 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming. We're going to get started here 30 seconds early We have a lot to cover. My name is Jason Gibbs. I'm the governor Scott's Chief of Staff. There's a number of members of our team Here this afternoon. I Hope you have an opportunity to meet some folks who you will be working with You have not yet had a chance to say hello to that's one of the reasons why we are doing this briefing series We are going to limit this to a one hour per briefing. There is a lot of Detail that we are going to Skip over These are intended to be very high-level introductory briefings Specifically tailored for folks who are not going to get more detailed information in your committees of jurisdiction So if you're not on a judiciary committee, for example, this is this this presentation is meant to be For your awareness so you understand the types of issues that we're going to be bringing to the judiciary committee So when you hear about them over the course of the conversation in the legislature, you at least have a general Understanding of where we're coming from and what our priorities are, but it's an hour. So we're going to keep moving We're also going to try within that hour in addition to covering a lot of ground to create lots of opportunities Or at least a few opportunities for folks to ask questions engage in dialogue. This is a Legislator briefing. I know we have some stakeholders and other interested folks here as well There's some media covering these briefings both in the room and online. That's great Stakeholders and media who have questions. We'd be delighted to follow up with you offline legislators who don't who have a question that we don't get to in detail tonight or Who think of a question when you're driving home tonight or whatever the case might be if for any reason We can provide you with more details or answer a question that wasn't asked Just let us know we'd be happy to get you that that information. So again, it's one hour. We're going to move pretty quickly We're going to cover wavetops It is introductory and as the session goes on we'll of course get into more detail in all these areas I Think with that that covers all the basic introductory stuff I'll turn it over to the commissioner who will lead us through the presentation Thank you very much Jason and good evening everyone. My name is Jennifer Morrison, and I'm the commissioner of public safety I'm joined here tonight by several members of the public safety team So if there's people that you want to talk to you about anything in this slide, there's lots of different perspectives here We are also joined here tonight by members from many of our other state law enforcement agencies And our partners from the agency of human services So there's quite a few folks here that if you have questions that we can we can point you in the right direction If we don't happen to have all the answers So we're going to start with an overview of where we stand on the governor's 10-point plan As most of you are probably aware In August of this year The governor issued this 10-point plan to address an uptick in violent crime That happened to coincide with a workforce crisis an unprecedented law enforcement staffing crisis in the state of Vermont So the conditions that we observed in the spring and summer are really what led up to this 10-point plan and in particular drug related violent crime and these Situations the confluence of events have created a situation where there was not only a perception of a decline in public safety But that there were actually a rise in certain types of crime in certain communities and there that's the birth story of the 10-point plan So the governor directed me and other agency and department executives in partnership with Everybody I just mentioned and well beyond that across the state enterprise prosecutors in the judiciary To implement the plan to reinforce front-line law enforcement capacity and to prioritize the reduction and prevention and prosecution of violent crime To expand prosecution capacity and help the courts address their backlog of cases and To prioritize long-term violence prevention policies systems and services and he broke the plan out into the 10-point action plan framework into Sections and I'm going to walk you through Most of the sections and Jay is going to address one right in the middle And then I'm going to hand the presentation off to my colleague D. Who is going to bring us home with some high-level policy overviews So point number one is in that first section of the 10-point plan which was to prioritize VSP mutual aid and It probably is not a surprise to most of you that VSP is available 24-7 365 for call-outs with Any case that exceeds a local community's capacity to handle it or for certain type of special teams activations We have 13 special teams that service the entire state in addition to that in recent months within the past year VSP has taken on the Staffing of overnight emergency calls for service in multiple communities We currently are doing that in four communities who have found it necessary to turn off their overnight shift because of lack of staffing In addition to doing these things in the business as usual and being the backstop for municipal and county law enforcement We have been meeting regularly with representatives from the Sheriff's Association and the Chief's Association To collectively put our heads together to find the best responses across a wide range of areas Including recruitment and retention of new officers training of officers How we can assist each other in meeting the demands for public safety and so on and so forth I've already mentioned our 13 special teams that continue to support communities across the state And VSP has assisted or taken the lead on numerous homicide investigations statewide and then another example of VSP mutual aid point number one is that in Burlington the community saw a need for more uniform presence of police officers on Certain days of the week certain times they entered into a contract with the Vermont State Police to use Troopers who volunteer to do it on an overtime status. So it does not interfere with their primary mission But that they have the opportunity to augment the The police in Burlington, so these are all ways that we have tried to address the governor's point number one Point number two was to shift special team troopers to coordinate with the federal ATF task force and that's what we did We shifted some of our narcotics investigation Resources