Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee - Regular Meeting

I call to order the Toledo City Council Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Committee meeting. Clerk, please call the roll.

Hobbs? Here. Williams? Here. Hartman? Here. McPherson? Morris? Sorrento? Here. Four present?

Thank you. I want to, first of all, start off by saying thank you, to everyone that has come out in our as our weather is changing. I'm especially thankful for our president of council, councilwoman Hartman being here. Thank you, miss Julie, for being here. Thank you to my vice chair for being here and to, councilman Sorantu.

I'm very thankful to our honored guests that are here, judge Coleman, miss Folgiano, miss Renee. Thank you. And to our chiefs and deputy chiefs and our, mister Dale Imps is here. And so I'm just thankful. I think I see mister Cunningham in the back.

Director Cunningham, thank you. And so thank you all for being here today. I I I I did struggle with canceling. Text miss Julie and I was struggling with canceling. But with such an honored guest, and this is so important, I figured if she could weather it all the way where she's from, we could weather it here.

So what I want to do is if councilwoman Williams wants to make a comment before we start, and then I'm going to have miss Renee start first because she wants to, try to get to Detroit, so she can get back home safely, and we want her to arrive safely. So thank you. Consulwam, you have anything? Alright. Thank you. Miss Renee, the floor is yours. I am anxiously awaiting.

Thank you so much. My name is Renee Dancer. I'm here with the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School. And my position there is Associate Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships. And I'm here today to talk about the Community Diversion Program and the evaluation that we're doing with the Toledo Municipal Court to evaluate the effectiveness of the diversion program. Just give me one second, I mistakenly closed out of my notes.

Okay.

So I'm gonna give you a little bit of an overview of the program itself. I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about the evaluation we're doing and then leave some time for questions and comments of course. Excuse me. The diversion program has been in place for a number of years. I think we heard that today at the press conference.

And in the life of the program we've had about seventeen fifty two males referred. Seventy one percent of the males were black. And for eight fifty one females referred, sixty six percent of them were black. So this program really is hoping to target a marginalized community that is being perhaps overrepresented in our criminal justice system. The top three charges referred are obstructing official business, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

But that's only the top three. There are 67 different charges that have been referred to this program in the past. And all seven judges at the Toledo Municipal Court are referring. And I just want to give you a little background on what the program entails, right? The diversion program is intended to address decision making and procedural justice.

And so individuals who are referred to the diversion program attend a three and a half hour class that hopes to address issues of or focuses on issues of procedural justice but really focuses also on decision making and analyzing how to manage situations with law enforcement in the future in a better way. But the second kind of core piece of this program really is deliberate and direct referrals to community service programs to address some of the underlying issues that might actually be the true root cause of some of the persistent re offending for these low level offenses. And so that brings me to eligibility for this program. Eligibility for this program is really directed at persistent low level offenders. So we're not looking at crimes that are very serious, but what we are looking at are people who are continuously charged with similarly low level offenses over and over again.

And so we think that maybe some of the reason for continuously having those charges might be some other underlying social justice needs and issues. And so this program is really designed to first provide an educational component to address any issues about how to navigate stressful situations like when one might be faced with law enforcement. But then also to really give supports to individuals to try to help them with some of their other social justice needs. Last year we totaled 185 individuals in the program that averaged about 15 a month. And similarly to the kind of life of the program statistics, we had more males than females in the program and 77% of the entire population was black.

As compared to 2020, we averaged 28 participants in a month referred to the program. And if you remember 2020, which I'm sure many of you do, we weren't referring in the months of February to August for reasons we all know. And so but we still averaged quite a high referral rate. And then prior to that, we were referring at a rate of about 50 people a month. So for this study, we're hoping to enroll about 1,200 people total into the study.

And so we really are hoping to kind of bump our current average up a bit to make sure we hit that enrollment number. But that is already occurring. So Judge Coleman and Lisa made great efforts at the end of last year to really collaboratively work with the prosecutors, the public defenders, all of the judges, all of the court staff to remind them and refresh their recollection about the program. And kind of why you might want to refer someone to the program and who is eligible for the program. And just from those kind of collaborative conversations, we saw an uptick in referrals which we're really happy about.

