Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee - Regular Meeting

I wanna call to order the Toledo City Council Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Committee meeting clerk. Please call the roll.

Hobbs.

Here.

Williams. Here. Cherry.

Here.

McPherson. Morris. Here. Sorantu.

Here.

Five present.

I want to recognize and welcome our newest member of council, Councilman Cherry to his first public safety meeting as an at large member. It's always great to have Councilman Cherry here. And so we're thanking all of CJCC for being here and for being a part of this great body. And I want to start out, I guess, today with, well, I guess I'll let you all decide who wants to go first, and we'll go from there. But so glad to have Ms.

Holly Matthews, Tom Lukey, who else do have here, Ann Minton, Baliboman English, and Judge Timothy Coleman. Thank you all for being here. If there's anybody I missed, please. Who did I miss? Miss McCracken and everybody else. Thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Councilman and thank you for the introductions and thank you for having us today. And with that, we'll just get started. So, I pulled together some historical information for purposes of education. So what is the CJCC? The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council is a 13 member board comprised of six city appointments, six county appointments and one CJCC appointment and that CJCC appointment is a suburban law enforcement representative.

Five of the six city and county appointments are by position with the sixth appointment being a citizen of their choosing. And as I mentioned, the CJCC appointment is a chief of a suburban law enforcement agency. So the CJCC has a pretty long history. We were established in 1972 by a city ordinance and county resolution. We originally established as the Criminal Justice Supervisory council.

In 1981, the council was renamed the criminal justice coordinating council. The Northwest Ohio Regional Information System which we will call Norris was established in 1976. So this means we have had integrated criminal justice data in Lucas County, Ohio in the city of Toledo for fifty years. Throughout the fifty years, the CJCC has realized numerous accomplishments and integrated criminal justice information sharing and criminal justice planning. The CJCC consists of three departments.

We have Norris, we have the regional planning unit which consists of criminal justice reform, reentry, a focus intersection of behavioral health and criminal justice and grants management. And we also have an administration department which covers the criminal history record checks. And our admin department is very important since we're established as a regional council of government, we're our own independent entity and we do all of the agency functions ourselves in house. So we process our own payroll, rewrite our own checks, we do not leverage the city or the county infrastructure for those services. And we do a lot of our work through the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council in our committees.

So I, the executive director reports directly to the board. Underneath the board, we have Norris and the Norris Advisory Committee. Under Grant's administration and the Regional Planning Unit, we have the allocation review committee. The allocation review committee reviews federal grant applications for violence against women act funding, justice assistance grant funding entitled to juvenile justice delinquency prevention funding. And that committee reviews grant applications and makes recommendations for funding for government and nonprofit agencies.

We also have the CJCC reentry committee which Tom will talk about in a few minutes and that committee really blends Grassroots Reentry Coalition of Northwest Ohio with policy and government representatives so we can work on reentry policy for both the city of Toledo and Lucas County. And we also have a fairly new committee called the Behavioral Health Criminal Justice Committee. And like the reentry committee, this brings together practitioners and policymakers to address the very important intersection of behavioral health and criminal justice. And then we also have some historic established committees. We have the finance committee which reviews our financial statements every other month and reviews our audit.

And then we also have a personnel committee that sets agencies policy recommendations to the board is responsible for hiring the executive director and completing performance reviews. So something I am very proud of are our achievements through grant funding. I just did a quick summary of grant funds leveraged from 2014 through 2025. You will see that we have brought in to Lucas County in the city of Toledo $10,200,000 for a fairly small department. That's a pretty staggering number.

Some of these funds are in partners with other entities. So we have worked with Lucas County on the Safety and Justice Challenge Grant and we've also worked with the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board on a grant to implement a law enforcement drop off center. And then we've leveraged $4,700,000 in competitive federal grants directly to the CJCC. And those grants really fund our reentry initiatives. They fund the reentry coordinator's salary and it also funds programs at the intersection of behavioral health and criminal justice.

So the city's investments help us leverage over 10,000,000 of grant funds in a period of eleven years. So next up is our work on criminal justice reform. This is really our roadmap that we have gone through since 2014. Our criminal justice reform really started when Sheriff Tharpe declared that we need a new jail and the jail is inhumane. Through that, Lucas County adopted the public safety assessment through the Arnold Foundation, which is now Arnold Ventures.

And Lucas County in 2015 also adopted a federal court order release policy based on the PSA tool. So what this really did was transform our system from a charge based system to a risk based system. And what I mean by that, Lucas County in 2015 had a huge failure to appear issue. Individuals knew that if you were booked on a charge, you were going to jail and you were being let out. With the implementation of the PSA, it takes failure to appear into account when looking at the scores.

So this way, if an individual has a big history of failure to appears, they would actually be held until their next court appearance and the judicial system then could clear out all of the clutter. And with the implementation of the PSA, we have actually reduced our risk to the community. Our nonviolent offenses while out on pretrial release have decreased with this tool. Also, in 2019, we adopted a risk based graduated response policy. In 2019, the CJCC received a justice reinvestment initiative grant, which helped us create a reentry database.

So we now have a direct fee from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and it really serves two purposes. One, it allows law enforcement to identify individuals that are on their radar that will be returning to Lucas County and they have information on their release date and information on what they have done while they've been incarcerated. And then we also reentry service providers that have access to this, which allows our reentry service providers to create reentry plans and help returning citizens transition back into Lucas County. And then kind of the key highlight through our criminal justice reform is that we have realized, and this number is slightly outdated, since 2016, a 42% reduction in our jail population, and that is both pretrial and sentenced. And this has resulted in actual cost savings through the county's contract with the Correction Center of Northwest Ohio.

They have reduced, I think, their contracted jail bed days from over three fifty down to about 190. And since it's a contractual cost, it's true financial savings. Also at the CJCC, we're involved in national, state and local initiatives. And I see this as one of the key areas of my job. And it's really how do I and how do my staff become engaged in initiatives that can benefit Lucas County and the City Of Toledo.

