 tonight I'm actually going to just let each of the panelists go down the line and introduce themselves and what organization or role or institution they are a member of and what their role is I am senior police officer Jamal Chambers. I've been with the Athens Clark County government for 20 years. I recently returned from the sheriff's office. I was an investigator for gangs at the sheriff's office here in this role now with the community outreach. Hey, good evening everyone. I'm Jerry Salters, Athens Clark County Police Department and Police Chief. Hi, good evening. I'm John Donnelly. I am the circuit public defender that is the director of the local public defender's office and I have basically been with the public defender's office for 29 years since law school at UGA. We were in the business of defending people who can't afford to hire their own attorney in the criminal courts in Oconee and Clark counties in juvenile traffic, state court, misdemeanor, superior court felony cases and appeals. So I'm not sure what expertise I can provide but I'm happy to provide whatever perspective I can as someone whose office is in the practice of, you know, sometimes representing people charged with gang, criminal gang activity. Thanks. My name is Mocha Jasmine Johnson. I'm the co-founder of the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement. We have a program called Ender School to Prison Pipeline. We provide bailout services. So I'm also an educator, master educator, worked in education for over 10 years, worked in GED education for over four years, which was some of the best parts of my life, enjoy teaching GED classes. So I'm here to talk about the Ender School to Prison Pipeline and what we see when we're bailing folks out of jail and anything that I can attribute to conversation to help. That's what I'm here for. I'll just start off and you can each contribute what you might know about this. It might not have to necessarily be even facts and figures so much but what, how does gang related crime affect the overall crime rate in Athens-Clarke County and or what are kind of the general trends that you see? Like is this an area of crime that you see trending is increasing or decreasing overall? So just to kind of give people a picture of what the crime is. Sure. So whether it's a robbery or a battery or a criminal street gang act is really doesn't really add to our numbers. We have a certain amount of incidents we have. I can tell you that last year, middle of the year, we've seen a huge increase in the amount of shooting and gang violence in Athens. We increased our numbers in our gang unit and we started seeing those numbers go down but we still had a lot of challenges. I think a lot of people know a couple weeks ago we had several shootings that was not gang related but unfortunately a five-year-old and a 14-year-old child were shot. But when we look at crime numbers currently overall in Athens-Clarke County, we are 9% reduction in the numbers of crimes from last year and when we talk about shootings specifically, we're down 25% from this time last year. We have a lot of work to do and how we solve it is through working with our community that's currently numbers. I don't think I'm contradicting anything that you're saying but to directly answer your question, gang crime is a very small small percentage of crime in Clark County. There are oftentimes reports in the media that several gang members were arrested over the weekend in this operation but they aren't they're rarely charged with what they call a criminal gang act that is a crime that's in furtherance of to advance the I guess goal of the gang. I mean a lot of these shootings are and are retaliatory for some perceived offense or some offense in the gang world but someone may have been documented with the police department or with other law enforcement agency as having been in a gang you know affiliated with a gang but just because they're arrested the next time for breaking into cars or a domestic violence incident or something doesn't mean that you know would have nothing to do with the gang that they may or may not have been affiliated with several years previously if that makes sense. So what overall is like the target demographic of gang recruitment and and what like circuit breakers are there or what should there be in place to kind of prevent my intervention overall? So I would tell you in this community and I'm from Chicago Illinois I was born and raised we have some issues up there but here in Athens it's more like a family right as a former school resource officer at Clark Central there's a lot of resources there's a lot of non-for-profits so what I've learned is the more these young men and young women are involved in those opportunities the less likely they are to get involved in things they shouldn't be involved in. The problem is we're missing a few kids and they're sliding through the cracks and that's unacceptable right can it be fixed yes can it be worked yes for partnerships as the chief will tell you and the deputy chief we can solve some of these issues now you're not going to solve every issue but a lot of kids you can address and it's not always about sports it could be about science it could be about reading the more they're involved in positive activities the less issues they're going to have and then rolling into the crime thing crime is a opportunity for someone if you leave a cell phone somewhere and they grab it man it's actually a crime young folks see it oh he just dropped a cell phone that's they lost my gang but that we know better than that but let me ask you a quick survey raise your hand if you all know who Snoop Dogg is okay Al Capone for those older folks like myself okay those are gang members right Snoop Snoop Dogg wears blue right he tells you he's a crypt right okay so if Snoop Dogg slapped Al Capone does that actually make a gang related or is it just two guys who just didn't like each other from opposing sides they slapped each other happens every downtown all the time Alabama Georgia happens all the time but we got to just sometimes put too much of an emphasis on certain things and not address what the real issue is is getting our young men and young women engaged in positive activities and focusing on their betterment of their education if we do that we improve our neighborhoods and we improve society I would say definitely the first part of the question is a target demographic areas so when we're seeing at-risk youth recommended to us through our program is usually kids that are living in poverty marginalized communities is heavily black and minority students that are being recommended to the program or we see that are being incarcerated in these areas they're also dealing with poverty issues they're dealing with not having enough parental support so I saw where we need to create like a village there's still a broken thing going on within Athens-Clarke County within even the organizations that provide support we're not working together we can't put certain things aside to come together and and work to benefit the youth and I don't think one organization or one person can fix this problem because it's complex when when I meet a student like one of the students that's been recommended to us he's like 11 years old he lost his mom two years ago he's been acting out acting out acting out acting out so it's like if we don't create like an intervention preventive measures a support system we're going to continue losing them we're going to continue they're going to continue falling through the cracks and then what I also see is kids that are being bullied under peer pressure they'll be more susceptible to wanting to be affiliated with a gang for protection if you are constantly like your like your mom cannot provide for you for whatever reason that can also be attractive to a young person to be a part of a gang because that's a support system and that's their way of making money so if we don't figure out how to come together as a community to to intervene and create a support system for these kids we're going to continue losing them but I will say over the past year or so I believe there has been a decrease there has been a decrease whatever is going on there has been a decrease but this issue of gangs and kids this been coming for a long time this been going on we've been hearing about this for like over five years from students doing research but it's like what are we going to do now so one thing is holding them accountable for their actions but another thing is that we have to figure out how to empower these kids and let them know that there's somebody out here that loves you and one of the hardest things it's like for me teaching GED classes some of the people were court order to my class some of the people had different obstacles that made it difficult for them to to to succeed but it's like you have to like not give up on them and and deal with conditional unconditional love dealing with them sometimes and it's hard so give back to your question elementary is what they're focusing on right now it's for recruitment uh and what they're using is your appearance so let's say you come from a home you don't have as much well we're going to provide you everything you need if you hang with us we're going to as you go into middle school you're not going to get bullied on because we're going to protect you you go to high school you're going to be a part of us now eventually you're