The city contracting system would be -- I know for the Health Department, we RFP things and pick lowest bidders and go through the procurement process.
But you would agree that the City of Philadelphia has control over who it contracts with?
Okay. So this is something within our control that we can help Chester with, yes?
So this would be one of the things in our control that we could help with? You said that we would be willing to help Chester.
Okay. Was the Parker Administration's opposition to the bill informed by a public health perspective to your knowledge? And if so, what was your participation in that opposition? And then lastly, we've talked about the air monitors that you all put up. Earlier when the Council President brought up the American Lung Association's rating on our air. You said that you would have to review it and get back to us. And also, there is a pretty well- crafted study that Delaware County did about the very harmful impact that trash incineration has on people's health. Why does it seem like the Parker Administration only trusts data that the Parker Administration puts out? As a doctor, do you think that we should also be taking into account reputable sources like the American Lung Association, prior studies that are credible about the impact of trash incineration? Why do we have to start from scratch on things that have been studied pretty well?
So, ma'am, I've agreed with Council President. I'll absolutely look at the studies and be happy to get back to your office.
Okay. And then can you answer the question about how the opposition to the bill was informed by any public health perspective. To your knowledge, was it?
Again, I'm going to look at everything and absolutely get back to your office.
Thank you. I'll just close by saying we have this F air rating. We control our contracting. We know the harmful effects of trash incineration. I'm looking to the Department of Public Health and the Parker Administration in general to take these concerns seriously and do what is within our control to make sure that our city and our neighbors are healthy. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Member York -- Member Young, O'Rourke and the Chair of Health Dr. Nina Ahmad.
Thank you and good morning. Thank you all for being here. My first question I have is for the Health Department. Just really quick, in your testimony it says the target for non-Hispanic Black women initiating breastfeeding drops from greater than 80% in FY26 to greater than 78%. So why is this number a little bit lower when we're trying to emphasize maternal and child equity? Specifically through the Joy Bank program that we have here in our city, can you talk to us about if we are investing in these health equities, why is our target lower when it comes to breastfeeding in Black women?
Sure. Give me just one second here. The lighting in here requires little readers. So we have been conducting broad outreach and conducting all sorts of telelactation programs. And at the end of the day, initiation and the target for monitoring with both Black women and Latino women has been lower because of participation issues. So we're doing all of the things we can. We are also increasing our promotion. Our goal is to be greater than 80% this past quarter. We were at 78.2% so we are trying our darndest to get more people and do different forms of outreach where we can be considered a credible source and then women are more likely to engage in breastfeeding.
Thank you. I just don't think we should lower the bar when it comes to this issue. I think we should set higher standards to ensure that we get to a place where there is equity in the Black maternal health system --
And we won't lower our target. Our target is going to remain where it is. We're just going to increase our efforts to meet the target, sir.
Thank you. One more question for Health involving asbestos. Can you talk about what are the penalties for not following the existing protocols the department set for abatement contractors currently?
Yeah, for asbestos particularly. What are some of the penalties that could happen if you're not following the abatement plan or if you mislead the department about what your abatement plan is?
Sure. We have both, they're called, air pollution control inspectors as well as supervisors. Folks submit their plan and we go out to do inspections, whether it's by complaint or engaged in inspections as they are working through the course of the job. If they are not in compliance at the time of the inspection, they do get penalties. We assess and leverage those penalties. The penalties vary based on the infraction and the type of permit, but we can get you full details.
It's a major infraction. What's the type of penalties? If it's labeled on your document as a major infraction?
So a major infraction would mean that we would ask folks to immediately cease the work that they're doing. And then the actual penalty amount, I can get back to you on the actual dollar amount and how it's assessed.
Thank you. Mr. President, one more question with DBHIDS please.
Thank you. My question involves the 2100 Girard Avenue and our Wellness Center. You report that there are 323 placements at Philly Home at Girard and 474 at the Riverview placement. Can you tell us how many placements led to a stable recovery, longer-term treatment or permanent housing as opposed to a short-term cycle through the program? And what are the types of services that are provided at these locations? And can you provide us with the demographics of the participants? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Great question. I can actually provide more detail after this. But I can say generally the participants receive mental health services. They receive medical services as well. There's also vocational training that's provided. There's case management training, all of the services required and necessary to get somebody on their recovery journey so that when they're discharged, they're able to contribute to the economic life of the city. We have 151 Philly One vouchers. And I believe OHS administers some of those and DBHIDS administers some of those. So the idea is to identify individuals that are ready for transitioning graduation from Riverview who can access those vouchers. I'm sorry. I think I missed the first part of your question.