And through that, it has led to a lot of work that relates to our reform work that we are doing here and it gives us exposure. One example of this, I do a lot of presentations either virtually or in person and through a presentation with one of these networks, Mornay Dancer from the Harvard Access to Justice Lab was on the webinar and she reached out to me about partnering with a project in Lucas County due to all of the stuff we are working on, which led to the evaluation by the Harvard Access to Justice Lab on the community diversion program. So this work really pays off and it helps us, one, get the city's name out and show the good things that we are doing, and it provides us access to resources. We have been able to leverage as many of the technical assistant opportunities through the Safety and Justice Challenge to benefit our community and we are stronger because of that. So the safety and justice challenge was funded through the MacArthur Foundation.

We are currently winding down our participation. It's a ten year program. We are in year 10. Lucas County was awarded over $5,000,000 throughout this past ten years and it really focused on over incarceration and public safety. And so how do you safely reduce your local jail population?

Our safety and justice challenge work consisted of seven strategies, the first one being criminal justice practices, so working with law enforcement on better training and working towards the law enforcement drop off center. Strategy two, managing based on risk is really leveraging the PSA and implementing policies that go hand in hand with a risk assessment tool. Strategy three, improving case processing. The main component of this is really our population review team. We meet once a week and do an in-depth review of our pretrial jail population and we try to expedite case processing or review bonds.

And when I mentioned expedite case processing, we're looking at say an individual who just resolved all of their felony cases and now a lower level of misdemeanor is holding them in jail, but their court date isn't for eighteen days. There is no need for this individual to be sitting in court waiting for a court date for eighteen days. So we have a city prosecutor and a public defender in the room. They'll review the case. They'll pull up affidavits.

They'll have discussion with social workers to see what services they're linked with. And if the defense attorney and the prosecutor can come to a plea, that will be written up. Then the public defender will meet with their client in jail. If the client is amenable to the resolution and it's in their best interest, a bring back order will be issued and they'll appear in court the next day at the duties docket. If the judge is amenable to the resolution, then the case will be resolved and the individual will be out of jail sixteen days earlier than originally scheduled.

And we have been nationally recognized for this program and myself and Sean McNulty and a few others have probably participated in over 20 peer to peer learning exchanges on this topic. Also as part of strategy three is the opportunity program, which is pairing social workers with public defenders to benefit the outcome of the case. And judges at Toledo Municipal Court have been very happy with this project and rely on the Opportunity Project to help individuals engage in services. Strategy four is diversion of underserved practices. So this is a diversion program, the community diversion program, which I have a more in-depth slide on next.

And this really is a four hour curriculum where individuals that are repeat offenders can be referred to and cases can be dismissed upon completion of the program. Strategy five is coordinated community practices, which was trying to align policies and procedures for the five probation departments. One big advancement was the sharing of drug testing results. So in an individual that was on probation for two different probation agencies no longer had to do two separate drug screens. Instead, they could do one drug screen and have that information shared.

And strategy six, reducing racial and ethnic disparities was funding micro grants to community agencies to try to reduce racial and ethnic disparities through grassroots programming. And then strategy seven is SJC amplification. I will have a QR code to this after the end of this section, but this is a 10 series podcast on our SJC reform work. WGTA interviewed and sat down with some of the core members and as part of that, there's also a one hour documentary on the work that has been done in Lucas County. And I know WGTA TE has won several awards for this series.

So Community Diversion Program, it was developed in part of the Safety and Justice Challenge in coordination with the Center for Justice Innovation. It is based on the foundations of procedural justice and is currently being evaluated by the Harvard Access to Justice Lab. And here are just some preliminary results. We will have much more in-depth results when the evaluation is completed. But at this point, you will see that we have a program completion rate once individuals are registered between seventy five percent to eighty five percent, which is a pretty good program completion rate. Do you have anything you want to add?

I would just say that our results from that, our defendants who have taken this, and there's about 3,000 of them, this is a three and a half hour diversion program where we teach people to breathe when they're approached by the police. Breathe and don't get yourself arrested. And there's also decision making, cognitive behavioral therapy, and there's a half hour discussion of getting people connected with the community resources that we already have in our community. They're not connected with it. They need to be connected with.

In the eighty and ninety percentile range, our defendants have said, one, that they have learned a new perspective on criminal justice. Their former perspective was the cops pick on us. We need to fight back. The new perspective is if we breathe and cooperate, we don't get arrested. 94% of them said they would recommend their the class to others. If you can imagine a class I order a defendant to go to, and they say, I would this was good. I would recommend it to others. And something I don't remember the exact percentage on this, but in the 80 or 90% range, they said, I learned a new coping skill. So this has helped thousands of people in our community to operate better in the community.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm wearing the wrong way again. Alright. So here are our results.

So this is quarter two, twenty twenty five. We have a jail population reduction of 43%, which is one of the leaders of the safety and justice challenge. So very proud of this work and as I mentioned, this is the safety plus justice challenge. The next charts are our focus on safety. So Toledo Police Department is the first set of bar charts, and you will see that Lucas County or not Lucas County, City Of Toledo has the largest reduction in property and violent crimes of Ohio's largest cities.

And I believe this is a period of a few years. And so not only have our jail numbers gone down, but our crime has also been reduced. Next chart is our murder rate per 100,000, also the largest six cities in Ohio. We had a spike as everyone knows in the 2019, 2020, 2021 range, but you will see we are the yellow line. We are back down in line as some of the lowest murder rates per 100,000 of other Ohio cities.

So I think these numbers kind of speak for themselves that not only have we reduced our jail population, but our community is still safe. And here is the QR code for the podcast and the documentary. So if anyone is into podcast, please download it and you can learn more about our safety and justice challenge work. And with that, I will turn it over to Tom to discuss reentry.

Okay, thank you, Vali or Holly and Vali. Thank you, city councilman and women for inviting us here today. We're happy to share this and I know we come, judge Coleman is chair of the reentry committee for our board. So him and I are here every April asking for a resolution from you and you've always graciously provided one to recognize the hard work that's going on. A little historical context back to 2013, the city and the county each gave let me back up a little bit more.

The reentry coalition approached the county government and city government saying, hey, we are all volunteer board. We really need to take a focus on reentry in the community. We would like to have funding for what we would call a reentry coordinator position. So initially the plan was the city council or the city of Toledo provide a $50,000 investment and the county provided a $50,000 investment. That was a one time investment with the understanding that it would be sustained with sustainability funding, meaning grant funding.

