And that aspect of shame sometimes leads to just withdrawing and not talking about it, not reporting it, and keeping it within the framework of the family as such.
The one thing that encourages me now, there is more money being 133 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 poured into the prevention side of it, because if you don't start the prevention piece, then we'll be sitting here years from now talking about 5 statistics and what is not getting done. So that 6 is so key. 7 And we're working in North Philadelphia 8 right now, with the clusters, because they've 9 asked us to come and do it. 10
Yes. Good 12 afternoon. 13 On the report -- in anticipating the 14 report of the Commissioner, with the coding 15 refinement and uniformity of the coding system, 16 did I misunderstand your remarks in that there is 17 not -- nothing is a hundred percent, but where you 18 are in terms of satisfaction with the bottom line 19 of that effort? 20
I -- the -- our first set of revisions included -- many of their codes were not in conformance with the State Crime Code, so 134 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 we gave information to that effect; they accepted that. But there were a number -- I don't know if they accepted our last round of suggestions. We haven't seen it.
Do you know if they will? I mean, will there be another opportunity for dialogue prior to the final production of that report?
I certainly hope so because I -- my impression, from my brief conversation with Brad Richman, suggested that he was very surprised that we hadn't seen it. I don't think we get to sign off on it the way that the Commissioner does. But it was the invitation to us that we would look at it. And, you know, it was a lot of work. We, again, took that project very, very seriously. So I'm disappointed that it's that far along and we hadn't seen it, but I -- it's not clear to me that the Commissioner knows that we haven't seen it.
I hope not. I don't know. 135 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 I mean, he said that he had signed off on it and he had given it to Inspector Brennan, I think, so I don't know.
Just that it's done. So, hopefully, we'll get a copy of that and see where we're at.
We'll let you know about that. What we also didn't fully hear today -- and I'm assuming that this is what you'll get at the end of the week. Last summer, when Commissioner Timoney testified, 750 cases had been thoroughly reinvestigated. It sounds now, like about 1800 cases had been thoroughly reinvestigated. What he told us was -- he gave us a breakdown last summer of how many of that 750 were classified as rapes, how many were classified as other sex crimes. We didn't get that today of the next --
Of the next (unintelligible) cases. 136 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044
He gave us information about arrests and exceptional clearances, but the numbers sort of didn't add up yet.
I would like to -- he said that we would have it by Friday, the 91 percent.
So I would like to see that, and we'll see how far along we're at at that time.
Another question. On the bricks and mortar question, have you had an opportunity for any dialogue with the Capital Program Office to offer suggestions, recommendations on possible locations? Is there an opportunity for you -- any one of you on your own to take the initiative and look for space? 137 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 I'm simply asking. And all in an effort to move towards completion or reality at this August 1 clock.
I want to say something before I turn it over to Chris. When we realized how little progress was being made in November, I wrote a letter to Commissioner Perez to ask for the status of it. Though I have not -- we have not gotten a response to that letter in writing, it -- we did learn from the police that there was a considerable amount of activity. I suspect some of those calls came from Councilman Ortiz's office as well at the same time, because we realized, My God, you know, and just this morning did we hear about the August 1st lease. So I think that clearly, we have to do more advocacy, we have to do it with the Space Allocations Committee. It was useful to learn what the process is, and it's a long process.
And I think if we had known that last year, we would have realized we had to do more to push it along. We just assumed that it was happening. 138 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 But Chris also has some information about collocation and information they have about cost and things.
I'm Chris Kirchner, the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Children's Alliance, and we have really been pushing through this to have a collocated facility for child abuse investigations that would house representatives of the Police Department, the Department of Human Services, the District Attorney's Office, my agency, and medical and mental health representatives around the City, for a truly seamless response when there's an allegation of child sexual abuse. I have not had any discussions with the Capital folks. And at this point, I would like to suggest that perhaps, as they're looking for a site to relocate, they be made aware of the space needs for collocation, what it would take to house 30 DHS workers and several district attorneys and have a medical suite on site where they're going. We did commission an architect since the last hearing last year, and that architect met with representatives of all the agencies I just 139 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 listed, including DHS, to ask what their space needs would be, and put it all together in a report -- I have one copy here that I can leave -- and to determine that to have that kind of an approach to child abuse cases, we would need about 27,000 square feet to house 80 professionals, with a cost of $6.8 million. That does not include site acquisition. And it was just an exercise that we undertook to really help ourselves visualize what does this look like, what would it cost, what would be involved? And our concern is that if we do relocate Special Victims in the next year sometime, that the collocation initiative will fall to the side because is it really -- is it reasonable to expect that Special Victims would move twice in four or five years? In a meeting with Estelle Richman this morning, she suggested that we go ahead and try to collocate somewhere in the City in Public Property soon, with the plan being to build or renovate a facility to collocate those 80 professionals in 3, 4, 5 years, recognizing how long that might take.