So if you can provide us with the demographics for the folks at the facilities. And you mentioned the One Philly voucher support program, and that is only for people that's recovering from opioid use disorder. But here the testimony says opioid. Are there other substances that people who have issues, can they get this voucher if I have alcoholism? Am I able to get this voucher if I have other types of substance abuse issues or was it only strictly for opioid use? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: The vouchers are funded through the Opioid Settlement Fund. So, yes, those individuals that have access to those particular vouchers will be individuals that have substance use disorder. But we're exploring other voucher and housing opportunities, including up to the H.O.M.E. initiative, to kind of look through the full continuum of housing needs for individuals in Philadelphia, regardless of whether they're coming from the shelter or treatment or any of our programs.
I'm just questioning that because it's only for opioid use. And if you look at the demographics, it affects everyone. But I'm asking for the demographics for a reason because there's a rising use of substance abuse among Black men. And I want to see if the resources are getting there as well or is it still going to the certain folks. Thank you, Mr. President.
I'm sorry. I was just going to clarify, sir, regarding the fines for air, the asbestos permits. So our local fines can be anywhere from $300 to $500, but we also leverage, because we regulate the federal guidance in the laws anywhere from 2500 to 25,000, we can also make referrals to the EPA and do criminal sanctions against folks.
Thank you. But for clarity, for a major violation you can shut the job down?
Thank you. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: And, Councilmember, just to be clear, individuals that are Black and Brown are also part of the individuals that have opioid use disorder, so it's really the full gamut of Philadelphians that have a disorder, that have opioid disorder, that have access to those vouchers. But we do have other options for anyone else that may not have that as a primary diagnosis, so we're moving them into more permanent housing.
I just want to follow up on the line of questioning from Member Young. And so, do we know the rise of substance abuse amongst African American men by numbers? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: I can get you that data, sir.
Okay. Because I want to see if there is a correlation between the new movement toward the legalization of marijuana. When I was a kid, they said marijuana was a gateway drug, right. And so, we also know mass incarceration, there's a movement to legalize it. And so, I want to know if there's a correlation between the legalization, right, and us saying the level of substance abuse increasing. So that would be very, very helpful information.
Council President, if I could just let you know about the procurement position. I just want to -- I mean the food procurement position.
So the food procurement position that I was referring to, which is within our CDIP Division, that is filled and was vacated because of the person. The position that I believe Council President is referring to is a joint position between us and Procurement. That has been vacant. And we are working with our new Procurement Commissioner to go ahead and fill that. That position is 50% with Health and 50% funded through Procurement, so we are working on that. So I just wanted to correct that for the record, sir.
And we will keep an eye on that and do our darndest to get it filled.
The name of that position is the Good Food Procurement coordinator.
So y'all know I'm vegan, so give our young people some healthy vegetables and some foods. And if they may not want to eat any meat, they can have that option to have maybe some tofu, a little bit of seitan seasoning, probably for our young people. But thank you for your hard work in all seriousness -- well, I was serious. But thank you for your hard work around that issue. Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke and we're waiting to hear from our Chair of Health Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad who will be next.
Thank you, Mr. President. And sorry for cutting in front of you, Dr. Ahmad. Dr. Nelson, thank you and your team for all of your work and for your responsiveness to outreach when questions arise. Our team is super grateful for the quick engagement. Much appreciated. I want to ask a few questions about your Resource Hub program, especially the colocation of resources in sites like Puentes De Salud. From my understanding, this has been an invaluable program that benefits from the language access and community trust of Puentes and resource distribution by the Health Department. But due to contract changes, these resources are being pulled from community sites like Puentes and moved to Mayor Parker's many city halls for neighborhood community action centers. For the record, what types of resources have been provided by the Resource Hub, specifically at Puentes De Salud?
