad luck or a handful of incidents. We've got a youth justice system that is broken. Juveniles get released, they end up back on the streets, and we have to experience the next gun-related incident. Restorative justice alone is not working. We need higher accountability for juveniles caught with firearms. We need to stop pretending this cycle is going to fix itself. Carl refuses to own the problem, refuses to engage in the community when we ask him to, and then acts like this meeting is the solution. It's not. I have personally reached out to you through text, through Facebook Messenger, through social media, asking you for what your plan is. What are you doing? How are you helping the community in this tragedy? And you have completely ignored me. So let's talk about solutions. Solutions start in Augusta. City Hall can respond after the fact, but the laws that shape youth accountability and public safety come from the state. If we keep sending the same people from the same political party back to Augusta with the same power, absolutely nothing is going to change. This fall, just vote for different representatives. Real change in leadership, real accountability, because Lewiston can't afford another term of wait and see, and let's look the other way. Thank you.

Further public comment.

Before I start, I just want to say, Carl, I don't think a lot of people realize that this was an official city council meeting, and that's why there was applause for the presenters. People were trying to show appreciation and respect. Um, I think maybe you could have made an announcement at the beginning that even though we're not in city council chambers, the same expectations apply. But I don't think people were intentionally breaking your rules. That wasn't supposed to be part of my time. That was just feedback to Carl. This has been a long and exasperating evening, especially since, like Janet said, a bunch of us did this already. You just refused to attend. You lied about what it was. Your lie is in writing that it was some sort of candidate event, and it wasn't. So, yeah, we listened to a lot of that. And in the beginning, it was great. And then we listened to a lot of people patting themselves on the back for not solving this problem. I'm absolutely mind blown that a teenager can shoot up an apartment building, go to Long Creek, and nobody says shooting that apartment building was wrong. Nobody addresses that with them. What? No wonder they get out and do it again. This is insane. This meeting was supposed to be about solving this issue, but it has absolutely devolved into turning the shooters into the victims. Oh, these poor kids. We need to give these poor kids more activities. You know what? That man over there that you tell to go away, that you won't let speak, spends time in Kennedy Park. Zero of you have been down in Kennedy Park talking to the kids. He has. He was shooting basketball with kids. He was inviting the community to this meeting. He was asking people for solutions. He spoke to a man who wants to do exactly what Mike Roy suggested and wants to organize teams of kids to play sports. Why can't you connect with your community? Why does it take a man from Scarborough that you want to lie and say is just a blogger to connect with the youth in your community about shootings? We heard from Chris Bicknell that more money would solve this problem, and then we heard that he's getting lots of money. And just so everyone in this room knows, he also got mass shooting money. Zero of the nonprofits that got mass shooting money did anything to address this problem. Iman Osman's nonprofit got mass shooting money. Iman Osman left a gun in his car unlocked. Iman Osman was not charged with criminal negligence. Iman Osman was not held accountable by the school committee. Iman Osman was then put on the ballot illegally and put on this city council. You guys are intentionally destroying Lewiston, and we see it. Scott is the only one on that council that has power to change it, and I think he has zero intention. I think that because he ignored my email when I sent him a screenshot of his email to a constituent from last September where he said he was diligently working on this issue, and I said, really, how? What are you diligently doing, please? He is my representative in Augusta. He will not speak to me. He does not deserve that seat. I would like people to know that there are candidates on the ballot that are in this room. Please vote for that. That's time. Thank you. That's time. Thank you. I'm just going to repeat it until they hear me.

That's time. Thank you.

That's time.

