Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Calling the Public Safety Committee to order. Roll call, please.

Vice Chair Coleman?

Here.

Johnson? Jost?

Here.

Kim? Naker. Here. Yang. Here. Chair Bowie.

Here.

Five present to absent Johnson and Kim arriving later.

Wonderful. Congratulations Pierre. Can we give it up to our LA. Thank you so much. So, welcome everyone.

As we have our public safety committee here, I just wanted to share that our theme for today is centered around community safety and innovative approaches to community violence prevention. We have on the agenda you see this the three items but we're going to actually withdraw the non fatal shooting units and reschedule that for our next public safety committee meetings just so we can have more time as you understand this is a very unique meeting as we're starting at one p. M. And have a shorter timeframe. And even after the policy committee retreat, just want to say thank you to all of the council members and department heads and our assistant mayors who really have been very collaborative, but getting some topics on the agenda.

We actually have more agenda items than we actually have time slots, which is a good problem to have. We will have the two items on the agenda today, so we get a chance to dive a little deeper. This is also a really good segue into or from our budget committee meeting where we talked about the special funds and some of our programs that are solely reliant on grant funding and special revenue or excuse me, opioid settlement funds and how we are best using those one time funds effectively to stabilize our communities. So, moving on into the agenda, let's get straight into it. So, I'm going to have Pierre read the first agenda item.

Item number one, SR2681, National Network for Safe Communities, Community Safety Innovations, Gun Violence Intervention and a Public Health Approach.

Welcome. I would like to invite Sasha to come forward. I don't want to take the thunder from her introduction, but Sasha Cotton is a nationally recognized expert in public safety and community violence prevention and has been a thought leader and consultant with city of St. Paul and also have led some violence prevention efforts or was the leader of the violence prevention efforts in the city of Minneapolis. So we're just so happy to have you here.

And also Sasha is a St. Paul lite and a central grad. So you're in good company Sasha. I know myself and council President Nacre and council member Coleman had a primer presentation last year at the Rondo Community Library. So, I just really is excited to bring you back before us as we're looking into how we're to utilize some of our opioid response funds and our special funds as well.

Well, thank you for the invitation member Bui, council chair Bui, to the council. We appreciate we, as in the national network, appreciate the opportunity to be here and the ongoing partnership that we've been able to have with the office of neighborhood safety and the city at large during the previous administration and continued thought partnership here the new administration. So thank you for the time. As stated before, I'm Sasha Cotton, the executive director at the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College, which is in New York City. We are a national think tank and technical assistance provider focused on the intersections of community violence and partnerships between law enforcement, community government at large, and community violence interventionists.

And what that all really boils down to mean is how do we innovate public safety to meet the needs of communities today? We work in about 35 US cities as well as about 10 cities abroad at any given time, and we are most known for our strategy referred to as the group violence intervention or focus deterrence. But today, I've been asked to talk a little bit more broadly about what we think when we mean a public health approach to violence prevention. And oftentimes, when people hear public health, they think that means to the detriment of general public safety, and really what it is intended to be is a bigger umbrella that includes all the things we think about when we hear public safety, as well as some of the things that we don't like health care, schools, parks, recs, community centers, etcetera. So, I'm gonna jump in.

Happy to take questions as they come up or at the end. And, again, thank you for the time. So, public health approach and a formal definition. Again, what does it mean when we say public health? And, really, what that draws down to is, one, how do we define the problem? What is it that we're addressing? In, you know, our instance, it's usually violence. Identifying the risk and protective factors. I'll get into a little bit more of a specific discussion about what we mean when we say risk and protective factors, but this is an essential part of a public health approach. Developing and testing prevention strategies, so identifying what works, testing them to see if they're effective, and then assuring widespread adoption.

All of us have really become experts on the public health approach through the COVID experience that we had just a few years ago, and so we think about application that can often be a good reference point. So risk factors. When we think about individual level risk factors for violence, we're thinking about things like a history of violence or aggressive behavior, exposure to violence which I, you know, statistically, but also think is really just important to put a a pinpoint pinpoint on, exposure to violence is one of the most key indicators for risk of someone being violent later on in life, and this is particularly important when we think about the intersections of community violence and domestic violence. People who grow up in homes where violence is particularly pertinent or obvious have increased risk factors for being violent both in the home and outside of the home later in life. So, those are families and children that we want to really wrap our arms around with supportive services to detract them from that trajectory.

