Environment as it can be. And one of the things that occurs is these incendiary comments that are coming from the Union Leaders that actually worsen the situations instead of improving it. And what happens is some of the comments from Union Leaders achieve the opposite of what the Union Leaders want to achieve. They actually make Police Officers lives more put them at more risk. So i think itll be great for unions to understand that our job is to protect our members. But, you know, our job is to also serve the public and their voice matter and certain things they feel, if they feel like certain things are occurring, a way that its not supposed to we should take heed to that and listen to them. Thank you, sir. Sorry, thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank the panel for your testimony and for being here today. Now, i turn it over to Task Force Members for any questions they may have for any of the panelists and well start with the chief. I want to thank you all for taking the time to be here today, very good comments. I think that mr. St. Jermaine your comments particularly touched home with me. And its never too late to be a Police Officer. And i think that we need people from communities such as yourself. And so what im asking you about is maybe some suggestions that you could provide on recruiting efforts. Because one of the things that we have trouble doing, you know, we all talk about diversify of the police force, but you brought forward some of the exact obstacles that we face and what has been brought to the forefront in this is the distrust and the separation at times with the Police Department and the communities that we desperately want representation from and the viewpoints from. How do we bridge that gap and get over that wall so that we can do the proper recruiting we need to bring those viewpoints in . Well thank you very much, first of all. And, you know, i do still think about becoming a Police Officer tucsons hiring. But, you know, its a great question. I think first of all its not going to happen overnight. Its going to take some time. And i think a part of it is to truly make a genuine effort, extending our hands to the community and allowing them to again, voice their opinion and letting them know that it needs to be a partnership. We need them. And we need them at the table. And their voices matter. And, you know, and we take what they have to say and how they view things and how they think things should be done in the community. We take them seriously. You know, i think just like Everything Else you do in life is that you have to basically give the Community Members or some people from the communities a reason to want to become Police Officers. I think when theres such a deep level of distrust between the community and Police Departments throughout the nation its really hard to get great individuals making a difference and changing the culture to become Police Officers. And i think we have to extend our hands to them and engage in some things by doing outreach work. And not just you know, posting things in the subway, on the buses and online, but actually going to the community and having regular conversation with folks. You know, we have in common than we think. And i think sometimes, again Police Officers have difficult jobs. If we can just show the community that we understand and we listen to them, we care about them, were there for them, i think that will change the mindset of the community and more kids and young people will want to become Police Officers. It is an honorable job. Theres no doubt about that. You get to save our societys most vulnerable people. We have to reach out and connect with them, whether im white, black, yellow, green, we all feel the same. We need to understand each other. Thats where the conversation needs to start. And then we can get to the phase where we recruit more Community Members to be Police Officers. Thank you. Can i add to that . Yes. Yes. So in a community that i grew up in southern california, oxnard, we had what was called the Police Activities league. And a lot of the and things like that, and that allowed for Police Officers to build and trusting relationships. And so no longer was that such and such over there but it was coach flores or coach brown. And for me i grew up as an alternative to gangs and violence in my community. I grew up playing basketball. And so i create programs where for young people that are detained as well as detention alternatives where we place them in environments that are going to allow them to thrive and be outside of their community. So looking at it through a wholistic approach but certainly, i know for us in our community, just simplifying things because we could get into our work and what we do but just going back to jim, he reminded me of a lot of things that did work in my community and that was the fact that there were Police Officers that truly cared that would come after. And they wouldnt show up in their uniform. Didnt create this like this sense of us versus them, but created a sense of all of us. Thank you. Thank you. Tracy is next followed by sue. Hi, thank you so much for your heart felt and compelling comments. I wanted to point out before i ask you, ms. Perez, a question it was gratifying for me to hear how much the comments of mr. Winkler and mr. St. Jermaine and their ideas were congenial to the ideas and theory offered about procedural justice. And the first panel mr. Winkler, you didnt specifically use those words you used reconciliation and restoration, but