There's no campaigning. Thank you. Further public comment. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Destiny. I'm from Wyndham. I'm not from Lewiston. I'm a Lewiston shooting survivor. Like many people in this community, the leucine shooting on October 25th, 2023 changed my life forever. 18 innocent people lost their lives. Many others were injured and survivors and families continued to carry the trauma every day. After everything this community endured, many residents expected our leaders to focus first and foremost on public safety and accountability. Instead, we have watched Mayor Carl Scheline devote significant time and energy to opposing federal immigration enforcement efforts and supporting policies that many residents believe make cooperation with federal authorities more difficult. The lessons from the Lewiston shooting should have pushed all of us to focus relentlessly on public safety, communication between agencies and preventing other tragedies from happening again. Many residents feel the city leadership has focused more attention on political issues than on the concerns of the people who live here every day. This should not be about politics or political parties. It's about priorities. Mayor, what are you waiting for? Another tragedy like the one caused by Robert Card on October 25th. Questions still remain about your role as a board member of the Maine mill and whether the relationship created a conflict of interest after $65,521.79 was directed to the nonprofit. Lewiston deserves leadership that puts the safety in residence. First listens to survivors and families and focuses on rebuilding trust in a community. We owe that to the 18 people who never came out, who never came home and to every survivor whose life changed forever on October 25th, 2023.

Thank you for the public comment.

Hi, my name is Dottie Parham Whittier, and I'm a Lewiston Ward 2 resident. And I'm here tonight because I love Lewiston young people. And I want to thank everybody that came out tonight, and I feel that Lewiston should be really proud of itself, that there are officials and professionals from the state and local community who want to do something to help young people. I've been a longtime youth advocate, and I've been reading a lot lately about juvenile gun violence. And I found an approach, and maybe LPD is aware of this, it's called violence interruption, and it reduces juvenile gun violence by meaningfully engaging with a small number of individuals at the center of gun violence. And that caught my attention because we've repeatedly heard that the youth that are involved in gun violence tend to be a small group, so we know who they are. And I'm not an expert on this subject by any means, and I don't mean to use this as any excuse, but anger, fighting, and violence within our youth often come from a place of trauma, pain, no hope, frustration, fear, and no support systems. I believe their actions deserve consequences and accountability. But I also believe that we need to remember that these young people are in trouble and they're living a downward spiral. I would propose, along with that violence interruption approach, to seek guidance and do some brainstorming from school counselors, mental health professionals, some of the officers involved in community policing, and see if we can put together some sort of street outreach that can meet these kids where they are, some type of mentorship connection. I've mentored a young person for 26 years. I started when she was nine. And it's very rewarding. And I know that there are people in this room that love our youth and would be willing to go along with certain guidelines and guidance to reach out and really meet these kids where they are. I really strongly feel that if they see that we believe in their potential, some of them might consider something other than violence and become role models for those around them. And certainly we all need someone who believes in us. Thank you.

My name is Amy Ranger, and I am in Ward 7, and I teach at Lewiston High School. And a lot of people have mentioned tonight where the parents, and I'm coming from the perspective of having had a student who was involved in one of these acts of violence, knowing him personally, the people I'm thinking of, he doesn't have parents. So the conversation about holding parents accountable, I'm thinking about this kid who I know is a good, caring, young, young kid who made a very, very, very bad choice but has no guidance at all. So I'm really in support of a lot of the conversations around helping kids find an activity or something that would get them connected to the community. And I'm thinking about this kid and the barriers to him getting help. Like he, he wanted to be in sports. I was trying to help him get in sports. He didn't have a physical, he hadn't had a physical, he didn't have health insurance. I'm calling his caregiver. It wasn't his parent. It was, there was so many barriers and he didn't end up getting involved in sports. And then So I'm thinking about if there's a way that anyone here can be supportive of teachers at Lewiston, have conversations with teachers because they're the ones that are directly in connection with these kids. Thank you so much.