Poor impulse control and anger management challenges are also a significant risk factor at the individual level. Mental health issues, especially those untreated, can lead to violence. We want to be very, very careful not to criminalize mental health issues, but to identify them as a risk factor and treat appropriately. It's also important to denote that untreated trauma can look like mental health, and we know that trauma can really lead us to some places with bad outcomes, including violence. And then the last one here at the individual level is association with peers engaged with violence.

Again, this idea of exposure and normalization are really important when we think about risk factors, particularly for young people, but for all people as it pertains to violence. At the family level, again, this exposure or experience with childhood abuse, neglect, or trauma. I have a peer who works in the law enforcement space who often highlighted one of the most important things when we're doing a retroactive look, so particularly homicide reviews, is looking at, and this will sound strange, children who have fallen out of windows. That sounds weird, right? Like, oh, is it because we think they got pushed, or what is it?

It's really this factor around neglect. If a child has such a limited amount of care taking that they could fall out of a window, it really speaks to the level of care that they're receiving in the home, and we don't necessarily need to be responding with punitive measures, but again, it's one of those things that could indicate risk and reason to take more precautions and deeper investment with that family or individual. Harsh, inconsistent, or absent parenting is one of the risk factors that we look at the family level. Family conflict and domestic violence. And then, this lack of stable housing or economic stress.

So, when we think about the risk factors, can also begin to look at what some of the solutions and preventative options we have. We know that housing insecurity is a major issue around the country, and certainly that instability can lead to risk for violent involvement. So, risk factors at the community and societal level, this is where we really get into some of those adverse childhood experience outcomes and the social determinants of health. So, high levels of poverty and unemployment, this corollary that people will see when we look at a map, often in almost every city that we work in, if we look at the map and look at areas for high rates of poverty, and then we overlay that with high rates of crime, they are almost always going to have deep interconnectedness. We don't necessarily know that that's causation, but there is a deep correlation.

And so when we think about instabilities around food security and employment and housing, these are major societal indicators that we should be looking at when we think about investment in violence prevention. Easy access to firearms or weapon is weapons are another key indicator around society issues. We know in this country we have second amendment rights. Our strategies certainly don't look to oppose or uplift those issues, but certainly want to think about gun safety and ensuring that where there is access to guns, there is gun safety and training. Lack of community cohesion or trust in institutions.

This is huge, particularly when we think about communities of color and immigrant communities that may have deep seated mistrust of systems when there is a lack of ability to access the resources that are available around safety and just general services, it can lead to violence and mistreatment. The normalization of violence in culture and media, again, this can't be overstated. Young people in particular with brain development and our understanding of it, knowing that young people's brains aren't fully developed until they're 25, the exposure at which they have a normalized view of violence can have a great determination on their proximity and risk inclination for it. Limited access to education, health care, or social services. Again, this is about social determinants of health.

Right? When we don't give people the things that they need, they will often find themselves in situations where they will do what they need to to make sure that their needs are met. And then neighborhood disorder, high crime, abandoned properties, lack of safe space, the idea that young people and families and residents need pro social activities, and when they don't have them, they can lead to risk factors. Again, a thing that government plays a key role in. Oh, going backwards.

Sorry. So, for every risk factor that we know young people, families, and constituents experience, there are protective factors, and this is where government can play a particularly strong role in the development of strategies, programs, interventions that can help to address those issues. So, social and emotional skills, self regulation, empathy, and conflict resolution are things that we want to build in individuals to protect them from access and involvement with violence. In young people, academic success or engagement with school is a very key indicator. This means partnerships with schools, investment in the services before and after school, and high quality education and engagement are going to be very important as protective factors.

Positive self esteem and future orientation, so the belief that your life has value and you have options beyond your current circumstances, and access to mental health and substance abuse supports are essential at the individual level. At the family level, again, the opposite of much of what we've heard in the risk factor arena. So stable, nurturing, and supportive relationships with caregivers become essential. And caregivers is a loose term. What we know is that when young people have one key adult in their life who they believe cares about them deeply and is a resource, it can be a pivotal change in their proximity to violence and other social ills.

Consistent family structure and routines. So how do we support families so that they can provide the structure at home that families, individuals, and particularly young people need to be successful and non violent, that parental involvement and monitoring, and then economic stability. These are some of the protective factors that we look to build around family level protective services. And then, community societal level, safe, stable, and supportive neighborhoods are critically important. We have, obviously, now a neighborhood safety department here in the city, and I know that they are doing a great deal of work on this matter.