its pretty much i think, you know, this idea of reform is consistent. Heres my question. In your written testimony you mentioned two things. Decentralization as an important key to repairing trust between individuals and then you have an idea about the federal mandate for system wide accountability for juvenile and criminal Justice Systems. I was particularly curious about decentralization given that the first panel was making comments, i think, in the opposite direction. You know, the idea that we might need to look to more centralization, you know, uniform ideas for standards for policing. So if you could say a little bit about what you mean by decentralization in your recommendation, that would be helpful. And if we have time, the federal mandate on what that is. Thank you. Definitely. I think decentralization in the sense of having Community Policing. And so very similar to the Police Activities league. Not necessarily having this one institution oversee everything. But really get i was in the probation department. I was recruited into probation because of my the programming i created in the community. And a lot of what we did is i was able to become that community liaison, right . So often times, when i think about decentralization, i felt often times Police Officers or probation officers arent equipped with the community resources. They dont know whats access accessible or available to them. And that leads into my federal mandate on system accountability, which ive talked to brian about. He was part of our threeday conference call. And one of the things i really do see is i was a part of a system that was held accountable. And it was a way in which we were hired. So not everybody came from Law Enforcement. Our training. We had to do the strengthbased approach. We had to do different types of trainings i felt equipped me to be the best probation officer i could be. I feel why is there a system thats working in one community, yet the neighboring county is the complete opposite, which is punitive, right . Its not held on Restorative Justice practices, its not necessarily looking at doing victim offender dialogues, not necessarily looking at doing gender responsiving for young women, understanding that women need to be served differently than men as well as redirecting some of the money that comes into Law Enforcement. Back into the community. Its a dream of mine, i know that with many people here in this room, we could achieve that. But i would love to you know, have more of an offline conversation. But definitely looking at how we could reduce Racial Disparities within a system on a front level. Ill just tell you a quick story and ill end. But when i was a probation officer we used to use the risk assessment. And that is an objective tool. And i know that new york tries to use it. But as an intake officer, a young person screened then a probation officer, then its done. People are screened immediately so that you could eliminate them from being put into a Detention Center. My first position within probation was an intake officer and i did gender responsive programming as a as holding all female gang case load. But when i would get calls from officers from Police Officers my young girl was going to be transported into the probation or the juvenile hall, i would risk them in my head and inform the Police Officer that was not necessary. That there was actually a Community Program that was going to be accepting them at this time. And so its things like that. Stepping i mean, we could do so much better if we wanted to. And i think thats what were here for. Thank you very much. Okay. Ill start with ms. Perez first. I really appreciated your comments about the program and those types of resources to make a connection with young people in the community that might not have had a Good Exchange with Police Officers. Can you talk a little bit more about your objection to having Police Officers in the schools . And you had specifically mentioned School Resource officers. In my experience, from the police side, i found that my officers that worked in the schools the officers were transformed by their experience interacting with the kids in a positive environment. I wanted to see if you could clarify whether you should never have officers in school or maybe Something Different than that. Well just from my experience in Santa Cruz County probation, what we saw was a Direct School to prison pipeline. A link higher numbers of young people being brought into the Detention Center. And when we analyzed the data, we were saying it was coming specifically from one high school that had a resource officer in there. That had a Police Officer. And so what we did was we gathered a bunch of stake holders as well as Community Based organizations to figure out how we could eliminate and provide an alternative. And what we ended up having was communitybased organization who were trained in conflict mediation, who were trained in reconciliation, be a part of this Outreach Program where the officer could then use them as an alternative versus sending people directly into the system. As well as in chicago, we trained the gathering for justice trained seniors in nonviolence as well as the staff. That led to the high school being 150 days without violence. And so i think we could look at alternatives. I certainly feel that i think another thing that we do as a nation is that we begin to criminalize childrens behavior things that we may have done as children, i think are now seen as a crime. And so i think we need to reevaluate