So let me tell you a little bit about the evaluation. This program is unique. We know that so what we know from prior research is that most all of the prior research deals with that deals diversion programs and that it employs a rigorous research design really only focused on diversion programs that address first time offenders. And so often first time offenders are just not going to offend again with or without an intervention. And so that research showed had results that would suggest that the programs didn't make any outsized difference one way or the other.

But this program is unique, right? This program is unique because it's addressing a different population. It's addressing repeat offenders. And we're also looking at things more than beyond just court case outcomes. So we are going to look at court case outcomes.

We do want to know if people are continuing to re offend. But we also want to know if this deliberate connection to community based resources is making a difference in people's lives as well. And so to do that, we're gonna look housing stability and employment stability. Because these are two particular items that people who have attended the program in the past are really asking for resources about. So there are plenty of other things they ask for resources about, but these are kind of two biggest things.

And so we want to know that makes this program unique and then this evaluation unique as well that we're looking at more life outcomes than just community or excuse me than just criminal justice outcomes. The evaluation itself employs a randomized control trial which is the gold standard of rigorous evidence. In a randomized control trial you're able to come out of the research having causation and assigning causation. Which means you're able to say for sure that this diversion program is why you are seeing the results that you're seeing whatever they may be. Randomized control trial means that we will randomly sort individuals who are referred into one of two groups in this case.

Of course one will be referral to the diversion program and one will be the other alternate condition will be referral to community service requirement. So the community service requirement is designed to look very similar to the requirements of the diversion program in the sense that individuals individuals still still have have the the same time commitment. They must complete a similar three hours of community service. We'll help them get scheduled and signed up to complete that service. They'll have the same amount of time to complete it.

They'll have this if they do complete it, they'll have the same result in their case which is a dismissal. And if they don't complete it, they'll still be asked to they'll still be required to come back to court and have their case disposed in whatever way the judge believes is appropriate. And that's all the same thing that you'll see in the diversion program. The difference between those two conditions, right, is that the community service completion of community service is providing anyone with any kind of guidance on how to manage difficult situations. It's not focused on procedural justice.

We're not giving folks coping skills and coping mechanisms. And perhaps most importantly we are not deliberately connecting them to the other community based resources that you all have developed here within the city of Toledo, right? And that could happen kind of random or ad hoc but it's not a deliberate connection. And so that's kind of the outline of what the study looks reflect on the program itself, this program really is designed to address the issue of how do we handle repeat offenders who we wouldn't are just not appropriate for a probation or a jail sentence. These are not high level offenses.

They're low level offenses. We wouldn't expect them to have probation or jail terms. But they are coming back over and over again. And so this is a program that is designed to address that. We want to evaluate is it doing that? And we did talk about the little bit of evidence. So excuse me. Here is our kind of this is our hypothesis, hypothesis, this this is is our our headline. If persistent low level offenders are participating in the diversion program, we think recidivism will decrease. So we think they will offend less.

And we think housing and employment stability will increase. We think recidivism will decrease because of the educational component that comes with the diversion program. We think housing and employment stability will increase because of the direct and deliberate connection to the community based resources that you all have developed within the city of Toledo. Our study population are the same folks that are eligible for the diversion program today. We have changed nothing about that to just to accommodate the study.

We want to study your program as it is today. So that means individuals that are eligible are repeat low level offenders so they it can't be their first offense. We know from prior research that that probably isn't making much of a difference. Who typically would receive no jail or probation sentence. So specifically we are not like pulling people out of jail that you otherwise would be putting in jail, right?

That's not what's happening in this program. They're referred by the prosecutor to the diversion program which is the protocol as it stands now. But what's really happening in the courtroom right is that the prosecutor and defense counsel kind of are collaborating on that decision, identifying the right people and letting the judge know that this person is really ready and appropriate to participate in this program. And then the person must be also willing to plead no contest which again is what's happening today in that diversion program. So I wanna give you just a brief and high level overview of what the randomized control trial looks like.