Matthew Egren, Ward 4. Let's start this off and be perfectly honest. Teenagers have done dumb things since the beginning of time, and they're going to continue to do them. But we also need our parents and guardians to be the adult role models And yet not be afraid that because they're going to be this adult role model, that they're going to have DHS called on them because they're being hard on these kids. Because I listen, where has been DHS Office of Child Family Services in supporting these kids and families? We know the sad truth is when these kids edge out of the system, there is no support from the state. Then I have a real good question. How many of these guns that have been taken off the street were acquired here locally within our community, not just stolen, but bought by somebody versus how many of them are from away? And then have the ones who weren't stolen, but bought and given away, have they been charged with crimes? Our kids need people to believe in them, care in them, because when you support them, they know there's somebody out there who cares about what they do, and they'll want to continue this, continue your support. I know this because I've done it for multiple kids and young adults. I just got a kid to go back to college after she's been out of college for two years because she needed someone to believe in her that she could do it. Now, instead of returning these young offenders to their same stomping grounds, their same friends, their same everything, have we looked at using the kinship logic and shipping them to family members, maybe outside of their exact community? Maybe that will allow them to change their trajectory in life. But part of the other problem these kids are seeing is they're seeing the long-term effects of the lack of enforcement, be it in drug dealing and prostitution here in Lewiston, and the lack of what I will call the broken window crimes, so that they see that there's no response, no punishment. Why should we change? Finally, Long Creek is not a happy place where our kids get sent. We used to have a lawn in Goodwill Hinkley. among others, that used to run along the very same lines. The kids that went there earned their way up and out of the system by accountability. These kids will tell you it was never a nice place.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Joel Burian, and I live in Lewiston, and Susan is my councilperson. Can you see what I can do? Press the button. How's that? That better?

Just lean in when you talk.

Okay. Coming into this meeting, I knew that it would probably be very difficult to talk. Any type of violence issue that you deal with is very difficult for anybody, community as well as the victims, as well as others. I've had the privilege of working with a number of trauma victims in my role as a social worker, not only here, but in two other states, including suicide, as well as violence toward others, including gun violence. What I hear tonight is a number of good ideas from a number of dedicated people. And I think there's some solutions here. I know that the district attorney has talked about some of his needs. The police chief has talked about her needs as well as other people on the city council. I think one of the things is that if we're focusing in on maybe the youth violence issue, one thing is to make sure that the people that have a stake in this, especially the people that are involved in doing these things day to day, have not only the resources but also the ability to work together. An idea might be that when we have kids that commit these crimes or are involved in it, there is a mechanism to bring community together to say, this is what we need, this is what we need to make sure we're protecting the people in the community but also making sure. I think a strong kind of a wraparound model that was described earlier by the Department of Corrections might be an option. being able to do that. The other thing is that coming together as a group in the community to talk about issues relating to what's needed, it's better to work it together and then you approach the attorney, I'm sorry, you approach the legislature, whoever you want to get funding for as a group, as a community, to say this is what we can use in Lewiston. And maybe addressing this issue right now might allow other things to happen to improve what needs to happen. But I think there's a lot of good people here. It's just like coming together and saying, you know, as a group, we're going to do it together. So that's just my point. And thank you so much for having this meeting tonight. Thank you.

I'm too short. Can you hear me? Okay. My name is Melissa Dunn. I'm a community organizer in Lewiston. I've been doing anti-violence efforts since 2018 or even prior than that, doing peace marches, vigils, trying to go to ground zero where incidents of violence happened in community to offer community response, get people connected to resources. That work continued even two or three summers ago when we started having shootings, and we went to ground zeros. We knocked on doors. We talked to neighbors. We talked to impacted families. We even talked to youth who had bullets in their bodies. since then. And so there's been extensive conversations, especially restorative justice processes and restorative practices for impacted community, especially the youth who may have witnessed this kind of violence or became a target because they share the same name as somebody within this violence and feared for their lives. And out of our discussions for a community program, the mothers and the youth came up with an after school program to be that more design specific to their cultural needs. And so I would ask community to trust in community to lead their own issues, especially around prevention and awareness. It's a fallacy and it's inaccurate information, misinformation, disinformation to say that nothing has been done about anti violence efforts in Lewiston. now gun violence has always existed in lewiston when i was a teenager i was beat with a handgun from the guy that i was with at the time broken nose concussions and that was in teen dating violence i experienced being trafficked and i know as a 45 year old woman uh that uh and experiencing more gun violence and domestic violence that domestic violence is interconnected to gun violence and so i'd ask people to check biases when we're talking about or referring to kids who are in survival as gangs or gang activity or that the assumption they must be involved in drugs because um because of my close work and i'm not going to share details here I know that they're more so having access to these weapons for survival and it should tell the community something. And what we're feeling in if if you feel they have no other choice for safety, if they're resorting to firearms for safety or survival and the police, we want to believe that they're going to save us, but they're not. They don't answer the call. They're not there. It's community our connections with one another. Thank you.