to be embedded with that task force and the BPD to address What was a significant violent crime search in that area? Those were very successful Collaborations and resulted in all five homicides in Burlington in 2022 being resolved Multiple state investigators assisted with those it was not just VSP DMV had assets that helped and all the other state law enforcement agencies provided support to those investigations There are still at least one if not more DMV investigator Continuing to work in the task force arena We engaged with the guard to bring in some counter drug analysts to help support the work from our that is being done by our Narcotics investigations unit and as I said these partnerships. They are always fruitful in this year They've been extremely fruitful. You saw the large-scale operation down in Springfield in November Which resulted in the arrest of multiple high-value targets and federal prosecution of those So that's that's just some of the ways that we are meeting the the request for point number two Point number three was to better align and deploy state law enforcement resources and bottom line This is the governor you saw during the pandemic He does not care what the name of your department or agency is he wants state assets working together to improve public safety To meet the needs of all Vermonters particularly the most vulnerable so we've been working quite diligently across Department of liquor and lottery department of motor vehicles housed within an AOT across the agency of human services Across the gate the warden service To put our resources together and provide the best outcomes. I'll just give a little example of one We now have set up that all on duty state law enforcement assets are visible like everybody knows where every state asset That's on duty is so a dispatcher can immediately Decide which is the closest resource and who should who should go first and then we can bring the right people in behind them If they're not the right one to handle the situation in the long term, but these are just some of the examples of Bringing our leadership together at the operational and administrative level to find ways to be more efficient a couple of examples that I Referenced in here. We found there were a couple types of investigations that we were doing concurrently with another law enforcement agency in the state and it Didn't need to be that way. It's just sort of how it had always been done So we reduced some redundancies and we really have upped our game in terms of communication with state partners again by being visible but also by Meeting together regularly and make sure everybody has visibility into each other's priorities Point number four was to augment the state law enforcement workforce And I'm happy to say that this has morphed into an idea that is going to be enterprise-wide across the state because it is not just law enforcement and first responders who are having significant staffing shortages The human resources department is working on a return ship program that would allow people who have left Service to state government to return And not impact their pension or whatever, you know, the reason is that they might not want to return And we are prepared to implement this program at the Vermont State Police We have identified several areas where we could use the resources of retirees if they choose to return so More to come on point number four And at this juncture, I'm going to move into the next area and turn this over to J. Johnson the governor's general counselor Hey commissioner just briefly I know we're trying to roll, but I'm wondering if we should pause and take a few questions on that portion of the presentation We keep rolling Thank You commissioner. I am Jay Kershing Johnson. I'm governor Scott's legal counsel I work mostly with governor Scott staff, but of course during the legislative session I'm available to answer questions and work with legislators who are interested in working with us on legislative proposals in connection with the 10-point plan what we decided to do is Ask essentially the direction was Coordinate with the attorney general to allocate prosecutorial resources effectively and what we really meant by this was Working with the AG's office and the state's attorneys and the US attorney's office to best allocate and align Prosecutorial resources across the state similar to sort of what Jen was saying We obviously have a 14-county system of prosecutors and the AG's office has concurrent jurisdiction So there are some areas where it's appropriate for the AG to maybe step in handle major cases So we worked a little bit with attorney general young to sort of re-energize the work of the attorney general's office criminal division and To sort of talk to them about how they might be allocating their resources in connection with major crimes prosecutions We are really hopeful and and I'm very optimistic We recently had a meeting today with the attorney general Clark, and I think she is going to continue their participation with us on the Task force that D will will be discussing and I think that we are gonna have a lot of areas where we can Talk to the AG's office about prosecutions and use of the AG's office to augment prosecutorial resources across the state We've also worked on restoring coordination between the AG's office and the VSP narcotics investigation units particularly at the outset in the Northwestern corner of the state and At this point, I mean the AG's office will largely defer to the state's attorneys offices if they're going to pick up a major prosecution but if the If the Vermont State Police narcotics investigation units want to embed the AG's office That is something that they are discussing with the AG's office at this time So that is another way that we've been working in this plank of the plan We are also working we started a conversation with the judiciary to eliminate the judiciary's backlog of cases Obviously, there's not a lot that the executive branch can do with respect to the judiciary's backlog a backlog existed pre COVID It's much worse post COVID for a number of reasons but The problem obviously is delayed justice and accountability and service delivery for alleged offenders including a growing DOC detention population As well as delayed justice and restitution for victims and communities. So this is The impact of the backlog on the community violence issue that we have been concerned about I Think what we've realized is that all three branches have to recognize and address systemic