We have spent a lot of time, especially while I've been here these last three days, working with every stakeholder: our prosecutor's office, our public defender's office, the court staff, the judges, the clerks have all participated and collaborated on developing kind of the internal process. I will spare you the details of what it will look like in the courtroom. But I just want you to know that there is not an office within this court operation that hasn't weighed in and offered their guidance and suggestions. And that hasn't done that with they've all been gracious. There has not been one office that has been you know obstreperous or unwilling to participate.

And every we were able to take guidance from each office. And so I just want you to know that because it's very important to know how collaborative this project has been. Basically what will happen is very similar to what's already happening with one additional step kind of in the middle. And so once we know that the prosecutor and the public defender have collaborated and identified an individual or a group of individuals that are appropriate for this program, we will have an on-site study staff. We've already hired this person, a local Toledoan, who will be in the courthouse every day to discuss the study with the individual who's been identified.

Discussing the study means telling them everything they should expect to happen while they're participating in this study. So we'll tell them what's gonna she will tell them like what will happen in the courtroom. She will make sure they know that participation means that they will be randomly sorted. Which means she doesn't know what group they'll go into until she presses a button and they won't know until they have agreed to participate. And random and she'll let them know the differences between each of the two groups, what that means.

And then also what data we plan to collect and for how long. And more importantly and I think most importantly, this discussion also makes sure the person knows that it is voluntary to participate. They can say no. It will have no effect on their case. We will not have hurt feelings.

And they can also say yes today and think about it and come back to us later and say no, I don't want to participate. And we will honor that as well. After they somebody consents or when somebody consents if they do to participate, we'll do a little bit of paperwork and then we'll do the random assignment. And that means they'll either then be scheduled for communities or they'll either be put into the community service group or the diversion program group. We've kind of worked out together how we think all of that will occur.

The Diversion Program Group already has a really well established process. So we're developing the process for getting folks into community service. Again, I won't spare I'll spare you the details but we're working it out. And then we'll collect data on all of those folks. So I am going to skip through this just because it is mostly the detailed study process that I promised to spare you details on.

And just get you to talking about what data we're gonna collect and for how long. So our primary outcomes are whether or not the diversion program reduced recidivism. And we think that the diversion program will reduce recidivism again because of that educational component. And then the second outcomes, the second set of primary outcomes are whether the connection to community based resources was enough to improve housing and employment stability. And again, that's the second component of the diversion program.

Here's how we plan to collect that data. For decreased recidivism, we're going we've already begun working with the CJCC Norris to look at arrest data and criminal history data. And so for decreased recidivism, we are looking future arrests. Any arrests in our follow-up period. And we will count the arrests and we think that the folks in the diversion program will have less arrests in that follow-up period than folks in the community service condition.

And again we think that because of that educational component to the diversion program. And for housing stability and employment stability, we are working with agencies within the community to help us understand those metrics. We think for housing stability, we'll work with local housing agencies to understand who has been accessing those services. We think we will see greater access or people accessing those services more frequently when they're in the diversion program. Simply because they will have the information.

They are being given the information very deliberately. We've identified this as an issue for an individual. We think that will happen more in the diversion program than in the community service program. For employment stability, we want to know if folks have a job and if they're keeping that job. And if it's so have a job and frequency of job changes.

And we'll look at unemployment insurance records for that. And we also again we think folks in the diversion program will have jobs more often than those in the community service condition. And we think that they will maintain those jobs longer periods of time. So they'll change jobs less frequently. And again, that is directly related to the community services that they'll be connected with in the diversion program group.

That could look like GED services, it could look like job training services, it can look like job placement services, right? So all of those things are already established within that group. I'll close with this with just that our timeline for the study contemplates enrolling 1,200 individuals into the study total. We have allotted a total amount of time of thirty six months to do that. However, our actual goal is twelve months, right?

We think one year should be enough time to get 1,200 folks into the program. But we've given ourselves some buffer just in case. And for everyone that's enrolled, we will follow them for a period of two years. So we will look at recidivism, we will look at housing stability, we will look at employment stability for a period of two years. We chose that period of time because we want to make sure we are giving people an opportunity to kind of lift themselves up off know, bootstrap themselves.