going to do something to earn your keep uh and that's what we have to address we have started the program with doing haircuts in the school in elementary but that's this one school and i'm trying to get other engagements in other schools to do the same thing because appearances everything that's what they're targeting with the way you as you said the way you dress the way you look builds into your self-esteem and everybody wants to be a part of something even to say they don't they really do and they thrive on that uh when you start talking colors and symbols that's just me identifying who i am where i'm at and who's going to protect me and what resources we need because in the end we're talking about resources those who have and those who do not also with you know i think they would agree that um but hadn't come right out and said it it's it's primarily on black kids and Athens and um not a hundred percent but but almost a hundred percent um which is troubling obviously for the just big that we still live in this world that's got um you know these sort of separate social worlds going on um and i agree uh that it is for the the exact same reasons that i've heard people described for the status and for the sort of security or safety i don't it's also um you know fairly rampant in uh prisons not just in georgia but everywhere and um so i remember last year i had a case where my client had been charged with you know selling drugs uh as a and also with gang activity and you know he was like 39 he said look i i had to join when i was 19 when i went to prison for a statutory rape charge involving well he was 17 the girl was 15 and he ended up marrying her and it was uh he completely got um well i don't know if railroad is the right word but he got um mistreated in the justice system ended up going to prison at 19 and said i had to you know i mean i was just in fear of my life and in the prison system and um and joined and then you know and ever after that he'd been in and out several times he said i'm also an addict and um i end up you know i'm living a criminal lifestyle but i i've never associated with the gang members outside of prison when i go to prison then i i have to put on that sort of cloak um but outside of prison he didn't uh but he still you know had had struggles um anyway had something else i was going to say but i'll it'll probably come back to me next are there some effective tools that that either are in place or could be put in place in our community that that would come back you know would kind of counteract this i thought it was really interesting about it being so prevalent already in elementary school and so i'm not sure about that i'd say we have a wonderful community with a lot of nonprofits but it's a matter of taking and getting those nonprofits together i know that we've got plenty of representation whether from our commissioners and they're working hard to look at different programs and what can we do uh and we've got to do something to give these kids somewhere to go and others after school programs but other programs it's later in the evening to keep the kids busy and i don't mind the devil's workshop right and so i think collaborating i think what mocha said if you can get everybody to come together and don't worry about sides and say we're here for the kids and work together i think we can we can make a lot of movement to add a community is only strongly this weakest link i remember some years ago mocha did a dance uh trio with some kids who normally would be doing other things and getting into trouble but i watched how those young ladies were at the hot corner festival and it was hot it was uh but they stayed engaged right uh chest in the community is a great program it keeps you engaged um we can do as a community we can do a lot of things but individually it's taxing that makes sense so if we want to keep them out the legal system we have to mentor them we have to give time for a lot of people time is a lot but sometimes if i'm gonna save a community i mean i have to give you all the time i have i can give you and then get partnerships um this is it is a complicated thing but it is the thing that actually can be addressed if we do it together remember now you got to treat this like you're a farmer what makes a good farmer right you put the seed you plant and you nurture if you're not nurturing them what's going to happen i would also say even when um officer chambers talk about the vip girls that was it's tough the girls oh my god dealing with girls a group of girls can be tough and so there were times that i wish i had additional support that i could have said okay i see this because you see where a child might be having an emotional or social like they need therapy they need different things there's different things that's going on that it's like they need a social worker i wish i could be able to provide these things so all i could do was take them out of their normal environments and bring them downtown and bring them in places they've never been before and and it's right here in Athens and some of them had never been in more theater and they're born and raised right here in Athens so it's like wow so by taking these kids into these different experience you could see how it helped but it can be taxing it can be taxing and so what i'm trying to do now with our end of school to prison pipeline program is provide mentorship and i'm trying to build it like a group mentorship where it's more than one person dealing with this particular child because you can get burned out and be like okay this is a lot and then also find um what i've been doing is trying to find okay well if you're a therapist would you be willing to give me like a couple of hours per month just to talk to the student we have another student that's going to do um the SAT it needs help to you know get in college okay i know a tutor so what i'm doing is using all the resources that i know everybody that knows me and but like hey mocha i'm like you can do something for one of these kids right so let's create a support system and so mentorship i do see that it works but i also see that it can burn somebody out so if we can like back to it again create a system to where okay let them go over here or let this child go over here to this particular program i feel like we can have more success but also there's times that there is a child that is being attracted to gangs and we're missing it so how do we teach the parents and um the teachers to be able to see it because there was things that was going on in my own family and if you don't if you're not from the gang life you don't know about gang signs you don't know about gang colors you don't know about gang symbols your parent that just working trying to put the food put food on the table can't you cannot imagine that somebody's trying to recruit your child from elementary school in middle school you're not thinking about that and they're saying these are just my friends but if you don't know how to identify certain things it can grow in a way that is hard once they're in it's hard to pull them back even if you're in a two parent home one it doesn't matter it's hard to pull them back so if we can create outlets support systems preventive measures work together collaboratively mentorship i do believe that we can help these kids especially those that live in marginalized community and property stricken areas the again i'm agreeing with the other what people just said to the response to that question and i would just add that the police can only do so much i think that you know they're asked to do more and more um and they i think would be um sort of misguided to expect the police department to prevent you know be responsible for preventing kids from getting into gangs um so i agree we it's got to be more of a community effort um and the well you know and going back to what i was saying a minute ago about the um prevalence of gang activity in institutions in penal institutions it's it's not you know a prison but the clark county jail also um you know i don't know i haven't really heard that that that you know gang activity is is widespread there but um they're very understaffed and and you know could use resources to and i know the commission is very aware of it and and trying to do what they can and the sheriff is trying to do what he can um but you know there's there's just sort of a number of agencies and um places in the community where that i guess we we just need to be sensitive that there are um being you know uh maximized i don't know given you know operating as as well as they can um to address all these different issues we look at the recruitment aspect of it we won't look at what they target so and then the privacy area is a fruitful area because that's a place that a parent's probably working extra duty to keep food on the table keep a house over your head roof over your head and clothing on you well while you're doing that who's watching your kids you know back in the day last kid kids you lock them in don't go outside but now you have cell phones and that's all they have in contact with them now on social media they do the music they do a due post the new tagging is online and so then you see something in the video game and you say oh fortnight let me get into this box and go back and forth in this conversation and now they've been recruited but that recruit is also trafficking you got human trafficking there's so many layers to