issues that are causing the backlog Two issues that were identified for us by the judiciary where we do intersect is in the DOC Which is handling a lot of remote proceedings There are just some issues operationally that the DOC can't handle they're not set up to be court rules So how do we most effectively work with the judiciary and the legislature to address those issues? as well as I mean we have that that group has also identified a small group to identify or to work on Some issues case by case, but there are some systemic issues that need to be addressed as well We've also identified issues with competency evaluation orders primarily the volume Which is causing a lot of the backlog and is threatening essentially to undermine the system because we have a system where We effectively right now have one competency evaluation Evaluator in person and a telehealth provider that is unwilling to Continue service unless the state does something to reform its system which creates a lot of volume competency of course is required before you can participate in a criminal proceedings So Jay real quick on the on the competency issue and the vendors frustration, but as a way of illustrating the Challenges in the judicial system. Can you explain a little bit more like what the vendor what our telehealth competency? Provider is front most frustrated by well, so they're most frustrated. I think and Commissioner Haas is here can maybe answer some of those questions if I don't get it right But I think what they're mostly seeing is that in Vermont the volume of requests for competency Evaluations is essentially overwhelming their ability to perform work So they I mean basically when you you initiate a criminal proceeding a Defense attorney typically or sometimes the court will request a competency evaluation because they believe that their client is not able to Effectively participate in the proceeding you have to be competent enough to understand what's going on in the courtroom This is a very low bar but there are a number of reasons why the States system simply facilitates those requests as a matter of Pro you know a process essentially at this point So we think that there's some improvements that can be made to the law Which will not have an impact on individual rights What will have some impact on the current volume of requests? Another thing that's been particularly frustrating is some courts don't believe they have the The authority to order medical records for the competency evaluation and without medical records an evaluator can't actually effectively evaluate competency so some courts don't believe they have the Authorities some defense attorneys don't believe that they have an obligation to ask for them So we just need I think a tweak to the law to ensure that courts will order medical records at the time They order our competency evaluation We think that some of this may actually have an impact on the volume of requests that are made So that's it unless you have any questions on those two items Okay, so we're moving into the last section of the 10-point action plan framework Which is to prioritize long-term violence prevention policies systems and services Point number seven was to expand the role of the fusion center the big and Vermont And I just want to make sure everybody's following the acronym the big is the Vermont intelligence Center It serves as a fusion center, but we don't call it that anymore And the Vic currently collects analyzes and disseminates intelligence information To identify investigating prevent criminal activity and also to prevent people and Vermont's critical infrastructure So the intelligence side of the house is very robust and it's well built and what we are trying to do is grow another side another dimension to to the Vic which will work on Trend and analysis like data analysis related not just to criminal criminal activity But also to other pieces of information that we have inside the state enterprise that could help us Have an effective situational awareness and intervene in situations or provide services in situations before They develop into a criminal justice encounter We're going to talk a little bit more about that in the next slide, but Basically, we're trying to do the best we can to grow the capabilities of the Vic to go beyond the receipt of intelligence streams of data and turn those into actionable items for the field, but also to now be able to do the very Precise work of being able to deploy our diminished law enforcement and other social service Resources in the most precise way possible so to identify people places and behaviors based on data and direct the resources there So we are moving in that direction as you all know it doesn't happen overnight But we have a plan so more to come on that and point number eight Which I would say is It's so big this could be its own plan all by itself point number eight The governor has directed all relevant state agencies departments divisions all the state assets to work together in the same model as the Pandemic response again. No silos. Everybody comes together and The goal is to meet at least weekly to identify and track hotspots repeat offenders others known to law enforcement and social service providers to swiftly deploy needed interventions and or services and to actively disrupt patterns and Prevent interactions with the criminal justice system So this this strategy acknowledges that violent crime is a symptom often a symptom of misguided policies or inadequate resources inadequate Coordination between programs and systems and it's an acknowledgement that we cannot enforce our way out of a violent crime Epidemic okay, and the other factors that are wrapped up in this So some of the examples of what we've done to be responsive to the governor's request to come together across the state enterprise and Respond like we did to the pandemic We have weekly meetings of the public safety enhancement team that I'm going to explain more about in the next slide We've created a heat map. It's still under revision, but it is pretty exciting I'm going to show you that too We've met with the chiefs of the eight hottest communities based on our on our heat map to Ask them if this matches what they think is happening in their community Yes, it matches to ask them if they have a plan to address it to try and gauge the level of interest in Going further with the collaboration with state assets and going further In that collaboration is is being piloted with the town of Bennington So we're in the process