Because it's not very easy to come to like go from having no housing to housing, for example. So two years is may actually be a short period of time for that. But we want to just be we want to just make sure that we're giving people enough time to actually do that. So if someone just to play that out for you a little bit, if someone were to enroll today, two years from today is when we'd stop looking we'd stop following them. We're doing this on a rolling enrollment.

So, if somebody were to enroll at the end of this year, we would follow them for two years beyond that. So, our study might last for a few years. I just want to make sure everyone knows. We can and we will provide interim kind of reports as we go just to keep everyone informed as to what's going on. But that's all I prepared for you today.

I'm very happy to take questions. I just want to stress that it has just been a joy to be here these last three days working with each of the departments and just to see how collaborative this court and all of its stakeholders are together is really just is just wonderful. And I I do see a lot of a lot of courts and attendant stakeholders. So thank you so much.

Miss Danza, thank you so much for your presentation. First is councilwoman Williams.

Yeah. I won't keep you because I wanna go home too, but I do have a few questions. I'm super excited about the diversion program because as everyone knows, I have several people in the criminal justice system that are close to me. So the first question I had was, as they go through the process, one thing that I noticed that I got from a whole lot of constituents or and or students or parents or people that I try to help out. The simple charge, just the charge hinders them for so much.

So after that dismissal process and they follow, is that charge, how long is do they have to hold that charge before they can even get an expungement? That might be judge.

Good question.

Judge Tim Coleman, Toledo Municipal Court. I can answer that question. Uh-huh. So, Ohio law allows for a dismissed case to be you have to file a written motion for expungement. We do not have a fee for that. That can be done immediately. If they got the conviction, they could still get the same expungement, but they'd have to wait one year.

Okay. Alright. Alright. That because I know that chart people don't know that. And is it will that be part of the diversion program?

That is not part of the diversion program. They would have to take that action on their own.

Okay. Alright. Thank you so much. I just know that comes up. And this may be judge Coleman or even TBD. What happened in May? The women flipped out. Like what happened? I just need to know. What happened? What did we do? Like, why? Why? What happened?

Why are there so many more women in there?

I mean, when I looked at this, I was just like, dang, what happened in May? Did everybody did hormones go what happened? I just need to know.

I don't know. Have that answer.

That was just one of the questions I had. I know everybody had that question. I don't I I just ask the questions don't nobody wanna ask. But something happened in May. The other one that I had where'd it go?

I'm asking the questions that that don't nobody nobody might wanna want to ask. I know you talked over briefly the detailed process. What's the dice?

Oh. The dice is the random assignment. Okay. It's like rolling dice. Yes. Like, are we rolling dice? Good question.

That could also be a crime. I'm just saying. That's all I had. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. I'm so interested to see how this program goes. And look at the data. Like, I'm a data person and it tells a story. And I know a lot of folks that would definitely appreciate this, especially with the housing piece. I mean, when you're tired and you don't have a home and you're sleeping wherever you can and people call the police on you and don't realize, like, you they're gonna get charged sometimes. Because we have great officers, they won't. They'll try to help you, but some people just don't understand. So I appreciate this, and I'm interested to see how this goes. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Council President Hartman.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I echo my colleague, Councilwoman Williams. I'm also very excited for the study and I think this is a great program. Do we judge, maybe you know this. Do you know what the current rate of recidivism is in Toledo?

That's a great question. Nationally, the rate is over fifty percent. In Ohio, I believe the rate is around thirty five percent. In Lucas County, I believe it's 23. I am chair of the Reentry Subcommittee of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and we attribute that to our first Wednesday of every month at 11:00, the Reentry Coalition meets here and provides provides resources resources for for people. People. That's That's what we attribute our low recidivism rate. And I'm pretty sure it's the lowest in the state.

Awesome. Good to hear. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you, president Hartman. Councilman Soransu.

Thank you. Judge, could you repeat the recidivism rate for for Toledo, Lucas County, right?

