 So my name is Allegra Clark. I'm co-chair of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee. It is 201 and I am calling the meeting to order pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. Am I supposed to read the part that doesn't actually apply? No, okay. We're recording in real time via technological means. So that was the formal part of the introduction. Like I said, my name is Allegra. I'm the co-chair of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee. We are joined both virtually and in the room with other members of the committee. And I will let them introduce themselves and then we'll pass along to Earl to talk about Chris. Hello, everyone. My name is Deborah Ferreira, one of the members. I was formerly a member of the Community Safety Working Groups, CSWG, which we, you know, one of the members who recommended put Chris into place as community responders that were very excited to have with us for these past couple of months. And I'm excited that the community has an opportunity to really give us some feedback. Of course, we've been meeting with Earl and he's been letting us know on a monthly basis how things have been going. However, it's always wonderful to get feedback and we want all the feedback, right? We want the good, the bad and the ugly, because what we're about is improving and making sure that the community is getting what it is that we're talking about. So for me, you know, one of the main reasons why I became part of this group and I'm still part of this group and CSWG and CSSJC is because of making Amherst a an inclusive a truly inclusive socially just, you know, community for all, you know, all those who are marginalized have a voice. We know that, you know, unfortunately, because of the root of policing in, in our country, it doesn't matter who's in the institution, whatever the color is, but it's the root of the philosophy of the institution of policing that needs to change, right. So if that doesn't change, then always you're going to look at people as properties and you're going to look at people as as something that just can be, you know, pushed around. And so for us, that's why we want to create crest so that there was that human factor that factor of really taking care of and providing resources and providing, you know, the care and compassion to people and not just people right, you know, taking care of our environment and taking care of, you know, all beings that are, you know, when they're not within our community. And for me it's, you know, it's a personal thing because I have two sons who are black men and black boys, and I want to make sure they're safe but I want all young people to be safe I want all community members to be safe and feel safe, and to be able to communicate and they can communicate and they can be and live their lives as authentic beings in terms of what they want to do. And so that's why I'm here today, you know, to, you know, listen to hear and to obviously, you know, applaud what Chris has done up until this point and then know that we have more to go, and to also put in a plug for the rest of the recommendations from the CSWG that I still have to be implemented in terms of youth empowerment center, the BIPOC cultural center, and obviously a lot of other recommendations in regards to to the Amherst nine. And so the work is continual. The work is something that that we won't give up. So I'm going to pass the mic along but you know, very, very excited to hear what the community has to say. Hi everybody, my name is Philip Avila I'm also part of the CSS JC. Yeah, we are very excited for everything to come today really just want to hear our communities voices and looking forward to hearing everything. If we want to go to our members who are attending via zoom I see Miss Pat and Dr. Fracate. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Pat and I'm a backup. If all my members CSWG and current members CSS JC, I want to add to everything that Deborah Ferrara said I don't want to repeat what she said but I'm excited to be here to listen to residents experiences with Chris I'm very grateful that our town is able to start Crest program. I'm just here to listen. Thank you. Dr fracate. Hi. It's a pleasure to be at this meeting and to join the listening session. I think a lot of the time the work seems to be something that is done alone and it would be good to have an opportunity to listen to what the public has to say about what we do and ways that we could improve the work that we're doing. Thank you for the opportunity. And finally, Dr. D. Shavas. Sorry. In the midst of some things here. So we just introducing ourselves. Yes. Okay. Well, thank you all for coming to the listening session for Crest. You know, I'm part of the CSS JC. And mainly, we are helping to support and facilitate this listening session for the public to give feedback to Crest that has been in place for a little less than a year. And to hopefully work to figure out how we can better serve the community so thank you all for joining. Thank you to members of CSS JC and thank you members of the public for joining us both in the room and on zoom. And now to introduce Mr. Earl Miller who is the director of the crest program and department. Yeah, I'll have to get you to this. It's my first hybrid meeting so do my best. Before it starts, I just want to be honest with folks. Crest is about seven months old, really in our kind of actual work we started September 6 delivering services in the community. So we are not perfect. I hope nobody comes here today expecting perfect. We are flawed, we are people trying to help people who are in particularly tragic situations. And I have the knowledge at the beginning of this that a I'm not unbiased, I'm doing the thing so I, you know, I'm going to do my best to really just just try to lay it out as it is, and and hope that kind of the way this was your dream not mine that our path forward will be yours and you'll, you'll let me walk it with you. I should start with a shout out. I am not the best PowerPoint maker in the world. This PowerPoint was created by cat Newman, our implementation manager, who is wonderful and is at home with Brady are you will see that dog with us everywhere we go. He is recovering from surgery today so special shout out to that puppy. So, I'm Earl Miller I'm the director of crest my first day with the town was March 21 2021 22 cheese. I'll be a little bit behind the eight ball. So I'm about a year in. And I just want to acknowledge before I start that we have two responders in the room with us today. Tim the brochure who's been with us since training started really fantastic done some amazing work with some of the refugee community in town, T at well by far our youngest responder but just as enthusiastic a human being as you could ever hope for, and I'm really proud to work alongside these folks. So, yeah, come up so they can see you. Oh and please note their new hoodies which we just got. You cannot buy them but they are, they are kitted out. All right, let's sit down now. Yeah, so actually, if I could have you stand up and just turn around. So, one of the things you'll notice on our on our uniforms this is true for almost every piece of uniform we have on the right side you'll see the town crest crest. So, you know, to signify that we're town employees on the left side you'll see our badge numbers. First and last name. There are position mine says director there's going to say community responder on underneath that our pronouns. I know that pronouns have become a political situation for lots of folks but for us. There are lots of families of trans or non non binary non gender conforming kids see that and feel impacted by it so I know it may not make everyone happy but for the folks it impacts it it is meaningful and so we would do it again. All right, Tim now you can sit down. Yeah, Tim, Tim also, Tim are great model why that's the resume. So next, we can go to next slide. Okay, so this is what we're going to talk about today. What is crests where we sit within the structure of the town, which was a decision really made with the CSWG and those folks are mission statement which is really kind of us taking the, the obligations that we were made by the town council the hopes and dreams of the CSWG and trying to also line that up with what the work looks like the department looks like. What our training was like it actually, we are going to give you a chance to see some of our training this summer so this will be a little sneak peek at that. What our work looks like and what our lessons learned. We have had the chance to do some really cool things and even the really cool things some of them have worked and some of them not so we want to give you a look at all that. And then questions and contact information. So we can get the next one. Who this one does animations. That was a surprise to me too. So what is crests. Is there another animation on this page. You can just hit. There we are. So, what is crests crests is a community responders for equity safety and service. We are the third branch of public safety in town, alongside the police department and fire department. Our mission is to provide to ensure that all public safety responses in town or anti racist, just equitable unfair for all. We take that anti racist mandate seriously. I'll show you what our team looks like but we are a minority majority team, not because we excluded anybody but because we really intentionally in defining what a responder was defined that in a way that did not create artificial boundaries for people of color, which is tricky to do but we got there. So yeah, you'll see fourth branch here. Some folks would say dispatch is a branch some folks would say they're not so we vacillate back and forth. The most significant difference from the other models in the country and there are somewhere between 20 and 40, depending on what you consider kind of adherence to the model is that we are not a program. So you'll hear us a program sometimes just because that's a shorthand folks use word department that does not receive any oversight from the police department or a clinical agency, we are unique nationally in that model. I think that's the way to do it. I share better I'm doing the job. But I think it what it allows us to do is to really own our work without needing to go through anybody else to get to it and that's really important under the structure of the town. I sit at the same level as the police chief and fire chief underneath the town manager I report him we meet every Monday at 11. And this is a picture of me and the two chiefs at Community Safety Day last year just to show that we can be in the same place. We get along. All right, so next slide. So our mission statement. This is really kind of for the responders, the expectations when they do their work. This is not listed in order which is really important each of these may be the most important depending on the situation. One is an overarching sense of optimism. Everybody is deserving of redemption of care. We talk a lot in our department about grace, kind of unwarranted love on undeserved. And that's really what we think our role is. We meet folks on some of the hardest days of their lives, they may not be feeling their best. We don't treat them as though, as though they're good folks as though they're our neighbors so we do that Rome Cabrera just step in Rome career is another responder, and also is a Spanish speaking responder so I'm. Yeah, I come up Rome so they can see I'm sorry, if you want to come up and kind of turn stand right in front and turn around. So I'm going to wave less and less enthusiastic model but nonetheless. I've done some really amazing work for us. So in our overarching sense of optimism, even when we meet with folks in hard times we remember that they're important that their feelings matter trauma informed care. This is an evidence based practice really rooted in the idea that trauma is so pervasive in our community that we should go into situations assuming that folks have experienced trauma and kind of. preemptively trying to avoid re traumatizing them. There's lots of data that that speaks to this. The sexual assault rates of women who are experiencing homelessness, the rates of sexual trauma in the community of violence those things. So what it allows us to do is to as opposed to having to ask everybody about the worst day of their life. We just assume that all of us have had a tough day, and we all deserve to be treated well anti racism. And for us, that means that's different than diversity is different than equity. It means that our department has an affirmative requirement to oppose and stand stand opposed to racism wherever we encounter it. And we intend to do that we do that every day. Being unarmed. This is written out there. Sometimes when folks here unarmed what they take that to mean is ill equipped or untrained, or somehow less professional. That is not true for us. Unarmed we see as actually a significant opportunity for us, not bringing a weapon into conversations with folks allows us to start from a de escalated place. And centered. We are services look different for everybody who's in front of us. We don't create kind of a menu of things. For some people, the best thing we can do is take them grocery shopping for some people the best thing we can do is help them with their paperwork. And the reality is for a fair amount of people here the best thing we can do is just listen. So we really do take it as our mission to provide the right support at the right moment, as opposed to locking ourselves into things and collaboration. You may have heard me say this other places I will go anywhere I'm invited. I will talk with any group