 and welcome to the backstory on policing in Longmont. With a particular focus this morning on a critical aspect of policing in Longmont, which is our diversion program or programs and approach to Longmont. It's consistent with a decades long commitment to community policing. Joining me in this conversation are three of the experts in Longmont's public safety department who are focused not exclusively but largely on our diversion program and what it means to keep people out of the community justice system, criminal justice system and in services that they receive that are responsive to the challenges they face. So the three experts with me, Dan Eamon, Andy Feister and Emily Vandoren. Thank you for joining me in this interview. And I want to start by giving you a chance to talk about who you are and what has drawn you to this work. So Dan, I'm going to pick on you first as the assistant to the Deputy Chief of Public Safety in Longmont. Dan Eamon, tell us about you. Give us some information about your background and what has drawn you to this part of this aspect of policing in Longmont. Sure, happy to. First of all, I want to thank you, Tim, for this opportunity. It's great to be able to talk about these programs and we're very proud of them. My name's Dan Eamon. I'm the assistant public safety chief for the city and we have a combined public safety department here in Longmont, which means we have the police and fire departments together. I oversee one of the four divisions of public safety, the community health and resilience division. So in my division, we have the office of emergency management. We also have the victim services group which is made up largely of volunteer victims advocates that respond to a lot of things like domestic violence calls. We have all the volunteer programs and then we also have the diversion programs that we'll be talking about today, lead core community health and angel. I've been doing public safety work for more than 25 years now in some capacity. So it's always been something that has been a passion of mine, but I started with the city as the city's first emergency manager and as we experienced things like disasters, one of the things that's always true is they affect a certain part of the population more and it becomes pretty clear that there is a part of our community that needs more help and it's something that I've always been drawn to is what can we do more of? Public safety has a unique platform and we have people to use that platform in ways to help people that are kind of in some ways forgotten by society and that's something that is a passion of mine and these programs largely allow us to do that. Andy? My name is Andy Feaster, I'm a sergeant with the Longmont Police Department. I've been with Longmont for 18 and a half years. The first 18 were strictly in patrol as a patrol officer for 12 and then I was promoted to sergeant and stayed in patrol during that time. The last two years of patrol work as a supervisor, I was the liaison for all these programs that Dan just described and then public safety decided and a good decision to develop a sergeant position specifically for our core team which is our crisis outreach and engagement team. We respond to mental health crisis calls for service and so I put in for that position and was selected for that position that had been in this role as the supervisor for core since January of this year. Thanks, I'm gonna come back to follow up on that a bit with you and Andy and what does this look like compared to where you, why you went into this business in the first place. And Emily, in a conversation and a backstory on policing, one might not expect to have someone with your background in your responsibilities in that conversation. So tell us about your background and what drew you to this work. Sure, I'm Emily Vandoren. I'm the case management supervisor for the case management team within the public safety department. I've worked in the behavioral health fields at various nonprofits for about 10 years. This is my first job within a public safety department as one would imagine. And what drew me to this work is, you know, when I was working more in the nonprofit sector, recognizing through work with clients how as a society we have kind of moralized substance use. So we label what's right and wrong when we're talking about the use of mind altering substances. And that had very little impact on the reasons why people choose to use substances. And so what I observed through my work with people is finding what they value and how they feel valued was much more impactful in creating behavior change around something that might be negatively impacting their life. And so when this position came open, I got super excited about it because it was a way to reach that community in a completely different way. And it was an opportunity to be far more creative and innovative than what the current state of social services was allowing to happen. Thanks Emily. So again, I'm gonna come back to you with this next question. And maybe we should start with maybe kind of a broad take on community policing, what that maybe means in the context of our public safety department. And then specifically when it comes to diversion, if people for me hear about diversion programs and you might think about diverting people from in terms of the employment sector or poverty campaigns or those kinds of things. But in this case, it's diversion in the context of the public safety department. So start with what does community policing mean in Longmont and how does diversion become part of that and how do you define it for listeners? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a little context too. I think where these programs are really developed as a result of, I think decades of working, the big problems that we have in society, substance use, mental health, homelessness, oftentimes as a society, we respond to those through the legislative process. We try to pass laws to fix those problems. And sometimes that doesn't work out the way we hope it does. We have issues, you know, war on drugs kind of thing. And what happens is when we pass laws, we have to enforce them somehow and that puts the burden on police officers. And what we've done with police officers through the years is we train them in the criminal justice system. And on the other side of the house, we train our firefighters and paramedics to utilize the emergency medical system. Those are the tools that we have given them. And we have put the burden on them to respond to these large social problems with just those two tools. So we have asked them to respond to people in mental health crisis or dealing with the disease of addiction. And we've given them the criminal justice system. So in Longmont for decades, we have talked about community policing as a way to engage with the community in different ways, problem solving