Positive peer groups and pro social activities, so sports, arts, faith, getting families and young people involved in the things that keep them connected, only to their neighbors, but to networks of people who can provide support when their traditional systems might not be available. Strong school environments with clear norms against violence, and that regards exposure, but also how we navigate when violence arises. If we match punitive behavior, like negative behavior with just purely punitive results, young people do not learn how to problem solve, they just learn how to be punished. And so how do we develop those strategies? Community cohesion and collective efficacy, access to employment and workforce development, culturally relevant supports and services, and then equitable policies that reduce systemic inequalities.

So, thinking about how we're removing barriers at the societal level that allow people to have equal access to the resources that government already provides. So, this is always an important note that we like to highlight because when we talk about risk and protective factors, people can begin to think that they're absolute. Risk factors do not automatically mean that someone will behave violently or that they will experience abuse or violence. Many, many people experience the risk factors that we've talked about, probably many of us in this room have had some of those risk factors and may not have ever been involved with violence, but they do increase your chances. And protective factors don't necessarily protect you in totality.

So, someone could be from a safe home, a safe community, have all of the access and assets in the world, and still have an encounter with violence, But what we know is predictable is that the more risk factors you have, the harder we should work to supplement you with protective factors to protect you against that violence that we're trying to work against. So, the other thing we like to highlight is that violence is preventable. It is predictable. We can assess for it, and it's not an inevitable outcome. Like other communicable diseases, we know how to protect, prevent, and treat it.

It's just a matter of putting the right resources, players, and practices into place to address the problem. So, many factors. Violence is complex, as we talked about. It arises at the societal community relationship and individual level. Social conditions matter. You know, we're coming out of a pandemic still in many ways in this country as well as, you know, locally dealing with a real crisis in our community around the invasion of ICE here in our community. All of those things can play a factor into how people are feeling, how they relate to one another, and those things can lead to really negative outcomes including violence. So social conditions really matter. Violence is much more than bad people making bad choices. Right?

So, the way that we like to frame this is that the person who is doing the services, providing the services, is one bad choice away from being on the other side of the table. And so it is really about accumulation of decision making opportunity experiences that leads to the outcomes that people are having, even when really, really bad decisions have been made. And ultimately what this boils down to is we don't throw our people away. Right? That even people do really terrible things, they need to be held accountable, but that accountability needs to come with a level of compassion that looks at how we restore them, so that they can reintegrate into society.

We need to consider all factors that put people at risk and protect them from experiences that perpetrate violence. So, how do we balance the risk factors with protective factors? How do we use that assessment of risk in a way that supports people and doesn't just lead to punitive outcomes? Because that is a very thin line. Many approaches. So, is multifaceted and our solutions must be too. We all play a role in creating safe communities. Again, I'm very, very happy about the development of the Office of Neighborhood Safety here in St. Paul, but it's not just about one department having a responsibility for keeping communities safe. You know, we know that police play a critical role for far too long.

Many municipalities have believed that public safety was purely a policing strategy, and so the expansion to Offices of Neighborhood Safety and Offices of Violence Prevention is a critical next step. But one of the things that is, you know, an example that we give around public safety is the medical system. We've seen over the last one hundred years medical care expand greatly from just doctors and nurses to dietitians and nutritionists and lab consultants and MAs. And many times when you go to a clinic, may not even see a doctor, because we've really allowed people to specialize and develop the nuanced responses that they need to health care, to both prevent negative outcomes in health care, and have a response when those bad things still happen. And that's really the infrastructure we should be building out with public safety.

Getting a little bit more nuanced and thinking about the specialties that offices of violence prevention, communities, schools, rec centers can play beyond a carceral system that looks more at punishment and punitive outcomes. So, when we talk about prevention in the public health approach, we are really thinking about the prevention pyramid as a tool that helps us to think about structures. So, at the base of the pyramid is primary prevention. These are the things that we do on a routine basis, generally in good government. We're thinking about how do we make people's lives better, how do we provide those protective factors that make lives high quality.

So, access to education, access to resources, housing, education, approaches that take place before violence ever happens, and can often provide a layer of protection against not only violence, but other social ills that we want to address. Secondary prevention is really about our early response, when we begin to see those risk factors, identify them, and focus on the individuals, communities, and areas where we need to do a little bit more to address risk. And then tertiary prevention is really our focus on further perpetration of harm. So in those places, with those people, under those circumstances where violence has already happened, where it may be routine, it is usually the smallest number of people who are deeply impacted, and we need to really double down on our resources and intentions because we don't want the perpetual cycle of violence to impact them long term. Examples with the prevention pyramid and thinking specifically about violence prevention.