this and then here you are born in the 60s or 70s or the 80s and you're like what's going on because you're out of touch and even when you do get in touch you're still behind you can put all the filters you want on your phones and your laptops but the reality is they're still going to have contact with people they shouldn't you have to teach them but you also have to have a community as willing to to see something to say something so if I see something need to say something and not be closed mouth about it one more thing like he said that I definitely think we have to figure out how to recognize the signs and be able to um because I remember I was looking at something on um Facebook and the way they were spelling somebody was spelling something it was like why they not this is not proper but they're replacing letters and those is an indication that that person is communicating a certain it's a certain things you have to be aware of so it's like if you could catch it you'll be able to like talk to your child like talk to them and be like if somebody approaches you or whatever the talk is you need to basically um how do you get out of it because you are a pressure too and they're not prepared for that and they never we never had that talk with your kids you know so if you live in certain areas I think in general period I know it doesn't happen in areas where there's more wealth you know where people just standing out and recruiting your kids but if you live in an area where there's corner stores and you see a lot of people hanging out in corner store you never know so you have to teach your kids to build up their muscles because the peer pressure that happens you're not there you are not there to help them maneuver that and next thing you know you you end up in a situation like officer chambers said now you have to do something to earn all of that that built up you know I don't want you saying what if you were in the blood game you spilled everything would be if it's a letter that's a c you won't use it because that's going to reference crypts so they'll change that b that c to b it's also a sign of disrespect when they exit exit out we offer from time to time in uh citizens of academy opportunities to talk to officers one on one and they can explain that to you um I've been on this little rampage and it started with a sheriff back there and what we did was start going to schools and teach them about gangs and I would say if your principal wants it if he reaches out to the chief I'll go anywhere and talk about it but I just don't come by myself I bring people who have specialist in certain with certain gangs and we come in and we focus on the issue we try to teach you what to look out for but we don't want to overwhelm you because trust me it could be overwhelming you don't need to go to a Atlanta Falcons game and talk about everybody as a member of a gang because they all got red on and I watch all that guys it can it can get deep but you're also going to say that gang members will use that material from different sports teams to signify who they are they also do hand signs they'll do handshakes they'll do anything to connect so that you know they'll do clothing they'll do gym shoes they even go as far as foods so when you realize that's going on and you start watching your elementary child and then understand who was that elementary child's mentor because watch out it may be a high school mentor who has contact with your child it might have been doing sports or some activity that you had to run late from remember there's always somebody watching your child even when you're not watching your child because a gang can only prosper through the people it brings in and if they don't have members they can't grow you don't see it so much and well to do neighbors because they have resources and your child's so busy into swimming or wrestling or soccer or volleyball that they don't have time to do anything and when they're doing that they have tutors well if you're in a community that doesn't have much you don't have those resources if they're not provided to you free and so even if they're provided free you have to pay attention to who's the person who is involved in your child's life you have to be an investigator oh you can tutor my child but who are you where do you come from what's your credentials because if you do not trust me you might be opening a window for something of course all that like those those things we talk about associated with gangs those are that's very attractive to young people teenagers love you know to have their own language and their own slang and their own way of spelling words and their you know manner of dress and a secret handshake and you can just go over to fraternity row and find all that here on millage and the secret handshakes they have at the fraternity houses and whatever um but obviously so there there is some universality to it um it's just they they form together and clicks for um well i guess it might not all be about criminal activity but of course um when you don't you're challenged for the resources um you resort to other means to acquire them but what what's kind of the more of the what's in it for the gang so what's what's the what's the economic uh kind of basis of how the gangs work i mean there's a lot of money in it what money well i mean i don't mind they make money in it and it's power you have power you have a lot of power you have money and you have power and and just to put it just to add to it just because somebody is in a gang that doesn't mean they're a killer or they're committing crimes i was in the military and when i was in the military i was surprised to find out oh you from a gang and then they found out okay this person is in a gang and if they're affiliated they click up in certain ways not they're committing any crimes but it like follows you for life you know so you have an instant group of in the military um if oh you instant click instant brotherhood instant friendship power the more people you have money right i mean so it's it's well i'm sorry yes these are people that have that previously were a part of gang some of them even wanted to change your life so bad that that's why they went to the military they're like i gotta get out of here i remember a female that was in new york and the way she lived and what was going on with her and she was already feeling we gang she left but does that mean all of that is out of her system so they're not active gang members like you know performing in them but they have the background that when they came in this is this was a part of them already add on you play the influence game so we just had a super bowl not too long ago and the halftime show was uh the emphasis was on la rap everyone in the halftime show war blew everyone was affiliated with the crypts the nfl didn't catch it right they didn't catch it they did the crypt walk they threw up crypt signs and they played crypt music and no one caught it but you gotta understand this has been normalized one of the hottest shows on tv is sons of anarchy that's gang related one of the greatest gangsters of all town was al capone that's gang related so you normalize stuff enough and kids see that that's a popular thing they want to latch on to it that's just the society we live in can we make adjustments yes we can do we want to make adjustments is the key nowadays if it's not bothering me i turn my eye and i look the other way now i turn my eye back and now it's living across the street for me now i have a problem with it now i want resources to get rid of it but if i help the community that's struggling with it in fact does that not help me also so i want you to start thinking as a community if your brothers on the east side have issues then you need to be so important them on the east side that way it won't come to the west side but if you don't believe me look up in chicago trust me they're struggling 16 year old kids had we call it bodies eight bodies on their name imagine that a 16 year old has killed eight people and he does a rap video about it and now he's more popular than president of the united states that's because we didn't address it because it didn't bother me because it wasn't at my back door now i set my back door kicking it down now i have a problem with it and i'm begging the police department to help me and so they come in heavy-handed and now everybody's mad at them when you have resources in that community that would have helped you but you didn't lean on them now some say it's too late i don't think it's too late but you're really pushing the edge are there parts about that that i see more of this like different community you know different areas neighborhoods should be focusing more on i think we have certain neighborhood gangs and we'll see certain areas that will flare up but when we look at our incidents and shooting incidents and look at a map it's all over because the kid may live in one area but he knows that the person he wants to shoot at lives in on the west side over in huntington or and so we're seeing these incidents so it's not really set to one neighborhood this is all over the community so we can't just say you know map it and we know that on this area we're probably not know because it's all over and they're not they're going other places to shoot and do things and so i'm so glad you said that because people might think that is like this particular area and then it's like they don't get the