 Thank y'all so much for being here. I so deeply appreciate it. Lou and the Netfront team, thank you so much for welcoming us here for amazing leaders. This is so exciting. Thank you all so much. Today is the start of a monumentous journey. Together, alongside this incredible group of leaders from across our state, we are launching an effort to develop a tool that will enable police departments to track non-enforcement interactions related to community policing. Once developed, this platform will be the first of its kind in the nation and will serve as a critical resource for promoting trust, accountability, and transparency in police community relations. To describe a bit more about what I mean, I want to start by telling a story. Serving Connect's vision is a future where police and citizens are working together as one community to address root causes of crime and promote safety and thriving for everyone. I am proud of all the work we are doing, but our Compass program is near and dear to my heart. It's where we work together with police and community leaders to develop locally driven movements that help them work together to tackle some of their greatest challenges. Compass started in Columbia's 29203 community back in 2018 in partnership with the Columbia Police Department and Richland County Sheriff's Department. Long time residents describe the area known as North Columbia as a village, where once residents were working hand in hand to care for one another. But over the years that village has been fractured. One in three families in the area lived below the poverty line, and two out of three residents reported first childhood experiences. The area also experiences the highest concentration of violent crime in Columbia. When we first launched Compass in the area, the meetings were pretty sparsely attended. But as time went on, momentum grew, and more and more residents and connections with local residents in the hardest-hit areas for violence started to grow. One of these residents was a woman. We'll call her Amy. We learned that Amy was a single mother with three young kids, and at first she was pretty reserved. But as time went on, she became more and more open. She started caring for her community, worked side by side with us to plan outreach events and community resources. She even helped to start a grassroots movement that cared for other women in her neighborhood. She became an active member of the group and helped us to plan community events like our Peace Walk back in 2020. It came on the heels of a particularly violent holiday season, and the residents wanted to take a stand against violence, and so we came together to lift up their ideas and plan the first empowerment for Peace Walk. It was a beautiful day with residents marching side by side with community leaders and law enforcement calling for peace. My favorite part was the youth that were leading the charge, and the next day they were the front page of the state newspaper. However, there were some in the community who didn't like that shift in power, and we became concerned. We had a meeting and we sat down with the group and wondered if we should pause our efforts. We didn't want to put anyone at risk, but with tears in her eyes, Amy passionately said, this work cannot stop. She shared that the first day she came to a meeting was a day that she planned to take her own life. She said prior to the work, her and her three small children had been living in the same bedroom in their apartment because she was scared of stray bullets, but because of the work, she felt safer for them to sleep in different bedrooms and they all were getting better sleep at night. She said she saw a light in her kid's eyes that she had never seen before, and so she said this work cannot stop. Amy's story demonstrates the power of community policing. Her feeling of safety and security was not the consequence of any one action, but the culmination of consistent, intentional outreach and partnership building from the Columbia Police Department and Richland County Sheriff's Department, working side by side with community organizations, leaders and residents. Community policing has been around for decades, but it's pretty misunderstood. Some think it's just about handing out stickers or ice cream cones, but really it's so much more than that. When it's done well, it is about partnerships between police and community leaders and residents that help address those root causes of crime and promote safety and thriving. The research that we know about, it shows that it can be a pivotal tool for helping to build trust and wellbeing and citizen satisfaction, but there are some major gaps in our knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. And in order for us to really reimagine policing and move forward with progress, we need to overcome that gap. So in order to effectively support police departments across our country and utilizing community policing practices that work, we must develop the systems that enable them to track and use evidence-based practices. Since I've gotten involved in the criminal justice system since 2015, I've yet to meet a police department that would say that partnerships don't matter to them. But when you look at what they're tracking or what they're doing, there's wide variability. And a big reason for that is we don't have a systematic platform to track. And that all begins with being able to measure community policing. So today we launch our statewide work group involving law enforcement and community leaders. Their wisdom, expertise, and experience will guide the development of a platform that will enable police departments throughout South Carolina and beyond to monitor non-enforcement outreach and utilize that data as a tool for enhancing proactive policing and transparency with the public. This work would not be possible without the incredible support in the Fron Formaceuticals Corporation. I cannot imagine a better partner for this effort. Luke Kennedy's vision and drive have placed our state on the map as a worldwide leader and innovator. Her generous support for this initiative will hopefully, once again, put us on the map as an innovator this time in the policing space. Lou, thank you for believing in our vision and helping it come to life. Thank you. So thank you guys for being here today. I think this is so important. It's very, very true that we want to support law enforcement. And the best way we can show that is by contributing to something this valuable. I think it'll turn out to be a great tool for all of us. We're happy to stand here with Cassie and Serven Connect and all these great law enforcement leaders you see around me. We're proud of the work that we do. And the very best way we can show that is by supporting tools like this and making sure that our law enforcement leaders are equipped and protected so they can take care of our families, our employees. All of those people important to us in and around this community across the entire state. So we know that the law enforcement has our back and we need to support them by having their back. And we think that this is one great step in doing that. I believe this app will serve as a great tool. I can't wait to see it launch and unfold and what they're gonna do with this. Once again, South Carolina's standing out there leading the way with technology and innovation. Cassie gave us a nice compliment. We like to do that here at Nefron. Now we'd like to share some of that money that we have received for some of the innovative things that we do and give it back to the community. We will make the Midlands and this state a better place each and every day. This is one great way to do it and I thank you all for being here today. Thanks so much. A round of applause for it. All right, I think you want to speak to us. I'll just say a couple of things. First, what Cassie has done to advance community policing in the Midlands and now in these last few years throughout the