Ronnie Parity, Ward 6. I just wanted to bring up, and I know the City Council has heard me several times, that was mentioned about public health. You did not pass the public health person that we wanted this year. And it's really disappointing because we really need a public health officer in Lewiston. If we're not using a public health because of money, we need to seek a grant. We're not using a public health committee the way it should be used. We should be using the committee that it comes at least twice a year to counsel. We need meetings on public health. And gun violence is a public health problem. I worked downtown Lewiston as a public health nurse from 2005 to 2015. I never had any problems working down in Lewiston. And I've been in every single apartment house in downtown Lewiston, believe me. And I grew up in downtown Lewiston when it was really nice. But anyway, we need public health and we need it. We need to get our committees from the seniors to the thing. We are not using our advisory committees the way they should be used. Please do something about public health. We need that. Look for a grant. and everything like that. I know you heard me before. You'll hear me again at city council meetings. I'm pushing for public health and it really needs to be in this city. Thank you.

Hi there, my name is Gail Belanger Sylvester. I was born in Lewiston. I graduated from Lewiston High School in 1985. I left Maine for a long time, then came back to Lewiston to be near my parents. I was at the door handing out flyers. The flyer title is the best gun control ever. I'm inviting all of you if you weren't if you didn't get my flyer there on the table. I'm inviting all of you to a meet and greet at nutty netties on July 25 130 to two o'clock will be a meet and greet and two o'clock will be the first meeting of a new organization called do you l a And there are three initial goals. One is to plan free workshops for parents and their children, two-hour workshops to be held in different locations around the city, wherever we can do them, at businesses, at adult education, in the schools, at the libraries, in the park. Wherever, whoever will help will host a meeting. So I'm looking for volunteers, whatever your interest is. You can teach a two-hour workshop. It can be about sports, a sports clinic. It can be about in the arts, something with art, music, business. It can be any topic. We need to get our kids involved. interested in their own lives. We need them to have interests, and we need to make it possible for them to pursue their goals. The second objective is to establish a write-in, a drop-in, excuse me, writing center and resource center for adults. Also at the workshops, I forgot to say that that's for the parents and the kids. The kids will be doing the activities and the adults will be having education about how they can further their children's interests. to establish a writing drop-in and resource center where kids can come and do art and write and where parents can pick up equipment, paper, whatever they need for their kids to do at home. The third initiative is Adopt a Child Program. Partners will seek sponsors for children interested in lessons.

That's time. Thank you.

Thank you. Please come and please pick up a brochure.

Thank you. That's time for the public comment.