through discussion, progress through talking and trying to get at the root of problems rather than just using the criminal justice system or just using the emergency medical system because neither of those are therapeutic environments. I think we can all agree to that. So as an evolution on that process, what we mean when we talk about diversion is diverting out of the cycle of the criminal justice system. We want to try to get out of this idea that we can arrest our way out of things. You know, arresting somebody or ticketing somebody seven or eight times for the same thing is not helpful. So we're trying to give our frontline staff different tools to use in the moment. So we trust our officers to know our community the best and we want to give them the tools to use in the moment. And that's what our diversion programs are. It's how can we get out of those cycles? But equally as important, diverting out of is what we divert into. I think we need to make sure that we give meaningful tools and as we talk about in detail what these core and lead programs are, it's gonna become clear that these are large comprehensive programs. We have a case management system that backs up all of these different inputs, whether it's lead, core, angel, community, healthy, all end up in this case management system that Emily's gonna talk about and the philosophies that we have. And they really are just extensions of that community policing concept that we've used for decades here. That's what we mean by diversion. So as we hear more and more in a 24 hour news cycle about mass incarceration and expecting the criminal justice system and incarceration to take care of all of the social issues we're dealing with, this is a long month's approach and attempt to say, this is how we avoid that by getting people where they need to be as opposed to just enforcement first as opposed to problem solving and treatment. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. So Emily, Dan set up, he teed up the question for you and that is, when you think about a case management supervisor, you wouldn't normally, I don't think, most people think about a case management supervisor in a public safety department. So talk more about what does that mean? Who do you supervise? What are their responsibilities? Give us an idea about the scope of work and responsibilities that you oversee. Sure. So we currently have a team of six peer case managers. So what we have done is we have blended the role kind of in the more traditional behavioral health sense of a peer support specialist with a case manager. And we did that intentionally because what we believe is people who can provide the support of a case manager. So linking, referring, making sure that agencies that are stepping up to serve and provide treatment or care to this individual are the right fit. All of those responsibilities as a case manager go even further if you pair it with someone who has life experience similar to the people we're trying to serve. So the participants in our program. So all of our case managers have life experience that we know our participants have been through. And we work really hard to utilize that in a healthy and productive way when we build relationship with the participant. What makes my role different or how this case management supervisor role is different when it's embedded in public safety. As I really see, like I said before this was my first experience working within a public safety department. So I had a steep learning curve and still have learning to do on the intricacies and complexities of policing and what that means. And so really took on the responsibility of trying to figure that out and helping the case managers come up to speed with that and feeling confident and empowered to build a relationship with law enforcement officers as well because we're peers. We're one in the same, we work for the same department. And so that I think is just an additional role than maybe a case management supervisor that's not embedded in a public safety department. Is it just to drill down a bit more? Initially the peer support person is that peer support for law enforcement, for a police officer, for a client or a participant as you've mentioned, or both. And then case management kind of long-term followup from an initial interaction, is that the way it works? Yeah, so the peer support person is the case manager. So they share both functions. Yeah, it's for the participant in particular. But I do like that you brought up kind of that peer work with officers too because what I'll get into later is kind of the importance of nurturing and fostering relationship building at every level. But with our partners, with our participants, with officers, with each other, with family members, all of that stuff. Right, we are gonna come back to, what does it look like, how does it play out? Andy, 18 years on the job, I'm the father of a son who spent eight years on the job as a cop in another city. And I know the thinking, at least for him, and I suspect for most of the men and women who go into law enforcement, is with particular mindsets about what that job is like. And you now are in a role that would seem, for most for laymen, a far cry from what the original call was, to go into law enforcement. So talk about that. What is your call now in the role that you're in? And how does that differ from what you thought you were gonna be doing 18 years ago when you went into law enforcement? Well, this is a great question to tie in to what drew me to this role now. That was 18 years at a street level on the streets of Longmont. You can't help but notice those social problems, the mental health, the homelessness, the addiction and all of those things. And as a law enforcement professional, I think it behooves us to recognize those and wonder what else can we do? Jail is not the option for a lot of these people. It's not the environment that these people need to be in. We need to find them and connect them with the correct resources. And so that's ultimately kind of what drew me to this. Those two years as the liaison for patrol for these programs really helped me open my eyes as to this is needed, this is progressive, and this is the agency that I wanna be part of because of these kind of programs and the ability of this agency to stay ahead of the progressive curve, if you will. So absolutely, this is a far cry from what I signed up for, if you will. When I got hired, I was 22, 23-year-old kid, excited about a police car and going out and doing what police do. But maturity and experience and things like that change a person. And programs like this helped a person like me understand that human-to-human connection is the most vital connection that a police department and its employees can have with its citizenry. And that's really what draws me to this work is breaking down the barriers, and brick walls, so