of build of a structured engagement process that will bring state assets from across the enterprise together Down with the local stakeholders local government the Governments the hospital the schools and try to bring all these stakeholders together to develop problem statements and Action plans to increase the public safety and access to social services in Bennington So that work is ongoing right now and we are planning to The next big Shall we say benchmarking that project is going to be a summit a daylong summit where we do a lot of the Face-to-face talking and really getting deep into the action items and timelines and stuff more to come on that And then this being our first community in Bennington It's taking us a little bit of time to build the right engagement process This is not meant to be a paternalistic thing where the state goes in and says hey community We know what your problem is we're here. We're from the state. We're from the government. We're here to help That's not what this is at all. This is a full-on engagement and inventory assessment building of relationships and trying to leave Just trying to help communities be more resilient And to have better access to the available state resources and that they would know who to call and those Relationships would be strong by the end of this engagement piece And we intend to replicate this in other hot communities during the course of the year So what is the public safety enhancement team? It's our goal is to reorient policies and improve coordination among programs and systems for better health and safety outcomes So the agencies and departments that have been directed to apply the state's nation leading pandemic response Come together regularly to measure activity and respond in as near real-time as possible Identify causal factors and take action to prevent crime and better serve Vermont's most vulnerable And the critical work of PSET is to identify hot-spot communities as I just mentioned For prioritization to swiftly deploy needed interventions and our services to actively disrupt patterns and prevent Interactions with the criminal justice system And the next slide is a picture of Whoa, where'd he go? Hold on it's like my big reveal the black button I Better let John do this or we know we're gonna have trouble It's like the suspense is building I wonder if it's the actual image. It's not rendering. Okay, so I'm gonna try and turn I'm gonna have Jason turn this around so you can at least see what I'm talking about Yeah Okay, so we have a picture of the heat map and There's a lot of information in this heat map some of the sources of data include And I want to just put right up front. It's these are imperfect Data sets because we're trying to use as near to real-time data sets as we can So we're using for instance in the law enforcement realm. We're using Call type data the type of call that an incident is labeled on as Excuse me that might not be what is reported to neighbors three or four months down the road after the incident is fully resolved The data reporting has been fully vetted and it goes off to the FBI This is as near real-time as we can get for the law enforcement calls for service We also have a layer of data in there that has plucked out certain types of responses by EMS from their records management system, so responses where the primary Reason for the call is overdose or assault those types of calls are coming into this heat map as a stream of data there is information pulled from the Department of Health on types of prescriptions by class per county so each county's rate of prescriptions for stimulants Benzos the different the medication moud those types of Prescriptions are all represented on the heat map We also have rates of Visits at emergency departments where the primary complaint is overdose That isn't that that is in there the death rate by overdose which is represented by the By the Vermont Department of Health There's a bunch of different data streams that we've tried to pull to make it beyond law enforcement Specific, but that it shows where the need is where where where there's need in our community The heat map is reasonably interactive for people who are users of it There's only a few right now because it's still under construction But every week we add in the most recent weeks data and we drop out the old week of data It is a six months running snapshot a running six month Look at what's going on. It's not intended to go back years or anything We just want to keep kind of our finger on the pulse of where the hotspots are in the state and within those communities You can drill down into the community's map And see what's happening all of the information is Deaggregated to the block level to the 100s of blocks of 100s addresses So it's not, you know your address showing up as the location of a call for service and then each week you can see that We have certain buckets of crimes that are counted specifically and then we have the other data I told you about It ranks the towns as the hottest or not depending on how you toggle the switch and then they further breaks down the Number the raw number of calls in the bucket by the 10,000 residents So just because the number in Burlington might be higher in the aggregate when you sort it by the 10,000 You find out that it's not as hot as say Springfield was that week or whatever it is We also have a layer of artificial intelligence in here that calls out anything that's out of range or anomalous So we have sudden jump in out of range as the categories there And you can see on this one that last week this past week Bennington is wildly out of range for burglaries They're expected range based on the six month average is zero to one burglaries per week And they had 11 last week reported last week So the artificial intelligence is designed to make sure we don't miss any big bumps or spikes But we're we're tracking those because there's a trend line that you can drill down into To see what the average number either statewide or in a community is Of these violent crimes in any given week There's also on the agency by agency page You can look at when what hours of the day and days of the week are the most likely to have These violent crimes come in and be reported to the police So it is not a perfect tool and it is still under revision, but it's the most real-time depiction of where the Crises shall we say are happening in our community and we're looking forward to Continuing to refine it and share it with the local communities to help them