that's interested. And, and that is something that's really important to us. We are not interested in being adversarial with anybody. We recognize that the strength of this community is the community, and we intend to enhance that community not further divided. Go to the next one. This is our department. I don't know if that's my best picture but it is a picture of me. It's hard to see it on a big screen. I don't know how I feel about it. So you'll see some of the responders are in this room. I'm the director of the department's longest cat Newman started with us in June of 2022 of those responders, seven of them started with us and training we took eight responders in the training. One person did not complete training. And then we were able to hierarchy in. So just the demographics of our team of those 10 people you see there, eight of them lived, worked, or spent some significant time in the town of Amherst seven of us identify as folks of color. Press is the only department of its type in the country with a black director, which is a unique function I think that speaks to what the town requested. Our diversity is our strength. Those folks come from very different places in the world. Chalo will be going back to Kenyon a couple weeks. Rome came to us from UMass Dartmouth. It has family in Ecuador. That's where his roots are. Kevan Lord, basketball player, Heather Lord's nephew. These are folks who, who care about our community beyond the work and I know that that that means something that Newman is the implementation manager. It's a grant funded position. She helps with policies and procedures and grant writing. She was our program assistant so our administrative person. Implementation manager has been our trickiest position if you want the thing that I've struggled with the most our first implementation manager lasted two weeks before I got here. Our second implementation manager lasted a month. Our third implementation manager lasted six weeks, and I'm not going to talk about cat because that this isn't going to count for her she's going to be here with us for a long time. The hard part is, it's a grant funded position. So every time some people are interested in what we're doing here. So anytime someone pops up who isn't kind of getting the same town benefits, someone hires them. And the three people who left before I think in conversation with them. I think left for their dream job so we don't begrudge them that, but having cat there will give us some real stability she's been with us from day one. Thank you. And go to the next slide. Okay, so our training. We were at the months in library in the basement. It was really hot until they got us an air conditioner about a month in. So our, you want to go to the next slide, I think it lists out the modalities. So our training we did nine weeks of training to prepare staff to respond to calls. Initially, we were going to do eight weeks, we got to eight weeks and realize we needed one more week just to kind of really firm some things up. And thankfully the town and folks were able to be patient with us that last week was pretty important. That's why we moved into our office and started to settle into things. We did training from anybody who would do one. We did a fair amount of restorative justice trainings racial equity trainings, situational awareness trainings from the police department. First aid trainings from the fire department, all the responders are CPR trained and certified at this point. We have a defibrillator so we have to go through it. I might be saying that word wrong but I'm giving it my best. I think we did a great job on that. We went with conservation and walked the past in town to find out where unhoused folks might camp sometimes. We went with rec folks to understand kind of what the parks look like. If folks remember last summer we showed up at picnics, barely unannounced, just to kind of start getting to meet folks. We were lucky and that we were, because we did it during the summer, we were able to really rapidly shift things so we were at opening day at Hampshire college. We were able to actually start providing some support to folks in the community during training. And Vanessa Phillips quote there is the training was everything we needed it was so eye opening. For me it was a lot of learning and learning and how to talk to people. Another thing Vanessa says is sometimes she takes it home and uses it on the kids. I don't know. I think it works as well as it works I've tried to remind it did not do much but but really the spirit of the training was we were building an institution here. That's how we think about it. So we needed to build culture in that training. We spent a lot of time talking about the ways in which we needed to treat each other, what my expectations were for how we would treat folks in town. And that was the standard that this town was going to expect of us I recognize that working in Amherst meant that there was going to be a very high bar from the beginning. Go to the next slide. So our modalities. These are kind of just a touch of the things that folks were trained in. We had report writing, pretty proud of our report writing is right now. And the circles of folks came to the circles at the town had a few months ago you would have seen responders facilitating those. The feedback was positive on that. Understanding housing discrimination and how we could support folks around that that has come up for us. All the policies of town things. Understanding the town COVID-19 response during training we were really training them to be constables. If you voted in the last election town at almost every polling site in town you would not have run into a police officer you would run into a crest responder. And that was a benefit for us to get to meet folks in town, but it was also benefit to the police department. If you ever have to be a console you have to wake up pretty early in the morning and so I don't think they minded not waking up that early that day. So we worked with the senior center. We did we started meeting with folks at the senior center probably two weeks in the training recognizing that about 33% of 911 calls in this town are for seniors and understanding their unique challenges. We were able to start fortunately with Pamela and only young and Jennifer Moisten who are in the room. So while they were onboarding we were able to kind of get the benefit of learning alongside them. And Pamela was a part of our training. So those are, these are all just the kind of amour specific pieces that we really had to think about and go to the next slide. These are our modalities motivational interviewing, which is a methodology of mental health engagement kind of rooted in asking open ended questions. The idea being that when you ask people yes or no questions you limit them, as opposed to helping them to find the answer for themselves. When the converter conversation turns to suicide and working with voice hears, we got those from the wildfire Alliance, particularly the conversation turned to suicide is one that has borne fruit for us. When we're working with someone and they say that they want to end their life. We're human beings we have a response to that an internal response through that training we were really able to understand that for a lot of people when they talk about wanting to die what they actually are speaking to is wanting some part of them to die. Some part of their life that doesn't work to not exist anymore. So this racism and anti racism. We got that, I think from Hampshire College folks who are graciously willing Amherst College folks who are willing to offer their time to us identity and anti bias non violent communication, which is really a kind of understanding of the way in which just the way you stand, just the way your your voice is kind of the things that we all think of as sometimes out of our control are really important to think of when engaging with folks. And a really important one was vicarious traumatization, the work that we do brings us in contact with folks trauma on a pretty daily basis. And if you don't do the work this my understanding from my career and working with social workers is if you don't do the work to really understand how to guard yourself against that. It can be very easily to be to kind of take on the moral injury of that so we're really kind of thoughtful about the way we approach that. And that's worth highlighting is when we talk about things like anxiety autism, OCD, we receive those trainings from people who experienced them. It was really important for us not to get those trainings from necessarily professional although we did have professionals talk to us about those things, but that we had folks who experienced it come and talk to us about what that felt like, and what was helpful to them in those experiences. And I want to thank those people, because they were all town residents who it was brave of them to come out in that experience to out themselves but it was it was incredibly brave to have that conversation with folks they didn't know. And so, appreciate it. Sure. How were those folks, how were those folks recruited. Yeah, so, most of them where we would talk to someone and ask them so the social recruited vicarious trauma, knew the two young folks, Kat Newman and known some of them, the wildflower folks who are also lived experienced folks were recommended to the Leap report. And in an ongoing way when we encounter people who have experiences, one of the things when we resolve the issue is we'll ask them if they feel like they have something they might want to teach us about. We'll kind of keep it in an open door. And that is an open invitation to this audience if you have something you want to teach us, please come teach us. We also we compensated everyone for their time. They were doing work for us. Their lived experience was no different than professional experience we compensated them at similar rates. Okay examples of the work, the exciting stuff. So meal deliveries. We partnered with the emmer senior center and the emmer survival center. And when we first came out, kind of we started doing meal deliveries out of need. The senior center had had some of its deliverers not able to work over just still floating around people have life. So we were able to do that. And it actually turned into this huge opportunity. What it allowed us to do is to meet seniors in a non stressful situation to begin to develop relationships with those folks. And if there are some folks who when we do meal deliveries for them the senior center don't like us because we'll sit and talk with someone kind of till they're done talking to us so we take a little bit extra time. But now there are folks on those routes who when a responder doesn't come they call in the office to make sure we're okay we have a good relationship with those folks. It meets a basic need for folks everyone needs to eat. And we have had to do wellness checks back to those address those addresses, we know the person. So, you know, some people if you knock on their door and they don't answer. You might be worried and there's some people who hate six o'clock at night. This person isn't going to answer your door no matter what you do let's come back in the morning so it allows us to have some context for the people we work with. Okay, I may look this way for this one. Here's some highlights of work that we've been able to do the one that you see sticking out. We were able to get a gentleman gene who's a veteran in the community. He came to us as a tax write off worker, who is now helping us to develop a program for veterans that is not so much rooted in providing them a thing but giving them something to do in a way to give back. And for us it's been helpful to have a bet in our in our community in our office, educating us on that experience, working with families navigating complex cases. This is, you know, we had a family reach out to us about a month ago who's struggling with an adult son and figuring out how to set boundaries so supporting them to think through how to have that conversation. They didn't feel safe having it alone what our role could be is just being another person in the room, and sometimes just kind of giving them permission and not be okay. That's a scary thing to do. A government agency that's helping me that's a direct quote from a person we were working with who said that pretty shocked. It's why it's so noteworthy for me because I, you know, that's been my experience in government is that our role is to be here to help. Assistance with walking home from the senior center, there's, I think folks would be shocked to learn how many seniors in town are living in pretty lonesome situations. There's nobody living with them. They don't have anybody to do the kind of very basic compassionate things that a person's family would do. So sometimes, I know folks will see us walking seniors back to the Clark house and they'll think is that an effective use of time. And for the people who are doing it for in that moment, I don't think there is a better use of our time than providing a meaningful moment with them. Public safety responsibilities. We get calls to deescalate things from businesses, someone comes in they're having a bad day they've had a bad engagement. Just a testament to some of the businesses here, more and more we're getting calls that don't actually want us to show up they want us to help support them to understand how they can engage with the person. So they're taking that kind of prevention on that education. But when we show up, we find that, you know, first we have to explain who we are, we are still pretty new. We trained a lot on that. So we have to tell him who we are. But