Primary prevention generally will not include anything about violence. So, think of mentorship programs and educational campaigns. Secondary prevention is really those broad based strategies that are focused on high risk areas and individuals, so think street outreach workers, violence interruption, hospital based interventions, so addressing those individuals who have demonstrated risk but may not be in a cycle of violence yet. And then tertiary programs include things like the group violence intervention, which is a strategy that we have stood up and that Minneapolis and St. Paul both have been implementing.

Reentry programs and victim services would be included in a tertiary pyramid. And so good violence prevention strategies include responses at every level of the pyramid to make sure that we're casting our net wide enough and that we're going deep enough to really address risk and protective factors and provide services across the board in our communities. A prevention continuum and some simple language. Yes ma'am.

We just have one question or comment on Council Morkim.

Just a quick question. Can you go back one slide? I feel like we have in some regards that the city has had groups that do this work, but what does group violence intervention look like? Like to you, like how is it structured? Is it can you just say two more things about what that is?

Sure. The group violence intervention is a trademark strategy that lives at John Jay College. It is really rooted in the idea that direct messaging and engagement to identify people who are at high risk, so usually through shooting data, is used to do strategic outreach to individuals who, again, who have been at high risk, usually in their homes, at their hospitals, sometimes in jails, to deliver direct messaging from law enforcement, community partners, and community violence interventionists. And the message really is you've been identified as high risk. Right?

People know that you're involved with this violence. We may not have any reason to prosecute you at this time. So this is not for cases where there's like prosecution and active order, but we're worried about you. We're worried that something is going to happen to you or that you're gonna be put into a position where you feel like you have to do something to hurt someone else. And so before that happens, we wanna you know give you some notice that your name is coming up in rooms that not in a good way.

The second part of that message comes from community members saying, you matter, people care about you, you are a father, a son, a brother, a community member, you matter in this community and we need you to be a part of our community, but the violence you've been a part of has to stop. And we stand in partnership with government and community that if you refuse to stop your behavior, you have to be held accountable. And then the last message is from service providers and community violence interventionists to say, we have been where you are, Many of these people are folks who have been previously incarcerated, previously involved, we call them credible messengers, who can say, I'm willing to walk that walk with you, right. Change is not easy, we know that you will need services mentorship and support to take your life in a different trajectory, and we are the people who are standing ready to help you if you need help. So it's not like take the help or get this law enforcement pressure, it's the violence has to stop, We're worried about your proximity to that violence, and there's help if you need it.

Yeah. And actually hearing you say that, it does make me distinguish the difference because I do feel like we do have had some street outreach workers, right, like our community ambassador program. But this is a lot more targeted. It's someone that has been identified that maybe, right, like hearing you say visit them while they're incarcerated, that's a much more targeted approach. And so, I just really appreciate the distinction because in my head I was conflating the two. But I just appreciate how targeted that approach is.

Yeah. It is really about trying to identify the people who have been closest to recent shootings that have potential for retaliation and messaging to them before they make the decision to do any kind of retaliatory act. So it is a slight difference from street outreach, both really important and complementary strategies. I think of street outreach as that like broad based engagement and then focus deterrence or GBI as you said, a more targeted approach.

I know we just have two more slides left. Yes. We could hold our questions towards the end just so we could be able to take all the questions at the end so we can have time for our next presenter. So, I don't have the funnest job right now.

I understand. I understand. So, giving some plain language to this, primary prevention is really about upfront, what we do before bad things happen. Early intervention or secondary prevention is about what we do in the thick of it, in the moment when violence is happening, how are we responding in real time. And then tertiary is the aftermath. What are we doing with people when violence has become like a cycle of violence and we want to interrupt and stop that pattern? And that concludes my presentation. Here is my contact information should anyone have additional questions after this time, but I am happy to take questions now.

Perfect. I do have some questions and I definitely could take some questions or comments towards the end here or as we're at the end. Juan, thank you so much. It's such a holistic approach and you're providing a framework that many of our department heads can really lead on. I'm just curious around what the National network for safe communities have done on inventory, particularly with different government, like in terms of city, county, or state around some of these services that are provided.