And we've been very successful in doing that. So before I get to the return on investment, is the next slide out, talk about when in 2013 they needed a place to put this office. The CJCC was a logical choice. One, they had passed through grants, JAG, VAWA and Title II And there was office space and it was a logical place if we're going go after grant funding to house reentry. So thus was born the reentry committee of the CJCC with which judge Coleman does chair.

It brings together seven members from the CJCC board, which are usually decision makers such as Julia Bates, the police chief, the sheriff, judge Coleman, and others, along with six of the a portion of the reentry coalition board members. I think we have six currently that can vote. So it brings together the grass tops with the grassroots. So the the individuals on the street doing the work day in and day out saying this is the challenge, this is a barrier. And this committee is able to talk things through and the elected officials with decision making authority can go back or advocate with their colleagues that we need to remove this barrier.

So it's been a great structure for us and it's worked to lead reentry over the last twelve years in our community. On the next slide, here's a return on investment. Like I said, the City of Toledo gave us $50,000 as well as the county and we've been able to bring in $4,800,000 over that time period to put back into the City of Toledo to invest in criminal justice reform, to invest in people in our community, to connect them with services and to hopefully have them obtaining jobs, becoming taxpaying citizens in the city Of Toledo and staying out of the criminal justice system. It's hard work, doesn't work all the time that smoothly. But you can see there's been a number of grants that we've been able to obtain.

Holly mentioned the Justice Reinvestment Initiative grant, which is labeled JRI there. We are the only county in the whole state of Ohio that has this data from ODRC. We get programming they complete in the institution. We get their out date that they're going to be on post release control. No other county in our state has this information.

And we were able to build the database because of the structure of NORS that was already in place. We had a program where worked about two years to create the database analogy like as Holly said, it's used by law enforcement as well as reentry service providers. Another grant I'd like to point out is the evaluation grant. So during COVID, we were interviewed through a rigorous interview process. We were selected as one of the sites to participate in the National Second Chance Evaluation.

That evaluation has to go to Congress and Georgia State University was selected as the evaluator for this process. Only three communities because of COVID were able to submit applications for funding to support the work we have to do as part of the evaluation. Lucas County, Alameda County, California, and Buffalo, New York. So the three of us are in this cohort that the report will end up going back to Congress. One thing GSU has acknowledged and are they're actually going through the process of creating a white paper is the level of collaboration Lucas County they see as unmatched in the country.

And they want to tell the story through this paper and we will be presenting to a conference in Denver in February. I will be traveling with them to present on the collaboration that occurs here in Lucas County. So your investment has come back multiple times over up to the tune of $4,800,000 The Reentry Coalition, many of you are aware, we have very strong vibrant coalition that's been around since 1999 that was initially funded by the Ohio State Bar Association where they were pushing for communities to adopt a focus on reentry. We have some dedicated volunteers, we have original founders, and we've had a whole bunch of new people come on that are passionate about this work that volunteer their time. We as you know host our premier event right here in this chamber the first Wednesday of every month.

We've been doing that since 2007. We appreciate the use of the room because it's fantastic to get these individuals coming back home and their family members that are with them all into this space and welcome them back home. But more importantly have 30 or 40 resource providers out in the conference rooms that they can go out and get all their issues taken care of in one spot. And if somebody is not here that should be here, we give them information to connect to that individual. So they are definitely getting a ton of help here when they come here for first Wednesday.

That we've also had a number of offshoots where we've done a number of licensed clinics in the community. And one year we did seven of them when there was temporary amnesty reduction or temporary reinstatement fee reduction. We were able to eliminate $350,000 of reinstatement fees with the BMV through those seven clinics. I don't know if judge Coleman you want to say anything else about reentry.

Would just like to point out that we Charlie was talking about risk assessments, when you assess risk, the greatest factor to predict whether a person is going to commit crime is whether they already have and whether they've been incarcerated. So these people are coming back from prison, from jail, are our highest risk people who are most likely to be causing the the criminal justice problem. They're gonna be the ones who are committing property and violent crime. And so by having a reentry coalition that can meet them when they get back and provide them the services that they need to be successful, They weren't successful before and they went to jail. With a very specific coalition of people who are providing those services now, we end up having the lowest recidivist rate in the state of Ohio.

Mhmm. And so if you can imagine what that does for two things. One, for individuals in our community who are basically in distress and their families are in distress, they're giving a second chance. And they're given the resources to take full advantage and be successful in that second chance. That's one thing. On the other side is the community around them that is going to be harmed because they're going to recidivate without this extra help. And so this reentry coalition really helps the individuals who are involved in the system, usually dealing with poverty, and then also helping the greater community by helping those individuals. This is huge for our community.

Hi, my name is Annie Minton and I am the behavioral health criminal justice Tom, were you done? I am the behavioral health criminal justice coordinator here at the CJCC. Whenever I tell someone that I work in criminal justice reform and I work at the intersection of behavioral health and criminal justice, I have never had someone say, oh, that's not necessary, oh, that's not needed. Because I think we all know, especially in a post COVID era, that our communities are really in need when it comes to behavioral health services and treatment, when it comes to accessing behavioral health services and treatment. So, starting around in the 60s in the area of deinstitutionalization, we closed a lot of our state psychiatric hospitals across The United States with the promise that we would create community supports that would take care of the individuals that we were releasing from these institutions.

Unfortunately, in a lot of ways, we failed to build up those mental health supports in communities. And so we've seen how in recent years, the biggest mental health facilities in our countries and our communities are our jails. And that's an unfortunate result of deinstitutionalization and something that both the behavioral health and the criminal legal system is very much seeking to resolve. So like Tom said, Lucas County is really known collaboration. My committee, the Behavioral Health Criminal Justice Committee, is chaired by Judge Navarre from the Court of Common Pleas, really seeks to bring together these two different communities to try and break down silos and work together.

So the mission of the BHCJ Committee is to seek systemic improvements at the intersection of the behavioral health and criminal legal systems to improve the lives of individuals with cross system involvement for the betterment of the Toledo Lucas County community. And the BHCJ committee envisions a community with a cross system continuum of care co created and co owned by behavioral health and criminal legal system stakeholders that improves outcomes for individuals with behavioral health issues, reduces inappropriate incarceration, increases access to services, and enhances public safety. So, this was a new focus for the CJCC. We had previously adopted a focus on reentry. The behavioral health criminal justice coordinator followed a similar format to the reentry coordinator through the creation of a specialized committee that would focus on these issues and a coordinator that would guide these issues day to day behind the scenes in between committee meetings.