My name is Troy, and I'm in Ward 4. I want to kind of take a different angle just a little bit. I wanted to reach out to whoever's watching this online. And if you have any friends that aren't here, get people more involved. It'd be nice to have more people show up, some different faces to come in here, maybe some different opinions. Also, to kind of get back on topic, I would fully support bringing in a three-letter agency of any letter combination you want to do. ICE, FBI, ATF, DEA, whatever. Bring those people in here and clean house. Get these people out of here. The other thing is... Sorry, I lost track of where I was going with that. Oh, yes, excuse me. So the thing that really ticks me off the most about the gun stuff currently is that we've been very fortunate so far that this hasn't killed anybody in this room. It hasn't killed... I think one person has died. Sorry, I don't have those stats on me. I think one person has died, and that's it. I know some people have been hit, haven't died, whatever. So far... None of us have died, but there's a good chance it could come. And the thing that ticks me off the most is that I'm a two-way guy and I've done everything by the book my whole life. I've paid all my bills. I've obeyed the law. I pay my taxes. I mow my lawn. I bring my trash out. I have a nice place. I do all the right things. And some jerk is going to make me change my some jerk is going to change my life that i never wanted to do because they decided that they had a different objective and they were going to insert themselves into my future and i don't want that for me and i don't want that for anybody else that protects themselves that they have to then defend themselves and now they are screwed forever because you don't just get to protect yourself and go on your merry way it's not how it works so that's what fries my ass have a nice day further public comment good evening my name is rick la chapelle

I am angry that we have reached this point. Before we can fix these problems, we must be honest about how we got here. We must have the courage to acknowledge where we have failed. Parents, we all have a responsibility to raise our children with respect, discipline, and accountability. Our young people need guidance, expectations, and consequences. To our city council and the mayor, you have failed to lead on three serious issues facing Lewiston. Rather than confronting them, you have repeatedly refused to address them. Youth violence, the needle epidemic, and the handling of funds intended for the victims of the Lewiston tragedy have demanded action, yet too often they have been met with silence or delay. The people of Lewiston deserve leaders who will face difficult issues head-on instead of pushing them aside. I want to thank Brett Martell and Susan Longchamps for showing leadership on the issue of youth violence. We need more people willing to step forward and confront the difficult problems. our state legislative delegations. All four representatives and our senator also bear responsibilities. Lewiston deserves stronger advocacy and real action from Augusta. I've only noticed one of them here this evening. If this meeting is truly about finding solutions, we need honest conversations, real accountability, and leaders who are committed to making Lewiston better, not just talking about it, but doing the hard work to make it happen. Remember, leadership means confronting difficult problems, not avoiding them. Thank you.

Further public comment?

Hello, my name is Brandy Walts and I'm from Ward 4. I've learned so much here tonight. This is my first city council meeting, so I am very encouraged to be able to know that there are people in the community that care about important subjects. I'm really here because I heard National Guard and in the comments I hear ICE. And what would we do to prepare for The companies, the local businesses that run Lewiston and have for years and years that have the very signs up that don't want them there. The people that feel like they have been racially profiled. Our kids and our neighbors who might not look like the kid that came from the perfect mom and dad's family and may go in certain parts of the city that might seem that they're in there for the wrong reasons. to basically make sure they feel safe as well. The people, the kids that, we know the bad taste that ICE and National Guard and really a lot of people in uniform put in the citizens' heart now, especially the young people. They've seen a lot on TV. Just on Facebook alone, the amount of negative, disgusting comments that are made And hearing how hard that these people in these positions are working, knowing that the Lewiston Police Department is down 11 and one on medical leave. You don't know that being a Facebook warrior going around and following the biggest news and to really get involved and to hear what these people are doing and the time they're taking away from their families to be able to ensure that stuff is moving forward. My hats go off to Long Creek and everybody else that's doing the work. I'm sure there's common ground. But if you're going to be having people in the city that's going to be trying to help bring ordinance and it very well may be needed where we are so short staffed in the agencies. But what can we do to help welcome them? with the people that aren't the bad people, that aren't making bad choices to make them feel safe and want them in their neighborhoods, in their schools, around their schools. I couldn't imagine going outside on Lisbon Street and seeing National Guards walking up and down. That alone is scary to a lot of people. So what will we do to ease the minds of the people that we're trying to protect without, you know, I know a lot of you know what I'm talking about, and I know a lot of you won't say anything, so I'm here today to say something. If we can do it with a way that we can trust the people in uniform, I think it's a great idea. But if we're coming in hot-headed and get them out of here and those people, that's not going to solve anything. In fact, I might put a sign on my door.