policies and what criminal behavior actually is versus childhood behavior. And so, i think that resource officers need a lot more training and Youth Development and so i think that if were not going to remove the resources officers immediately, i think theres an opportunity to provide more training and resources to them so they can make a better judgment when referring young people either to a Detention Center or detention alternative. Go ahead. I was going to ask mr. St. Jermaine for his views on that. And you were talking about, you know, recruiting folks and having that interaction. So id be curious on your views about School Resource officers. You know similar to ms. Flores, its an issue for me. You know, as a young man who spent years in a juvenile Justice System, i spent 3 1 2 years in the juvenile Justice System and currently work with young people incarcerated. Its my life passion purpose, what im going to do for the rest of my life. I interact with young people who are in the system who are at risk on a regular basis. And, again, having Police Officers in the school. If the objective is to actually help and the system is not going to punish those officers for not arresting and punishing these kids, then yes it can work. Again, these officers are human beings like any of us. Right . If we doing the job and our higher ups and our Commanding Officers are telling us we need to do this and do that. We need to seem tough on crime something were big on in this nation. Then having Police Officers in the schools in schools is not going to work. But if we change the way the system operates and what we incentivize, what we give, then sure. Who really changed my mind. I was questioning myself saying was that real . Does this officer really just cared about me and ask me if im all right, did i eat, whats going on . I think things like that can really help to whether we want to have officers in schools, or not. Again, if thats not the goal. If the goal is not to prevent and help, then having them in the school i think to me actually deteriorating the situation and makes it worse. Thats really helpful, thank you. Thank you very much. Seddrick alexander. Pretty much asked a question i had in mind but you know sitting here listening to both, ms. Perez and mr. St. Jermaine. And to your point, to both of you alls point, our goal was not to arrest kids or put them in jail, but was to help them and build relationships with them and get to know their families and so forth. But, over the last 30 plus years or so many schools across this country have become adjusted to having School Officers in their schools. And what would be helpful for me in terms of what youre recommending because i would like to be able to defend what youre saying and what youre requesting. Because a question is not going to get asked so much by police as much as it may get asked by educators who will say to you is that for the past 30something years, i feel safer in the school with Police Officers here because depending on where you are in the country my school is not that safe. Kids are coming into the school with guns and knives and drugs and Gang Violence and et cetera et cetera. Correct . So because that will probably itll be interesting to note that you probably would experience some pushback from those in education who would say, hey, i want those Police Officers in my schools so that i can feel safe. How do we how do you help me help us respond to that . Mr. St. Jermaine . Ill make this really quick. You know if and there are young people who are carrying weapons and other contrabands into school. And, again i know that the focus today is police and Community Relations, but this conversation is much bigger. Which i wont get into it but you know, sometimes we need to ask ourselves where young people are getting these guns and weapons. But if there are young people bringing weapons and contraband into the schools, sure enough, if you have an officer there, their job is to make sure the school as a whole is safe. Right . Whatever needs to happen if a young person is bringing a weapon needs to happen. Public safety is number one, is paramount. However, all im saying is the objectives should not be to punish kids. If it happens it happens. And were going to take care of it whether that young person being arrested or whatever needs to happen it happens on premises and we handle it the appropriate way. But if the officers are not being incentivized to actually find thingsindividuals, then i think educators in the communities wont mind that. You know, i have a son. And he means everything to me in this world. And ill protect him by any means necessary. And i want him to be safe. And if hes in a school where other individuals are bringing weapons, sure, i wanted something to be done about that. However, its the way were doing it. Again, were not doing it to harm the entire school. Were not doing it to all of a sudden look at every young individual as a criminal, as they carry weapons. One particular young person bringing a weapon, we deal with that young individual and we do whatever we need to do to make sure it doesnt happen again. So, i guess what im saying is sure, we needed indicators to be safe and we want to make sure our children are safe. If theres a young person thats bringing in weapons and putting the school in danger then well handle it accordingly. However, if the objective is not to actually punish them, then it wont be such a huge issue. I dont know if i answered your question. That was great. I you just reminded me o