Sure. Absolutely. And I thank you for the question, Councilmember. And I just wanted to clarify for the record, so the resource hubs are -and Deputy Commissioner Garrow is passing around double-sided information so that everybody has access to it. The resource Hubs were a part of our COVID funding, our federal funds that we received. Those dollars are sunsetting at the end of this June. And so, the funding to pay for the rent, to pay for the security, the cleaning and all of those items at the resource hubs, that funding is ending. But we know that our communities still need us and we know that our communities need the resources that we were providing. Whether it's masks or COVID test kits or free condoms or the newest, latest and greatest condom holders, we want to make sure that we have them accessible. So what we began doing, as we realized that this funding was sunsetting, we started partnering to figure out where we could create spaces so that communities could still have access to these resources and the test kits and everything else. And one of the areas that we realized where we don't have to pay overhead, where we don't have to pay for security and cleaning and all of those other items was at the neighborhood action centers. And so, we ended up partnering with the neighborhood action team. And again, Jim is passing around -- I don't know if you have it yet, Councilmember, we are passing around the information that shows the map. We are hoping to go from having four sites to actually 10 around the entire city so that there is access. I have also met with Puentas to figure out how we can address the challenges and the issues with them.
Okay. So then that's the reason why you're planning to move the services out of Puentes to a neighborhood community action center starting July 1, because all that funding will be sunsetting? That's the logic behind that?
Correct. And I'm sorry. If I could clarify, at the same time we're more than willing to still provide the items. We just don't have the capacity to pay for the rent and the rest of the overhead.
Okay. Heard. The locus of my concern had to do with language access. And so for me, if Puentes was providing that, moving them out of Puentes would be concerning for that reason because of language access issues and the community trust Puentes has built already, especially with our migrant neighbors -- so thank you so much for this, I'll keep this to the side -- you're of the opinion that the neighborhood community action centers will be able to provide the same level of language access that Puentes De Salud has offered? Is that something that we can trust?
So that is the goal and that is something that we can absolutely make sure it's addressed.
Are there currently any staff Spanish-speakers in the apparatus that could be moved?
So we use Language Access, we use Language Line and other language resources within the Health Department. We do have Spanish- speaking staff. However, we can work to figure out the best way to address that need. I have been personally, actively engaged with Puentes because I want to make sure that we, as a non-English speaker, English being my second language, I'm very mindful of those issues, so I want to make sure that at the end of the day we have the best solution for the community that needs the Department of Public Health to be there for them.
That's great and I appreciate that. Do we know right now which neighborhood community action center that folks will be directed to away from Puentes?
Got you. Okay. One of the things that -- I think I'm looking at this right. Maybe I have it wrong. I think that's east of Broad Street. Is there one in the 2nd District? Is there a neighborhood action center in the 2nd District because Puentes I think is in the 2nd District --
Not sure. Okay. That was one of the concerns, that Puentes I understand is in the 2nd District. If we're moving into a neighborhood community action center because the funds have been sunsetted and that's already the plan, great. But then the location does matter because of where folks are. You want to say something?
Yes. The 2nd District action center just opened last week.
Okay. Thank you team for getting that squared away. That does address some of the concerns that I had. So there's not necessarily -- as long as it's there and we can get some language access at that neighborhood action center I think that'd be good, because I think all of the resources that were coming out of Puentes will be able to just be replicated in this new spot. So that's awesome. I heard the bell. I want to honor the clock. Is there a second round?
We have a hard stop at 1:00, so I think we can get there. But ask that question, sir.
Let me ask just a few more and I'll keep it real, real tight. DBHIDS, thank you. Thank you for the work that you do every day to support some of the most vulnerable Philadelphians. Some of this may already have been addressed. So if you have already gotten it on the record in your opening testimony or across questions that I may have missed, then just disregard it. Take what you can. Like many folks, I am concerned about the coming changes to Medicaid enrollment and funding and how that will detrimentally affect the lives of those who rely on Medicaid for their health care. I know that we have up here 73,000. I had actually in my records 67,000 Philadelphians will lose Medicaid coverage due to the federal cuts. What proactive measures, if any, have you been taking to address the Medicaid changes? Let me just get them all on the record. Is there any collaboration with the state to prepare for the fall of the cuts? Is there any public awareness information campaign that you're running about it? And I know that you've said that you're preparing for some of this already. I kind of wanted to get some details about what that looked like. Some are proposing a public health emergency fund or that the city step in to fund its own Medicaid subsidy program. As a safety net for those who will be under or uninsured due to these Medicaid changes, if provided with the funding, does DBHIDS have the ability to administer such a program? And -- I got too many more. Let's just go with that. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Very good questions. I have our inhouse expert Donna Bailey, who is the CEO of CBH. CBH is the city's contracted managed care organization insurance that serves all Philadelphians that have Medicaid. But to answer your first question is there anything we're doing, absolutely. In addition to the effort that the MDO's office, Health and Human Services is embarked on to contract with the consultant with deep Medicaid knowledge to help create stakeholder engagement around four areas, which is enrollment, financial assessment, eligibility and I think fiscal technology solutions. In addition to that -- and that work will start in May and we're going to be looking to you to be part of some of those work groups. So we hope you'll be able to participate. However, on our end at DBHIDS and CBH, there's been a lot of work being done. So the state behavioral health managed care organizations and counties have been meeting to talk -- with the state to talk about what are some of our early mitigating strategies, what data should we have access to, to support individuals so we can make direct outreach, and what are some of our Philadelphia-specific strategies to raise awareness so that Philadelphians know what we're doing. And so, Donna, who's been heading that task, will speak a little bit more to that.