to speak, of what in the past may have been perceived as difficulties between public and the police. Oftentimes, we're viewed as just this machine that shows up in a uniform, when in fact, the majority of us wanna have a human-to-human conversation, a human-to-human interaction. And in this role, particularly in the core position, we're really working really, really hard to break down those barriers and help those that struggle with mental illness understand that we want that human-to-human interaction with you. We want you to be able to trust us. We want you to recognize that you might not think that anybody cares about you, but the people that do care about you are the police department. And the human beings want you to have a happy and healthy life. We're gonna do everything we can to help you get there. And it's pretty profound. Some of the changes that we've been able to make in those relationships and ultimately their lives by building that trust, building that rapport, breaking down those barriers that I spoke of and helping them understand that the connections we're making for them and facilitating for them are ultimately gonna help them have a better and more happy and productive life. So that's really what it is for me, is yes, it's a completely different way of policing than what we're all normally used to, but it's absolutely necessary in that human-to-human interaction and where kind of dynamic of the world we live in is going now. As Dan talked about tools and the limited number of tools traditionally, sounds like showing up with some additional tools translated into resources and alternatives, especially when you're interacting with people. Generally, you get called interactive with people when they're having their worst moment on their worst day. And to have some options that open up for you, sound like the basis for some hope and optimism about what this looks like going forward. I wanna come back to the question just kind of broadly again about community policing. Would people around the country interested in community policing see that translate into what the three of you were talking about today? Or is this more unique to Longmont? Or how generally do people in public safety think about community policing the way you think about community policing? Who would like to feel that? And that's for all three of you. Yeah, I can start having lived community policing in this agency for as long as I have. It's an absolute necessity to build the relationship with the community and the trust with the community. And this agency feels that from our community. And it's because of the efforts put forth by Chief Butler over the years and the buy-in from the staff here to get involved in the community, to get out there and meet people and have those human-to-human interactions and do work at its highest level to the best of our abilities and gain that trust and respect and that's huge for us. And I think when you talked about tools as far as community policing, my core team is an example of that. The tools we bring to the scene are actually all other human beings. So I'm bringing a police officer, I'm bringing a mental health clinician and I'm bringing a paramedic to your worst day. So I've got three highly skilled experts and three completely different professions coming to you to figure out how can we help you? And in my mind, that's about as good a definition of community policing as you can get. And so that's kind of my answer to that piece. Anne or Emily, you wanna build on that? Yeah, I think one of the important things that we talk about a lot is the partnership aspect of community policing and it's not, this isn't something that we do on our own. This isn't a lawnmower public safety department thing. The partnerships that we have with our community play out in these programs. We have what we call our operational work group that meets every month to talk about people. And it's partners from the district attorney's office. It's the municipal judge, it's treatment providers, it's public health. It's all of these agencies that work together to help support individuals that need help. And it's this wonderful dynamic that happens when all of these entities come together to help support people. So that is kind of an extension of community policing. It's this partnership aspect of everything that we do. And it's not just the partnerships that we have with internal staff. It's an incredible partnership that we have with community partners and the community. So I think that to me is how this community policing thing is played out over time. Emil, you want to put an exclamation point on that? Yeah, I think the only other layer I'll add is, you know, that group Dan's talking about, we also address systems barriers. So how the community can work together to remove big system stuff that feels impossible when we try to do it individually in our own role or on our own team. But collectively, we can make it happen. We can do what we need to do to remove that on behalf of the larger community and the individual that we may be brainstorming around. That's that exclamation point. No, just for whatever it's worth, a simple response on my part to the question, what does it mean? What is community policing mean? I've said kind of the cliche, my response has been kind of the cliche. Our police officers show up first as problem solvers and second as enforcers, right? In contrast to what might be true in other cities where the call is to come in and enforce. And that's kind of a wimpy response without the additional information that you've just shared because the question becomes, how do they solve problems with the traditional tools and the answer what you're providing is, they're not traditional tools. They're much deeper, richer and sustained than what most people might expect. And then these days of these images that we're seeing in the 24 hour news cycle, this kind of information is, I think, important for people to have operational in their heads. Dan, you've made reference to angel, core, lead, rewind, the kind of the acronyms we've used for the programs. I'm gonna ask you to give a kind of a description. What do these acronyms mean? And how do they get started? How do they get funded initially? And I wanna follow up on that. Sure. Well, Andy talked a little bit about core. So that stands for crisis outreach, response and engagement. And that's our co-responder. You've heard that term kind of use. That's our co-responder program that pairs police officer, mental health commission and a paramedic together in a dedicated response unit. So we have two of those teams now and they are primarily dispatched through the 911 center to go to mental health calls for service. Where they spend most of their time, however, is in the outreach and follow up to follow up and engage people after that initial call for service. And Andy will talk about