direct their limited resources While we in the state will direct our limited resources to those spots. This is so this is a really very exciting tool it provides a As the commissioner pointed out as close to real-time intelligence analysis as we can develop at this point time We're going to continue to work on it, but it is already showing At least the ability to measure the results of our effort in some specific areas So specifically what I mean by that is we watched the activity in Springfield Decrease after the large the large law enforcement effort that you probably read about in November. We've seen types of crimes particularly our most concerning types of crimes decrease in Burlington and in Northwestern Vermont as the law enforcement activity has Focused on those areas these types of tools like what the commissioner is talking about give us the ability to be more responsive Which is important because law enforcement is facing the same workforce challenges As other as other sectors, so we have to be super smart about resource allocation the the dots that have to be connected are between the vacuum that we create by Surging law enforcement activity into a region or a community And the social service outcomes So when you disrupt, I'm gonna this is hypothetical when you disrupt drug supply chain significantly in a particular region is your human service apparatus or your human service assets part of The tactical team that is carrying out the law enforcement activity so they get a seamless handoff So they go right on the ground to the to the the residents Who need the human service at that point in time or over the coming days because this they're going to be searching for a new supply? Are we meeting the needs of families? Who have been the victims of trauma because of activity of people who live in their houses and is it is that work truly? coordinated on the ground like that's the COVID response that that the commissioner talks about is integration of all these state assets at the operational Level on the on the ground. So we're not waiting for referrals Or people to call 2-1-1 or what have you there is a direct connection between the intervention and the service that's a Easy to say very difficult to do Under the based on the way that our enterprise is constructed But this tool is a pretty significant step forward in our ability to understand our operating environment With a higher level of specificity. I think the people on the ground will tell you they understand the operating environment very very well But now we're able to measure it with a much higher degree of specificity More frequent rate of measurement and then we're able to share that information with all of you So I'm going to pause there and ask there any questions Go ahead I'm just curious you can share more information about what artificial intelligence systems are being used because um, it's there's nothing on this inventory that was released by ADS related to this This works. I'm just curious and maybe that's it's new I'm curious, you know, what system is being used and what kind of AI? I don't but I can talk to my ADS partners because they and I was actually as Jason was explaining this I was remiss and not saying that ADS has been a crucial partner in all this and they're not in the room I don't think but they have been super Super integral to getting us to this point So representable we'll find out for you for sure. It's a it's a data spike flagging tool. I think AI makes it sound like something super scary But it's like hey when your data jumps beyond this particular range you get like a notification in your email inbox That's like hey, you might want to look at this data And when we do, you know get towards the finish line of thinking it's as good as it's going to get on the He-map there's going to be like a clear context within which we present this data with things like that But this is what we're using to detect sudden jumps and out of range And and staying straight up up front. This is not perfect data Like this is not the data that we would use to put a grant application and looking back for years of data, right? But this is a real-time tool. So I appreciate the question that hang on sec There was a question about Tony next to you. No, ma'am. Did you have a question? Okay Who conceived it Oh who can see it That is a great question so today at our p-set weekly meeting we were talking about just that and for now Once we get it to the point where we are Confident that it should be published. We are going to be publishing PDF stills of the This cover page that you see there's a second page that shows you what the different data sets are that go into it And then probably what we'll end up doing is doing like the top six or eight hottest communities each week We'll publish their individual page It is it is Envisioned that we will get to a place where we can share it with local partners and let them use the interactive nature of it For instance, you can filter in or out the EMS calls You can filter in and out, you know certain streams of data To be a little more precise for what your purpose is and we would like to make this a tool available publicly We're not quite there yet And it requires certain licenses that do cost some money because it's a kind of fancy system But we're working on it so we're thinking stills first on a weekly basis that folks can come and look at and then hopefully we Turn it public-facing with an interactive some features anyway, Jim. Absolutely. We'll be public eventually think along the lines of our COVID dashboard That's the type of type of tool. We're trying to make available I appreciate the transparency. I would love to be able to get on line and look for this information I also know that You know, even these larger communities listed are small and relative terms in a few cases Can give you the wrong impression of a community which can have a lot of other Rampification so I just We're still the safest or second safest state in the nation, so let's be clear. We are a medium-city No Maybe chitin, but anyway So the heat map more to come on that if there was some reason why you had a specific need that you wanted to talk more about that work We're not to the final public-facing phase, but I could certainly jump on meeting with you and share screen etc Yes, ma'am. Go ahead Without consulting with the ADS folks who are the brains behind the operation like we're like the community that he showed this way Boba, and they're like, yes 60 to 90 days, but I can't I can't promise