And on this slide, you can kind of see a few of the different projects I'm gonna talk about in the next few slides. So the CJCC created the position and it's funded by the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board. And through this position, the BHCJ coordinator is responsible for the analysis, research, development, planning and evaluation activities that support system improvements for the intersection of the Lucas County Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Systems. So on the next page, this is one of the kind of initiatives that started, and I can give you guys better copies. I know it's very This is what has led the work of the BHCJ coordinator over the years.

So this is our first sequential intercept map that we completed in 2014 with the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence out of I don't know where it is in Ohio, but accurate.

I can see it in

my brain.

So this is our 2014 map. So if we switch slides to 2023, you can see how much this system has grown. And so basically what we're doing is we're looking at different intercepts of the criminal legal system and mapping what resources we have available from the behavioral health system and from the criminal legal system. So as you can see looking from 2014 to 2023, our system has really grown and we've really increased the number of services we have as we've attacked the gaps in our system. So also through this initiative, we vote on priorities for change which participants will come up with together and then we'll do some action planning.

In our '20 23 priorities for change, we identified improving access to a psychiatrist in treatment services in jail from day oneentry as a focus, as well as developing a more robust outpatient commitment process, increasing reentry planning, including medication discharge, and increasing opportunities for sustainable peer services. And this map is really a great resource for you to see what we have across the intercepts, so I'm happy to send this. It's also on our website. If you go to the CJCC website and click on the BHCJ tab, you can download the full report, which also includes the map. And so kind of, if you hit the next slide.

We decided that we had this great map of our entire system, but we decided that we needed to do a deeper dive on our competence to stand trial continuum. So competence to stand trial stems from the constitutional right that you have as a defendant in a case. You have to be able to either be able to participate in the case against you or understand the proceedings against you. And that's really kind of a hallmark of the American legal system. But if you are unable to participate in your defense, then you are deemed incompetent to stand trial.

And that's typically a mechanism by which individuals seek to get treatment. So we have a lot of individuals that are cycling through this system in an attempt to be connected to services. So we wanted to map out this process in a more detailed way and find ways that we can improve this process because there is a competency crisis across the country right now as individuals are being funneled through this system. Because like I said, in the area of deinstitutionalization, we didn't create a system that could appropriately link individuals to treatment. This kind of the best.

This system was created for a smaller country. As we've grown as a country, we've outgrown the need for this system in some ways as a mechanism to get treatment. So we also identified priorities for change at this summit. One of them was to create a co responder program, which I'll mention in a little bit, because that is something we received grant funding to do. Also, generally increasing communication and information sharing.

Doing an examination of private hospitals and community mental health centers policies around banning and arresting people, and developing an AOT program. So one thing I don't have a slide for, but that I meant to add a slide for is that out of this process we really realized that one of the best ways to connect individuals to treatment is actually diverting them away from the criminal legal system entirely through diversion programs. And so through the Competence to Stand Trial Policy Academy that we attended in Washington DC with the state of Ohio, we really identified building up a diversion program as a key to our system. So, the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health actually put $11,700,000 for fiscal year twenty six and fiscal year twenty seven in their budget to build a diversion programs throughout Ohio. Toledo was selected to be one of the sites that would receive some of this funding but unfortunately it was struck from the budget before it went through.

But we're still working with the state to see how we can bring some of that funding to Toledo. They picked Toledo because of all of the advancements that we've done, both in the criminal legal system that Holly explained earlier, and also just having this Confidence to Stand Trial Summit and the work we did with the state at the Confidence to Stand Trial Policy Academy. Locally, I'm still working with Sean McNulty and Rebecca Facy to create a municipal diversion program that would impact individuals moving through Toledo Municipal Court. So if you go to the next slide, this is the care center. So I mentioned diversion programs are a great opportunity to deflect individuals away from the criminal legal system.

Diversion programs typically take place after an individual has already been charged with a crime and come into contact with law enforcement. An even better option is for law enforcement to deflect individuals from the criminal legal systems themselves. And so the care center is a center that's operated by the ZEF Center, where law enforcement can actually take people that they encounter on the day to day actions of their job to the ZEF Center, where they will be given an assessment and potentially receive services or be admitted to the crisis stabilization unit. Since this unit has started, there have been 116 drop offs and 94 of those have been from Toledo Police Department. So we know that this is serving Toledo residents.

This is a really important innovation because the Zeph Center has said themselves that it's way more difficult to manage individuals once they are incarcerated. So being able to deflect individual to care immediately is something that we're really proud of and something we're looking to enhance. And kind of on that note, a big priority for our community has been developing a co responder unit. A co responder unit is special in that it pairs Toledo Police Department officer with a licensed mental health clinician. So they will arrive at a scene together simultaneously.

And they have special skills to de escalate situations and identify when an individual might be having a crisis episode related to mental health concerns. This was a priority that was set forth by the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board. And then we kind of said, well this is a project you want to start. This is something we can help with and get some grant funding to get going. So we actually won $550,000 in a federal grant process to establish a co responder program in Toledo, Ohio.

We are currently in planning for that grant. So we are working on building that program right now and we hope to start implementation within a year or so. And then we'll have two years of implementation with that money. We are currently planning a trip to Denver, Colorado where we will see a correspondent unit that's known as being one of the best in the field, and we're hoping to bring back a lot of lessons learned in the development of our own program. And then the other successful grant application that we had this year was for the enhancement of the adult treatment court.

We won $678,332 to enhance the adult treatment court. We are adding some new services for treatment court participants. One of those new services is peer support, which is individuals that have lived experience with substance use and sometimes going through the criminal legal system, use their lived experience to kind of meet individuals where they're at and encourage them to engage in treatment services. So that will be provided by new concepts. And then we also know that part of substance use is that it impacts the family unit that you're in.

So we also have a home based family therapist that will be working with clients and their families through their recovery process, and that will be provided by Ohio Guidestones. And the judge is Judge Ian English who is our Chair's esteemed husband.