state is, let's just say it's understated. The work you do is incredible. Community policing is really what we built, our foundation of policing is throughout the state and I think that was never more evident than in the last 24 months when we've seen nationally some of the social unrest issues that have occurred and in many places spiraled out of control and what you saw here was the importance of relationships and partnerships and trust and I think that's what allowed us to manage, work together to be solution oriented and how we police and what other communities want to see out of their police departments. Perception is reality and we know that we are very grounded in community policing efforts but we've got to be able to measure success. Whether it's front porch roll calls, coffee with cops, serve and connect Greg's groceries, we have to be able to measure our successes and share those success stories and again shape our narrative so our community understands how we're policing and has a better understanding of what our community policing efforts. So we know that leveraging technology is a force multiplier for us and this is an opportunity for us to use technology to our advantage to help tell our story and I think lean forward into community policing arena. So we're very excited to be part of this. This is a collection of a very distinguished group that I'm very excited to be part of as we try to advance this initiative. Thank you. Thank you. So I want to leave room for questions. We have an outstanding group of leaders here in this room. The group is chaired by City of Columbia Police Chief Holbrook but we have amazing leaders. They're in part of your packet, I could say them all and I encourage you to please interview, reach out to them, those that are here. We're committed to making sure that this platform is developed guided by both leadership in our state and law enforcement that understand community policing as well as voices from the community themselves that can be advocates to know what the critical tools are, what we need to be measuring in order to have that transparency accountability and trust and so that's why we're here. I do want to present, if I can, Lou, thank you so much. On behalf of Serving Connect and our work group here today thank you to Nefron Pharmaceuticals for making this work possible and I hope what we develop is something that has repercussions not only for our state but beyond. Amazing, thank you so much. And for my colleagues in the community I'll just add that this mission is incredible and reach down deep into your pockets and give if you feel so moved because it's worth every penny. Thank you, Lou. Thank you. Thank y'all. Any questions? I can but I think I'm gonna leave it to Chief Holbrook when you think about some of the community policing activities that you'd like to see tracked on you. Well, I mentioned a couple of my remarks. We have really a menu of community policing activities that we do that can easily be replicated. Hardly anything is an original idea. We all take what we call evidence-based best practices and cater them to our individual department needs but we're a big state, lots of different police departments and this portal will certainly be an opportunity for agencies to potentially inter-reportal and see what are successful programs, what the feedback been, how they have been measured for success and they may be able to take and duplicate a similar successful program in their jurisdiction. So the three main components of, just to build a little bit on Chief Holbrook's comment as well, according to the Department of Justice the three main components of community policing is that organizational, cultural and infrastructure. So how it's reinforced within a police department, the extent to which leaders are reinforcing, do you have one officer or is it embedded throughout the agency, those values? There's about partnership so I think this will give us an opportunity to track things such as the number and depth of the relationships that police departments have with service providers in the community, faith-based leaders, youth service providers as some examples, but then also the extent to which departments are engaging in shared problem solving. So how are they providing additional resources, support? How is, what is that impact on trust in the community? But in terms of what the specifics on that infrastructure will come through the power of this amazing group here. So as far as I know, we are the first in the nation. There are some departments that do a good job of measuring community policing but by and large there is no systematic approach and no shared understanding of measurement. I'm really thankful and encourage you to talk to Seth Stouton who is a professor at the University of South Carolina and has become a national and I dare say a world renowned expert in this space and he'll actually be speaking to our group today to really walk through some of the challenges with measurement that we're seeing. It's hard for us to say whether community policing does or doesn't impact certain outcomes because we're not measuring it. Like I said, we measure use of force. We measure guns retrieved, we measure crimes, we measure all these sorts of things but for all the effort that we put behind saying community policing is important, we don't track it. And that's a big gap in our understanding both for individual communities seeking to build trust but also this movement overall. This is my big vision. If we're really effective, what if we brought departments throughout our country on this portal? Then we'd be able to use that not only in local communities but we'd have a research database that would help us actually be able to measure what kinds of community policing outreach is most effective, where it's most effective, what are the things and what does it impact? Does it impact crime? Does it impact just fear of crime? Does it impact trust? How does it work? And I think if this is done well, this is a huge opportunity. And again, Lou has been such a leader of really locally being an innovator that takes us on this worldwide playing field. And I don't know, I wanna dream big. I think we got the dream team here to make it happen. So I'm excited. So this work group is gonna be convening for the next six months. They are the visionaries, the expertise, the, their rich wisdom and perspective is gonna help guide the work but our goal is at the end of the six months that we have an infrastructure that can be pilot tested. And so hopefully then within the next year or two we actually can bring it more to scale. That's gonna be determined with the group here today. If I were to guess, my ideal circumstance at this time would be I could see like pilot testing it with probably like three different departments if you hit like an urban rural, you know, if you have large mid-scale just see how it works in some different sized agencies. But that would, at this time, that would be my guess. But again, this is the power of the work group driving this effort forward. I don't think there's any amount of thanks too great for the group standing behind me and all of their colleagues. We really, and Cass has taught me this, we have to do a better job thanking law enforcement for what they do instead of complaining about things that we can fix. But also we need to remember to thank law enforcement. And I think that if we, my colleagues and I do that we're showing how much they matter in our community. And I hope that gives moral support and also makes these guys want to get up every day and do the hard work that they do. So it matters to me. Any other questions? Again, we have a really outstanding group of leaders here. I encourage you to connect with them if you're interested and thank you again for helping us promote. I think this could be a really huge deal not only for our state, but hopefully our country. So thank you and thank you to Nefron and to Lou. Thank you.