that in detail, I'm sure. And lead stands for law enforcement assisted diversion. And that tool is primarily for patrol officers to allow somebody to divert out of the criminal justice system. So if somebody is struggling with addiction, the idea is not to have to apply to criminal justice system. We wanna get them into Emily's team without having, with that is the mechanism. So we allow any patrol officer who has an engagement, whether there's a criminal element to it or not, to ask somebody if they wanna make a different choice today. Do you wanna get help? Here's how you do it. And we have a referral pathway right into Emily's team. That's what lead is. And both of those programs, we had a precursor to CORE since about 2014, but we got a couple of grants from the State Office of Behavioral Health in late 2017 or so to really start funding lead and CORE. The ANGEL initiative started in about 2017 too with no funding. That's our open call to the community to come to the police department and ask for help, ask for treatment. And we initially started that just with administrative staff and we would all kind of try to help get that person connected to treatment. We've since evolved that program pretty dramatically into long-term case management through Emily's team also. Part of those grants I talked about funded some of Emily's team also. So some of the case managers in the last program is the community health program that really we target people with multiple chronic conditions and social barriers to care. We try to connect people to a medical home so that they're not utilizing the emergency room as their primary source of care. So initially we started all of those really with grant funding or kind of in-kind administrative work. We figured out really quickly that doesn't work. And we have some federal grant money and we have a little bit of foundation money. But just this year in 2020, the Public Safety Department repurposed some existing positions to fund a few of all of the positions that work together to make this team work. We're at about a third that are permanently city funded and about two thirds that are continually grant funded. And that's kind of how the funding breaks down. So folks who have been around government work and I spent my career in tax supported work, the wrap on grant funded programs or get soft money, get something started. The grant money goes away and so does the effort, the program or whatever. What you just described as a transition that's occurring. Connect that back to the city, the community of Longmont overwhelmingly supported in November of 2017 a dedicated sales tax to support public safety. Are those dollars, that sales tax generating dollars that help sustain these programs long-term? So when that was passed, that was targeted to bring the Public Safety Department up to what was needed to provide police and fire services at the time. So at the time, these programs really weren't started certainly not in the form that they are now. So that public safety tax really wasn't, this wasn't a thought at that time. What has happened over time is the department has repurposed a couple of positions, some in the public safety tax, some in the general fund and just traded. So there wasn't any additional city funding that was used. It was just a trade of a position that we didn't fill for one of these positions. So some of the things that have come from that tax, body cams, right? Did we have body cams on our police officers before the fall of 2017? I mean, that wasn't one of the priorities that got funded. I wanna come back to some of that before we're finished with this interview. I wanna stay with you just for a minute. You and I have spoken on occasions about evaluating effectiveness and evidence that the programs we're funding are doing what we hope them to do. So follow on now, what kind of data, what kind of evidence have you been able to accumulate that these programs are having the effect that you wanted to have in diverting people from criminal justice into treatment programs. And then we'll come to come back to Emily with how you track those. So that we know that these are not just one-off experiences. Right, well, ever since we started these programs, we knew that they're grant funded, people are gonna be watching these things and we need to be able to evaluate and measure something. That was really important to us from the very beginning. So one of the first things we did was we got a hold of a professor of economics from CU and we asked him, what should we do to measure these things? Because one of the challenges with harm reduction programs, and Emily talked about what that term means, is it's progress over time and it's years of time. You know, you don't solve addiction in a day, right? It's somebody who, it's a chronic disease. It doesn't go away, you manage it over time. And measuring success takes a long time to figure out if our interventions work. So what we've tried to do is figure out what are the metrics we need to start measuring. So on the lead side, which is what we have the most data on because that's where primary source of funding has come from, we've started to measure things like decrease in engagement with law enforcement. How many times do we as a public safety department see them again in that mode? And that's one of the ways that across the country, these lead programs are being evaluated. So we had an 18 month interim report done by this professor and you know, he's published it. It's out there for people if they wanna read it. And for everybody that's been in our lead program for 18 months, we saw a 59% reduction in all legal incidents. So that's significant. We weren't expecting that much. It was a significant reduction. And 35% of the people that were in the lead program were never seen by the police department again. So we've had some pretty good measurable success on the core side. One of the things we measure is how many times are we pulling those calls away from patrol? How many times does Andy's team, how many times are we bringing the right resource to the call? And those guys make on average 400 contacts a week. And you know, that's just a number, but that is a significant number in terms of percentage of calls for service over time. I mean, if you play that out, I mean, we're talking 5,000 calls a year, right? I mean, it's significant. It's a huge number. So they're running on just crisis calls alone. It's 250 crisis calls a month. It's huge. So the impact that they're having is enormous. We've had 15 directed missions from the field into a psychiatric hospital, which means we're bypassing the emergency room, we're bypassing all of those things. We're getting people where they need to be right time. You know, we've had, oh, let's see, what do we have here? 268 referrals to substance use treatment. We've had over 140 referrals to housing. We're measuring some