Because like, for example, like the reentry services. I know like the city of St. Paul have done like pilots, you know, very short lived pilots in a time where we had lots of resources. But we've seen those services maybe integrated into more county or state agencies. I'm just curious if there is like an inventory of like how GBI work or other strategies are embedded in other services and how we can collaborate with them.

Yeah, thank you for the question. So we do see a lot more reentry services at the county level because probation and parole tends to live there. I think a critical role that city government can play is one, really thinking about the specific needs of the constituency in that city because counties are blown up a little bit bigger, particularly a place like Saint Paul where you're the county seat, the largest city, the needs are gonna be, you know, particular and a little bit different. So, having an eye for that and relationship between the city and the county attorney is critically important. Also, how do you drill down because sometimes, not for nothing, the county can get very focused on the things outside of the big city because they feel like, oh, the city's got it, right?

And so, are there strategic conversations happening about allocation to ensure that people in the city are getting the needs that they getting their needs met through reentry services, and that there's not a disparity in service. I think when we think about inventory, it really because we work in so many places, it looks different in every community that we're working with. The most important thing that we see around GBI is how do you get the critical decision makers to the table on a regular basis so that information is flowing. Right? So we established a governance committee in every city that we go into that is generally chaired by the mayor, but that includes The US Attorney, the county attorney, the city attorney, probation and parole, parks and recs, if there's an office of violence prevention, those folks are there, as well as some of the community players.

Right? So if you have large institutions that are already leading some of this work, they're also at the table. Really, how are you moving forward in an intentional way, the big base of public safety work in a coordinated effort around gun violence prevention specifically. Those people talk to each other all the time, but they may not be talking about this. And then I think like in a more nuanced way, shooting review meetings, which I know were happening here and I'm not a 100% sure that they are back on track yet, really get at the nuance of identifying where we have gaps in meeting the needs of the individuals who are most high risk.

So you've got this sort of blown up governance structure that meets like bimonthly or quarterly, but the shooting review should be happening weekly or biweekly to really keep a pulse on what's happening with those individuals in a service oriented way and from law enforcement. Perfect. Can I have a question for Councilwoman Kim?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, just really appreciate yeah the word holistic and again I just reiterate how much I appreciate the focus and lens of this committee around sort of like wellness when communities are well. So my question is sort of attached to that idea because you know some of the protective factors on an individual level you talked about strong emotional and social skills, having empathy, conflict resolution, But also sometimes we don't have models for that. And so like thinking even about the that this is in my mind not dependent on age, right? When I look at this bottom, when you look at your pyramid of prevention that like the base is mentorship education campaigns.

That could be like you're the volunteer at the library that this kiddo sees. And so, just can you say a little bit more help me pull on this thread around like this process and what you're proposing isn't age dependent because they're sort of like there is a universal ideas that apply no matter your age. But you did talk a little bit about sort of that trusted message carrier and someone that had a shared experience. Can you speak a little bit about how or if it all differs in age? So young folks that are sort of maybe exposed or have older kids that kind of get them into some things or maybe it's just adults that haven't had models or mentorship and dare we say support because I believe that so much of this is a failure of our policies.

I think our social issues and the way we criminalize them are policy issues. But if you can speak a little bit to that question around is it are some of these approaches age dependent or you know, in your professional opinion, how or if do we extrapolate that at all?

Yeah. So, you know, violence can happen over the lifespan. So, certainly not age specific. We do think about our approach differently when we're talking about minors, and really increasingly people 25 because of the growing science around brain development, but because of the carceral system, people 18 are dealt with in a different system than people 18. So, there's a couple of different ways that we break down the way that we do our work.

So, at the National Network, particularly for people 18, we've replicated our evidence based model to do something that's really moving away from any kind of punitive outcomes and really focused on young people who have had contact with guns. So usually, they're young people who have been pulled over by the police, like in a vehicle with guns. They might have a sibling who is involved with group or gang violence who's a little bit older. Our approach with them is really gonna be information and education, support, mentorship, emotional regulation, looking at the whole family to identify, you know, risk and protective factors and where can we build something specifically with that individual person that's gonna, you know build them up and away from those outcomes. In the adult system, of course it is a little bit different, but brain development still really matters, exposure really matters, and quite honestly mentorship really matters.