All right. Next section is grants management. As I mentioned, we administer justice assistance grant funds, violence against women act funds, and title two funds on behalf of the state. The focus is really to control funding locally instead of having individuals in Franklin County, Columbus make decisions for Lucas County and the City Of Toledo. And we do receive a small administrative portion of these funds that offsets the cost of my grants manager.

So justice assistance grant is the most generic funding there is. We fund Toledo Police Department, the Sheriff's Office, Lucas County Prosecutor's Office, Lutheran Social Services and Family and Child Abuse Prevention Center. Right now, we do have concerns about the federal funding pause and also the shutdown of the government. So hopefully that will be resolved soon and they will replace FY 25 NOFOs and we can continue this work. Violence Against Women Act is domestic violence funding.

We fund programs in the sheriff's office, family and child abuse prevention center, prosecutor's office, Toledo Police Department, the YWCA, advocating opportunity. And we do actually have a court project this year. We are working with Toledo Municipal Court on redesigning their victims waiting room. And then finally, Title II funds are to address juvenile crime and delinquency, really focusing on positive youth development. We are currently funding the Sylvania Youth Diversion Program, Empowered Chef, which is Sofia Quintero Center, and Empowering Minority Youth in Toledo South End through the BELIEVE Center.

And with that, I will turn it over to Shane for an overview of NORUS. Thank you, Holly. I am Shane McCracken. I am the director of NORUS and as Holly mentioned earlier,

that is a department under umbrella. Norris is the information technology arm of the CJCC. We provide automation and information sharing amongst multiple criminal justice agencies throughout Northwest Ohio. We have a staffing of about 33 employees who provide both application development and support in addition to a department that provides network and hardware support to maintain our applications so we can deliver them throughout the criminal justice community. On our next slide, we have, and I'm going to have a couple small corrections as we go through this.

We have 88 members that use NORA's services. And again, those members are within Lucas County or Northwest Ohio region. We do have one agency just north of the border, Monroe County in Michigan. Out of those 88 member agencies, we have about 2,800 users at any given time, and they run anywhere from 12 to 14,000,000 transactions per month. Those would include criminal justice histories, running once in warrants, and just any other criminal justice query that may provide additional information to whatever agency is running those.

And again Norris has a group of application developers that provide all of the criminal justice applications used throughout Lucas County Beginning with. An application used by the Toledo police department called the crime reporting system. So that application allows police officers to enter in the nature of the crime that they have been called to. And then that information is consumed and stored on-site on one of our databases. From there, we also offer the court case management system, the Toledo Municipal Court, Maumee Municipal Court, and Oregon Municipal Court utilize.

That has some integration with the, that's fine, with the crime reporting system. So if you can imagine a crime report goes in, an affidavit is created, it is taken to Toledo Municipal Court and in their case management system a

case is initiated. If unfortunately the crime that was reported requires incarceration while waiting for their arraignment at

Toledo Municipal Municipal Court, they would then be booked into the Lucas County Jail which Norris provides the inmate records management system application for. So at the time of booking, they would consume all information provided by the officer and enter it into that inmate records application. And that then information is shared between the case management application at Toledo Municipal Court and our once in warrants application in the situation that perhaps the defendant is released from jail and does not appear in court and a bench warrant is issued, that is then maintained in our once a warrant application. In addition, if there are any more substantial warrants such as a protection order warrant or a felony warrant which would require that warrant to be entered in at the state level and at the federal level, we have a complete integration between our local warrant system and the state warrant system and the federal warrant system. And what this allows then is for officers, the courts, the jails to be able to look up once and warrants on any kind of, or any person that they may have interaction with to see if there's outstanding warrants anywhere in the state or across The U.

S. That they would need to be able to take them in on. And I've kind of jumped around, Holly. All of this that we provide does need network infrastructure and network infrastructures are not cheap. So we have been maintaining all of these applications on a network infrastructure under a flat budget for the last five years.

We've successfully maintained this especially with rising cost in different cost of network appliances such as servers and firewalls. We're pretty proud of the fact that we are able to offer these services under a flat budget especially as IT costs rise. And then the next slide is just a list of all of the applications that we provide and as I kind of went through a scenario, we provide the police application, the court applications, the geo applications and then we provide a lot of system integrations between other vendors in the criminal justice arena. One of our biggest integrations is for the e citation and e crash. So when an officer pulls somebody over and writes a citation for perhaps an accident, that information is entered into an e citation program.

And then we are able to consume that information and then integrate it into the court case management system to generate a new case for them so you don't have any manual entry. The idea is we do not want someone to have to enter information twice. We want them to enter it in one time and then we want to share it amongst all of the applications. And that is the end goal of Norris. Our goal is to make everyone's job in the criminal justice arena easier, efficient, at a low cost. And I think we've successfully been doing that for the last fifty years.

Thank you, Shane. And I will say entities that have truly integrated criminal justice data. And I will say my counterpart in Franklin County thought that purchasing a new case management system for their jail would give them a Norris and it doesn't. It gives you a tool, it has Norris has so many integrations that increases the efficiency and effectiveness of courts, jails, and police. It's not just off the shelf software.

It has to be pulled and pushed throughout the different systems to make it work seamlessly. And Shane and the Nora staff work hard every day to enhance the user experience and make changes to meet their needs. And so it's definitely something that the city of Toledo should be proud to have because when I present nationally, it is something that everyone wants. And then last topic is just background checks. We have a background check office. We actually started this at the request of the city of Toledo, and we do provide the city of Toledo's background checks for employment. And with that being said, our presentation is done.

Okay. Councilwoman Williams, first of all, you for your presentation. Very well done except for the where I needed the magnifying magnifying glass. And I also wanna recognize the councilwoman McPherson is here. Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you, chair Hobbs. Thank you for this. This is some good information. I don't know what's going on in Columbus, but it's serious over there just looking at the numbers. This data is really amazing, for us to have, but I will tell you this.

I know, several people that were coming home from prison, just to speak about the reentry, portion of it and even the diversion I have, were in their last six months of their state prison terms and when they met with the people that were trying to reentry them, they were like Lucas County is the best county that we have to work with. It was crazy. It was a young lady. Her name is Vernice, and she goes to all the prisons and she meets with the folks to help them get jobs or whatever and they were like, we're not worried about you, you're going to Lucas County, they have a great reentry program. That speaks a lot to what we're doing and, you know just the second chance first Wednesday is amazing and I didn't know it went on for this long, eighteen years is a long time and Lucas County has been put on the map throughout the state.