things about how many times are we connecting people to the right resource that wouldn't have happened before? That's so impressive for somebody who comes from my background. I love to hear the numbers. Let me talk about, to achieve what Dan just talked about, right, the reductions in recidivism or repeat calls and getting people to the right place. A call comes in that activates your team. What happens? Dan made reference to a crisis call. They're crisis calls. What are the other kinds of calls? And then how did your team get mobilized? What does it look like in action for your crew? Sure, so our team's a little bit different in the sense that if we do end up getting a call directly from a law enforcement officer and end up meeting them out in the community, it's definitely a secondary response. We're really, we highly value officer discretion in being able to assess the situation, make sure that this is something they feel good about too and using their kind of position as a law enforcement officer to make a really powerful impact by choosing to do something different, right? So unlike Andy's team, we don't necessarily get called out through dispatch on a call that might come in to the public safety department. Most of the time we're mobilized when a law enforcement officer either goes to a call for service and says, yeah, I really wanna refer and lead or refer this person to lead. And our case managers are on staff, they give our on-call phone a call, we go out and meet them. Or it can be a follow-up. That officer interacted with the individual, wants us to get involved and then we take the initiative to outreach that person. Another thing that's really different about our approach is the value we have on outreach and the creativity. So we don't give up, we don't just use the phone, text message, email. We are out there on the street looking for people. We utilize relationships with community partners to try and connect with people. We utilize our relationship with patrol to try and connect with people if that makes sense. We have a very unique team and how creative they can get. To really help the person who's been referred to us, understand that we're here, we wanna meet them and we wanna get to know them. We wanna know what they aspire to, what they want to look different in their life. And we value that. So Andy, a call comes in, dispatch sends a police officer. Police officer now has in his or her portfolio of responses of tools, the option to follow up with Emily or somebody on her staff. When an officer shows up, how do you screen that? How do you engage? How do you determine is this gonna go one way or another and when do you reach out to somebody on Emily's team? Well, that speaks to the caliber of people that we hire here as police officers and the training that we put into them and their willingness to buy in to programs like this. And we had that when lead started, when core started, and I'm sure there was a little pushback to some degree, but the quality of people that we hire here are totally receptive to new, progressive kind of things like this. So they have the ability to go and they're gonna do the investigation. They have the ability to communicate very well with other humans on these calls and they're able to quickly realize, okay, this is potentially an addiction situation where this family, this individual, whatever that looks like, could really use some help as far as how are we gonna help this person that has this addiction? And so they're gonna start automatically thinking and triggering in their own brain, okay, this is something that we might wanna get ahold of Emily's team for. And then they can decide, is now the moment or is this something that we can email them or write down on the form that we need to fill out and they can come out later where it might fit the situation better? Oftentimes, it's really in my personal experience and Emily knows that I referred to lead a few times when I was still in patrol and had her team and Emily herself come out and meet people in the field with me. And it was an experience like I've never had before. It was absolutely amazing to see Emily and her team to be able to come out and instantly build rapport, instantly be able to communicate at the level that this person's at and gain the trust immediately in such a fashion where they're putting them in their car and heading off to grab coffee to talk about the lead program and figure out what that looks like for this individual. So our officers, especially now, two and a half years into these programs are very keen on what they're looking at, who they're engaging with and what resources we have here that can come into play. And the same goes for the core team that I work with. They're oftentimes patrols out there talking to families about our angel program. Hey, if you can get your family member to walk in the front door of the police department and say the word angel, we're down the road towards treatment in the hurry. And we're getting Emily's team involved in that too. And so to kind of answer your question, I suppose, the staff here knows they're engaged. They want to help the people out there that need to help in these different areas. And they're very quick to refer and they refer the right information about the right situations, about people involved, the family involved. That's a huge piece for our team as well is what can we do to help the family? What resources can we provide the family to do some self-care, some self-therapies and find those resources for yourself so that you can be healthy in this situation too. But our officers are highly skilled, highly talented, excellent communicators and certainly know the resources that are available to them through these programs. Yeah, I want to put for listeners, put this into a context. I had a chance to interview Chief Butler in a backstory program a short time ago. And in that interview started with kind of what's the philosophy of community policing? How does that get translated into a corporate culture? And then then how does that translate into the selection, training, promotion or retention, promotion and termination of personnel? Cause that's where it starts is to get the right people on the bus and then to get them in the right seats. And it's encouraging to hear you as a line officer reiterate some of what we heard from Mike in that interview. I want to drill down on two aspects. You mentioned training. As I recall in my interview with Mike, he referred to the number of hours that police officers spend going through an academy. It's like 600 hours of training. I don't know if that's the right number. That's what I recall. And he compared it to the number of hours that somebody goes through to be a beautician. I thought he was making a hair joke at the time. He wasn't, but he was pointing out that it requires the state requires over twice as many