I would have to, make sure I'm right on this, but off the top of my head, I believe it's 23 in Lucas Lucas County. County. Okay. 35 in the state and over 50 nationally. But I I can forward that tomorrow.

Okay. Then I have a question, mister mister chairman, chairman, on on bonding. When the people that have gone into the diversion program, are they typically released when they're charged on OR bonds, or are they asked to pay something?

If they enter the no contest plea, we reserve finding and set an OR bond. People cannot complete this diversion program in custody. So if it's somebody that we need to keep in custody, the diversion program would not be offered to them. Okay. So bond decision really happens before the idea of them going to diversion. So if they're not going to get an OR bond, they can't go to diversion.

Oh, okay. But I just want I just want to be clear. In other words, someone is arrested for resisting arrest. They're they're brought in for their first appearance in municipal court. At that time, bond is discussed, obviously, with the judge and the and the attorney and defendant. And I guess I'm asking, are they released on o

r Okay. So resisting arrest is actually a really good example for that. Because there's, I think the officers would agree with me, there's a couple of different kinds of resisting. One is kind of dead weight and just being a pain. And other ones are basically fighting with a police officer. Let's say the person who is just deadweight has some priors but they're not a violent person. They don't have a violent criminal activity flag on our bond tool but they do have priors. That person is probably going to get an OR bond and they're probably going to be eligible to be offered the diversion program. Let's say a different example. The guy is fighting.

He has a six and a six with a new violent criminal activity flag which means he's a really high risk person as opposed to just moderate or higher. He's high risk. He's going to get a cash bond. So he's not going to be eligible for the program.

And the ones that have a cash bond, typically do they post it or do they remain in the jail?

Guess I wouldn't have math on that, but my sense is that most people who get a cash bond cannot post it. Okay. Some can, but I would say most people who get a cash bond can't post.

Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you, judge. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you. Question one for me. What is the age on this? Will it start right at 18?

The the eligibility for? Yes. Yeah. 18 is the the start. Yeah.

Okay. Right at 18.

It's not for not for juveniles.

When you talked about jobs, does does it count if I'm somebody that's got a lawnmower and I'm just cutting And

a that really kind of exposes limitation of the data source that we have, right? The unemployment insurance records are good at telling us who's employed where and for how much, but there are some limitations. Somebody who is working in a gig job like mowing lawns isn't reporting income to or isn't it's not a job that has an employer that has to pay unemployment insurance. So they wouldn't register on this dataset. Normally what we would do because we would count that as a job, right?

That's a job. But normally what we would do in situations like that is we would also try to include some surveys to allow some self report. We aren't doing that in this evaluation. And one of the reasons we're not doing that is we want to make the evaluation as light touch for the defendant as possible. And that would require them to kind of keep in constant contact with us. So we're really focusing on administrative data sources. But you are right. That is definitely a limitation in our data source.

What do you do you say to Ms. Danzer or Ms. Falchano, Josh Coleman? What do you say to the criticism that this is merely a program that is a crutch? It is creating a crutch for a because there is no excuse no matter which ethnicity is or how poor you may be. There's no excuse to commit any any crime at all. There are people that are black, which we seem to have here as the high. There are people here that are poor. There are people that and yet they don't resist. They don't whatever these minor they don't do any of these things.

And so what do you say to the criticism that we are merely creating another crutch or a way for them to bypass or get around what is going on versus just do what you're supposed to do regardless of your ethnicity, regardless of where you live, regardless of income. How would you handle that question or criticism of this program? Anybody can ask.

So I would say that ninety four percent of the people, and there's about 2,000 of them completed this program, ninety four percent of them have said, I learned a new coping skill I can use in life. 81% of them have said, I learned a new perspective on the criminal justice system. That means a huge percentage of the 2,000 people who have been to this program aren't going to give the police as much trouble the next time they run into them. So this isn't a crutch. This appears to be from the so we don't have the study yet, but what we have is the survey results.

