 Let's go ahead and get started. My name is Tom Hincey. I've been asked to emcee this awesome panel on community health and safety. Cool. All right. How's everyone doing? All right. Thanks for coming and thanks to the awesome bike caravan that went around. My name is Tom Hincey. I use he, him pronouns. I've been asked to emcee this panel on why Davis needs a community health and safety department. So hopefully we're going to talk for about 40 minutes. I'm going to let the panelists introduce themselves in a second and then we'll take answers or questions, excuse me, hopeful answers from other folks. So the first thing to say is this campaign has already had some major victories, y'all. We were able to pressure the city council to actually take homeless services out of the police department and give them to the city manager. So we're already making progress and that's a big deal. Like people like me who were on the streets in New York City for a while, I had police hassling me all the time when I was sleeping in subways, ferry terminals, what have you. So that's a really big deal for a lot of people in this city, but we've got, we've got further to go. So anyway, I want to turn it over to the panelists now to introduce themselves starting with... I think it's as loud as it goes, but I will try to project. So my name is Morgan Poindexter. I'm a graduate student here at UC Davis and I've been involved in this this campaign to reimagine public safety for the last year. Hi, I'm Nusra Amola. I'm a third year PhD student at UC Davis and I'm a member of UAW 2065 and I've been involved in this campaign since the fall. Hello everyone, my name is Suley Anibaba. I've been in Davis for 22 years now, can't believe he's been that long. I am currently, I currently work in Tramper as an advisor for athletics. Also my second gig is I work as a counselor, mental health counselor for Group 1 in Davis, Mentally Challenged Boys. Hello everyone, my name is Kasia, Chris of The Welfie. They're not protect city, they're not protecting... Just a question. I will reimagine public safety in Davis. I actually had a situation about two weeks ago where so I didn't tell you all my responsibility at the group home is to I'm the nine staff supervisor. So what I do is I'm sleeping at night, one of the teams runs away, they call me, I have to go looking for them or if there's any kind of intense situation, imminent situation they call me, I show up. Two weeks ago I was going to Safeway in West Davis. There was an unhoused individual who was a person of color, so this is where it gets really interesting intersection with this individual. Unhoused, food insecure, mental health, I mean I think there was some kind of psychosis going on, right? So he was leaving some food in the trash and at some point he was pushing carts down the parking lot and folks were freaking out because the carts were being cleared by the cart. So an individual was my friend, but I got there, it was called the cops because in his brain the first thing to do is they just switch it on, let me call the cops. So once he called the cops I was like, oh shoot I wish you told me I don't done that. So I figured I should do something. I'm changing you know verbally the escalated individuals with mental health issues. So I went and approached the man and I remember approaching him, he was really really aggressive, like don't come near me. First thing he was, don't come close to me. I was like, all right, I'm just here because I'm worried about you. So what do you mean? I said, well someone just called the cops and I'm worried that cops will show up but I didn't warn you. This might be your last break, last time you pretty much alive. And he was like, oh really? I was like yeah I'm really here to warn you. So we're talking, as I'm talking to him, I was mindful not to get to close to him. It's like the non-global he was just giving me and slowly, I mean it was crazy because affect changes because like this guy cares about me. Absent and entire overturning of the culture of policing, they just need to not be the responders because as you said they are not approaching the situation using tried and trued public health, well researched, documented, evidence-based ways to de-escalate a situation. And even when they're trained in de-escalation, it is a small, tiny tool that they might use if they feel like it. And it's not the culture, it's not what they think about, it's not it's not what they were trained to do and that's not, I like to think about it personally and maybe some people would disagree but I like to think about it on a systemic level. Sure, well I can talk about my personal experience with policing which wasn't in Davis but as we know, Davis isn't necessarily an exception. And so I, my brother, and when he aged out of the school system, he didn't have anything to do all day and he'd sit at home and we couldn't find resources for him, we couldn't get any caretakers to come go home and like engage with him and do activities with him and so he sat at home and he started running away and it was an old times of day, it would be at five a.m. in the morning and he's non-verbal, he can't speak, he isn't able to take public transit though so he could get far and we would constantly have to be calling the police and at some point it was a weekly occurrence almost we were calling the police that you know we were on a person named basis and about the actual help we needed you know we would just that was our only choice was to call the police but when it came to actually getting the resources needed and it was so clear how helpless we were you know we can pay for these kinds of services and my mom is a immigrant so like her English wasn't the best and so when it came to like actually getting the help to navigate the system we didn't get that we only have the help and my my brother it's we've had issues with like people losing their temper you know just like teachers and caretakers and stuff and so the idea that he could be intercepted by police and an armed officer could potentially you know lose their temper with him was a constant fear um and like not far from where we're just like one county over at Ethan Seller was a man with disability with autism and I really think you know it's just another one it could have been my brother so there needs to be another option for families with children with disabilities there needs to be someone else we can call who's trained their family it takes special skills I don't expect just anyone to do it especially not the person with the training that has that that's just one of the things so in my mind for traffic enforcement it's very very simple just divorce it entirely it is not criminal I mean some some things do you eyes sure that's a criminal offense all right involving vehicles but really a lot of traffic stuff a broken taillight why is there not just a traffic person who is not armed who just says hey I can fix that for you you want me to fix that thanks have a good day be safe I mean right or or if you're speeding hey please don't do that here's your hundred and fifty dollar fine slap on the wrist but but it doesn't require anything that there's no need for the interaction between the criminal system and traffic enforcement in the way that our society has it set up right now and a lot of it gets talked about well until you know state laws change blah blah blah we can't do anything but honestly I mean there are cities who have stopped enforcing minor traffic violations specifically to get around this problem so honestly city council um you know let's let's make an ordinance that we are no longer pulling people over for expired registration we're no longer harassing black and brown people in our community which we know that we are because of the RIPA data like I've looked at the data that is it is true that we are pulling over and detaining especially a lot of black people in Davis and then letting them go because they did no crime that's horrible I mean that is literally the definition of racial profiling and honestly I mean chief kaitala at the April 6th city council meetings said it basically you know he said the quiet part loud which I was really surprised by he said outright that he stops or he pulls over and runs the plates on cars that look like they don't belong there's a lot of us who work here in Davis right we've been talking about the white moderates and I think rightfully so but there's a lot of workers in Davis who also live here who really care about this right we need to make sure that those people are aware of the campaign and are going to come out to vote also we can build the power to do it I think so we should we should find our co-workers reach out to them build our networks and finally I just want to thank all of our panelists Keija, Suley, Nusrat, Morgan and thank you all for coming