So that's amazing and that speaks to the magnitude of your the work that c CJCC has been putting in. I appreciate you and I applaud the work that you've done because it has reached throughout the state. I mean, unfortunately, the state prisons, but that's good though because there the she said she had to work harder for prisoners that were entering in other counties than she did for Lucas County. And I I was just blown away. I said, well, what?

That is amazing. So thank you so much. And Joe's coming and the work and the diversion work with you. Just seeing those numbers going down is just simply amazing because though each individual situation that happens is an individual and it impacts so many people with just that one individual, just to see it go down is amazing to me. So thank you so much for this information, the data and if we can get this, this would be great for us to have and tell even more because we still have so many people in state prison that are coming home.

Know, I love bringing folks to First Wednesday because there's just so many people here willing to help And, you know, the team that works there, like, that actually take people to court to renew get those fines reduced. Like, they drive them there. They don't say meet. They say, we'll come get you, meet us here, and they drive them there or we'll come to your house. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you chair Hodge for having them come present this information because a lot of people don't realize how impactful Lucas County is in this recidivism fight and this touts it. I see the blade here so it's gonna get out there because we need to talk about this more. Thank you.

Thank you, President Williams. Councilman Cherry.

Thank you, Chairman Hobbs. So as everyone knows, I've been gone for almost two years now and also was the chair of this committee for, I believe six, seven, eight years. And this is the kind of stuff that I miss. Just I echo what the Madam President said about the work you guys are doing and how long you have been doing it. It happened well before I've gotten here, but it really took flight.

I remember having these discussions in the 14s and 15s about where this was really gonna go and I'm just really proud to see where it has gone. So I echo Madam President's words and just can't thank you enough. I also want to thank the commissioners. They've had a lot to do with this. I remember Commissioner Contrada was really in-depth with a lot of this, and I wanna thank her, I haven't seen her in a while.

But the commissioners, this was just a great collaboration through a few decades now of city and county government working together and doing what needed to be done for the citizens of the city and the residents of the county, but it wouldn't be done without your team. So again, thank you, you, thank you. Glad to be back. It's my first committee meeting and I'm glad it was this one. So thank you, Chairman Hobbs.

Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, thank you. Nice to see some smiling faces and for people who really enjoy what they do. I would like to get a copy of this slideshow, it would be a lot easier, I couldn't tell who was yellow and who was orange and so it would just be helpful. And I don't want to be the Debbie Downer of this committee, but I've got some real issues that I need to put out there whether you can help or you can't, you have to listen because I'm so frustrated. So, know, I just, you know, I've sat through, I was actually a victim of a crime, and I sat through, the misdemeanors over at TMC, and, it seemed like hardly anybody showed up.

You know, they just keep names and names and names. So then they issue a bench warrant, and I don't think anything ever happens with the bench warrants unless something serious ever happens, so then there's no accountability in that regard. I'm not a big fan of the public safety, it was a PSA, public safety assessment, And, know, judge, I sat on your bench with you and it was around a time when I just had was trying to learn a little bit about what was happening and I hear what you're saying about reducing the jail population, but reducing the jail population does not equal a safer community. I'm going to say that again because I think we agree on that sometimes because there has to be that support that you were describing with the mental health tools or the behavioral tools and some of the drug issues and what have you, but having, you know, reducing a jail population does not equal a safer community. This is just my layman's term, I don't have all of your degrees, but please listen to what I'm saying because right here is a resolution for the young woman that was killed who was 19, Jasmine Queen.

I'm going go to her funeral tomorrow. I've had a gentleman in my district who had 44 misdemeanors that pled down to four. That may or not be your area, but I just want you to know, these are what I hear in my district. I had, I don't know how old he was, I want say he was like 36 or 35, he raped a 91 year old woman in my district. He was in the PSA tool and this happened in my district.

I've had two men who have been wandering the neighborhood without pants on. I have had a gentleman in my district who cut off his ankle monitor four times. So, when we're talking about, and again, this is not necessarily all of your predictive tools and so forth, this is what I see in the last two years of being a district council woman. And what happens is, is that people come and turn to us as leaders, as elected leaders and look to us for answers that guess what, we don't have. So, when you're looking at all of the tools in the toolbox and when we're looking at monies that are coming in from you know Burn or wherever, VAWA, you name it, OJJDP.

I used to deal with a lot of those grants in my former career and I like to see them come back here, but it has to translate into making our community safer. These are only four or five different things that I have dealt with in my district. Perhaps other district members have had these issues. I don't know what to say to my constituents, and I need help, and I don't know what to say. And I'll just end with this that it's really telling that we can build, and I'm a dog lover, a new Lucas County care and canine care LC4, but we can't figure out how to build a jail.

I yield. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Sorantu.

Thank you, chairman Hobbs, and thank you for having this meeting today. And thank you to all of you that are here today. I would like to revisit the diversion program. I attended the program as it was presented sometime earlier this year. I think it was in the spring or summer, I can't remember exactly. But I think it's a great concept. I think it really is important that we offer that to people. But when I look at the stats that were presented at counsel just a short time ago to the Public Safety Committee, about thirty percent of the people that are sent there do not complete the program. And I'm just curious what happens to those 30% that do not complete the diversion program?

They have already entered a no contest plea in order to go to the diversion program. So if they don't complete the diversion program, they're found guilty, they get to conviction and then proceed to sentencing for whatever that charge was that they pled to.

So so are I mean, like, is a bench warrant issued if they don't show up to diversion, or is it something that's arranged?

So when we when we send them to the diversion program, they have thirty days to complete the diversion program, and we give them a date to return to court if they that's late at seven weeks later. And so if they complete the program, the case is dismissed. If they don't complete the program, they have to come back. We can send them back again and give them another chance to complete it, or we can find them guilty and sentence them at that time. If they don't show up, then a warrant would be issued for their arrest.

So when a warrant is issued, what what percent do you think are actually arrested and brought back to court?