I think in a lot of communities there's this belief that it's the kids. Right? Like kids are driving the violence, but statistically still across America while the numbers are going up a little bit, young people represent less than ten percent of most shootings and homicides as victims and perpetrators. It's a relatively low number. When young people are involved, it is more egregious. I think we have more community outcry, and I think that that's right and appropriate because young people of the future, we need to invest in what happens to them, and when something bad happens, we need to respond. But overwhelmingly, most victims and perpetrators of shooting are in the age range of 18 to 30. And those people need deep mentorship and we're seeing that number go up. Right? We're seeing a lot of shootings in many jurisdictions.

I don't have the numbers in front of me for Saint Paul, but 38, 39, 45. Right? And and because groups and gangs are shifting in America from deep hierarchy based groups to sort of more interconnected networks of people who are willing to act on each other's behalf, but aren't necessarily affiliated to colors and symbols and you know some outside network, it means that they're staying connected in those ways much longer. Right? We used to see people age out of traditional gangs and groups in their thirties.

Right? Sort of like, I'm an adult, either I've gone to prison or I'm going to prison and that's gonna be my trajectory or my brain is fully developed, I wanna do something different, I found a career trajectory, whatever. That is changing because people are having careers and families and jobs, but still feeling deeply attached to their neighborhood crew or their family crew and periodically maybe still acting on behalf of those people if violence becomes an issue. Don't I know if that helps to answer your question.

Yeah. But,

this mentorship of how you get away from those ideas and concepts as being normal still requires a lot of mentorship.

Thank you.

Absolutely. So, we see that we definitely need a part two and three series of this. Thank you so much for joining us and being a thought partner. You know, think everything that you had mentioned could apply across every single department in the city of St. Paul.

I know you had a chance to connect with Mayor Her, you know, during the World War I tour and already have your existing relationships. So, know, I really would love to see, you know, this culture shift around like the approach for public health not only apply to public safety like you mentioned, but across all departments. So, thank you so much for your time and now we're going to go to our second agenda item. Also too, like we have the contacts, please feel free to have Sacha Kadden as your thought partner. If you have any other questions you know convey that to Sacha Kadden because you see my office as well. But we're going to go to our second agenda. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Have a good Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Agenda two here and Peter if you don't mind reading into the record.

Item number two SR2680, Office of Neighborhood Safety Program Overview and Opioid Response.

So, Mr. Baker, welcome. Welcome, Director Baker from Office of Neighborhood Safety. You've been hitting the ground running. I'm not going to do too much with your introduction because I'm just going to give you the remainder of the time here. Have about, let's say fifteen minutes or a little less. But again, as you can see, if there's any other questions, we can make sure that we can get that briefing with certain council members after.

Thanks, Chair Bowie, members of the committee. My name is Cedric Baker, Director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety, and thank you for the invitation. Understanding that we are a little low on time, I'm going to be very particular on the slides that I show you just to make sure that we're able to get through the time frame. And of course, I'm able to take any questions. So today, I really want to focus just giving you a really brief but quick overview on ONS, the future, and what I've been working on for the last three months.

I have someone here, our chair of our neighborhood safety community council, to greet you, and then I wanted to talk really briefly about our opioid response and next steps. I would say that my colleague, Sasha Cotton, did a beautiful job of explaining some of the things that we are wrestling with doing in the Office of Neighborhood Safety. Excuse me. But in particular, I feel like ONS has a very unique and very particular role here at the city where our team is really supporting residents dealing with interrupting cycles of crisis by addressing the root cause of violence and particularly unsheltered homelessness. We do this in cooperation with our city departments and also community partners to make the city of Saint Paul safe.

This is just a overview of kind of ONS' timeline of when we started. There are two or three things that I just want to quickly highlight. Our office I'll start with 2021 in May that the commission St. The Paul Community First Safety Commission actually convened by the Citizens League. The reason this is important to me because it feels like it's full circle.

During this time when the commission made I was a board member for the Citizens League and was champion in this work. And it feels full circle to now be in the director role here in the office of neighborhood safety. But the commission recommended creating the office of neighborhood safety. February 2022, the city actually establishes ONS. And then July 2022, ONS announces project peace as a programmatic area.

May 2023, our NSEC, our community council begins its meetings. In November 2024, familiar faces work begins in the Office of Neighborhood Safety. We have three main programmatic areas, two particularly that I'm going to talk about today. But the first is Project PEACE where in that program, we deal with addressing trauma and community instability and focusing on gun violence. We do that in partnership with community organizations, but also internally, city departments.