generally when we talk to folks about wanting to meet their needs. I don't think anybody kicked us out and said they weren't interested we've been able to engage. Generally, I think folks expect a level of force and coercion from public safety that we don't bring. And it's actually somewhat uncomfortable when you don't get that thing. So supporting other town activities. We want to be a part of folks day to day lives. So that when things get hard we are just strangers usurping. So we really, you know, we were at some of the winter fest events. We will continue to be a part of kind of wherever we can we want to meet our neighbors whenever we can. The housing issues just really it's a huge challenge. It's a huge challenge for every public safety department in town. For us, it's the lack of resources. We've had to partner with agencies far away is Boston to connect folks with services that could take them in. One of the things I'm really proud of is our dph funding mandates that we share that funding with community agencies. So for everybody staying at Craig's doors for the next, I want to say there's a four or five more months left than it every day they are offered a bus pass free of charge to get them wherever they need to get to and they're collecting data on that, which we hope will inform the PBTA and providing more structured supports One of the hardest things out here is when someone gets an apartment and because of a lack of ability to get there. They can't they can't take that apartment. And we are aware of folks who are sleeping outside because they can't afford to live close. And so they come in the night before and sleep in the woods so they can make it to work in the morning. These are the sorts of issues where we're working to address. All right, next slide. Yeah, can I ask a question. Of course. And maybe you're going to be telling me. Yeah, I just wanted to know like, you know, what's the population that you've been able to serve, you know, in terms of if you have some data breakdown in terms of, you know, race ethnicity abilities, you know that that sort of thing. And then also, like, whether you all are being called more as opposed to like the police for different things that that come about. Yeah, so we won't be sharing person level data today. We're partnering with the UMass Donahue Center to figure out how to do that. And in an attempt not to violate HIPAA, which would put me in think prison. We're figuring that piece out what we're sharing today is kind of raw data. And I do hope that at some point this summer we will, we will have that that kind of kind of person level data to share. So our total interaction since our launch this goes up to the day before St. Patrick's Day. We've done 5,780 interactions. Our biggest single event interactions was folks were at the bank center that first vaccine clinics with gift cards. We have 500 people to get vaccinated that day. That was a long one. And for the meal deliveries that 840. Sorry, I have my glasses, but I don't have glasses that are that good. Yeah, 847. What this is what you'll see here is that we talk about interactions, we are not currently on the 911 system, which means that all of our calls are self initiated. And the numbers are really viewed through a dispatch lens. We will right now, we, I believe we are in a position and the plan is for us to start taking 911 calls this summer, and then we'll be able to get that data much more smoother. I want to shout out Chalo, one of our responders who really developed the data system from nothing and has done such a great job that we'll be presenting to the Department of Justice in two weeks on our data collection. The report writing is thorough. We're able to meet our needs as far as the race piece which is important. We walk a fine line between under serving and over serving communities. I know there was initially some thought that we can provide some preventative services in the apartment complexes and I just, I think in terms of stories and why we don't do that. So me and Jennifer Moisten last summer we're doing barbecues at the apartment complexes, and we were at Village Park, and there was a young woman there who was from Holyoke from Holyoke. I probably would have talked to her anyway, but I'll talk to a Holyoke person every day. And she was talking about how nice the apartments were there. And if you've lived in public housing and other places the public housing here is beautiful. And what she said is, I really like being here I feel safe here, but some mornings I wake up and there's a police car outside my house and I feel like I did something wrong. And so we really don't want anybody to just see us walking around and think they've done something wrong, which makes means we really do try to be predictable when we're in the apartment complexes or in communities of color. We, we do not have the technology, nor do we have any plans, nor do we have any policies to to be a part of any sort of surveillance mechanism for communities of color. And I don't expect people will trust me at that word people are going to need to see years of trustworthy practice before they believe that thing so for communities of color I would say there's still some real skepticism in there. They're righteous. They have every single right to that. There's a good reason for them not to trust us. And I hope that and continue to watch our operations that will develop that trust with folks. But it is going to take some time. Just one other thing like when you are looking at the data to really think about populations who obviously English is not the first language to to make sure that that and obviously you know you have to keep confidentiality no one's saying about sharing any type of, you know, private information, it would just be really more the data in regards to it, but that would be a key aspect of the data too. And so we do currently collect a pretty robust set of data on every engagement, the language the person, their native language, recognizing that some folks can speak English but it is not their native language and so it's always. It's insufficient, you're not speaking to people in the language that they, they think in on racial perceived race, because we don't want to be kind of asking people. Those things are perception of their race, the perception of the race of large group gatherings is this a gathering specifically for one one group of folks. We collect that on where we met folks what the weather was like, were there any societal conditions right a noise complaint can be just an issue between a person to business, but often it's someone who is very impoverishing folks who are very much impoverished in the kind of general unfairness of that. Because we also want to be able to support the town and thinking about what sort of root issues we're seeing as we move through things. And we will be presenting as we move forward with this listening session initiative. Our goal now is to have one of these completely on our data collection system so that if we're not asking questions the folks think we should that we add those in there. Thank you. Great question. They've always asked good questions. Next slide. Spending time with folks matters. We like I just said that nobody should trust us we haven't done anything to earn your trust. So for us getting upstream upstream is this idea that really comes from the kind of harm reduction substance use that as a as a society we spend a lot of time picking folks up out of the stream that they've fallen into, and not enough time preventing them from ever falling into the stream. So for us we want to meet folks wherever they are, particularly when people are experiencing joy, right doesn't always have to hurt. So that means that you as you can see, we'll we'll go to events where there's families to talk to them about things. Vanessa Phillips designed this really wonderful engagement process we go through. We have some games some fun things. We're not collecting data we're simply sharing our information out with folks, but really just to develop a presence that we're predictable that we're there. And I'm, you know, in my role, not everybody's going to get to meet me I spent a lot of my time in meetings, but they will get to meet the responder so when we do these things you may not see me because the important folks for them to me are the people who are doing the work. I also just want to add that that simply being with people is important. We've sat with people after they've experienced pretty devastating losses in this community, and I don't know that there will ever be a data set that quantifies the importance of those things, but they are. We've sat with caregivers as they've realized the depth of a Paris dementia, and they've realized that their family dynamic is going to change forever. We've sat with people who lost a friend to an overdose. We've sat with people who lost meaningful relationships and while both parties are still alive it is a death of a sword. So small things matter and they add up. Next slide. Oh, and that, sorry, you want to slide back that. This is our first month community engagement data. Why that's there is I want folks to know that while we were figuring out what we could do. The thing we did was meet people. The thing we did was go outside. There was one day where they had a table on the common. We were just meeting anybody walking by our offices at the bank center. They say second floor but I keep getting this feeling if I start out on the bottom floor there's four of them. We're on the top floor of the bank center. We're from 8am to 4pm on Mondays 8am to 8pm Tuesday through Friday and 10am to 6pm on Saturday. Just show up. I know that like if you want to schedule tour will do that, but I never trust the scheduled tour right I'm going to clean up a little bit before you get there maybe hide just show up. We are what we are. It's loud some days it's quiet some days we're trying to figure it out but come see us for what we really are so just show up I really do invite people to just come by. All right, next slide. All right, so now we're at the best part where you all can talk. Rome is listed here because he is our responder who's fluent in Spanish. If folks have questions in Spanish they can reach out to him, we will be doing this listening session again in Spanish Rome will be doing that. Rome has, I think already translated this PowerPoint, or close to it. I'm there I'm the director I'm probably the least exciting part of the whole thing and cat Newman if folks have organizational needs. We still have some businesses some community partners that want to reach out cat really does navigate that piece. And the number listed there is our main line number so you can just call that and get someone. All right. I don't know how to do the next part. I think it's, I think it's yours. Please say thank you. Really great information. And then we're going to go to the questions. Right. So if we can have community members present or online. Just start asking Earl and the responders here to questions. And just for participants online if you want to use the raise and function. You know, in order to make sure to give everyone opportunity, you know, obviously try to keep your questions as brief as possible so that we can get as many questions in. If you can state your name. I'm sorry. Much too official for a question. My name is Anita Sarah. I live here in town and I've been watching the development from an idea that CSWG had to. To you and all the wonderful things that you're doing. You mentioned the hours and. I'm just wondering about a couple of things. One is the level of staffing that you have now your ability to respond. To those things that happened. After the press office closes. You also mentioned that it's grant funded. And I'm wondering if there is any consideration to making this. Part of the regular budget, because it seems to be without that. It would be unsustainable. So it's, it's really kind of the nuts and bolts and one other, one other thing. I'm sorry. When when you have a 911, I guess I'm wondering how, how are the calls that we will be coming in. And right now, if a call goes in on a 911 line. But it's when you're staffed and it would be more appropriate for crest to respond. How, how is that happening? Yeah, I think those were the three. All right. All right. No softballs here. No, no, I know it's Amherst. So I will try to take those in order. As far as our hours right now. When folks call outside of ours they can leave a voicemail. We've had some some small issues with voicemails issues when the responders come in the next day they have one general voicemail account. They're asking the voicemail kind of triaging it Tia actually does that most mornings triaging that often when people call they're asking for a specific responder, they want a person so making sure that person is aware of when they want them and kind of triaging it that way. We've just kind of developed an internal structure of that. Your second question around budget, I think I did a poor job of explaining this. So we are funded by $620,000 from the town budget that covers our salaries. All the responders are union employees which is a really important meaningful thing. It's all of our salaries and a little bit for extra stuff. We have a dph grant that covers kind of everything beyond that. And that's $450,000 with a 50% match so for every dollar we spend, we need to spend a dollar with a community agency, which has led us a really good collaborations, including motivational interviewing training. I really love motivational interviewing. And so as we've using as we're using that as our kind of language, we found it really important to make sure that anybody