hours for people to be trained to cut hair as to police. I don't know if those are the right numbers, but it was disproportionate. But you just talked about some additional training. So in addition to what officers get in an academy when they arrive and they're fortunate enough to be hired by the Longmont, for our public safety team, what kind of training were you just referring to in terms of this approach to community policing? So we consistently have training like the range and defensive tactics and those kinds of things, the police kind of related stuff. But one of the things that really emphasized and drew me to this as well was when Dan brought former Albany, New York chief, Brendan Cox in, and he's kind of the national leader, if you will, of the national lead thing that Emily's running. And it's those kinds of trainings where we've got specialist experts that have law enforcement background that we can bring into our building and put as many of our police officers in front of to listen to what they have to say, who speaks the language of the police, so to speak, but is bringing in this new resource, this new tool to help mitigate those social issues that we've talked about, the homelessness, the addiction, the mental health stuff that we all ultimately, I think in our heart of hearts is police want to help mitigate as well. And so it's that kind of training. It's bringing those experts as national kind of experts. It's sending folks like me to the first ever national co-responder conference earlier this year in Kansas and bringing that information back and being able to share it with not only my staff on the core team, but the staff within this police department, particularly patrol. It's Emily and I producing different in-service briefing trainings, getting to briefings and just having 15, 20, 30 minute conversations every once in a while about what our programs are offering, how we're changing, how we're being progressive in our own situations and how that's gonna benefit the patrol officers out on the street in knowing what we can bring to the table. Dan spoke to bringing the right resource at the right time. And it's also bringing it to the right place. So we're finding these folks via calls for service or that outreach, that follow-up piece that Dan was talking about. We're bringing those experts in the fields to the table. And the more we can emphasize that with our staff and prove that it's working, which Emily and I I think have done a very good job in proving to our staff that it works because the buy-in from our patrol level is phenomenal. They are our number one customer and I think Emily would confirm that as well for her team. And so the more we can engage with them, simple little things too, just, hey, thanks for referring us. This is where we're at with this person that you sent us and continuing to kind of keep those updates going too. And through all of that, we're able to educate our staff about what do we do on the backend? And if CORE is not here, what can you do when we're not? Because there's one day a week and it's a Sunday when CORE team's not here. And so we're able to help them know what those resources are, know what the phone numbers are, know who to call on a Sunday. And it's that kind of training that's critically important to our programs is just continually having that conversation with the staff that is our primary customer, if you will, and that's patrol. I've heard so much in the news recently about the training of public safety or police officer in particular and what it looks like and what it includes or doesn't include. So for Longmonters to understand that in addition to the Academy, what you just described is an ongoing part of the work and the culture of Longmont's public safety department. There's another follow-on I wanna just kind of go on down here. So a call comes in, police officer is dispatched. Depending on how that police officer assesses the situation and the needs of the individual, you do or do not, you may or may not follow up and ask for somebody to show up a social worker or a psychologist or a paramedic, someone to show up with you or a team to meet you on site. Is that correct? Yeah, so dispatch is dispatched to call the patrol and there might be zero undertones of mental health. We'll just talk about CORE for a second. Patrol will go and say it's a domestic violence situation. There's no problem caused to arrest, but while they're there, they're having conversations and they realize that maybe one half of that domestic is struggling with some mental health issues. They will then, if CORE is on duty, ask for CORE to respond. And CORE will go out with those three experts that I talked about and engage specifically about that mental health situation. What are your connections? What have you had in the past that didn't work? What can we do to facilitate maybe that working this time or facilitate something different, a different approach? Oftentimes a lot of our calls for service for patrol do have some mental health undertones in them when dispatched. And so my team is very adept at listening to the radio and dissecting nearly every call for service that comes in when they're on duty and recognizing that our resource is gonna be helpful in that situation. Ultimately, if it ends in a criminal arrest that happens sometimes, but we can still be a resource on scene for that kind of stuff. And oftentimes my team will cancel a patrol officer. If there's two sent to a call, we'll oftentimes cancel one of them. Getting that patrol officer back into service to deal with what they need to deal with. And we're gonna go, and if we're able to handle it on our own, we'll send that other officer back into service as well and really just engage what the actual issue is on the scene there. So, Annie, both for you, from a police standpoint or perspective, and Emily, for you, from a CORE standpoint, what concerns would you have if dispatch sent the CORE team out without a police officer involved? Are there risks associated with that? Would the CORE team wanna respond if there was a police officer on site to have done the initial kind of vetting or screening or evaluating of the situation? From a CORE perspective, that's, you know, there's a reason we have a police officer on the team and that's the safety aspect of it. That's the primary thing that they're responsible for is de-escalation, calming of the waters, if you will, building rapport, and then maintaining safety as our other experts are able to do what they do. Are there situations where I would be totally comfortable with one of my clinicians going out on their own? Absolutely there are. But we're built right now to respond to crisis calls for service. And the other aspect of having a police officer on the team and responding, as I spoke to earlier, is building that relationship and breaking down those previous preconceived