resources or support or they're condemned to look down on and what i'm noticing is that there's a lot of moms that live in those areas they don't want it they don't want the the gang activity they don't want the fighting they don't want all of that and it's and they're being consumed and being put under this umbrella of this is all bad and it's not you know so i'm glad you expressed that you know so um recently sb-44 was signed by the governor and will take effect later this year and this increase is the minimum sentence for gang recruitment of minors and for street gang offenses um is this do you think this is going to be effective what kind of tool can this be um if not what might be some of the pros and cons so i'm sure i would tell you that every tool is a good tool but don't abuse a tool when i went to the conference i was permitted to go to conference chicago you and they said this one thing you can't you can't prosecute your way out of a problem that you created by ignoring it think about that you knew it was lingering and you said nothing uh your officers asked for assistance and resources and you said okay we'll see what we can do about it so you let it linger and it became worse so then your community folks came say hey we got a problem over these guys are hanging on the corner we don't want them on the corner you said well we'll see what we do about it and so now those same guys said well if you're gonna let me hang here i'm gonna hang over there also you said okay okay well let me call the chief chief you better come fix this you said well i told you i needed more resources so i'm trying to get the community folks involved well you need to get it done now but we knew it was lingering we knew it was a problem so now we're trying to address it uh as a SRO at Clark Central i had 1,700 kids and i only dealt with 30 but on fox five you think the 30 was 3,000 think about that most those kids go to school they achieve well they start families i love when i see them they give me hugs but we forget them because they're just average kids and they're supposed to do that so they're not getting the encouragement but the ones who are constantly getting in trouble you give them all the resources but not the proper attention i would also say i don't think that the bill is gonna help because just taking up even a more stricter and a punitive approach and throwing kids in jail and making it harder to restore uh or empower these kids i don't think that is um going to help us and so until they address poverty and the housing crisis and we're creating bills that can reduce the poverty that is in this in Athens Clark County i see an increase over the past couple of years with maybe you know um kids acting out but at the same time we have a homelessness issue and people are living in hotels and some of these kids have to go to school every day so until we are addressing that appropriately um creating this type of bill i don't see how it's it's going to fix it especially when we know compared to all the crime it's a law it's a small percent this is not chicago he know about chicago the real deal this is not chicago this is not alana it's a very small percentage but it's going to get some kids caught up that are not a part of gangs it is because now let's say a child at a young age get a tattoo of a gang on their arm let's say a group of girls or a group of boys get into a fight it's not necessarily gang related they shouldn't have been fighting collectively and jumping somebody but you can actually be charged in a way that it's going to be harder for you to reclaim your life and have a second chance i know i've worked with some kids that i'd be like if you don't get out my classroom right now or i'm gonna call your mama or oh my god let me walk out this room right now but it's just i understand some of these kids are off the chain but just throwing them in jail and and not having other resources there for them not working to try to empower them and pulling them back out not making sure that these communities are properly funded not making sure the school system is properly funded and having the education services that they need not making sure that the teachers in the classroom have the assistance that they need so they can be able to teach and still deal with behavioral issues until they make sure that certain things like that is in place these bills is not going to help us yeah i mean i don't expect it to be too much of a problem in claire county because the public defender's office will be there to protect these people but no um but it will be it could be um in the atlanta area um and i agree it's it's you know i mean it's sort of the uh an uncreative politicians go to move right hey let's increase the penalty for some crime that's been in the news this year um the increasing the incarceration for drugs didn't work um you know the war on crime when we won that when year did we win that i can't remember um you know the um you know you can incapacitate people for a certain amount of time but nobody knows the magic number um to do that that doesn't then become harmful to them and their families and um and nobody knows that and and it's uh we have to be very careful about incarcerating our fellow citizens and um i'm not saying you never but but we have to be very careful about it um so i don't see that that's going to accomplish anything um and i also you know with that i would hope that a community would would keep in mind that um money might might be better spent not on a you know specialized gang prosecutor um but those resources could go to you know mentors in the schools or whatever you know there's the the $250,000 that a da might request for a gang unit could go to you know that could go a long way at the four middle schools in Athens um but i did think it was interesting or comment towards because somebody you know had to on their honor we we had a case a few years ago i think you may have been involved in investigating it it was it was uh three people were charged and they were from different gangs with with robbing a gas station um and i was like okay well you may be able to prove that these guys robbed it but they're uh the information is that they were all in different gangs at one point in the past and i don't know that um this is this prosecution for gang activity is is necessary in this particular case so when you look at the prosecution for gang activity there's there's a lot of levels of it the most important thing is the training that you get we do get training for the issues they have in Atlanta chicago new york will not be the same issues that you have here in Athens will that bill be effective in lana it probably will be real effective because they're they're dealing with ysl right now but will it be good here in Athens maybe not so much because we have a different thing a lot of our kids are so related to each other that's what we're dealing with so and as chief said every doesn't make everything game related but sometimes it is and so because you have such a great community people love and it's prosperous to them you're starting to get folks starting to migrate here and so when they migrate they bring their habits with them the goal for us as a community is to teach our kids to withstand that migration because they don't they will be lost to that bill that bill will be effective but like you said you wind up grabbing the wrong kids and not the ones who brought that mentality here the bill was to target those adults who come from prisons who won't let their lifestyle go and then they come here and they recruit your kids and they recruit them with such a a love for the game that they instill that in them so growing up and I'm and there's a confusion about gangs most people think people gangs are stupid they're not a friend of mine was going to Southern University which is homeless looking in Illinois when really I seen two guys I said wait a minute something's not right they both wear red jackets uh they had the hats turned to their vice lords and I asked him I said let's talk about said what are you doing he said well this is how it works he said we're not foot soldiers we have high cues so they sent us to school we'll never touch any product we'll never cause any threats I'm going to be a lawyer and he's going to be a doctor they need lawyers and doctors just like you do there's a confusion about this because if you look into the mafia they did the same thing these gay members that they have learned from the mafia they've learned how to be successful by keeping those who they see as intelligent out the mix and they let them become citizens and they go to academies and they do everything they're supposed to do as citizens until one day they're called upon for the gang so that bill can't be effective and it will be effective in Atlanta but just because it's effective Atlanta doesn't make it effective here in Athens but don't forget now we have people who migrate here so it will be effective against them and I mean from what I've been hearing and I mean I'm not gonna lie it's like being a teacher you you know people that are affiliated with gangs and just because they are that isn't being their bad people and I still have to engage with them and and they're not causing any harm but um I would say even dealing with that particular bill the main thing is that it ties it ties all of our hands it ties the police officers hands for making a decision of like okay we want to