That's time. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Wendy McPike. I'm a taxpayer in Lewiston. This has been a very helpful evening. I really appreciate all the people that have come and shared different perspectives, different insight of different things that they've experienced that they know, the research, things about Long Creek I didn't know, things about the school and what they're doing. I really appreciate all of that. It's helpful. And also the resources that are here. And one of the things that my husband and I talk about a lot is there are a lot of people in Lewiston and a lot of organizations and agencies, nonprofits doing a lot in Lewiston. And I'm hopeful that this... meeting that they're going to be having at Nutty Nitties there, as I say that right, that they're going to have some of those people come to that meeting to discuss what they're doing, where some gaps might be, who can fill those gaps within those organizations and within those communities, because these kids were talking about are the future of our country, the future of our town, the future of this city. So it's important that we don't just dismiss them and that we try to look for ways to help them and show them that we give a crap because they're here. They're our future. They're going to be taking care of us someday. So we need to show that we care and in a way that's meaningful. And if it means more funding, everybody's short-staffed everywhere. It's an issue. And there seems to be some tangible things that we can do and just paying attention, saying hello, not continuing the divide that was talked about earlier today, that we come together as a community and stop pointing the fingers and try to figure out how to help these youth that are our future. So that was kind of my thing. I had something else, but I didn't write it down. So anyway, that's it.

Last call for public comment.

My name is Robert Glaspie. I live in Ward six. At this point, I'm just kind of hoping I'm not one of those people or them. Hoping I'm not mistaken as One of those or one of them. I hear that a lot. Seen it a lot on Facebook. Kind of feel like that's where part of this problem lies. It's a matter of culture. I haven't been here too long in Lewiston. As a matter of fact, today I'm breaking one of my cardinal rules, which is if I haven't prepared something to speak, I don't speak. But today I kind of felt compelled to speak. Because I had more hope. coming here today than I am leaving with hope. Not hope less, but I have less hope. I've listened to some of the questions being asked, which we probably could have found out on Google. We have AGs here who are working tirelessly to protect us. We have other people here who work for other agencies. And we have no idea what it takes to do their job. We don't know where their funding streams are. We don't know that they're understaffed. And what everyone is met with is the one thing I didn't come here for, which is political debauchery. Both sides. I don't care who you are. I don't care what ward you're from. It's them or us. When I moved here, I saw I closed on my house hours around the shooting. And all I saw was Lewiston Strong all over the place. Blue everywhere. I felt included in that. I don't know. I kind of feel like it's a little bit more divisive now than anything else. And that's everyone's problem. That's all of your problems who represent us. And it's everybody else's problem who's sitting here. I haven't heard anything productive today. I've heard a lot of blaming, a lot of finger pointing. But nothing that's going to lead to results. I haven't heard a lot of good questions. How are we going to fund it? There were definitely a couple of questions about funding streams that could point us in the right direction. But I've seen counselors sitting up here listening to people who are killing themselves to do this work, who have sat there and rolled their eyes and snickered. It's disrespectful and distasteful. And it's not a good representation of your award. Whoever it was, you know who it is. Anyway, I hope that this becomes a little bit more productive down the road. I hope that there's a lot more cooperation. I hope there's a lot more generating of good ideas and collaboration. But from what I've seen tonight, I haven't seen it from anyone. So good luck.

Further public comment?