notions of what the police actually are. And we want to engage as humans and use our platform, as Dan talked about earlier, to help facilitate their life improvement. So there's an important piece to have in the police there. But yes, there's absolutely times where we could send my paramedic and my clinician out to a call for service. My officers on CORE do go on vacation. So there are days where I do just have a clinician and a paramedic. Now patrol is usually gonna respond on those calls for service initially and call for CORE. And if my team gets there and says we're good, you guys can go back in service, that's totally fine. The key component is the safety of those that aren't police officers in those environments. We all know that mental health can be kind of a volatile situation sometimes that people literally don't have control of. So it's important to have that piece, but absolutely. There's zero reason sometimes that the police officer needs to be there. But again, for me, it's about building those relationships that way as well. Kamala, you wanna weigh in? Sure, yeah, I completely agree with Andy in regards to the opportunity that is presented when we have an officer respond in conjunction with another role. So although the case management team isn't necessarily dispatched or called upon to calls for service immediately, kind of what I said before or along the lines of in their position as a law enforcement officer and for lack of a better term, the authority that comes with that, we know we have stories from both our case managers and their life experience and our participants that when someone in that position chooses to do something different, that moment of impact and that relationship building is priceless. It can just launch something that otherwise might be missed in the opportunity. So I think it is important to have officer involvement. It's a key reason for me anyway, why officer discretion and working in tandem with law enforcement is so important. And then they trust us, right? They trust that we then do what we do and that we'll run with it with the participant and they get just as energized and excited about seeing those outcomes as we do. Part of the reason for the question to the for the two of you is in the national discourse right now about policing and words, language like defund police and move money from patrol to social services. The question I think has to be asked, what are the implications for those on the social service sides being dispatched without a police officer? And I think authority is a good term for the very reason that a police officer is there. And I guess the question is, can you do the latter if you don't have the form? I mean, can you roll out the kind of services you provide without also providing whatever level of security and confidence goes along with having somebody like Andy or his team on site when you arrive and then you manage it from there. And I think that's an important conversation wherever we're talking about allocation of resources and what the role and scope and function of public safety is. Any final comments on that one? If not, I'll move on. I have one final comment. I think the other important layer to think about in that kind of conversation on like kind of that policy side is the response piece is just the start, right? So we can transfer who responds or maybe we can but what then we do with that is just as important if not more important. So if the resources behind it aren't funded or aren't equipped to meet the need of that individual we're just transferring the situation, the problem whatever we want to label it. Although, I don't want to negate kind of the spirit behind some of it in terms of escalation, right? Like someone who responds in a different way can avoid some of the escalation piece while at the same time knowing that it's complex. It's very complex. So what we talked about lead and the core program and the angel initiative just for the sake of kind of fleshing out the whole portfolio you have resources like the Longmont like the restorative justice and working through the Longmont community justice partnership or some kinds of cases both for kids in school and for the community. There's the rewind program where youth get into the criminal justice system and then get referred over to the restorative justice program. So for listeners, you've talked about the core of your responsibilities but there's a broader collection or set of options, tools if you will for moving people towards solutions problems by choice and being diverted from the criminal justice system. Is that fair in terms of the whole portfolio? So it's hard to imagine as a lay person, it's hard to imagine given what we've experienced in Longmont a future policing in the future without diversion, right? So I'm going to assume that we're going to get here we're committed to diversion as part of the mix. It's not possible in every case but as Dan mentioned, it has had profound effects on repeat calls and helping people move in the right direction. So what do you see as the future? What should the Longmonters, we know Mike's going to leave at the end of next week, maybe July 3rd we're going to see a shift of leadership in the department at least on an interim basis to Rod Spinlow. I think that has implications on the firefighter side for their involvement in these programs but we'll see how that plays out. But I think there will be a question in the mind of folks as we go into a transition we've had pretty stable leadership for 26 years I think with Mike, what should we anticipate as the future of diversion in Longmont's public safety department even as we transition from one chief to the next? Well, I'll take that one. So we've actually talked about that recently we had, we talked about that with the city manager and Mike and Rob in the same room to talk about what that's going to look like and I think the overall message is, it's not going to change. The direction of the city and the public safety department isn't going to change these programs are incredibly important to who we are as a department. That culture and philosophy isn't going to change. And as you mentioned, the national perspective on this is changing. This is definitely a moment and one of the things that we want to do is continually stay ahead of these things as we have in the past and that's what we're going to continue to do is try to identify ways we can continue to provide tools continue to engage partners in different kinds of discussions and make sure that this continues to be a part of the culture of who we are and everything we do has a benefit to the community. Andy and Emily, I don't want to shut you out of a response to what you would at least like to see in terms of diversion as we move into the future. For me, I completely agree with Dan and I'm glad to hear the city manager and Chief Butler and Chief