without talking to the brains of the operation. Thank you. You're welcome You mentioned The coordinated effort from the different agencies to respond to critical situations in communities such as ours and the flashbang approach was beautiful made for TV and I can only compliment the officers and the agents that responded and Coordinated efforts such as this that is really the only answer this town Communities can't do it themselves and police agencies can't do it so I want to thank you for the efforts Thank you, sir the colonels here, and I'm sure you'll pass that along I want to take that opportunity to say Right, we can't enforce our way out of this, right? So it has to be a team effort And imagine the it was a beautiful operation. I did it was beautiful operation and it's one of many that happen each year but Imagine this happens again in three months similar situations same law enforcement action Imagine that that is followed directly on the heels of as the cops are rolling out of town AHS and all of their social services are rolling into town and maybe we've got EMS providers who can provide Medication assisted treatment in the absence of that in the local community and maybe we've got Signing up for economic services and trying to help people get their life together at that critical moment in the wake of a Disruption of the drug supply like meeting people where they are with as many resources at the state can bring to bear and Amplifying that by being in such close contact with the local partners that they bring their services And we are meeting people where they are in their community in the wake of a major incident so that's sort of where we're driving towards is to Acknowledge that we can't enforce our way out of this We know we have to enforce vigorously But we have to be holistic in the way we respond to communities because at the end of the day We're just going to keep kicking indoors and taking off drug dealers until the demand for drugs drops or goes away Go ahead In the future Can't answer it because we haven't quite achieved the the vision yet But of course we would have metrics built into anything we do because if the juices and worth the squeeze then we're not going to keep squeezing, right? And you know I spoke about Bennington in this community engagement piece And that really is what the lead-up to this summit that I described is about it's about assessing the willingness and the capability of the local community To really honestly inventory their own Opportunities but gaps as well likewise on the state side. We have been going through a months-long inventory of what can we bring to the table in these local communities and then the work up to that actual summit is where a lot of this work happens of Assessing the willingness and the ability to make changes that are going to be impactful and make Communities healthier and have a stronger social fabric in in the wake of it It's not like we're going to go into a town walk in for a day long summit and roll out and never talk to them again We're trying to figure out a way to walk alongside them to amplify all the available services and then build strong relationships between local and state You'll see you will see we do track performance key performance indicators in all of our major areas of operation, so In the substance abuse space for example We are tracking on a weekly base on a regular basis at least weekly what the overdose rates are What the incidents reporting to er's are so we can over among other Recovery and revitalization metrics will cover more of those in the health care conversation that we'll have but you're asking Exactly the right question that every legislator should ask in every single policy area, which is what are you going to measure? to demonstrate results if you ask all of our people that it would be helpful and it would help us continue to cultivate I think pockets of Excellence in public service. There are a number of them across state government that we can all be very proud of But but it's a it's always a work in progress Number one number two. There are still some areas that don't really measure output They just measure the work that we're doing by how much we're putting in And so if you're asking the right question and we do have key performance indicators and substance use and our recovery work We'd be happy to share this Go ahead This was covered But I I come from a very rural area and there is a perception and whether or not this perception is true I don't know because I haven't looked at data But there's at least a perception that if you call 911 you'll get lucky if someone shows up an hour later And so I'm wondering Whether that perception is true. I guess number one Number two You know, where are some sources of data that we could look at to see what the realities are when it comes to response time In rural in rural areas of our state and if that perception is true and the data does bear that you know anecdotal observations out What things are we doing to try to? Get response times to be better in rural areas because you really are out on your own if you're in the middle of nowhere and Someone breaks into your house or attempts to commit a crime or something like that and you're sort of stuck You know just being on your own. Thank you Yeah, thank you. That's great and I feel that living I've lived very remotely as well and response time can be a long time We do measure response response rates It takes manual Labor to cultivate those response rates in terms of like if we're looking at a certain community or a certain region The highest priority emergencies get the quickest response time But the reality is that sometimes your resources whether that's a trooper or an ambulance service may be coming from a long distance away They may be Receive the call while they were asleep at bed at night have to suit up gear up get in the car and drive to your location So if you tell me that there's an hour response time, I'm gonna say yep That's possible in many circumstances It is the nature of living in a rural area across the country not just Vermont I'd be remiss if I did not point out that we have 50 vacancies amongst our sworn ranks in the state police That's a lot 50 out of 330 is a lot of vacancies We have shifted Resources out of other types of areas and into the patrol sector. We are doing our very best to meet the need but If you have a specific concern about a Response time the Vermont State Police can absolutely investigate and get you some of that data But what you're