I mean, eventually, we're gonna get them or they're gonna die with a warrant. Yeah. But we execute warrants every day. I mean lots of them. And we actually have a warrant enforcement unit in the Toledo Municipal Court that goes out to execute warrants. Now those are going to be the high level most important ones. So typically, if somebody doesn't complete a diversion program, we're not sending our warrant enforcement unit out. But if somebody doesn't show up for a domestic violence case, we're gonna send the warrant enforcement unit out for those cases.

So So

our our warrants do get executed.

So in domestic violence cases, your honor, are most of those people brought in? They're found because a bench warrant was issued and they're brought back to court?

Well, we have lots of outstanding warrants that Right. The sheriff's office and the marshals and our warrant enforcement unit, the Toledo Police Department, and other agencies just did a domestic violence roundup this last month during domestic violence awareness month. And rounded up, I don't does anybody know that number? But they rounded up a lot of people, but they didn't find everybody that that they were looking for. So, yeah, we do have outstanding warrants.

Okay. And then, like I said, a few weeks ago, we had a presentation here at council at the Public Safety Committee. And I guess I'm curious, I didn't see when I went through that today what the rate of recidivism was, those that complete the diversion program. Do we have any idea? I know Harvard is doing a study, but do we have an idea of the recidivism rate for the six months, the last six months or something like that?

We tried to do our own internal study of that. And really, the golden test is the randomized control study that we're doing with Harvard. It's very expensive. It takes a long time and we'll tell you the results in a couple of years when probably more than a couple of years when we get them. We did try to run our own study and it was really inconclusive and we couldn't come up with any numbers that told us anything.

Isn't that a part of the Harvard study that they're going to tell us? And how long will it be before we see those results?

I would say it's going be at least four years.

Four years?

Yeah.

We have to get 2,000 people completing the program in order to have statistical significance and have that and then they'll follow them for two years after that happens. So it'll take us a couple of years to get the 2,000 people through the program and then not to follow through for a couple of years. We are hoping to have some interim results that they'll be willing to release prior to that.

I hope so. Because that's a long time four years from now. And you know, we we really need to assure the citizenry that, you know, we have a safe city and that people are held accountable.

But keep in mind that 91% of the people that go through that program say, I learned a new coping skill.

Right.

I know something different to do when I talk to the police. And what that different thing is, is they know how to breathe and they know how to think before reacting. So we now have probably about 3,000 people who've completed that program. So there's 3,000 people in this community who know how to breathe Mhmm. Who, if they're in the situation where the police walks up and the guy out front is arguing with the police, there's 3,000 people out there available to walk up to him and say, hey, dude, take a breath.

Take a breath. Mhmm. I mean, this is with all these people who have learned these these basically de escalation techniques, breathing, decision making techniques, they're out there in the community and they can share that when there's interaction and help calm the crowd. And then on the other side, the police take that same training. Our police officers take CIT training, de escalation, procedural fairness training, so that so that they have that also. So this is something that's building in our community. And then Holly also showed the and I I recognize, counsel Morris, your your concerns that you hear from constituents, we

can't

stop all crime. We we can't. Nobody's ever successfully been able to stop all crime. But if you look at the statistics that actually happened, as our jail population has gone down, our crime rate has gone down in the city of Toledo. Now we did have a spike during coronavirus. When we took away all of everybody's support system, things kinda went crazy for a while. Most communities in The United States did not have a record murder rate during coronavirus. Most people had an increase and they went back down. Toledo, unfortunately, did have an actual record.

Right.

That that's not true across the country, but everybody had that spike during coronavirus. But that has gone back down, and that's true in Lucas County also. So from the time we really started aggressively working on pretrial reform, diversion programs, PSA court, risk assessments, both So pretrial and probation, our overall crime rate is down during that time. So although you have lots and lots of examples, we still have 60,000 cases filed a year in Toledo Municipal Court. But when I started as a judge twenty years ago, we had a 100,000.

Think about that. A hundred thousand twenty years ago, and we're down to 60,000 or less now. That is a huge decrease. Now, you're out there answering to the 60,000 who still have crimes that they were victimized by but it's not 100,000. So, we're making excellent progress. We haven't stopped crime, but a 40% reduction is pretty gigantic.

And I I appreciate, you know, those comments about people that have completed the diversion program. I think that is very important and it's very helpful because, again, so many problems that we've seen in the past are where, you know, the police had to deal with a situation where the person was not cooperative, they couldn't see their hands, they couldn't they had verbal exchanges that didn't start off on a very good note, I understand that. But again, what I'm driving at is I really want to see the recidivism rate. If the people have done well through that class, and it's a very helpful class, like I said, I was I was in that program, not the class, but I mean, was in the program that you presented, I thought it was very helpful. But again, are people repeating, and is the recidivism rate still there?

I really look forward to those numbers, and I really hope it doesn't take four years to find that out. Because again, a lot of people, and I share Councilwoman Morris's viewpoint, a lot of people do not feel safe and, you know, they hear about crimes and they hear that these certain suspects have been arrested prior and it's been a violent crime or gun crimes or drug crimes of things of that nature. And it is difficult to give answers to people because they feel that, you know, people are not being held accountable once they're brought to justice, that they're not being held accountable and that it's a slap on the hand, and they're gonna be back in trouble again. So that's where I'm coming from. I look forward to seeing recidivism rates as soon as we can get them, because I think that will really help the public understand too, you know, what is happening.

So thank you. Thank you, mister chairman.

Thank you. Is there anyone here that would like to speak before we end this meeting? Is there anyone in our audience that would like to speak before we end this meeting?

I have another issue. Is that okay to speak on that now?

Okay.

Richard Arnold, thank you for the opportunity to speak. This is a public safety committee. I was hoping to see Toledo Fire and Rescue here tonight. There was a tragedy earlier this year on February 2. There were three children that died in a fire in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The story is the children were ages 16, 14, and 12. The middle child was severely autistic and had a long history of attempting to elope, attempting to run away. They would find this child trying to jump out of second story windows in the middle of the night. So, on the advice of experts, they secured their home. There were locks on all of the doors and windows.

The parents and the eldest child had a key to the locks, but not the autistic child. And when a fire broke out, all three were killed. They've concluded the investigation. No charges are going to be filed. It seems that these parents did everything right. They acted on the advice of of of experts. And if they'll give you any idea how severe this problem is according to the National Autism Society, last year you had eighty two children who died while eloping. Some were struck by cars. Some drowned. But it is a big issue.