Good evening. Can you hear me? Thank you. My name is Fatuma Hussein. I actually live in Auburn, but I work in Lewiston for the last 24 years. So I spend more time in Lewiston than in my city. One thing that I want to say is, first of all, the mass shooting funding, that should be fixed. It really needs to be fixed, and it needs to go to the right people. So that's one thing. I am Somali. I'm a Somali descent. We too are victims of crime. We too are victims of gun violence. We have a lot of kids. I know that's the elephant in the room, right? Like we talk about this gun violence that is in circles, but it's actually about Somalis. And I just want to say, you know, right there and then so that people are aware of what we're talking about. A lot of Somali people are good. We are taxpayers. We have made Lewiston a thriving place. We have had a lot of issues along the way. A lot of us are women and children. We do not have know many head of households that are men we don't have a lot of role models and therefore um you know accountability i think is one of the things that we need to do i think if we have gun problems back in 2006 we predicted i predicted we have a lot of um you know um sorry drug problems and At the time, what I said was, if we don't do anything about drugs, we will have a lot of gun problems. And if we don't do anything about gun problems, we will have bombs. And that, I'm going to say it on the record, because where we're headed is not good. It is not good that we have leaders who are not getting along. It is not good that we are pointing at each other's fingers. We're not coming up with solutions. We know that the issue is big. We also know that we have children who are vulnerable. They don't have the services that they need, and if they do, it's limited. We have a lot of trauma. We come from war-torn countries, and that is also problematic. I am talking to you as a mother of eight children. I have four boys and four girls, and I've worked tirelessly to ensure that my kids have the best school, education, and support at home. It was not easy, but it was really something that I had to do. a lot of somali mothers are not the same we don't speak english we have a lot of issues and therefore what we need to do is come up with a solution that is community driven i think there's got to be some leadership changes too because if leaders are not getting along they need to leave and we need to have the right people who are going to make changes and so lewis is still strong it is always going to be strong we need to work together and mayor i applaud you for you to have a committee that can look at this that has no bipartisan issue. I know.

Thank you. Thank you. Last call for public comment.

Wow. I'm just going to try to summarize some of the things I've heard tonight. You just have your name and where you live, sir. Oh, I'm sorry. Gene Keen, Ward 1. um just want to summarize some of the things unfortunately we're at a point where it comes to money a little bit and you people are responsible for that the state's responsible for it that's where we're at secondly and jake will probably verify this as well this meeting reminds me of parents student conferences at schools i'm a 40-year educator taught math phys ed athletic director, part-time assistant principal. And what we find when we have parent-teacher conferences is that the parents that should be there don't come. They don't come. And I don't think the people that need to hear what was said here tonight are here tonight. The people that are here tonight are the same ones that go to the teacher conferences. So somehow as a council, you need to find a way to reach those people. Other things like gun owner responsibility, legislation and so forth. Those are all issues. The number one issue in my eyes is lack of parenting. When they come out of the womb, you got to start parenting. If you wait, it's too late. You got to manage social media. You got to check their rooms. It's your house, not theirs. I'd like to end with two stories from my career that had an impact on me. At one of the schools I was at, when a student disobeyed the drug and alcohol policy. It was a 365 day penalty. We had the kid that did that. He came in with his parents. We discussed it. The parents, okay, we agree with it. Six months later, they came in. They had put their son through all kinds of rehabilitation stuff and so forth. We let the kid back in because they parented. Second story, we wanted to suspend the kid because he got in trouble. Parents went to bat for the kid and got him out of it. Six months later, he went to college, killed himself. Parent came back to me two weeks after that.

That's time, thank you.

Parent came back to me two weeks after that and said he should have listened.

That's time, thank you.

Thank you for all you do.

Last call for public comment.