prevent we want to present this alternative it ties the judges hands from saying okay we might want to do um uh a no cash bail for this particular situation it ties Athens Clark County our small town hands of taking more of a restorative approach to addressing this issue as opposed to and that's what I see with the criminal justice system I'm not saying that officers and all these people necessarily always have the time to be able to decipher who's bad and who's going to cause harm they have to make sure they're safe okay but once that part is over with the judges and people that are involved in these kids lives should happen should be able to make a decision that's more restorative than punitive and this bill ties their hands from doing that questions and um I will uh ideally I just take a question from one person until we've had a chance for a lot of people to have uh the questions answered so I will start with you here I demand a question yes um I'm curious about whether there is any list anywhere of the different nonprofits and mentorship programs things like chess community you know that actually does also tell what your needs are from us that would be real useful I mean I've heard different people trying to work on this list I don't think it's been um published yet but I think that it's something maybe we all need to start working on and make sure it happens and probably have it listed whether on the school website but somewhere to where people can have access to it but have y'all heard about the list that y'all know uh one of the commissioners commissioner fisher had a community meeting and where people got to talk at the church mocha was there and I think at the end one of the action items was try to get that together and try to get so we know what resources are out there and how we can help those resources and again work with those resources because there's so many that a lot of times we don't know but we know certain groups we try to work with them to solve issues I'm probably volunteers I don't know who you would need to contact from but I know Dexter I had started the conversation a lot of us was like we need a list we need a list and then I don't know who was supposed to create the list so maybe we should ask the mayor I don't know if you have all those organizations and all those groups and you want to funnel these children into activities that keep their minds stimulated and give them that sense of empowerment that a gang doesn't need to give them how do you get these children to these programs especially if their parents are working that will do these on there I mean I'm going to tell you this we have um we're dealing with some we have two programs our teen social justice and we have under school to prison pipeline that's definitely direct mentorship so transportation is the issue so we have someone picking up kids sometimes the ones that are 16 and 17 I'm the trans the bus system is free and these kids don't want to get on the bus you know what I mean so the main thing is that um I have noticed because of the internet and the way technology and the information that they have access to it is not easy to engage these kids like it is really not so you have to figure out what that thing is that they're interested in and try to direct them that way because if they're not interested in it you're going to lose them anyway I've been through it in so many different ways so my thing is finding out what is that thing that they're interested in or peaks their interest and then also like I said it takes a village to raise a child so whatever services or skill that you can provide a non-profit or organization maybe you can provide some transportation and the parent will sign the waiver and say yes that's okay for somebody to transport a kid whatever service or skill that you can offer offer that you know so that's what I would say is not just about getting them to the program is finding that program or that that particular thing that they're interested in enough that they were attached to so I've heard several times resources mentorship how but I have yet to hear anyone mention about organization the community coming together to build out this housing situation it's only getting worse I'm pretty sure everyone has seen all these new buildings new apartments many of them they're going up how are you guys dealing with the housing because a lot of these children who are in poverty their parents are doing evictions the rest of evictions so how do you guys if you plan on doing that plan on addressing that issue okay I would tell you this a lot of people don't know the work that we do we provide trends we pay for I'm familiar with a lot of families and as far as our role what we can do we provide housing as far as paying for hotels or families with their kids to stay in those hotels there's a mom that even called me last week her car broke down things like that so if I could pay for her to stay in one more night but the thing about it right we could pay for a family to stay in the housing in a hotel for seven days then there's larger organizations with bigger pots of money so we sign up sign the form say after seven days you're we're trying to be we try to play our role as transitional housing because that is a big problem when I ran for office I was trying to bring attention to the housing crisis so I'm trying to play my role and everybody needs to play their role but I would say this you do see a lot of kids struggling when kids are moving around from place to place that's another way that kids can fall in the subset susceptible games when families are staying in hotels there's other people staying in those hotels too that they're susceptible games so we all have to play our role we are appearing in the government I think that that's a governmental question but transitional housing is how what we have been doing if I can provide some type of resource for that family just so they can get by for a week or two until they can get to another agency that can pay for long-term housing if we can sign a letter so they can get a voucher but a lot of landlords are not even accepting the vouchers so that is a heavy loaded question and it's very complex and it's nothing that we up here can fully fix not even close it's a serious problem even people we bail out of jail we have to provide housing for them because if we don't they're gonna be back in the streets they can get arrested for soliciting it's a lot now we see people with mental issues they can't get housing because they can't they need help with understanding how to pay their rent and they bills this one man they paid for his whole apartment put him in there and because he was dealing with something mental he burnt it down so it is this is a complex issue that I don't think that myself or anyone up here can really address and we need to start to talk into our state legislators that's where we need to focus on but we don't see it we don't we don't see it they're they have they're doing things that's going to hinder us and especially black boys and young black girls from thriving in this community because a lot of the families that are being pushed out are black families they're marginalized families so that I just want to tell you that's a heavy loaded question a lot of you said I think there's going to be a forum I think that's going to be the topic of a forum later this summer right so a ACC go up as a house strategic plan community happening tomorrow morning and you also fill out the survey at the west acc.l post well we will share that link again with the survey on our in our social media for the federation because I think that is a interesting survey that the county is trying to put out there at least but um yeah it's not it's not the answer you want I don't think anybody up here has it but I'm going to try to find some people to sit up here or just plant the seed and you because we hear about these resources because that is a late term what kind of resources mentorship is great but if you have a single mother with a kid and she is being evicted that mentorship she's not caring about that she's trying to figure out how would she put her kids in this house and she has a group and she has the right support system it will help even if it's one mother if she has a support system that she need we just have to help these people we can't just let people become homeless and turn our backs because it is a crisis it's going to bite Athens who is going to bite Athens so bad if we don't figure out how to address the housing crisis okay so that that all depends on what happens so let's say that we have a altercation that takes place in the home in front of the children and it's a violent altercation or something that needs to be brought to their attention the school normally jumps in they'll let us know and then we also will send a referral to defects that's one way i want to say something there's a gentleman named Rodney Robinson who does community engagement and he literally keeps me locked in what's going on with all the schools um chief was able to come out and speak to the kids and let me tell you something we got some intelligent kids at game school they're very pronounced for their words no he works for the school district and he's very good at what he does um one issue is when we came to get young men a haircut and the young first time he doesn't talk this kid doesn't talk he talked that time he said you know sometimes i don't sleep at