We also have Familiar Faces, who focuses on our unsheltered homelessness population, really preventing and diverting individual crisis through outreach and life coaching. I'm going to come back to that concept of life coaching for both programs and promoting stability for community members experiencing unsheltered homelessness. My colleague Sacha Cotton talked a little bit about group violence intervention, so I don't really need to go into this slide, but just to say that that is a core component of the Office of Neighborhood Safety. And then community violence intervention. And the only thing that I wanted to highlight here is within group violence intervention, as it was said before, is very targeted.

It is more specific in its approach with community violence intervention. It's a little bit broader in scope, and it allows us to engage the community a little bit differently, but still focusing on dealing with reducing gun violence. This slide really highlights the importance of the ONS' model and how we have been a part of the city's plan to reduce gun violence here. It's really done through this community first public safety work and effort that the city moved before my tenure. It's in collaboration with city departments and also external organizations.

And I just would have to put a plug in to say that the continuation of this will need to be done in funding and supporting investments in programs and specific departments such as ONS for this work to continue and the impact to continue.

Quick question from Council President Maker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. A question, question, just a comment that looking at the slide, it's really notable that the the deep first of all, decrease, but also the fact that it really is almost entirely attributable to the decrease in discharge of a firearm. Most other things have stayed unfortunately some somewhat consistent. And I just think that that really says a lot about both your department's efforts, the police department's efforts, especially on the non fatal

Yes.

Which I know we'll have presentation on later, and then our collective efforts to try to our safe storage ordinance, our gun violence measures that we took last year. So just want to note that. Absolutely.

Thank you, Chair. Council President Nacre, I completely agree and I think it is definitely a team effort. We could not do it without police and I think that they are great partners in the work. Really quickly, familiar faces, and we refer to it as our intensive care management team, where there is really assertive outreach focusing on supporting these individuals. And then we call it relentless engagement, stubborn engagement, that we are out there every day really trying to support these individuals that are dealing with a lot of issues, sometimes mental health issues, other times substance abuse issues, connecting them with the right services, making sure that they have a wraparound support, and then trying to ultimately get them into housing.

The last area that I talk about today is our Neighborhood Safety Community Council. And we say that this council acts as a bridge between the city of Saint Paul's government and the broader Saint Paul community to address structural and historical barriers related to public safety and assisting the city to navigate an alternative approach to public safety. This council, we've already met at least one time since I've been here, I've really appreciated their commitment into the work. And I want to introduce John Porton, is our NSCC chair that you recently voted on, and so we appreciate that. And with that, I'll introduce John to come and greet the clinic.

Welcome.

Thanks. I hadn't realized you voted me in. So thank you for the invitation, and thank you for letting me do this work. Thank you, Director Baker, for the opportunity to talk to you. I joined the NSCC as a regular member about two years ago. I was looking for some way to impact my community. This works really well with my profession. I'm currently the director of social science research at the University of California Supercomputer Center. Before I worked there, I worked for the It's a remote job. Before I was there, was at the Crock Institute for Peace and Justice, which is a lab at the University of San Diego that focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of violence reducing programming.

And when I'm in meetings about these kinds of topics, I'm really proud to say that St. Paul comes up as a positive example, both in terms of the progress we're making on community policing and in terms of the progress that we're making on non police responses to violence. And I just wanted to say really briefly that citizen outreach through councils like the N. Plays a really vital and specific role in that project. That bridge that Director Baker was talking about is actually two ways.

It's really important that we have two way traffic. One thing that we try and do as members of the NSCC is get out into the community and explain not only the priorities that we're hoping to address, but also the reasons that the programs are structured in the ways that they are. And there's a lot of research that demonstrates that when citizens understand the theory of change that the city has when they design programs, they're more willing to look in the places where they should expect change. And when they do see change there, they come to trust their city government more fully, and they understand how they can communicate their needs back to organizations like the ONS to help them build programs that meet their priorities. So that's the other direction of course in which the traffic is going on the bridge.

We're out at community events. We're communicating the priorities of ONS and the efforts of ONS to the community members. We hear back about the results that they see. We hear back about their theories of change and their perceptions of public safety in the city, and that helps us reinvigorate the priorities of the ONS, and understand how it is that we can build this sort of good spiral of feelings between the city government and citizens who are seeing these changes in public safety, and their perceptions of public safety are getting better as a result. And of course, you can ask me any questions after Doctor. Baker's presentation. Thank you. Thank you, John.