else who wanted to understand that with us could. So that training to about thank you in agencies across town, and we'll start offering that to individuals. I should have mentioned this earlier so this summer we're planning to do us a Crest Academy for folks. So day where folks can come in and get a hint of what the training felt like, because it was the training itself was tough but it was emotional and so that we can folks can come to us. The third question about triaging this dispatch. I'll answer to the best I can. So dispatch is a is overseen by the police department so I don't have much of an ability to kind of mandate things. We do have a policy that's in a legal review right now that really would provide them a roadmap to what should belong to us, how those things should be handled and organizational trust I, you know, I haven't had a reason to think that dispatch won't do a great job of that. We've also connected dispatch with some larger national pieces of other dispatch departments, the fire department in New York, the San Francisco police department. So they're part of some learning communities with those folks to understand how they triage things. And I think when we talk about that, like, it's important to look at the community for what it is. This is not an incredibly violent place. This is not that is not the culture of this town. This is not an incredibly criminal place, it is just not the culture of this place. And so for us, you know, I think that as we grow and get more, you know, as we grow as a department we'll be able to take on more I think the initial limitations are going to be our, our staffing, our minimum staffing level is three responders. If we get beyond that then we really are impacted in our ability to go out that really means that there's no backup for folks and we're always hesitant when there's no backup. They all work in pairs of two. So actually all three of these folks here are not here with their partners, their regular partners. They have a partner who they're assigned to who they spend the majority of their shifts with. And so we'd like to have two teams on their times where we can only have a team and a half. And me and Kat are both willing to step in in those situations as needed. And more and more there are days where all, you know, yesterday I think was a good example. We started work at eight by about 830 we did not have a deployable team for several hours just because of the nature of the work they were doing. We hope to grow. And I think it's going to be really important that as folks think about growth that they think about it realistically. If they wanted, we could, we could do this fast. And when I look nationally the places that have tried to do this fast have flooded the engine. They put so many resources into a thing before they built the culture, before they really understood what they were doing, and it falls apart. I think for us taking deliberative steps, moving forward, I have eight folks who are so who care about this thing more than I could ask them to. I know that there's eight people like that out there right now. And to that effort we're working with the colleges we're working with mass hires to help to develop the field. So that the next time we're looking to hire folks that we've been a part of their learning, so they're not coming here blind. And remember that there's there's no department even like ours in New England so we are cutting a path through the woods. And that means for me, I have to really separate out my ego. If it was my ego making decisions, we'd be much further along with the fastest department in the country by far usually takes about three to four years to get one of these on board we did it in nine months. And it still feels slow for folks like that's the level of excellence I know this town expects. And I hope that they'll expect excellence without throwing me into a microwave because I'm trying. Everybody. I'm Elizabeth. Hey good. A long time resident of Amherst. And I'm on the Human Rights Commission. And I'm also the liaison for the Human Rights Commission with the housing trust committee. She kind of took part of my I had a question and a comment. So the question was, if you're not attached to the dispatch, how do you get your calls. And you answered that, but I also wanted to not underestimate the importance of your presence in the community. I know that we were working at the high school, we had a traumatic event last spring. A week before from two weeks before graduation, and your presence there was a measurable. So for those of you who say that walking someone home, who's just need some support shouldn't be part of your job. I'd like to say that that is exactly what we need in this town because of some of the things that you brought forward to us as a school community during that traumatic event. Thank you so much. And I just want to say, I am privileged to work here. I have the best job a person could ever hope to have in the best place a person can hope to have it. If I, if you ever catch me complaining about something, please stop me and remind me where I came from. That is the best place I've ever been so and it's that sort of this is this community being who it is that makes that happen. I'm going to call them the individuals who are on zoom and so our first person is three. Hi everyone. Oh, can you guys hear me. Yeah, we can. Awesome. I want to first thank the CSS JC and Earl for their amazing leadership. I have just a few questions or areas I'm hoping that or you can expand a little bit more on. I noticed in your PowerPoint you talked about serving families so I'm hoping that you can speak on the relationship that Chris has with the Department of Children and Health. Another thing I'm hoping to learn a little bit more about is what mental health agency press, if any, is connected to. I know in the past Chris had a relationship with Adma so I'm just wondering what mental health agency, Chris may be utilizing now. And lastly, I'm interested to learn a little bit more about how you and your team might be taking steps or working towards relationship building to connect with people that may have fell through the cracks of traditional safety services and may not have reached out in the past. Yeah, stop there. I like this you guys are going to get me in groups of three alright, Brianna I'm going to start answering them if I start answering a different question you please chime in and correct me. So our relationship with the Department of Children and Families, you know where we are mandated reporters were funded funded by the state so that's an obligation in that contract. I don't know that we we've had much engagement with the Department of Children and Family we've reached out but I know that they're fairly busy. We have had some relationships with folks like Casa, the child advocate groups around how to support kind of foster kids I grew up in foster care. Two other members of our team did so it's something we think about often. And the experience of adopted folks. So, it's a relationship that I think is probably going to take a little bit more time to firm up. But when they're ready we're, we're, we're excited to learn and engage with those folks. You know, I don't know folks understand the kind of heavy weight that that foster care and adoptions and when those things go poorly the complete trauma that that can be to see young people who've been rejected by their family of origin. They'll occasionally be rejected by their family of choice or or opera, you know, whatever it is. It's a double tragedy and we see that a bit more than folks might expect of the homeless folks that we interact with a fair amount of them were adopted or grew up in foster care and so it's something we think about a lot. As far as social service agencies. Really, I think where we've gotten to is that we have we have a human service meeting that happens every other month. We have all the big players CSO service net. Wildflower Alliance, the Department of Mental Health. Sorry, Cooley Dickinson hospital Holy Oak hospital. Basically anybody who wants to engage with us those meetings. You know, I think what we found, you know, at the beginning there was this I think real thought that we would need to hold up more of the health system. But with the new community, community behavioral health clinics. We actually do have a place to bring people now for same day triage. Those places. We have folks of color working in them and we've utilized them as far as contracted we're contracted with wildflower Alliance, which is an agency with an anti racist mission that has an entire kind of voices of kind of communities that have been oppressed from black communities to Spanish speaking communities to disability communities. And they're in town providing support groups. They're in the hospitals talking to Amherst residents who are coming home to provide them resources as they come in. And they're doing that kind of preventative work here already. As far as how we engage with folks who slip through the cracks. Our first step is really to be presence. Walk that we do every day that takes us to some of the behind the buildings where folks go to to feel safe and unsafe places. We prioritize engaging with folks we engage with folks who are homeless encampments we know their names they can come into our office. A lot of that is actually being able to meet resources that I think fall below the line that folks might think of. We had a gentleman show up one day who just desperately needed a belt. And that might not seem like a big thing but for this person it was the biggest thing in the world and so we were able to address that for folks with developmental disabilities which is a real issue. The amount of folks who should be in treatment programs or should be getting some support we're just kind of left to their own devices during the day. We have a couple folks we have one guy who comes up every day and listens to Marvin Gaye with us. It's never a bad reason listen to Marvin Gaye. But he also just pleasant part of our team and spending time with us. We really do ask people what we could do to be helpful for them. And for a lot of those folks, it's just providing a need and then showing them that we're going to back away. I think what folks are used to is somebody showing up with a resource and then using that resource to kind of bait you into a coercive situation. So, during the cold snap when we were able to house folks, an important part was continuing to talk with them about did they want to work with us. Did they want support to not come back out on the street, or for some of them. I think it's important to say that when we see folks who are living on the streets here that some of them are living there because the system let them down, and they don't trust it. And if you had went through their situation you wouldn't trust it either. And so for those folks sometimes people ask us how do we move them along. And I think that's the wrong approach to it. I think the approach, the approach that we're taking is to build long term trust with them so that when we start talking about permanent housing it isn't an imposition. It isn't another thing that's going to get pulled out from them right before they trust it. So, Breonna to your question, I would say the best thing that we're doing with those folks is to engage with them on their terms to kind of meet them where they are. And to not have any expectation beyond them being our neighbor, who has value to our community because they're here. One of our one of our really important values is that we don't delineate residents of this town. If you're a resident of this town because you go to college, you're a resident of this town. If you're a person who works in this town and you spend most of your waking hours here. You're a person in this town. If you're a homeowner or a renter homeless if you're in this town you're in this town. And for us, we just don't see this need to rank people by their social shadow. Sorry, Breonna if I might have missed something you asked such a good question I might have answered a different one. Oh no you answered it. You answered all of them. Great. Thank you so much Earl. So Breonna introduced us to Tia so Breonna also if you're asking how we recruited people, Breonna new person heard out really good for us. Thank you. I'm going to call birdie into the room. Yes, thank you. Oh, can I have a little box. There I am. Hello. Thank you so much with us today. I'm curious about crest being mandated reporters because I know, even though that's something important that can sometimes be at odds with like trust and I'm curious how you like explain that mandate to people and you can you mute so. Birdie can I I think I got the question can I I'll take a shot at it and if I if I end up in a different direction you'll correct me. Absolutely thank you. Thank you. So, A we are transparent with folks about the limitations. So when we're engaging with folks right at the beginning. We have a conversation about them go and mandated reporter I think is a term that is used far too loosely in the community, mandated reporter means that if we are aware of the abuse of a senior, a person over the age of 65, a minor, a person under the age of 18, or a person with a disability, if we are aware of abuse we are mandated to report that. There's nothing in there that says we don't have to let the person know that we are forbidden to have a conversation to try to navigate that support. All too often when people are mandated reporters what they do is they make the man they make the report and then they pretend the person doesn't exist anymore that some solution has been proffered. So, for us it's being honest with