night i said you don't sleep at night he said yeah because i woke up and uh a gentleman i woke up and the bullet was in my wall while i was sleeping well i brought that to the chief we brought in expert role um i believe that we've addressed that issue in the community but that aggravates me and i don't like that somebody's nine years old he can't sleep because some adults can't get their stuff right that you would shoot and in the name of a gang if it's a gang at all or is it just a personal thing that you never learned how to work it out so you grab the gun you shot we can go into the gun thing but in the end we talk about adults who are not responsible they do irresponsible things and it traumatizes these children and once you traumatize somebody there's no coming back from that you can give all the therapy you want to but if they become angry enough then they strike back and then that's that cycle we talk about and if they're not big enough they go get the help of other people and then they strike back as a group that's that gang stuff we're talking about right it's only going to be prevalent till we as a community say if it's not going to happen on the west side it's not going to happen on the east side i stand with you we stand with the police department we stand with all the services up here to stop it we can stop it together we can minimize it because you'll never stop human behavior you just push it to somebody else's community i don't want it in this community at all not the not massing county in ogreville get me wrong but i'm worried about clark county right so i think everything we're doing here we're talking about we need to talk about more we need to bring in more resources because you're correct if you have nowhere to live and i know it's from south south chicago then i'm gonna take something that i need to get what i want and you're not going to be able to stop me but if i dress it now and we see all the cues and we use all the the tools we have then we can't do something about it this is a issue that we can't address but there's so many communities that didn't address it and not a catch in it i don't think we should be that community we've had incidents downtown here's the thing those people weren't from here they were from other communities they saw each other downtown they got into it yeah and oh it hadn't been gang related because it happened in someone else's community but this was the tip of point here because now we are in metropolitan area that's very popular go dogs two championships about to be a third that's the reality but we got to think about that we're bringing great folks to spend money but we're also bringing other folks looking to take money and it's not always gang related but it could be a catalyst to gang behavior can i ask a question um that you touched on just a second ago but we hadn't really addressed it but um you know handguns are a very scary problem and y'all's line of work right um any thoughts on that and um particularly what um i'm thinking of is that we see you know as public defenders and miss carter will back me up on this we we see a lot of police reports and in our cases and um it's shocking to me how often i'll see a report of a burglary or entering auto where someone's gun was taken out of their truck or their car or um you know garage and but there's no penalty for that is there if you have a gun in your glove box in an unlocked car and someone steals it and then they go shoot somebody in Athens with it the person who essentially passively circulated that gun has no responsibility right yes correct uh there's no legislation it's not against the law if you leave your uh firearm inside a vehicle and then when they get stolen just to give you a statistic last year in Athens Clark County smallest county in georgia we recovered over 300 firearms illegal fire firearms so when i say illegal i'm talking they wasn't they were stolen or they wouldn't possess legally and so we seized them and uh some communities turn around and sell those guns back to make money uh in Athens Clark County we destroy them all so we take them all and and get rid of them but we have a huge issue with with the amount of firearms and specifically how young people uh get firearms and specifically when we look at shell casings from a shooting scene we're not seeing pistol rounds as much we're seeing large caliber rifle rounds 7.62 and 556 and that's bigger than anything that officers carry um and so that that is concerning at that level and a lot of these firearms ars and things that are being stolen of vehicles and burglaries and things of that nature so unless you're I assume that you all are packing like yeah and unless you're prohibited yeah unless you're prohibited and and there's not necessarily it doesn't have to be concealed anymore as long as you're on it can just can't go to the Capitol building with it because the legislature that's that's where they draw the line it's where they work you can't you can't care about it that's kind of the two part but you know we've heard a lot about the description of the issue you know broadly speaking you know violence and involvement stemming from poverty lack of support you know generally what I've heard is you can kind of summarize people getting involved in things for some combination of meeting protection uh meeting affiliation you know some kind of connection to other people so protection protection in moments right um and generally speaking we've heard kind of like we need to invest in work you know but the reality is that we have only so much we can do in a given day or week or year there's so many dollars to go around there's only so many policies that can be reviewed by legislative body you can give in legislative session so so thinking from the more empowered place of the local government right because there's no state legislators the air is far from aware I'd be very curious to hear y'all's thoughts if you could just pick one each of a funding recommendation and a policy recommendation that you think would be an especially impactful or transformative place to start um and just a tiny bit more background so when I say policy recommendation that's something to do the purview above the local government um or we have some school board members here in the school district that you think would would make a difference to interrupt annual involvement um or or whatever else to break up that school and then on the funding side I'm specifically thinking about how we've got this seven million dollars of uh unexpended money that's currently designated generally to youth development and violence prevention um and so you know what are your thoughts on like how to spend money in an effective way that's kind of only at home I would tell you this you can't spend anything unless you actually physically understand the problem yourself so if I can get you to come to the east side right and just look observe if I could then get you go to a school and walk around and look and observe then you'll fix the problem I'm gonna fix it for you because you have to see it first see people tell you all day what needs to be fixed but you'll never capture it appear until you actually see it for yourself see what the people who are struggling with it are going through and then you can fix that problem and address it where you need it we got plenty of officers that the chief will put you in you can do ride-alongs you can ask questions and I I think Dr. Gantt will probably have some teachers who love to talk to you they want to run but they'll talk to you but you have to see it first you have some lawyers here who love to sit down and talk to you about the problem but me telling you how to fix it is not going to help unless you can see it visually and then experience it go there at night and see what the business owners are going through uh the homeowners are going through when they talk about this this is not go to millage five points and see the traffic they're complaining about right go to the schools and say they don't have enough supplies so the difference I would tell you is I work Monday or Friday I want you to be with me Monday or Friday and we'll fix it that's the best way I can tell you now you gotta listen to my music in the car but we'll fix it and I like R&B slow but I mean I like you like that but we'll fix it I mean that's a complex like just to give you one answer like okay so you're saying policy it's it's at the point that I'm tired of coming to these meetings because we talk and we have the conversation but what we're trying to tell you is that we need people we need people we need bodies we need it's not just about the money the money is there it's going to be distributed to all these programs the issue is not going to be cured so it's a long term type of goal that you're trying to set out for so I think that is a more like in-depth question where we set aside time and brainstorm because it's even if I say this policy change when COVID hit that changed everything you know what I mean the homeless crisis that's that's also the root of it so I would definitely say that um continue trying to fund as many of these non-profit that's already doing the work stop reinventing the wheel there's agencies that's out here already doing the work if you could save if you're one organization you could save 10 kids that's better than none but it's like all of us is fighting for that money and it's not enough so like I said support the people