Thank you, John. Just to highlight that, we currently have 11 members on the committee and, two of our members are actually turning out at the end of this month. Those wards are Ward 1 and Ward 4. And so, if there is any interest in your wards of joining in SEC, please let us know. We'd love to reach out to those individuals. We would like to partner with the council in finding individuals that would like to have a voice in the overall public safety approach here at the city, and this would be a great opportunity for them to use that voice to inform ONS in our work.

Thank you. And then we have a

comment. Question.

Quick question.

Long are the terms?

Thank

you. I think the terms are about three years, but I can confirm that One with term, three years. Let me just make sure through the chair, me make sure that's correct. This is here for the numbers and if I if there are any questions, please let me know about fast forward here. This is the ONS organizational chart, just telling you who's here and what types of roles we have.

Some of our team members, very proud of our team members. They work extremely hard out in the field every day supporting individuals. My leadership team, Rachel Holzimer, who's the deputy director, Faith Lofton, who is the program manager of Project Peace, and then Chris Michaels, who's the program manager of Familiar Faces. Really quickly, I'd like to just talk to you about two, three minutes around what I've been working on over the last three months. Right now, it's really getting to clarity of our scope.

What do we do in the problems we are trying to solve? I think at times if we're not clear, we can try to board the ocean and we have finite resources and limited attention to focus on certain things. And so we've really been focused through some strategic planning on really getting crystal clear on what problem are we trying to solve in ONS, specifically through our programmatic areas. We are also identifying unmet needs based on that scope of work. And so there are a lot of things that we feel that we need to do within the city that we have not been doing.

And so we're getting clear on how do we make that a reality in our day to day work. I am also building out a sustainability plan. Say for the Office of Neighborhood Safety, we have been building the plane and flying it at the same time in that we had to move very, very hard. And I also liken it as an example of a startup firm where you are really rolling, you're doing a lot, and now we're kinda at a place where we need to make some very tough decisions when it comes to keeping the impact that we have and increasing that impact. And so that goes to our current structure all the way to our budgetary concerns.

And so I'm creating a sustainability plan for the mayor to really better understand what we are up against, but also how I believe we can create something that lasts more than five years. We're talking ten, fifteen, twenty years. And then lastly, internal and external engagement. I'm definitely involved in meeting with as many organizations and then internally getting aligned with our departments to make sure we're on the same page. I'm moving really, really fast right now just based on time. But if there are no questions, I move over to opioid response.

Yeah, we're not going to take any more questions, but you could just finish up with the opioid response, and then I'll have some closing follow-up requests from council members.

Okay. This is just a summary that the city of Saint Paul received about $14,000,000 will, should receive about $14,000,000 in opioid settlement funds over the seventeen years. That's 2022 to 2038. Those opioid settlement funds are housed in a special revenue fund and there are certain restrictions to those funds in ways that we must use them. They all must be related to opioid remediation.

And then lastly, the approved uses here for the city is focusing on treatment, prevention and other strategies. And those other strategies could be like training, different things of that nature. Right now, the current budget and how it is set, the opioid dollars are going to these areas. The only thing that I'd like to highlight here is when it comes to general fund that fentanyl quality of life one time funding of a million dollars, it is my understanding that under the former administration, there was a desire to move forward with a project that never actually got off the ground. And so we are currently in the mayor's office thinking about how do we best utilize those funds, giving the needs that we have here in the city in a way to do it that truly aligns with our goal and desire to deal with quality of life issues.

Just lastly, moving forward, we are actually conversations and we'll continue to have conversations about how to best use these funds in also coordination with Ramsey County as well because we don't want to be in an island unto ourselves. And with that, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you. So we're not going to take any questions, but do you have any closing comments? Because we want to just respect your thought leadership and this is your first time in front of the council body. So thank you so much. You've really been hitting the ground running and I really want to just say I appreciate how you are intentional with our collaboration and just making sure that we have a partnership you know moving forward.

So if there's any closing comments from any council members just due to time and respect for the HRA meeting I don't want to take any questions. We definitely can follow-up with some one on ones with you, Director Baker. But thank you so much. Really appreciate how you are just looking forward and emphasizing the sustainability, understanding that majority of the program, if not all, is funded through special funds, all grant funds. So I just wanted to make sure that we can just highlight the great work that you're doing and as we're considering the budget and also being a partner with the mayor's office that we have a chance to really review and understand this program's impact.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yep. Okay. And with that, we will adjourn.