folks, hey, if we see these things we might have to talk to a person reminding folks, kind of as we get into situations hey, you want us to come to your house reminder, there might be, you know, our things okay if we saw this thing it might be an issue. I might a really great teacher in that Sarah David out from the wildflower alliance who's written some papers and done some work with the United Nations on this. I think it's important to remember that if our system was was if our current system and structures were good at dealing with abuse we wouldn't have so much of it. That just reporting it isn't enough so for us, even the report doesn't mean the work isn't done. I find that it doesn't preclude us from having a conversation to see further context. You know that it is an equity issue if we're putting our lens on every relationship a person has that people still have autonomy that seniors and children and. And so, you know, we have a nuanced look at it. I think we're looking to get the Disability Law Center in to do a training on it this summer during our kind of, you know, knock on wood quiet time in the summer. We're going to get back into some training. But yeah, for us mandate reporting is as a part of the piece. But ideally, we would have identified those issues before they rose to abuse and engage in them. We don't do anything without someone understanding why we're doing it and what's happening and how that might impact them. And it's also really important for folks to remember that reporting abuse, often puts the abused person in a much more precarious situation. And so not just kind of saying not us anymore. We think about that a lot. The process right now the internal processes, if a responder became aware of abuse there to alert me, we then have a conversation about who are the people we need to engage. Is there a way to engage them one to one there are some agencies that we have contacts at that we can talk to you about, you know, there's a structurally rise to a thing is there a resource that might come with that. And I would say the one time that that really came up for us, actually the mandate reporting brought resources to the table for the person that wouldn't have been there otherwise. So they understood why we were doing it they agreed with it they helped us to follow up the forms it was a mutual process. Thank you so much that's very helpful. Great question. I'm going to bring more. Hi, good afternoon. Can you hear me. Yes. Yes. Hello. We can hear you. Okay. Okay, good. I have two questions. One is and thank you for doing this listening session. The first question is, although press and the PD, a PD are not going out on calls together. Does the police refer or follow up with with press on on calls that they have gone on that would need like a follow up with press or social services. So, can you speak a little bit about the MOU and how press is what what what you guys are doing in the schools and what the elementary schools do you just go to the Crocker farm school or do you go to all three elementary schools. And what is your work within the schools. Great questions Lauren. Okay, the first one. We often the co responder with the police department, the CSO clinician will reach out to us if he goes on a call and feels like there's a role for crest in the long term processing. Right now, I wouldn't say that we're receiving much kind of afterward from the police department and you know that may have more to do with their business or them not quite understanding where we are yet. But as a work in progress and something we hope will will kind of firm up as we move along. But we're available for it as far as our calls. We are not sharing kind of after reports with the PD. They're just our role is separate. I think it's important for folks to remember that our work is as different from policing as the fire department is that we are there for calls that never fit well with the police department. We're still doing their work around violence and criminal calls. I don't expect the call back from them. And if we're doing ours. There are times where we overlap in kind of change ways, sometimes we'll get called to a thing and then someone at the thing we'll call 911 and so it generates these two responses. And I think there's been some examples of that being fine we don't run away. Obviously we don't have an ability to tell the police to leave. But we also don't see our role as being asked to leave our role is still there. And if they're there to ensure that there isn't criminality, then, then hopefully that isn't there and we can get back to work. But that is still a very much a work in progress. I think 911 will bring that out. As far as the MOU at the schools, folks can find that if you want, I can, I can find a copy maybe share with the CSS JC so folks can share it. Our MOU with the schools really speaks to us not wanting to read to replicate the role of law enforcement and the kind of school to prison pipeline. We are not school resource officers. We are not in schools to serve any disciplinary function. We do not decide discipline we do not refer discipline. Our role really is to be a collaborative partner with the schools, and to help them kind of provide more support to folks so often our calls from the school are and I say often. It's probably five or six total have been things like the student is struggling to come to school. The family is going through something we're not really able to write the schools of school they drop your kid off and that's the end of it. Would you be willing to go knock on the door and just make sure the family is okay. The only real kind of ongoing resource that we're offering to a family right now is that Tim and another responder are currently providing an Afghani refugee family with some transportation for their kid to school. And I, looking at the values of this community I can't imagine there's anybody here who would tell me not to do that. This is a kid who needs to get to school a family that needs support father was displaced to a different country left here as a single parent, we're going to do everything we can for those folks every day. As far as at the elementary schools, when we're invited by the principles we show up. So we came to the wildwood for their black history month reading read some links and use poems don't know if they were that into it I don't know poetry and fourth grade is quite there. Lord one of our responders actually the principal there was his his teacher when he was in school so he particularly wanted in there to reconnect. However, we've had some engagement around an issue at a bus stop. And we provided a presence there until that issue is kind of able to subside and Crocker farm. I don't know if everybody else had a chance to meet Derek Shay, but he is one of the most magical people you'll ever meet. We, we started to engage with him. That school is a minority majority school it's a school where lots of folks from, you know across the country refugee families are there. So, you know, we have partnered with Derek to provide some kind of activities at the school. Chalo just had a African drum circle and dance class for folks who are at the Kwanzaa event, it was the same folks who did that, which was really lovely. We're providing a couple other resources there, and that's really just to provide another another venue of activities for the families there for families that aren't as geographically centered as the other parts of town for us to have a venue to kind of bring them together. It's kind of a pilot for what we hope to spread out throughout the schools as there's interest of developing these programs that provide a benefit to the school and allow folks to kind of see Crescent and an un, in an unpressured space. What I will add is that we don't take any attendance at those meetings, nobody is asked to sign anything nobody is asked to tell us their name. We don't ask for names when we're in the school. We are not in any way surveilling folks and I recognize that public safety agencies have said that, and then turns out, there was a little bit of surveillance happening, but we really are not. Our goal at the schools is not to. I tried to be a teacher during cove it didn't do that great at it, not trying to do it now. Our goal is to support the teachers who do a wonderful job. Everybody here got to spend as much time as I have watching the teachers do the work they do. It's, it's really incredibly important work to what our community is going to look like. And for us, you know, to not be there to not be providing a resource there would be a missed opportunity when you talk about trauma informed care. If you want to mitigate the impact of trauma the best way to do it is to empower families. And we see that as our role. Sorry, Lauren, I hope it was that did I get to it. No question. I'll take some answers and okay. Lauren, do you have any additional questions or comments. Oh, no, thank you. Thank you, Lauren. And I just want to say, Lauren has learned one of the first people I met in town, really helpful person on the board of health. It's because of folks like that this thing makes sense. The fact that you folks showed up on, you know, kind of miserable day here, and you could have been doing literally anything else is if this initiative is successful it'll be because of you. Then we have a hand up in the audience. Nice shirt. My name is, can you hear me. Yes. My name is Gina. I'm a student, an organizer, and I'm also an intern for the DCC in North Hampton. In my research I'm currently interested in the way in which crest can help with university students. So the questions I two questions. One is, do you currently respond to UMass students. We're Amherst college students. And how do you imagine you can reduce the harm in terms of, I know that there are a lot of issues with intoxicated driving. There's sexual violence of an epidemic on campus. And then there's also, you know, traffic violations. So what kinds of, what kinds of harm reduction can you do in those in those terms. Yeah, so that's a great question. And thanks for coming for folks who don't know DCC is a division of community care North Hampton is a somewhat similar initiative to crest couched in public health, not public safety. Not a competitor they are an ally of ours. As far as the campuses what I'll say is we do not go on to the campuses to provide supports. They are much more well resourced than we are they have initiatives. In fact, Hampshire and Amherst both have unarmed responders on campus currently. So we are going on the campus but certainly students live in our community. So we are working with students right right now I think that looks like there's a couple kids who have particular kids, young adults who have particular situations that they have some issues with the administration of the colleges and so, you know, those have been things like someone wanting some support around sexual identity without wanting without without being concerned about being outed to folks in their community so we've worked with that person for a while. One of our pieces there's some college students particularly students of color who just struggle to find a safe place to study. And we've had those folks just kind of come up and use our conference room. At first it was surprising because I didn't, I don't think anybody knew we were there. But I think that's one of the most important things we can do is just kind of be there and have a quiet space where folks can be. So we're in our role with the college where we're navigating that with the office student campus center at UMass and figuring out where we can be helpful. And certainly the town is going to have to have conversations about what that is we are a limited resource and so right now our priority is residents of the town who can't get services from other spaces. The colleges are just much more resource than the community so it isn't that we don't want to be on the campus, but if we're making a decision about where resource lies. We're generally going to provide it in town versus on versus to a student because we can refer them back to the campus for services that are pretty rich. Was that was that an okay answer. All right, I'm trying not to give too many unsatisfying government answers. We have any other questions online. While we're waiting I can ask some questions. I always have questions for. I guess just to kind of go off of some of the questions that that folks brought up here which were excellent in person and online. One of the first ones I would have would be. I know you said that you know you're not sure, especially in terms of like how fast you could grow right and taking those steps. However, what is the plan for is there a plan for this next fiscal year for crests in terms of increasing the budget and making sure that the budget is more succinct within the town. And while we sourced and obviously the goal is, especially maybe in a part of CSWG beforehand is for crest to be 24 seven and to have the correct staff right to do this work. And we know a lot of times crisis happens in the middle of the night and things like that. So, you know, given that that's one of the things you know the growth. What is the plan for that. We're looking at grants. I mean, what I'll say is town budget is town budget. I mean, it's, it's tricky right now. And certainly not my role to talk about it but but it's hard right now. And it's not my role to tell you what you don't need. Right. It's not my role for crest to grow at the expense of other things in town that matter I'm certainly not here to say we need less teachers or I think the world of those folks so as far as the town budget that would really be a question for the