And I've been asking around, you know, I don't even know if there is conventional wisdom on what to do about this. I'm sure there is no one size fits all solution. But at your next meeting when you have Toledo Fire and Rescue here, I would love to hear their thoughts on this. I know that we have Toledo's families in Toledo going through the same issue, making the agonizing choices. How do I keep my special needs child safe and at the same time protect the rest of my children? This is a serious issue. How do we secure our homes to make sure a special needs child can't run away and at the same time how do we protect all of the other children? So thank you.

Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Is there anything else from our

Could I just make one additional comment with your recidivism rate concerns? Keep in mind that in Lucas County, we have a very low recidivism rate compared to the rest of the state and compared to the nation. And a lot of that is based on this work we do. The other thing, when we talk about incarceration, you need to understand that incarceration is criminogenic. What that means is by incarcerating people, we make them more likely to be criminals.

There's a study I just reviewed recently that shows when you put somebody in jail and then probation compared to straight probation, they're a 140% more likely to commit new crimes by having done the jail time first. And and really the explanation for that is if you put somebody in jail even for a short period of time, they're likely to lose job, housing and start having family difficulty and they lose their relationships and to the extent that they were getting any drug, alcohol, mental health assistance, they lose that also. And so then they have to start all over again. And so by reducing our jail population, we're reducing that criminogenic effect of jail. But we're replacing that with more work with the mental health board and them being specifically involved at the time of arrest, at the time of us setting bonds.

So a lot of times we're letting people out of jail because they got hooked up with their drug alcohol mental health treatment at the time of arraignment. So when Annie was talking about the opportunity project, those social workers are sitting in our arraignment courtrooms, Courtroom 3 and Courtroom 4, talking to defendants. And they will talk also with Harbor, Zeph, Unison, Midwest, Arrowhead, all these treatment centers. And they can immediately, during the process of our morning arraignment, get them hooked up with treatment. And so we're giving people OR bonds on the condition that they go to Midwest treatment inpatient that day.

And so people are going instead of staying in our jail where we and part part of the reduction of our jail numbers is people going directly to treatment. We make that a condition of the bond. If they don't stay in treatment, I mean, could walk away and then not get the treatment and go out drinking again. That'd be a violation of their bond and they're held accountable for that also. So between having one of the lowest recidivism rates in the state of Ohio, actually we are the lowest, right? Twenty three point

eight percent.

Yeah. And what is it nationally? It's over fifty percent, right?

Close to fifty percent.

So we're a lot lower than the national rate. And between that and our overall crime rate decreasing, that shows that what we're doing is is working. So and we'll take another stab at doing our own internal study to see if it results in anything, but no promises. We were hopeful that what we did before would be able to show you something and it just it didn't. We might have to wait for Harvard.

Councilman Sorontu.

Thank you. I just want to I have a couple other comments I want to make. It appears to me, and if I'm wrong, tell me that our mental health system is overloaded and that we really need to expand it. And I would appreciate it if the good judges would lobby our legislature and the governor to take some of that $3,000,000,000 that they have in reserves and expand mental health services statewide. I mean, we have a Toledo Mental Health Hospital on Detroit Avenue, which I'm familiar with because I spent three years at probate court, and I went to those hearings that we had over there.

But it I mean, they're just bursting at the seams with with people, and the state really needs to step up. The county doesn't have the money. The city doesn't have the money. It's the state that's got the money. And we we really need to make a concerted effort, not just judges, but everyone in the criminal justice system and our legislators, our city councils, and our mayors, and county commissioners to get the state to expand services in these centers because I just feel that if we don't, we're not going to solve this problem.

It's just going to continue to be there. And the other thing I want to say is I'm glad that you've indicated that you've worked somewhat with juvenile court. I've been a big I've had a big concern about juvenile court since I returned back to counsel four years ago. And that is that I mean, I've talked to the police. I've talked to parents. I've talked to citizens. I've gone to neighborhood meetings all over town. And it's guns and it's drugs that the young people are involved with. Kids, 12 years old, sometimes even younger than that, 12, 14 years old. And I think we really have to address this issue in terms of what can we do to stop the violence because it's just gotten so far out of hand.

I mean, it seems like almost at least two or three times a month we have juveniles with guns and somebody's murdered or somebody's severely injured because of guns. And drugs and guns go hand in hand in this community based on what I've found out from the police department, and we really need to tackle this. So I appreciate your assistance in that area, any thoughts you may have, but I think we really have got to do something, and the state needs to help us with that also. I'm sure every major city in Ohio has the same challenge. I've not heard of any city that says, oh, we don't have a juvenile problem with guns and drugs.

We do. So I just wanted to say that for the record. Thank you. Thank you, chairman Hobbs.

Thank you. I want to say thank you all for being here today. This information has been very encouraging. I have, over the course of five years and three months of being on council, sent countless amounts of people here on Wednesday, and it has always been very positive. Many times Andrea and I have been contacted saying thank you because of what happened to them here on Wednesdays when they come out because of the amount of help here.

And I know we've got a lot to work on and overcome and accomplish, but I believe councilman Sorontu that the problem that we're having with our young people, a lot of it just stops at home with parenting, period. And I know it's not what a lot of people want to hear, but I was raised where I had a strong mother and father that were no nonsense, that probably would some of the discipline I received, I'll use that word, would not be acceptable. But I tell you what it did for myself and two, three black boys raised in the inner city on Elliot Street between Auburn and Upton, My mom said, my dad said, I'm gonna take care of this now so the police don't have to take care of it later. And they meant what they said. And it just I just believe that what's happening with our young people goes back to parenting without proper parenting.

So anyway. But we have to start holding adults more accountable for the behavior of children. Our teachers can't teach because adults are coming to school. Instead of listening to the teacher, they're jumping on the teacher because of what a kid said. Our our our please, I mean, it's this cycle has to start with parents, and parents have to accept the responsibility.

You are not your child's friend. That's not the way I was raised. I'm here to parent you whether you like it or not. I was not my children's friend, and we have to get back to some fundamentals of parenting if we're going to make our society better, especially amongst minorities. It's not popular, but I know it works.

With that being said, this meeting is now adjourned.