How big was the 140 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 place we visited?
They had a three-story type -- three floors almost, I think, wasn't it?
I think they had the 141 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 coordinated in place, they have child protection housed there and police housed there and prosecution housed there and medical done there, but it's not particularly a child-friendly facility at all.
It wasn't. And it might have had the coordinated services, but I felt that it really wasn't what at least I had perceived.
Right. I think we might want to plan some other road trips along those lines. Houston is kind viewed as the benchmark. Chicago's just putting the finishing touches. The City of Chicago contributed $7 million, the county 1 million, for the total $8 million budget, to house a similar number of people in a collocated facility that will be open for business in March of 2001, and it was designed specifically for that purpose.
I might believe that it has to be concurrent, that it has to follow -- I don't think we're going to get two or three moves. I think we either do it at one point --
The first time right. 142 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044
And, of course, when we met last year, we assumed that we could at least get relocation done while all of the -- I mean, the parties all have to agree to collocation. And, hopefully, we're going to get to some conclusion from DHS; and, hopefully, we'll get some leadership from someone in the City to take this on. This has all been on the backs of the Children's Alliance, even though it's well- documented by other cities that this is the way to go, that one hopes that someone from DHS or Estelle Richman's office or from the District Attorney or the police will really put some weight behind this, because this has been on the agenda for about ten years?
That's exactly what it's going to require, that's exactly what it's going to require.
What we do here, continuously from the various agencies is that they have no power over the other agencies. So we think it requires somebody in the Administration 143 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 or on Council who has jurisdiction over all of the agencies to help.
That's why we said we need to -- I said to the Commissioner because we need to bring everybody together, into the same room, and be able to come to a conclusion on this before we sign a lease on any new site. I think this --
This has to be decided before the lease is signed and even the location, sort of a --
Will you have a chance to share your report with the Capital Office? Because what I'm hearing implicitly is that there's limited or no discussion happening across City departments. It's important and it's useful and it's helpful to hear that Commissioner Estelle Richman supports it and embraces it. It means nothing if that has not been communicated with the Capital Program Office, just as a way to register with Capital Program Office that this is a priority. So, again, we'll look to the Chairman 144 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 and burden him, if you will, or shoulder him, with the follow-through on ensuring that all of those departments that have been mentioned -- the Capital Program Office, the Law Department, the Public Property, I've heard finance, and now Estelle Richman -- have to be brought to the table to make sure this priority is up high on everybody's list, if we want to move towards collocation.
There's one other issue that I didn't mention about the facility. We were at a training program, where I believe I heard one of the officers from Special Victims Unit say they only had three phone lines, which, given the numbers of phone calls -- when you think of 5,000 cases and the complex cases that involved DHS, I mean, I'm not certain that it's true, it's worth finding out, but I'm certain I heard someone say they only had three phone lines.
I'll find out. Any further questions? 145 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044 (No further questions.)
Let me say, Carol, Carol, Chris and Terry who's here and the others here, it's been fantastic -- it's still not over, it's still not finished. We got to keep on going, we got to keep on meeting. And it really has been terrific so far. And given from where we started to where we're at, I think we've made incredible strides, because changing a culture -- and like I said, changing a culture of a police department is one of the most difficult things. And I don't think we've totally succeeded, but I think the framework of change is in place so that it will be very difficult to go outside of that framework. And as we keep on monitoring and keep this in place, I think we can continue. We will get all of the other reports. Is there anyone else? (No response.)
Seeing none, I really want to thank you all. And this committee, on this issue, stands in recess until the new millennium, 1/24/01, at 2 p.m. 146 12/12/00 PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 000044
Happy Holiday and Feliz Navidad and everything else. And my Three Kings Party is on, I think, the 6th, so everybody's invited, okay?
I was just going to ask about that. I'm not missing it this year. (Adjourned at 12:30 p.m.) - - - 147 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Tuesday, December 12, 2000, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY RESOLUTION NO. 000044 __________________________________, JOSEPHINE CARDILLO, Registered Professional Reporter