town manager. You know, what I can control is the work that we're doing access grants and other places we have a non fiscal grant with the council state governments. They're actually coming into town on Tuesday. They have like any award winning film crew coming in to help us to shoot a five minute video, which will help us to access grants down the line. We're really at the place where I kind of thought we'd come in and just be writing grants, but it turns out we have to figure out how to become eligible for those grants first. We're such a weird thing that we don't that we're not eligible for public safety grants right now. So we're navigating that with the state and trying to get the Department of Public Safety to make us eligible for those. We're not currently eligible for jail diversion grants from the Department of Mental Health, we're working with the state on that. The Department of Justice has an extensive set of grants that supplement municipal funding for public safety departments across the country. We're not currently eligible for that I hope we will be by the end of the summer. The thing that's in my control is is aggressively pursuing grants and we are doing our best at that. We just try to become eligible. Often what I'd say is we show up place and they go okay so you're the cops. No no no we're not the cops we're different okay so you're firefighters we're not firefighters. Okay well then I don't know what you are but I'll have money for it. So we have to go back and really educate, you know, and try to do that in a kind enough way that those folks don't want to give us money at the next day. I don't want to educate folks but I don't feel that. So, I think the the fiscal pieces that are within my control where we're working towards. Rome is going to start working with me on getting trained up to do grants to get another set of hands working on that to get another group in there. So, we will aggressively pursue those things we're also really hoping to get some grants that can tie us together with other entities in town to get some grants that look at senior services so that we can kind of share that load together. Us in the department department are going to share an AmeriCorps volunteer this summer who's going to help us to navigate some kind of youth programming things. I also know that part of my job here is to be a good partner to the other town departments, and that, you know, I think folks don't know but I think we're the most fundable thing in town where the future. And you can you can jump in with us or you can get you can get dragged into the future and so that's really the messaging is, you know, I think, I think everybody's going to have something like a crest department someday. And if you put money into it right now you'll get to help decide how that goes and if you don't it'll just be a thing that happens. So, yeah, that's a great question that will always ask great questions. Was that an unsatisfied government answer was a little bit. It was good. I don't know if there's other questions is not asking you go on, go on. I want to make sure the audience anyone online. No one has their hand raised but maybe check in with the other CSS JC members to see if they have questions as well. Does anyone on the CSS JC have questions. Yeah, Miss Pat. If you can unmute miss Pat you're muted. I know this. Okay. So, what is the immediate plan. To staff crest 24 seven. Well I appreciate, you know, the great work that crest department is doing a majority of folks need help during the overnight. Is there any plan to make sure that the town fulfills the recommendation from CSW gene. Thank you. Currently with the resources I have that is an impossibility. I'm sorry I could say more but that's just the reality I have 10 people. There isn't a department in the country like ours that goes past 10pm. I don't know what the staffing of that looks like I don't know what the supervision would need to look like I, I, you know that is something that I aspire to. I hope that we'll get there. That is really the wilderness there is no roadmap there so with the 10 folks I have, you know, we're providing 10 different shifts a week with 10 people I more than that right now without a substantial increase in resources is impossible. And I mean, I think I think we get that, you know, like miss Pat and I being on CSWG, you know, that was what CSWG envisioned in the future. And so for us it would be more so about figuring out a plan right for that to happen because you know we want to make sure that anything that is non violent non criminal and you know and obviously for us it's even including traffic violations I'm not saying that it would be like we even be another, you know, group within, you know, crest to do that, but it's kind of like that's what we envision right so for us it's like what's the game plan, you know, the timeline for some of those, you know, like you said it might not be in your public right because you don't, you might not have that that power and the way with all. But what we want is as you said this is a new. This is a novel program. So even though even if there isn't a program that goes beyond 10, you know, we want this program to go beyond 10, you know what I'm saying we want this program to come up with the vision and the way to kind of, you know, to make that happen. And, and, you know, and in terms of staffing like even for you right it seems like you are stretch right so an assistant director you know what I'm saying. We need like more of the staffing to make sure that it's not all on you and it's not all on the staff members and the implementation manager. It needs to increase right so what we keep on asking is yeah what is the, what's the vision, because you know we want to have like okay a five year plan right or what have you to be like okay what what's how how is this going to happen. Yeah, so the plan is I think, you know, we're building a mission and a vision that I believe will stand up to anything. That's, that's in my bailiwick. We originally had a staffing plan that would have had hours extend until midnight, but it would have meant almost no overlap between the responders so no chance for cross training no chance for, for support. You know, as soon as you know we're going to work on the grant level to acquire positions and as we acquire positions use those positions to expand our hours. As the town is able to provide resources or any agency we partner with we will expand our hours, but I would say is a part of the and I apologize if the short answer made it seem like abrupt. I don't feel abrupt about this thing. I feel like if we had the people to go all night, we would go all night and I don't doubt that my folks would do a bang up job of it they try their best no matter what situation they're in. But you know the reality is that for me there's so many things happening right now that if I spend any time on on ifs and things that are out of my control, I might miss the things that are in my control and so it's not it's not as far as a plan. When the resources are there will do the work. We will, we will go out there and do our absolute best with it. And I know that I know that 24 seven is a thing that needs to happen and so what I hear from this is that folks would like there to be a plan, and I will start working on one next week and hope to have it to you soon. Thank you. Thank you. A question in the audience. Here it was so nice meeting your husband last weekend he's lovely. That was that the lack business association Amherst area, bba. And my question, and I hope you can fulfill my dreams Mr Miller. I want press to act as a cop watch. Because I think that are we, I would feel safer, and my loved ones for my loved ones as well, if they were to be stopped by the police, I would want someone to watch what the interaction. I would want someone to be there to be my eyes not to intervene and interrupt or disrupt or obstruct, but just to observe. And also to share a leaflet or brochure to say if you have a complaint, if you want to follow up. Here's, you know, we're safe to do that with. That's my dream for crests to be able to scale up to do that. And that would require press to operate during those hours in the evening and early morning, when stuff can go down because, you know, daytime. You have many people watching, but at nighttime, it's dark, our roads aren't very well lit. And I try to as a as a community member, stop, pull over, and just to observe the interaction between the driver and the police that are surrounding the driver, just to see what's going on. And it's typically something very minor, but the tension is so high nonetheless. So I think the most dangerous times for regular people are in the evenings, when there is a police stop. And I think I would love to see a cop watch component for cross. Thank you. Thank you very I don't know if I'll make I hear you, I hear that and just on the intent wise what I hear is that police engagements are can be traumatic whether they're good, whether the cop is the best or, and I've had that experience myself and so having someone who's a presence kind of follow up, however it goes, whether it goes poorly and folks need resources to make a complaint, or whether it goes fine and someone just needs a reassurance that they're okay to kind of be that presence recognizing that a police stop is a use of force right to stop you in your tracks in your day. So I hear that. And I'd love to talk more about that. My name is Kathleen Anderson, I'm a longtime resident of Amherst. I understand that Chief Livingstone is retiring. And I wonder if you know of a process underway to hire a new chief. And when one is hired, how you plan to interact with that person. So I'm not aware currently of any of the hiring planning for that position. I'm eager to participate if asked, but I may not fit in that plan. I'm not sure that would be a town manager. The part that I do control is how do I plan to approach that person when they start. I think this is going to be a great opportunity for us to set some expectations for each other for us to come to for fresh eyes to see what we're capable of. But I think for them also to see with fresh eyes, how absolutely committed my team is that you can count on these folks. For me, it'll be an opportunity to show them what we can do to kind of have a fresh start. That's what my hope is. And like any new town employee, I will approach them optimistically, hopefully with a hope that we can have a shared vision of the future. That doesn't denigrate either of us. That would be my expectation for anybody where government employees are our responsibility is to be collaborative and amenable as we move through things so I will. I can only clean my side of the street. I will do everything in my control to make sure my side of the street is ready for this person when they start. That's a great question. Thank you. I'm going to go back to the folks online so Alicia Walker. Sometimes there's a lag. Hi, Alicia. Hi everyone, can you hear me. We can hear you counselor Walker. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Earl so much for this presentation. It was really helpful. And thank you to the CSS JC for hosting this list listening session. I think this is really important. And I'm happy to be here and to also be hearing everyone's input. So I also was a member of the community safety working group that helped to envision class and I realized that it's probably very difficult to be building something as your own when it's coming out of the hands of a group of different people. And for us to always be like you know remember the vision that we started with and you know things have to change but here again to do to do that. So I just wanted to stay and I know you're aware of this but that the community safety working group when we were coming up with Cress as an idea. It came from trying to figure out what services that were currently being performed performed by the Amherst police department could be outsourced to another department and the emphasis was on restoring the trust between the APD and the BIPOC community and Amherst and all of this came about in the light of talking about police brutality and talking about the murder of George Floyd and these came from calls from the community for change in our community and restorative justice and upon doing outreach with the community we found that for a lot of BIPOC members in this community restoring is not actually an option that there are a number of BIPOC and other community members who do not have trust in the PD and who also need to be able to utilize public safety services. And so my question is how are we can or we as in Cress continuing to make sure that the focus is on centering BIPOC needs restoring the trust with the BIPOC community and public safety services. And so that's the question, but part of like my concern that I share with what Vera just said in terms of not offering 24 hour services and again I know the budget that you all have for Cress doesn't allow for that. But I know that the again the vision was that there are people who who are afraid to call the police and that that is not restricted by time. That can happen at any time of the day on any day of the week for any community member and that they should be able to access public safety services. And so I think regardless of you know Cress is closed at this time so tough luck. And so I understand that that's like a constraint of budget right now. But you know if the budget was available, is that something you, you could make happen. And I asked this because I know like we're coming up on budget season and I think that resources don't ever just fall in your lap, like you have to seek resources and