Spenlo having those conversations already because I'm bought in, my team is bought in the staff and patrols bought in and I'm proud to be a part of an agency that is always ahead of the curve and willing to go further ahead of the curve and set the example for others. We didn't speak much to this, but pre COVID, we were having site visits fairly regularly from outside agencies outside of this state coming to see what Longmont is doing. And that's evidence to me that we are ahead of it and we are progressive and it's a very prideful, profound feeling for me at this stage in my career to be part of this and to have folks like Emily and her staff. It's, I don't know, it's just special. That's how, it's the best way I can put it, it's special and I'm extremely happy to see it continue down that progressive path. Emily, any last words on this particular question? There's a few. Yeah, I would just echo what both of them had said, you know, in terms of the future, meaning growth and security and also modeling and really empowering other places to learn about their community, get to know what their community needs, be thoughtful about what they're implementing. There's no rubber stamp for every community. And I think that's part of what makes us special is that we're really trying to hear what Longmont needs and how we heal our community. Yeah. All right. If residents are inspired by this program, what they hear here and want to get involved in some aspect as volunteers, are there opportunities for volunteers and in what areas and how would they get involved in? I guess I would answer that in two questions. I think the bigger perspective for me is we know that these problems that we talk about are enormous. These are way bigger than anything the Public Safety Department can do on its own. So when we talk about partnership with the community, we really mean that. And there are things that every member of the community can do to impact these problems. And it's things like reducing stigma. It's things like not being afraid to engage people. It's not pushing the problem somewhere else. Don't rely on other people to solve these problems for you. Engage and be part of the solutions. And I think that's the bigger picture challenge, I would say, to the broader community is find a way to be engaged. It's not necessarily coming to join the Public Safety Department to do that, but there are a ton of ways that people can be involved in just understanding more about mental health, understanding more about what addiction is, understanding more about how those are root causes of homelessness and how that affects people. And just trying to understand what that really means and being involved in that way. So that's how I would answer that question. And I'm sure Emily and Andy have good answers for that too. Nellie or Andy? Everything Dan said, of course, I always fall back to, and it's impactful for me, what Chief Butler has always said. We know that there's social capital out there and how do we leverage that social capital when it comes to these social issues? And for me on this team, I'm confident that there is social capital out there around mental health within this community that could become resources for our team and the citizens that we deal with on a daily basis. What does that look like? And who's out there? Who's willing to step up to the plate and be that social capital that we can all leverage as a team and really dig into some of these folks that really need something local that will pay attention to them and care about them and dig in and really get in the trenches to figure out what routes haven't worked and what routes can we now try? Because we do have some very difficult situations in the city that oftentimes just kind of get left behind because nobody wants to dig in. My team wants to dig in and we need that social capital to help us dig into some of these folks so that they can have a better life. And for me, that's really all that this is about is how can we help this person have a better tomorrow? And then let's progress from there and grow from there. Amal, you wanna add to that? I would just think if a community member feels compelled to kind of step up and join in whatever way they feel they can, yeah, just utilizing some time to reflect on what that means to them, why this is so important to them. And then, yeah, I think like Andy was talking about, taking the initiative himself or reaching out to us, like Dan was talking about, reaching out to the people around them that they see in the community all the time. And yeah, we'll take opportunity less than right. It sounds like if you hear something here, that's my iPad firing up here. I apologize, I can't mute myself right now. It sounds, Dan, like your advice to get involved to support the diversion efforts is to take advantage of the incredible collection of nonprofits that work in this community, whether it's HOPE or the Hours Center or the Longmont Community Justice Partnership or the Recovery Cafe and on and on and on is those places that people could connect and work with the very same clientele that our diversion team engages with on a regular basis. That's how we would leverage or optimize citizen involvement with the kinds of programs that you're talking about. Is that fair? I think that's fair. I think one of the things we talk about a lot as a team is, we only really impact one part of this gigantic spectrum. And one of the challenges we have is there is a lack of services in the community. There aren't enough treatment providers. There's not enough crisis availability. There's not enough bed availability. And that is a challenge for us. And it puts a lot of pressure on Emily's team to have long-term meaningful relationships with people until we can connect with services. So if there's ways that members of the community can impact that side of the spectrum, that would be incredibly meaningful to the work that we do. Any final thoughts from any of the three of you? I've kept you over time. We've gone longer than I promised we would go, this has been a rich conversation, at least for me. And I believe it will for the community. Any final thoughts? I think for me, I just want to thank you again. This is a great opportunity for us to get to talk about what we do. And it's very encouraging to see the interest and appreciation for what we do. All right, anybody else? I'll take that as the last word. Thanks to the three of you, not just for your hour today, but for what you do day in and day out in service to this community. We are only as good as those who are willing to step up and serve. And I'm proud, as you are, Andy, I'm proud of the way this leadership of this community has chosen to serve this community through our Public Safety Department. So good on you, stay safe and healthy. And Long-Moders, this is the backstory, at least part of it on policing in Long-Moders.