Thank you, Commissioner. So as the city's Medicaid managed care organization for behavioral health, this is obviously an issue that's of deep concern for us. We're concerned for individuals who might lose coverage, but our revenue, our capitation is determined by enrollment. So the fewer people we have, the fewer revenue we have. We're funded 55% by the federal government, 45% by the state. So last year, we really worked to try to delay these changes. We were unsuccessful. We know they're coming. So our strategy really has been one of education and outreach. So earlier in the year, we really were focused on provider education, stakeholder education. Now, we're shifting more towards member engagement. We know or the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services is estimating that 184,000 Philadelphians are in the expansion population. Those are individuals who gained eligibility through the Affordable Care Act. They're the ones that are really going to be at risk for losing their coverage under these new policy changes. Of those, we're expecting about 74,000 to lose coverage. I think that's a low number. So we're also looking at our own data at CBH. We're estimating about closer to 90,000 individuals who are currently receiving behavioral health services to be at risk. So what are we doing? First, we understand that a lot of people don't even know they have Medicaid. They think they have Health Partners or Keystone or Geisinger or UPMC For You or United. That's Medicaid. And so, that really is our talking point. If you have any of those organizations as your physical health insurance company, you're automatically enrolled with CBH for your behavioral health coverage. So we're doing a lot of public services announcements. We're out in the community. We have a member services team that's like the first line of information and resources. They have a script so that when people are calling in, they're asking those questions. We're also planning for member engagement activities across the city this summer starting June 13. We do have some flyers. The first one will be in partnership with Concilio, so we really want to go to those neighborhoods where we know we have a high percentage of both eligible and utilizing members, prioritizing those first. We're also working with PA DHS on how they are planning on implementing this. We know that folks can get a waiver if they're considered medically fragile. The state has not issued what their definition is going to be for that. We're really encouraging for a broad definition, so that as many people can be exempt as possible.
Is there going to be a day that we're going to get the definition or what the definition will be?
So we're expecting that CMS will give additional guidance to states in June. And hopefully shortly after that, PA DHS will issue their definition to the managed care organizations.
Okay. Great. I see a switch-over. I have more questions, but I can wait for another round.
Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad, who's the Chair of Public Health.
Thank you, Council President. It has been good to wait and be the last person because I've heard all my colleagues ask their questions, very insightful questions. Good afternoon and welcome. I just want to start by saying thank you to both these dynamic Commissioners, both for Public Health and for DBHIDS. I am grateful to all of you for your cooperation, for work collaboration. There's nothing greater than the health of Philadelphia, our mental, physical and our wraparound services that keep people engaged and fully participant in our society. So I thank you both for that. Now, for the question. First to the Public Health. We had had this conversation already in our meeting we had around the projected timeline for the health centers in the Northeast, the additional health centers. There's a nine-month-to-a-year wait for people to be seen. We are already facing so much stress from the federal government that is undermining our health in the country and of course here in our city. We need to have every available resource to support our communities to have health care access. You had informed me that all the legal barriers were resolved, a lot of things were resolved and now we're getting ready to hit the ground. And there's a 2029 date for the Frankford one and there's a 2030 date for the Friends Center. This is unacceptable, to have so much time. Projects of this nature, of this scale shouldn't take so long. Much bigger budgets take maybe three or four years. For this size, it's unacceptable. So I need to know what exactly is the barrier to expediting this in a timely fashion so our constituents in this part of town have access to health care? We were able to in two weeks get 95 done. We know we have the capacity to do this. We need to have the will to do this. So I really want you to clearly articulate in a public setting, for our public consumption what is the barrier? Why is it three and four years that it will take now that you have resolved lawsuits and everything else? What is the real reason for taking so long because it should not? (Applause.)