so like is this something you're advocating for for Cress, or is this something that you truly feel like even if you had the funding and the other responders that that wouldn't be a possibility like is it isn't merely a budget constraint issue, or other other other issues related to the, to the program being new. So that's my second question. And then, I mean I basically just wanted to hear those things if you can elaborate a little bit more please. Remind me of the first question. Yeah, it was more about you know the the rebuilding trust with the BIPOC community and how we are, you know, continuing to remain focused on serving the needs of the BIPOC community and making sure that they have a public safety service outside of the PD to contact that makes them feel safe and that is trusted for them. Yeah. So, I actually think that's probably a question a responder should answer is when you want to come up and answer that how do we center BIPOC folks, I could tell you it. But if I tell you it, you know, I could be making up in the moment I think the most important part of this is how do the responders contextualize this. Sorry to put you all in the spot. What do we think about BIPOC folks in the kind of context of our work. All right, come on, Rome, you got Rome's Rome's Rome's fighting the fear of public speaking so appreciate you my friend. So one of the ways that we contextualize the BIPOC community is by in one way is giving them an outlet and a voice. I can speak for myself in terms of the Spanish speaking community. I've met with a lot of people that merely communicate in Spanish and they feel more comfortable speaking to another person in Spanish. Regardless of whether they can speak English or not, some people can better express themselves in Spanish and I am always like the first person they come to. One of them tend to really, they've never really trusted a public public safety agency besides press, because we've been able to listen to them and, you know, at least be there for them and sit through the fire like girls with them. And, you know, we're just open we're anti racist and all that. I don't mean that you don't all have to jump in the blender. One more you asked me that'd be great. Hey, if you want to take a shot, he is our newest responder started with us in November. So just just quickly kind of how do you conceptualize BIPOC folks in our and the way that our office operates. Yeah, so as the newest responder and someone a person of color who actually comes from a different background as a foster kid and stuff I think that we just try and incorporate equity and any any way we can and just really relating to these people that our own experiences as well, and really letting them know that they're not alone and sharing that. I would say Tim you'll escape this one since you are a model earlier. The other piece is that for a lot of BIPOC folks, the things they make reach out to us for there may be another venue for doing that but they trust us. So I would say the majority of our trips to go get groceries are folks of color. The majority of our doctors trips are folks of color. We haven't reached the point where we needed to use that as a triage issue. But we prioritize going to BIPOC events like Kwanzaa being at basketball games where folks generally feel safe getting out in the parks, trying to kind of meet folks where they are. Yeah, second question. It is a resource issue. If we had the resources to go 24 seven we would be 24 seven the training that we have we trained the whole time as though we were 24 seven. So we reviewed videos of nighttime stops we all of the majority of our situational awareness training was in the context of a nighttime engagement with folks. And during the winter, we had nighttime engagements when when daylight ended early and we didn't find that to be an issue. The other piece that I just think is worth mentioning is that I hear that need for us to take on services of other departments that is a two way street. They do need to be willing to offload those services. We are prepared to receive the work. We have been ready to receive the work. And whatever it falls into our lap, we will figure it out. These folks have have seen our work change really quickly in a day. The needs of folks has shifted and we've been able to do that. The fire at the high school. That was three days into our deployment. And we shifted to do that vaccine clinics. You know, we are not afraid of work, but with the amount of people we have, there's no way and by the way, I'm doing my best but I do have to sleep some hours so another big part of overnight was is needing to have a member of leadership who's working third shift You know, I think the only structural piece I would worry about is finding folks who are interested in working the hours. You know, that's been an issue but I think, you know, my job is to do the work that's laid out for me and as soon as that's laid all my desk we will accomplish it as soon as we can. I hope that was a good enough answer to counselor Walker. Yes, that was really helpful. Is it okay if I have to quick additional things. He's going to stop you. Okay, great. Sorry, because I had a lot in my head, but I was like waiting and forgetting some things. While you're thinking about it I just want to say, one of the first things I told the responders when they came on is something that you said in the council meeting when I was appointed and I think about it a lot. The idea that my job here is to hold your baby. My job here is to hold the town's baby and we talk about that metaphor a lot that while we're doing the work. This is work that was visioned dreamed into existence by the town. So it doesn't feel strange to us it's something that we've known since day one because you told me it so so I just want you know we keep that in our hearts all the time. Thank you I actually really appreciate that. So one of them is actually just like sort of a suggestion and the other one is a question. So I'll go with the suggestion first just because thank you and I apologize because I can't remember the gentleman's name who spoke first. But I really appreciated that Rome thank you for that I really appreciate that and I think it's incredible that we have Spanish speaking responders and I know that that was another thing that I really advocate for in this town is language and language services and so I'm wondering if we have any plan to also be able to either provide services or have at least outreach and other languages or recruit responders or people that interact with crests. We have some kind of working capacity from other from other language backgrounds or other cultural backgrounds. For example, I know in this town we have a very large Cape Verdean population we have a very big Cambodian population. We have the you know I just there are a lot of other identities that are that live in this town and do we have a plan to be able to communicate with those communities as well. Hopefully eventually, and then that was my, well that was I guess my suggestion that I turned into a question. My other question was about the ADMHA, because I think I heard this and I apologize because I came in sort of late to the discussion so I might have missed some things and I think I heard you saying that we are partnered with Wildflower Alliance. And I think that was something more specifically because when it was in the hands of the CSWG we had partnered crest with the ADMHA, which is, you know, a BIPOC led mental health professional agency. And I think that that was one of the things that I was really excited about is crest being connected to groups that have BIPOC leadership, and also very excited about the opportunity to have BIPOC mental health professionals in this town which is very deeply important. And so I'm wondering if we still have plans of that sort to be bringing in BIPOC mental health professionals into this town, or if there's any plans around that. Absolutely. Got another set of good questions. Thank you so much. So language. I don't want folks to feel like Spanish is the only language we have on our team. We have a responder, Chalo from Kenya. He's a great case Oahili. And, well, I'm not going to get the other one, but another dialect in Kenya that is used in Kenya. We are all of our recruitment has been focused on identifying folks who can meet more language needs. We have a folk, a person who we hope will apply who is Kate Verdean. It's not just the language it's understanding the culture that that matters. That would certainly be a priority in hiring it would be a benefit it would, you know, give someone an increased chance of getting the position. And for us it's the language piece is huge but understanding folks culture, Rome. So, I'll tell you a humbling experience I had. I'm from Holyoke. And so when I think of the Spanish speaking community, I think of folks from Puerto Rico that that is what life has taught me. And I came here and I would, we did a panel over at the bank center and I began to talk about my understanding of Puerto Rican folks and a person in the audience said, that's not going to be enough. And I heard that didn't feel good in a moment but like most things that don't feel good that's because it was true. And so we recruited folks who had led the cultural understanding that folks here had. Not to pick on Rome again but part of Rome's value here isn't just the language stuff but it's how do you understand what it's like to be a part of a family that just came to this country is trying to make a way for yourself and that understanding helps us just as much as the language experience so I think as the department grows. I don't know if I'm the person or if, you know, a bus hits me and someone else is here that making sure that the person bringing people in is looking at where folks come from that that context matters that our diversity is our strength it's hugely important. I hope the town always kind of prioritizes that to the second question. Yeah, so actually this is a Jennifer moist and idea who is also our wonderful tech for the day. We started engaging BIPOC counselors and social workers in the community, and a process of kind of creating, not just a referral system, but to engage them and navigating how we support folks to be able to line folks up. So the request we get most often that we are almost never able to fill is that somebody with like a black male therapist. And there are just not enough folks so we're also going to be partnering with some folks out of the area to really provide that support and, to the extent that you know, folks, the therapy is great mental health stuff is great but the places where we, we talk about what's in our hearts isn't always that cut and dry. We're also setting out hopefully to start an initiative with black hair places barbers hairstylist to get them some mental health education to so that they can support folks to identify the resources that that they can gather through their insurance. And to note, we are in a really kind of crisis space with clinical folks period. This state has opened several large contracts that require clinical staffing. And we didn't have enough people before the pandemic and we certainly, it's hard to compete with people's couches. It's hard to compete with not having to come in so this is something we hope to continue. I would say, you know, we're always open to things certainly. And we'll, you know, I think it'll find a way. I was an unsatisfying government answer, but it was all I got. That was great thank you so much. No sir Walker do you have additional questions. No that's it thank you so much. Thank you for coming I appreciate you being here. Great. So I'm going to bring Lauren Mills and I sorry I have a few more points to make. And I'll make them quickly. Can you hear me. We can. Hello. I wanted to push back a little and be a little bit more clear on some of the concerns of transparency and the, the transparency around the press communications with the police because you said you do report to the chief. We do not report to the chief. I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't want that misunderstanding the linger at all. We do not report to the chief. I do not report to the chief. I don't have any regular meetings. We don't send him reports they don't have access to our reports we do not report to the police. Well, I thought that's what I heard you say in the beginning but for me I just have a transparency issue. Again, around students in the schools, because my children have told me recently that the police were present in schools with a canine dog. And I think around that's to me is concerning and if you're a person of color. I think we have to normalize, even though it might be triggering to us we might have to normalize having police presence around us and I'm just not sure why. We in school. If something was going on but I just think going forward that in in communicating with the, the residents that, especially residents of color we need to know what is, what is that relationship going to be, because in order for police to have less responses to things that they don't need to respond to, they're going to have to communicate somehow that to crest and so I just, I just, I just feel like that needs to be more transparent. And you did say some things about the MOU you said what you do not do, but you didn't say what you actually do in the school so I just would like, you don't have to answer it now but I'm just saying that for trust and transparency I just feel like those things need to be a little bit more clearer for communities of color. So I'll take that in reverse order, what we provide at the school's consultations. So when teachers are navigating a situation we