telling me doesn't surprise me and the last piece of Your question or your statement was the perception is and I was a police chief for a long time I was a police officer a long time and people's perception doesn't always match reality But at the end of the day it doesn't matter because their perception is how they feel and it is our job to make them feel Safe and taken care of Perception reality don't always match, but we have to be really dialed into what people's perceptions are Yeah, or if you want to contact me and ask about specific towns, then I can find someone to get that that data You can't all ask me at once Yep, so the last two points on the governor's 10-point plan relate directly to my colleague deed Barbic Reconstituting the violence prevention task force by executive order. It's been done in point number 10 John, can you advance was appointing a director of violence prevention and it is my great pleasure to introduce you to debar So as Jen mentioned I was recently appointed as the director of violence prevention and with that I oversee the violence prevention task force which was Reconstituted in the end of the summer beginning of the fall this year the violence prevention task force is comprised of senior officials of the executive branch and Includes the agency of human services agency of education ADS departments of public safety children and families mental health Department of Health and Department of Corrections and as you can see Probably a theme is developing that we are all working together through the enterprise Multi-disciplinary approaches how I often refer to the violence prevention task force and the reason for this is to bring All of our resources together all of our expertise together in how we can approach reaching our goals The task force goals are looking at areas where changes can be and changes and improvements can be made to prevent violent crimes And whole defenders accountable in addition to also as was mentioned earlier providing resources as to individuals as well What we have done since the task force began meeting in the early fall of this year is we work to identify gaps in policy and Identify areas that we can fill those gaps Worked as I mentioned collaboratively Collaboratively among these agencies again to bring all of our resources together break out of those those silos so some of the work that We really so far have have Concentrated on is criminal justice and school safety have been Focuses for us among other things, but these primarily will fold into some of the work that will now Go over to the legislative session We've looked at modifying current laws in areas of violent acts for Bail considerations, so that's one of the areas we're looking at in terms of Policy changes we're looking at I Identifying some gaps in some of the drug offenses Identifying some areas in youthful offender and delinquency cases Jay had mentioned earlier competency and insanity evaluations and then Universal ceiling of records, so those are a couple of areas where again, we aren't Rewriting a completely new section of law But we're looking at some gaps in existing policy where we feel that some changes can be made to better enhance our ability to To hold offenders accountable In the criminal justice system The other area of focus has been on school safety and this is an area where We are looking at enhancing Several different parts of school safety and those would include emergency preparedness for schools and that is updating school drill requirements to include option space response drills All hazard having schools Have all hazards emergency operations plans They are required to at this point But what we're asking for is to enhance that to meet that their emergency operations plans meet a Template that is provided through the Vermont school safety center Looking at schools requiring that schools have controlled access and visitor management So that exterior doors of schools are locked and anybody coming into the school has to check in So we're aware of who's coming into the school buildings and then behavioral threat assessment teams And I want to just go into a little bit more detail about this part The behavioral threat assessment teams we're looking at requiring that for supervisory unions and school districts and What a behavioral threat assessment team is it's embedded into a district in in our case in Vermont We're moving toward and it's a multi-disciplinary team made up of school administrators school counselors mental health professionals teachers Could be coaches And these teams look at if there's a threat of violence or self-harm that becomes apparent or known Within the school that team does an assessment of that threat and determines, you know What level this threat rises to is it a serious threat or is it a minor threat? Is it a threat to others? Is it a threat to self of self-harm? And then that team works to I to with that individual student and develop a comprehensive plan to work with that student whether that and provide resources whether that be mental health or counseling or mentoring But each Individual threat assessment that's done An individual working plan is developed and that that team develops for that individual student and the idea here is to bring that student into the school community into the fold of the school community and that's Really important for a number of different reasons, but initially the first part of that is instead of Responding to threats. We're looking at preventing any threatening actions happening So we're trying to get this at the earliest possible point in time and work with that student providing resources That are available for us to again bring that student into the community fold So that's a little bit about what behavioral threat assessment teams are and what that process is But that's another thing that we're looking to require of schools As part of the work that we're doing with policy I would also just want to add that the Vermont School Safety Center, which is Which is a model of cooperation between the agency of education as a partnership between the agency of education and the Department of Public Safety and The Vermont School Safety Center if you go to the website, it's Vermont School Safety Center you will see a Incredible number of resources that are available to school administrators to teachers to mental health professionals to school counselors to coaches everything from how to develop an emergency operations plan to other Resources available for behavioral threat assessments. It's