that's already doing the work that has a track record that's showing that they're already doing the work and it's not just one organization you can play chess and community all day but if somebody's homeless and hungry what organization is there for that if a young girl has been raped what organization is there to address that who's there to help this person so it's not just one answer and all I could say just keep funding these find the money fund the organizations that's doing the work that's actually doing the work and it's not about just a hundred kids inside because you can have a better impact with that kid the mom and the whole family when you're working with only 10 kids or 20 kids so some of y'all is looking for organizations that have a hundred children but I feel like I build a relationship with the mother because it's a holistic approach you have to take the parent needs help the teachers might need help you might have to go up to the school to deal with the teachers you understand she might need groceries this week so we're dealing with we try to take a holistic approach and the parents have to be invested not look down on and pointing the fingers at the parents so fund the organizations that is already doing the work and when it comes to policy changes y'all have to do something about these state legislators that is creating these horrible harsh bills that's gonna lock half of these kids up and still not creating policy changes to address the homeless crisis and these other things so I know the mayor and commission meets with the legislators at some point in time y'all have to tell them y'all is not helping us yeah I'm guessing that they have said something in very polite way that probably falls on deaf ears because there's probably I can imagine a big disconnect between our local delegation and the state representatives but I sense that you want something more concrete than than the other two panelists that have have given you so far and I don't know that I have anything that's very good but maybe like some sort of county funded social worker at each of the four middle schools to be in some sort of gang you know intervention position I don't think that would be a good title but the certain communities like Clark Gardens have could use some attention cleanup I don't know what I don't know why how they get in such disrepair and it just probably breeds stress and and crime but I don't know that the county can address those neighborhoods um and I'm sure maybe they have and and it's difficult to to to do consistently but those are the two things that come to mind so on a policy standpoint uh I'd say collaboration we live in a wonderful community that has these great nonprofits that want to help and how do we support them and bring them together um you know historically at the police department we look at this past year we've had three major issues that we felt facing the community one being homelessness second being uh opioid crisis with the amount of overdose deaths we suffered last year and then also shootings um and what we want to do is yes we're the police and yes it's our responsibility to enforce the law but how do we work with the community because our greatest crime fighting tools of the eyes and ears of the community we depend on that our community for that and we don't want to be in a situation where we're policing the community we want to police with the community what does that look like um when we get something going when a group wants to do something and really help kids we want to be there with them yes we're going to enforce the law but how can we also partner to mentor if it takes reading a book to a kid but it's got to be a a a group effort it's going to take the entire community to do that so I'd say that policy has to deal with collaboration between a lot of different groups that care deeply for this community that hurt two weeks ago when that five-year-old child lost her eye to violence and another 14-year-old was shot we got to have something that's going to address those issues so um as you stated earlier like there are resources like direct resources that will help these families pay their rent like the Georgia rent assistance they recently had a program where they were paying up to 18 months of people's rent however there are so many landlords who have a debtability that are not accepting these payments from Georgia rental assistance so that's one problem like first of all how is that legal and ethical and number two how can you guys collaborate as a leaders of our community to encourage these landlords to accept these um payments commissioners I can tell you I had the privilege of being at a work session last week and and there's a lot of work being done on that and if you get a chance to watch some of those meetings or even attend them there's a lot being done if y'all want to elaborate you can I mean probably one of our many bureaucratic components that they mentioned to would be GIC which is the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing but that's the advisory body on the strategic plan for the affordable housing part of okay so we said in motion a bunch of things with the arbala money in the American American money and two things that kind of happened in parallel was this homelessness strategic plan and the affordable housing strategic plan and there's two different um organizations that contract with one of those the idea is those are going to talk to each other and so the homeless coalition is the main advisory body for the homelessness one which has been run by this group for the cloud worst and then GIC is the main advisory body for the affordable housing one which is run by this organization called HRMA so without sending you down the radical of like watching tons of meetings or attending meetings that you can't necessarily speak at like a like a basic just kind of cursory like looking at where those plans are and recommending into them that forum that Tim mentioned is actually an opportunity to literally like impact what's going to be an affordable housing strategy I think what's really important to think about both of these is that they're partially about how to spend the arbala money but we all know that that's like a one-time thing it's going to run out the the bigger impact here we talk about long-term transformative solutions is you know what does this recommend is the priority things that we're going to carry forward in our year to year when we're guiding our policy decisions um so I if you're asking me for my take on what we should do with all that the thing that's most important to me right now that I want to see is how those two plans talk to each other specifically around supportive housing which is what's often needed for the people who are chronically unhoused and it's often what's left out of like like an explicit requirement in affordable housing projects we talked about income level but thought about what other like wraparound services people might need to succeed in that housing um and then the other thing to look for is what's called light tech credits which is low income housing tax credits but they're um so you hear people say light tech um and what we really have seen fall off in recent years is landlords accepting those things and there's some things that I think we're going to get recommendations around that we can do legislatively to start to see more private development include those voucher programs so we start to see a greater supply of those in the community I hope that was clear it's a common issue because like I personally have been experiencing uh like um trying to find somewhere affordable or like I've had this with systems that I couldn't use it because the places that have ability were not accepted and the places that were accepted about just didn't have any ability and like the people who are affected they're not here to learn about these um just tell them that you're typing I didn't want to mention uh for anyone who doesn't know this is uh commissioner jessie cool who is from uh represents district 6 on the west side of Athens and I'm sure he would love to talk to any of you afterwards too so um and uh thank you jessie for always being a good attender at our uh declaration form so um I think we're about ready to wrap up oh wait wait tim and suki have questions over there no question I was just gonna also point out mr myers over there um oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry so chair saloon is back here to mr myers i just i want to make sure we have other reports people are oh sure yes thank you tim did you have a question yeah just just a quick one this so I think one of the things that it's about foundation I appreciate y'all being part of this is that we all y'all talked about the why people why these kids join in right y'all talked about a deficit people and children's uh resources or guidance at home uh their parents being overwhelmed housing all these things um and you know I don't think any of y'all said anything about letting you know uh these kids people join these games or bad people don't y'all believe that we don't believe that right but if we look at the way we actually tackle uh game prevention in our society it's much more towards that fact of uh you know it's uh you know throw the book out kind of thing as we see how the solids legislation come through uh that we're just going to look like we're going to get prosecuted and as far as possible when