Andrew Jones, Ward 2. We heard a lot of comments tonight about restorative justice. And I'm not saying I disagree with restorative justice. I just think it has its place for certain things. Restorative justice would be great for, you know, like broken windows or somebody playing mailbox baseball. But when we're talking about sailing rounds through downtown and potentially putting people's lives in danger, I think we're way past the point of restorative justice and we really need to involve the criminal prosecution of these youths. Another thing I had heard from the chief was that there isn't a possibility of charging parents for the crimes committed for their youths. And I would love to know more about that because, I mean, right here in Lewiston, the stepfather of Jasper Smith is facing a manslaughter charge because Jasper got a hold of his handgun and accidentally shot himself. Yeah. He's in peril of losing his freedom. And that's right here in Lewiston, Maine. Across the nation, states are picking up the ability to hold parents accountable for when their children do things with firearms, like shoot up schools. You know, there's a man in Georgia who has gone away for the rest of his life, charged with murder, even though it was his son who used a firearm to murder his classmates. Another topic I just wanted to touch on is There's a lot of talk about looking for taxpayer money to fund various nonprofits to do a lot of work. And I would just say that if this council were to be in the position to fund such things that they scrutinize them, I would hate to see a repeat of the mass shooting money and how that was used. A member of this council for a day was a recipient of that money. He is... He had a firearm stolen out of his vehicle, didn't get charged for that. And he's also under indictment for trafficking of firearms, which I think contributes to this problem in our city. Lastly, another thing that the chief touched on when asked was what is the commonality? Why is Lewiston such a hotspot for this particular crime? And I would question the demographic of the individuals responsible. Granted, I'm not in the downtown. I don't see this stuff happening myself. You know, I live in the suburbs. We don't have this problem. But we saw the video on Jefferson Street. And while we do not know the background of that child, we do know what he looked like. And I would question if there's a commonality between him and the other people responsible. And that's three, two, one. Have a nice night.

Any further public comments? Public comment is now closed. Back to the council for any final thoughts. If councillors have them, we're starting on the other end this time. Councillor Martell, is there anything you'd like to say as we're wrapping up?

Nope. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Councillor Chittum.

Merely thank you to all of you who presented, all of you who spoke, all of you who listened. I think there were first steps taken tonight. Long way to go. Thank you very much.

Councillor Noble.

Councillor Roy. Just want to say thank you to everybody. And yeah, thank you for coming out and listening and offering up your thoughts.

Councillor Harmon. Same for me. Thank you to everyone who's here. Councillor Longchamps.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, thank you for coming out. We have heard a lot about different resources for our youth, some solutions. We've heard that we need a lot of lots of money. But one thing that we really haven't talked about, and I won't talk long about this, but what are we doing or what is our plan to protect the people that have nothing to do with this youth gun violence? where the stray bullets are hitting their houses or their cars. That's why I called for the National Guard to come here, not to intimidate people, but to help people. We are 11 officers down. And there is maybe a handful of people that are in because I scanned the room and I'm in downtown every single day, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And there was maybe a handful of people in this room from downtown. I hear scared parents, grandmothers that will only run to the store quickly because they're afraid of a stray bullet hitting them. It is our responsibility to help. We are 11 officers down. By golly, we need some sort of help. And I will continue to say it and I will continue to show up. And I love Lewiston. And I love every single person in here, black, white. I don't care who you are or what you are. And most people, everybody that knows me knows that that's true. But we have to do something. There are people that are living in fear every day in the downtown area. Because the reality is, is you never know if you're going to the damn laundromat if you're going to get hit with a bullet. My mother won't even leave her house. She lives on the corner of Horton and Pine Street, except for to go to a church function.

Thank you, Councillor Longchamp. Councillor Nugent.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd just like to say to all the folks that came out tonight, thank you. Everybody watching at home, I hope you've learned some things. Everybody who works in these fields, thank you so very much for your time and coming to speak to us. And just to point out, the room was filled with the folks that show up at parent-student meetings. This was... on some levels, a meeting for the suburbs. And so the question is, how do we bring this message to the people who are actually impacted by the violence every day? And so I think those places are where we have to have some of these conversations. Thank you.

I really appreciate everyone coming out. Thank you for speaking. Thank you for tuning in. You know, in this room, many different viewpoints and philosophies are represented, but I truly believe that all of us here are coming from a good place and we love Lewiston. So I appreciate you turning out tonight. Thank you so much. And a huge round of applause again for our presenters. May I have a motion? Yeah, we already did an official council meeting, so may I have a motion to adjourn? Second by Councillor Nagy. Madam Clerk. What? Okay. We're now adjourned. You all have a wonderful evening.