just an incredible amount of support resources for schools and going back to Behavioral threat assessments the Vermont School Safety Center has done an incredible job of bringing training to the state and has already trained upwards of 500 Folks in the process of behavioral threat assessments and developing teams and conducting those assessments and we'll be Continuing on that with providing trained the trainer Program in January at the end of January and what that will allow us is to build a cadre of behavioral threat assessment trainers within the state who can then go to schools and school districts and continue this this training and this Support for school districts in continuing to work in this direction so That is in a very short nutshell The work that we've been doing with the violence prevention task force and some of the key areas that we've been focusing on so far since we've Been meeting in since the fall Yes So I read you ball day The report done by the Texas House of Representatives on the ball day school shooting and they courtings that report had Every plan in place if you were to look at the plan You think it's a great plan that they were going to be able to prevent any sort of violence occurring in their school But the actual facts on the ground with the Texas House of Representatives Included was the actual facts in the ground didn't match the plan that was in place There's a disconnect between plan and an actual on the ground action And so I'm wondering in Vermont. What are we doing to actually audit these these plans? Hey orders to make sure that the plan says something like access control We aren't seeing doors being left open or broken locks That we're seeing the ability in these plans for cross agency coordination during an emergency Such as what we saw happen in Texas So we can make sure that you know all the time that we're spending on these plans actually resulting in on the ground Changes that are remaining consistent and that emergency occurs the plan would actually be able to be The part of the Recommendations what we're hoping to move forward with in this session does require that the school districts report back on Their plan. So that's one part of how we're going to assess. Yes, every school has a plan and another leg of that is that it has to meet certain requirements minimum requirements as set forth in the template that is provided by the Vermont School Safety Center in terms of how do we know that The plan is the plan, but we're also following the plan I think it's really if I'm understanding is the root of your question and the A couple of years ago the Vermont School Safety Center in coordination again with Department of Public Safety and the agency of education Provided training to schools on how to conduct Table top exercises and other types of exercises to go through those kinds of steps to say, okay Let's and when I say emergency operations plan I think a lot of people think oh, you know active threat active shooter But these plans are comprehensive they include what to do if there is a chemical spill in the chemistry lab What to do if there's an electrical outage what to do if there's a Crash involving a school bus. So it's all encompassing all hazards emergency operations plan so to go back that The these training these tabletop Trainings that we put out to the school and taught them the schools how to do these exercises Was to do exactly I think what what you're focusing on is okay. This is the incident We've got a school bus It's it's subzero temperatures stuck in a snowbank and we got to figure out how we're going to get these kids off Into a warm safe place and so they work through that tabletop exercise and Identify oh, we have a gap in our communications plan. We need to enhance that So those are the kinds of things that have been done in the past to assist schools and sort of doing a dry run Of those kinds of things So that that has That has been done but we're also looking at in in these policies that were that we've been working on for this session is Also identifying for instance that the annual training ensuring that that is happening for behavioral threat assessments And I think this is really a start for us in Vermont by having these these mandates for these requirements and it's a first step and This will be built upon so, you know, I think we're taking our baby steps and then looking at okay What's what's next and that you know, it could be okay. How are we going to start tracking? You know training now how many trainings has a school done those kinds of things But that's you know again in the future something to to to build for So I didn't don't know that answered your question Yeah, yeah, so again, you know, we're at the first first stages of this and you know along the lines of Some of the things that Commissioner Morrison talked about for instance the heat back. We're just starting off We know we have a ways to go, but this is our first steps in that direction We We're at 515 So this is this is the first of Six that we'll do we'll do two more this week next week there are three additional One-hour briefings introductory briefings on a whole range of topics Kendall sent you all the The list of briefings. We would love to see you all at all of them If anything changes, we'll let you know We have some notes here to follow open some folks But by all means if there is something specific that you would like from us or if you think of something Down the road that that you'd like us to address. Just let us know we'd be happy to get you the information as The conversation in the legislature moves forward I have no doubt that the judiciary committees in particular are going to jump into a number of those Details at the top of D slide With great vigor I Would point out in one case The universal ceiling of records the governor mentioned Thursday that we have some sincere well-intentioned expungement policy that we need to Evaluate because right now that expungement policy would would allow someone who commits a violent crime as a young adult To go on to purchase a firearm in the future Whereas if they were a little older, they'd be prohibited from owning a firearm or purchasing a firearm Under current law so these are That's one example of the type of modification that we're proposing to make it We'll work with the judiciary committees in a little bit more detail on that See overview again if anybody has any questions you can grab anyone any of us would be happy to follow up with you Thank you all very much for coming