This appears to be a program that teaches people things they intend to use in their life. And they intend to use them in their next criminal justice interaction which is going to be with the police on the street. So this is really something that we think is an effective learning tool and not a crutch. And I think the idea of a crutch is okay go through this simple little program and get your case dismissed. Well, these are low level offenses. These people are going to get credit time served or finding costs that they're not going to pay. Okay? So, an extra three point five hours is something as opposed to nothing. Credit time served finding costs you don't pay is nothing. Three a half hours is something. So it's not a crutch.

I would just that last point that Judge Kuhlman mentioned would have been what I led with. But I would also just say that the program is also designed to get people information that they might not have already about how to pull themselves out of poverty and how and that's really beneficial. Program addressing recidivism and addressing social needs is really beneficial to the entire community, right? Addressing recidivisms hopefully pulls these folks out of the kind of cycle of criminal justice activity and allows the court and all of the other justices and partners to really focus on the individuals that need to be in there and need that intervention. And then the social services really help to allow people to support themselves eventually on their own, which is really a benefit to the community, right?

And you've done a great job of creating all of these resources for folks and we want people to use them. So this is a pro one way to get get folks there.

Last question. What when you have I've grown up in a community where, respectfully, there was someone in the community, my neighborhood, my block that had mental health struggles. And we knew we didn't pay. Oh, that's just you know, as a kid growing up, oh, that's such and such. You didn't but there were times when, like, our officers had to do their job, and maybe this person was walking in the street. And, you know, for whatever reason, hey. Get out of the street. The exchange takes place to set. Alright. And they're trying to help them and save their life.

How much is the mental health piece evaluated or a part of this study? So because, you know, I'm just saying where I grew up, there are people that you know have mental health struggles

Yeah.

That will have interactions as much as our officers or our TFRD try to deescalate or so how does that come into play in this?

Yeah. I would just say, and I'm I'm really stealing, I think, judge Coleman's thunder on this because this this is usually what he says. If somebody has mental health issues, they're probably not appropriate for this program and they probably need treatment. And so the court is really addressing that a different way. And so I'll let Judge Kuhlman talk more about that. But that's not I don't think we're referring a lot of folks who have mental health needs.

Yeah, having mental health struggles wouldn't eliminate somebody from perhaps getting their case resolved through safety and justice challenge. But in our court, our public defender's office has an opportunity project that our social workers who are in our court who are part of the public defender's office. And what they do is they do specific hookups to local drug, alcohol, and mental health organizations with people in the courtroom. That may or may not include probation. So let's say you have somebody who maybe needs to get hooked back up with his F center but nobody's asking for probation term for the particular case.

They'll meet through the public defender's office. They'll meet with the Opportunity Project who will actually schedule them an appointment at ZEF and give them a handwritten appointment reminder and tell them make sure you get your appointment at ZEF. And then their case will get handled through the Community Diversion Project program and they'll be referred. That's how their case will actually be resolved. So they'll get both issues addressed at the same time. So they can get their mental health and get the case dismissed through the community diversion program. And our opportunity project does that all all day long.

Thank you, your honor. Are there any questions from our before miss Danzer has to leave, any questions from our general public? Any questions? Any questions for her or miss Faulciano or judge Coleman? Any questions?

Councilman Serratzu. Thank you, mister chairman. I personally, I'd like to hear from the police chief or one of the officers here in terms of what they think of this program. And if there's suggestions they have, I think that would be very helpful for counsel to know. Thank you, mister chair.

Good afternoon. Chief Mike Trenley. So I have seen this presentation before and we've kind of participated in this process as it's been going along. So from our standpoint some of the safeguards they have in place you know on the types of charge that will go to diversion I think help officers in that there's serious crimes that we don't want to see diversion happen necessarily. We think somebody needs further either jail time or further treatment or something along those lines.

But at the end of the day from a policing standpoint, our goal is to reduce victimization. So if we can find a way and this study proves that diverting certain types of charges actually reduces recidivism, then in effect we are reducing victimization. And that is a win for us as a community, as a police department, because then we don't have to arrest more people. We don't have to risk officers and our community when we make those arrests. So I am anxious to see what the study shows.

And if it does turn out the fact is that it is an effective way to reduce that, then I think we would all be derelict a little bit to not endorse something like that.