work with them sometimes to think about how they might approach a family to think about what trainings are out there, what resources are out there. So we may never know the name of a family, they may just present an issue to us so we support them and navigate that that generally is going to happen at the principal level between me and the principal. As far as what we do is the consulting is the resources for parents, it's, you know, we support the restorative justice folks we help them to think through things. What we do is very, very light. We've had maybe 12 engagements with the school period. The police have zero to do with our deployments. They oversee dispatch, but I receive no supervision from the police chief don't expect to receive any supervision from the next year. We are a separate department. As far as the police being at the schools with the dog. I have no knowledge of that they do not report their deployments to me. Lauren, do you have any follow up questions. Is that satisfactory. No I don't thank you and I won't, I won't be raising my hand again. Thank you. Come back Lauren hey hey this is your town too. Yeah and you can go stop by and those are good questions those are real those are legitimate questions I appreciate you. Question in the audience. Wait, can you wait one one second Kathleen just for the microphone. I know it's getting long I'm sorry we'll end right on time folks Kathleen Anderson. And I think it should be your responsibility to be protective of students in school. And so how you make that. You need to decide how you say more how you're going to do that. Can you say more. Police, as Lauren was just saying, have somehow been able to gain access to the public school system. And it is a dangerous situation as we know with police. But the crest is supposed to be the team that intervenes in situations that are probably very much. But what happens in the school district. So if you're not there but the police are there. That's harmful. Yeah, that that really I think is going to be more of a question for the school board. I'm again when we show up the police aren't there the events we're doing a cracker farm the police are not there. My understanding was that nothing had changed in the operations between the school and the police department this sounds like it might be a shift. It appears that the folks that talk to me the school board, the superintendent and the police chief. You know, we are not the last school committee meeting you attended. Was the last one for the MOU. Yeah. So, say that again. I think it was November. I think it was the last one for the MOU. I haven't been invited back since for the what the memorandum of understanding that we signed with the schools. If you're a resident of Amherst or a worker of Amherst, you can go to any school committee meeting that you choose. And you can ask any questions that you like. Yeah, you don't have to be invited. Yeah, just show up. You know, yeah, no, no, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. I work about 70 hours a week right now. Make one of those hours, the time that you spend at school. So we have a hand raised from the audience online. You. Greetings. My question is, I hear a lot about the schools and the community and the service aspect. I'm wondering how we're tapping into the power and voice that we have in young people to be able to support the work of crests. But it's not so much recipient of, but so the community is working with the power and and wisdom of young people so that there is less of that policing of or servicing of but more of a with relationship. If you're working with the RJ in the schools and the principals. I'm hoping that schools are also beginning to take notice of that. I know this isn't a place for that conversation, but I'm really curious about how you're tapping into the powerful young people in this community with the work that you're doing. That's actually a great question that I can answer. We have youth groups approach us with particular feedback about things the sunrise Amherst young folks who I, I really value my time I get to spend with them have talked to us about the ways that we can kind of lower our impact on the environment, which has been eye opening for me when we go to the restorative justice classes at the high school. Those are really a conversation we're talking to them about what they do we're asking them questions about how it would feel. When they think about things, you know, one of my hopes and dreams from the beginning is that some of these kids who are in middle school and high school now will want to grow up to be crest responders and that they'll join our team and so that does mean involving them now will take on some interns over the summer, who I think are some rising high school seniors graduating seniors to really give them a chance to see what our operations look like. Yeah, I, I, we've met with the paku kids, young adults, I'm sorry, like, I'm 80 at my heart. And so welcome any conversation I would say that like the values that young folks have spoken to us about have been transformative. There have been ideas we had that that when we met those folks changed because of the way that they brought us through. I appreciate that question and if you have any thoughts on how we might do better at that, please reach out. I will thank you. Thank you. Hi, this is Vera again. I am neighbors with Lauren, who just spoke not too long ago. And one of the things that we wanted to do for our community. Our children and our neighbors children, you know, is to offer opportunities for cultural enrichment for field trips for outings that is so critical to healthy communities. And for press di to see that as an equity issue to provide opportunities for trips, you know, let's go out to see, you know, a sporting event or let's go out and, you know, do some beach outing right. Let's provide these things for our community members who cannot economically travel, you know, across the oceans right during these April or summer months of vacation. There's a lot of children stuck in our community that do not have a YMCA here that, you know, don't have a place to go to to recreate to to hang out. Right. And so let's do something positive that isn't about addressing, you know, that is preventive. Right. Thank you. And Lauren Mills, I see that your hand is up and I'm just wondering if you have an additional. Thank you. Well, and Vera, I'll just jump in with that one. That's why we're pushing for the youth empowerment. You know, that that be put in place and, you know, again, in terms of the feedback we're getting is a lot about feasibility still and looking at things and you know again delay delay delay and and like you said, I mean we need that space. You know, it's not anything about delaying. It's about how, how can we put that in place right away because especially our BIPOC youth differently able use LGBTQ non-bibe. We need a space and we need to make it that happen. I agree. I would love to be able to do there's a tons of things I'd love to be able to do that just with the amount of folks we have aren't going to be feasible. You know, I think this conversation has come before. You know, I think right now, unless there's some real uptake in our resources, it's still going to be us trying to support rec to do those things because it does appear to fall into their bailiwick but you know obviously we're looking at how we can develop more resources for for you. I have to stop myself sometimes because I hope in 10 years we're doing things I didn't even dream about now, but we're not doing a lot of things I dream about right now. You know, I would love for us to have some sort of the police department has a camp for young folks, whether you agree with it or disagree with it, it's a space where folks can come learn about them and engage with them. I'd love to have an opportunity like that with crest where folks could come spend real time with us. I'd love to develop a real internship program or a shadowing program where students from the high school who are thinking about becoming responders could spend some regular time being trained by the team. And I do believe we'll get there someday so I hope folks will continue to have real high expectations for us and even if we can't get all of them today I hope you know that we're working at it, and I do believe we'll get there someday. Huh. Why can't we do field trips for kids. Yeah, so the reality is we only have two teams on and they're both they're both working with folks. And so you can't necessarily bring in if someone's asking us to take them to the grocery store. They're not necessarily going to want us to use that as a teaching tool. If someone's talking to us about a traumatic experience and they're like they're not going to necessarily want that to be seen as a teaching tool. It's actually a real trauma trauma that black folks have had right that our pain is pathologized kind of. So I do think there are issues with our current limitations about doing those things. As far as folks coming to your office that happens all the time. I just don't think we have the time right now to develop the program. I think we can do it ad hoc for folks, but I think about having a robust program. There's 10 of us. I think I'll add and jump into that is that if we're listening and if we have members of the audience as counselor Walker or any other members of our town council is that there seems to be a budget issue and limitations in that way and so we are hearing it from our residents of what the idea of Crest wants and let's make this dream really happen. Let's get it funded. Let's make all these possibilities that all of our residents want happen. So I really hope people that are in positions of power that can make that happen are listening today and really hear these residents. Let me jump in with that too. In terms of absolutely right. That's what I've been thinking in terms like town council and town manager and the school committee because we're having a new police chief come in. I mean, the focus needs to be on the on the police department as to why are they putting a police in the school systems. You see what I'm saying. I mean, Crest is doing, you know, what what they can do. But none of them have so Crest doesn't have power over the police department. You see, I'm saying town manager has power over the police department and the new police chief that's coming in. So, the pressure needs to be on to make sure that this police chief understands that we do not want police in our schools. We don't want policing and, you know, for our kids. My child and the Amherst, you know, schools right now and I don't want my child pleased. You see what I'm saying. So it's about making sure that that that message is clear. And why is that happening? Why is why is there, you know, police with dogs and things like that. And, you know, unless they're, if they're there to respond to a violence or, you know, or something. Okay, we want more information. We want transparency around that, but we shouldn't be surveying and and out there, you know, policing and looking at our kids. And we know that a lot. Most, most often it's kids of color that are being surveyed and are being looked at and are being profiled to, you know, to then be addressed later. So those are some of the things that we need to, you know, we're glad we're hearing from the community, because we have to put that front and send them. And just we're at time and I just want to say, I still feel the same way about this job is when I started it I'm trying to do this thing as joyfully as I can. I recognize that that we can get so into the weeds on what's broken that we forget what works. And this today to be really worked like people were, were fair. People ask critical questions, which is fair. It's what you should expect of government. People have a vision that I can achieve right now. So there's a goal. That's worth having. And I just want to leave you all with my commitment that this will not be the last time we do this that this will be a regular thing. Some days I think you'll like me a lot. Some days you might not like me so much but that's just the part of this, and I'm committed to continue this conversation. And the good times and the hard times and the tough times. Again, like I said about like I said, Alicia, I know I'm holding your baby. I know that this is yours and that I just get to sit with it and I am privileged beyond comparison. I just want to thank this community for letting me come here for letting me do this work. And I hope that I make you happy more than I disappoint you. I need to talk to my team and just see if I can go. I don't know when the next school committee meeting is great. Thank you, Kathleen. Great information. Any other questions. Well, one of the things that we do want to say is thank you, Earl for obviously for coming and answering the questions. Hopefully though you can put out when the next listening session will be, I don't know if you know if you want to work again with CSS JC so that we can work on it but I think we need to send out another date. Because like you said, you know, this is something that needs to be continual and ongoing. If I could just add I really appreciate that all of you showed up today. I know it's icky outside, but your commitment to show up today is important because you care about this community and we, we care about what you have to say about it. So thank you for being here and thank you for joining on zoom as well. Any other members want to say anything. I don't know if any members online here. Yep, so it is 405 I guess we are adjourning our meeting and again thank you everybody for showing up and we still have a lot of work to do.