I think I'll go all kind of point out that it's more about the lack of resources a lack of attention a lack of uh yeah deficit these people's lives um so I my question is and I hope if it takes more of a case management kind of no ticket between game prevention which I think might be more uh workable but so my question to y'all is do y'all feel like our um our style on game prevention in this community and also our state nationally is the correct one uh and if not what y'all think we should be so I would say this and I left this out there is a percentage that I actually born into it my father was his father was and that's just the way it's going to be and you don't have a choice there is no right plan because you have to adapt to the moment right you have to adapt to the community what we do here may not be successful in Dunwoody or it may be not be successful in College Park but it works for us and we're forever adjusting um always adjusting trying to feel you don't fill out uh SRO's are important but SRO's don't work for everybody okay uh community engagement works but it doesn't work for everybody so it's going to be a multitude of different techniques until we get the right technique and we may never get the right technique because every human being is different what I would say is um I 100% support anything we could do to try to help these kids before they get in there and offer like Moga said for not only kids but their family and what can we do to prevent them to get in there but once they've got a gun in their hand and they're shooting up in people's houses we've got to get dangerous those dangerous situations off the streets and then look at rehabilitation and things of that nature and supportive when they're coming out and their systems for restorative justice but the challenge is we have to keep this community safe and when it gets to that level with farms we've got to take action so um wait what was the question again no um the are we addressing it as as effectively as we can I I couldn't tell you but the just you know my my experience and this is largely anecdotal and from just this community the little bit of I guess you know and then conferences or research that I've done on my own it it seems to be that there's terrible data on this issue because it's very hard to study um and so I don't think that we're stupid for not having good you know answers and and and there is not no one has come up with a good you know solution um to reducing the kind of childhood trauma that would you know keep this this going um the so from my point of view in the courts um there it's almost become a an insult to talk about restorative justice in some circles but the the fact of the matter is the truth is that that's not happening there is no restorative justice in place in the courts in Clark County um there are people who are capable of doing it um at the Georgia Conflict Center for example um here in Athens um and they have mechanisms in place and they have you know met with juvenile court um but it the the DA's office has not enacted it for whatever has not you know followed through with any of that um despite what might be on Facebook or in the news or I don't know what on both sides I mean some people are claiming look at what the DA's office is doing with restorative justice and other people are using it as a weapon saying the DA's office is bad they're using restorative justice and I'm and a few others that are actually in the courtrooms are like actually it's not happening at all and that probably is a good idea I'd love to see if it works um but nobody's doing it and there are very um well-trained committed people ready to go so that's the only thing I can think of that that we could try just a quick comment on that as far as with the restorative justice model both parties have to agree to be a part of that program and so some part of the DA's office that don't be had like one case or both that's my understanding too both parties have to agree absolutely yes but I don't think that um well yeah I don't know that it's being pursued very vigorously is one instance where the two parties have to agree to it are they indulge in juvenile I'm sorry is it indulge in juvenile like what what what court what level of this oh I believe it's juvenile but I would have to and I'll just comment that one of the last um I think was the form at the library where I think I saw this was asked about sort of just that she said it's only being right now started with juvenile court and a lot of this we do see gang activity starting however um I think what was found referring to is it needed to help us adults okay and I'm sorry I didn't hear the adult statement part of your statement yeah I don't think I did say that did clarify but but right I mean in Georgia 17 year olds are treated as adults in criminal court I mean I will miss a gang sign I'm learning about some of this stuff too you know um I do believe I do believe the internet and um the portal that you have for the internet is definitely making it easier for to reach these kids so officer chambers they specialize in teaching this they work it they do it they see it in different forms and shape because I'm telling you is is just because everybody have on red I don't mean they're part of a gang there's other things that you have to be able to recognize and that is not my expertise I'm not sure until you can learn like work session but like I tell you all work session I'm very special so I just thought we wrap up here tonight um I'm gonna but uh each of our panelists if you have any mass urge you want to send people away with um I live by this slogan people can only do to you what you allow they're doing what they want to do our kids because we're allowing it because we're not addressing it we have resources here to do it together work as a team and make a difference but just understand this you're never going to stop it but you can reduce the behavior you can make it so uncomfortable that they don't want to be here that's what you want to end and then when we prosecuted we're prosecuting from a a community aspect we're telling you this behavior will not be tolerated so you have to adjust and do better or move to someone else I just want to thank y'all for for the great questions and a great form tonight um I guess my hope is I don't want to experience what we experienced a few weeks ago and that's been my fear is we've seen shooting incidents rise right now we're at a low from this time last year and my commitment to you as a community is we're going to do everything we can um but it's going to take the village it's going to take the entire community to work together to solve these these issues but I don't want to see another situation like we had last week the five-year will be in shot or even looking at the two homicides we've had this year both being young african-american males we have to come together as a community it's not a police problem it's not a government problem it's a community problem so that's the only way we're going to solve this by working together thank you yep and um if you are a member of a gang you're 100 times more likely to be shot than someone who is not in a gang it's kind of a different way to think about it um and the you know working in the courts it's these situations like I you know we're gonna there's a good chance that we will deal with it on some in some aspect in the courthouse and it's there's so much sadness and pain uh involved in these situations all around um you know we will be representing a young man who's charged with this and then you know they'll have relatives and family who are uh heart sick and heart broken about it as well as you know the this little this child's family um and people just concern people in the community for for either a tea you know anyway it's uh the courthouse is not a satisfactory place to resolve these issues I mean it can only do so much it's very limited in what it can do and um yeah just want to I mean I work there and I'm dedicated my you know professional career to trying to do what I can there but it is it's very limited to um satisfy the community's outrage or or offense at this type of activity I would just say don't judge because a lot of us are judging these kids and we're some of us are afraid of them and we're giving up on them a young black man is 3.5 times more likely to be expelled suspended from school and ended up in the incarceration system and it does start from elementary it's starting from elementary now to where a child can be an elementary student can be suspended from school or basically arrest depending on what state you live in or where you live so the the thing that I want to say is that I see a lot of people judge you judge these kids people judge me stop judging because they're already a young black man and a young black woman we're already walking around knowing that supposedly we're a threat they maneuver differently some of them will see people in the automatically across the streets so what I'm trying to tell you is be more of a servant try to see what you can do to help instead of judging and condemning this young person because believe me you think that you just walked away from it for every bed in that jail you have to pay tax dollars so you are ultimately can be a part of the problem and you can also be a part of the solution but judging somebody and not seeing what you can do to offer help stop stop that because it's not going to help us