Okay. And I appreciate that. I I guess I'm also, as a follow-up, I'm just wondering if in your discussions with the men and women of the police division, are you hearing that they think it is helping a bit? Or that they're still seeing a high rate of recidivism from people that have committed or that have gone through the diversion program?

So that's a that's a tough question to answer to a certain extent. Because most of our officers probably don't even realize that the diversion happened. Because a lot of these are low level types of offenses that they're not going to court on. They're not being inside inside the the courtroom courtroom to to witness witness the diversion. We have both of our district captains and our deputy chief from our field operations division here tonight just to hear, understand, and be able to communicate as this becomes more public what the intent of this program is and be there to answer officers questions.

So right now I don't know if our officers have a huge opinion one way or the other. Officers in general, I will just tell you, think criminals get off too easy. Right? But we're more a lot of times, you know, want to see harsher punishment because of the things we see on the street, the effects of their criminal conduct on the streets, and the being tired of dealing with the same person over and over again, right? So the reality is if this program can reduce that, then that solves that problem.

So we're gonna require a little bit more education as this becomes more of a public, you know, we're having press conferences, we're having studies, we're having council meetings, So it's going to be more out there. So education of our officers is going to be an important factor in this.

And I agree. And I again, I think we all are anxious to see the results. And then we can talk some more in terms of what can we do to strengthen the program and also reduce the amount of recidivism. Because we wanna keep the officers safe. We wanna keep the community safe. We wanna keep the courts not, you know, filled to capacity. And certainly the jails also. I mean, it's a win win for everybody. So I I appreciate that. Thank you for your perspective, and thank you for being here. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you, mister Richard Arnold. I Richard think you had something you wanted to speak to.

I have a public safety issue, but it's not this one. Would you like me to wait until the very end of the meeting? Don't know thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'll be brief. I don't know if you're keeping up with this situation in Detroit. They just had two kids freeze to death in a van. The it's in the early stages of the investigation, but on Monday morning, what they had was a family of seven living in a van. There was a mother with four children, her mother who also had a small child. The grandmother worked at a fast food place. The mother was ready to start a job this week and they had numerous contacts with human service agencies but everyone bounced them around, no one got them any help.

On Monday morning when it was very frigid, they parked in the Hollywood Casino in Detroit parking lot and over the night the vans ran out of gas. And in the morning they found two of the children ages two and nine froze to death. They transported them to the hospital. The other three are in stable condition. And so now starts the press conferences and the finger pointing and the accusations, and there's Mayor Mike Dugan, he said, we don't know what happened, but the two things that have come out is, one, they were well known in the system in Detroit, and two, there were shelter beds a short distance away, but nobody linked his family with them.

And as I'm reading this, I'm reading this long list of all the human service agencies that they have in Detroit. It's an impressive list. But there was no coordination. And I was thinking, you know, what I've learned attending public meetings, sometimes when you have all these agencies, they spend as much time competing with each other for various funding, federal funding, state funding, local funding, grant funding, whatever, and not as much time as they should helping people. Jack Ford taught me that.

If you remember before Jack Ford was mayor or council person, he ran sassy during the crack cocaine epidemic. And as he saw this proliferation of agencies, he saw they're always competing with us. I used to have long conversations with Jack about turf protection. Agencies that just want to take care of themselves and people get bounced between them. And we've got great agencies here in Toledo.

But I'd like to ask City Council, if not the Public Safety Committee, then one of the other committees to take a look at this. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that we have coordination and communication? What happened in Detroit should not happen here. For children to freeze to death when there are emergency beds nearby but no agency stepped up. And like I said, the investigation is ongoing. But I'd like to ask city council, I hope I'm wrong, but are we doing everything we can in Toledo to make sure that our many human service agencies are working together, are communicating together, not just competing for funding, but working together to make sure that people are safe. And I'd like to ask you to do that near in the near future. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Thank you, mister Arnold. Thank you for always caring and bringing us great information. So to all that are here tonight, thank you so much. And, miss Danzer, I am praying. We are praying that you make it home safely. Thank you for being here. And anything else, president? This meeting is adjourned.