Sure, Councilmember. So let me start by saying this, right, pouring concrete to build a road can't be compared with building two health centers, specifically health centers which require a multi- faceted set of exam rooms, mammogram, all sorts of services. So it's not -- yes, we can absolutely pour concrete, I'm not a civil engineer, to patch a roadway. It's not the same and cannot and should not be compared to the building of health centers. So where we are, we have two sites. We have the Frankford Transportation Center, and that is going to be a multi-use health center residence as well as a grocery store that is going through the process steps of getting the core and shell built and everything. And remember, this is a health center. We all know what recently happened with the collapse. I don't want to move anything faster than it needs to be. We need to make sure that the health center and the site is safe. So that site is on its trajectory. We are working through the letter of intent. We are working through all of -- they have new market tax credits. We're working through all of that to get that through design. Both sites, we have conceptual design drawings for. Now, the way construction works, our CPO, our DMD for capital projects has explained and taught me is that we have phases. Construction occurs in phases. So we have our conceptual design. Then we have our architectural drawings and our blueprints and everything so that it's sound, especially now for the Friends site the litigation has ended. Once those drawings are finalized, approved, verified, we have the permitting for that. That is when the process occurs for the building of the core and the shell. Okay. That takes its own time. Once the core and shell is built, then we go ahead and do the fit-out. The fit-out is the phase of the construction where we decide about the exam rooms, the items that are needed, and we get the equipment and all of that. The FTC site is -- because of the multi-developmental uses for the FTC site, it is a smaller building compared to the site at the Friends Hospital. The FTC site is on its own trajectory. We're working on the LOI, the letter of intent, and the lease documents. For the Friends site, we are in the final phases of selecting the architect and the designer that will take our conceptual design and go ahead and turn it into drawing so that we can then move towards the permitting and the construction aspect. The building itself that was there onsite that was the Lawnside building where the health center is going, that has been demolished. So we are moving on the most appropriate and safest trajectory that we possibly can. Again, I want to be very careful and cautious. Pouring concrete for a roadway is not the same that, you know, we want to be cautious on how we build up our health centers so that they can last us for upwards of 80 years.
Thank you for that. So you might not know. I actually have background in development. I actually do --
I do know what you just described is a process, but you did not describe time involved. So time is money for contractors to put these things down. So what I'm finding is sort of bureaucratic speak, is what I heard from you. Not your fault because you might not know how this works. You were told something by the capital budget people probably. All I'll tell you is it is not about pouring concrete to do a street. There is no reason where we are today for this to take as long as has been told to you. And I will follow up with you with whoever gave you that information step-by-step-by-step to tell you, you know, getting all the financing together, getting the actual contractor in place, it should not take so much time if we are intent and if we are intentional about it. So we're going to have a conversation after this, which I will then publicly share with everyone to say what exactly is the hold-up of doing this faster because this has taken years to even get here. So I don't accept that answer and I will actually look to see details, and this is going to be a callback, details on the actual construction project, to say why is it taking so long. Because this scale of project, just with the money involved, should not take this long. Much bigger projects take shorter time than this. And to the safety issue, the garage issue, was a materials issue and we're going to hear about that. This is not a materials process. Material science was involved in the garage collapse, not in this one. This is not going to be using those kinds of materials. But, yes, safety is paramount and we have the best building industry here that can guarantee that. So I do not take this answer and I need to have a much more specific, detailed that I can share with my constituents about why these things are taking so long step-by-step, including financing all the way to the contractor. So we'll get back to that. So thank you.
I welcome conversation, Councilmember. And I just want to make sure that I put on the record that all of us are working together. We want the safest and the best health centers. Again -- I know based on what you just said, you have expertise in this and I appreciate that. And I look forward to us meeting with our colleagues with DPP and CPO, because they are extremely great partners in this, and we can absolutely go through the process. But where we are right now is we have conceptual designs and we are working to get the firm selected to take us through construction and then take us through the process. We want to make sure that we have the safest and the best sites.
Thank you. We will circle back on that. Because of my limited time, I want to shift to DBHIDS. I wanted to get your perspective on the partnership you have with the Department of Human Services. How engaged are you? Because in the last budget hearing, we were alarmed to hear there was not enough DBHIDS presence in this process of child welfare. And what I mean by that is when the investigators are going out responding to a complaint, their load in terms of how many cases they're processing, what support the social worker is getting there and similarly, what is your engagement with CUAs, who are actually executing on following up on that investigation? I want the entire wraparound perspective you have because I love the diagram you gave us in your material about a well- rounded, comprehensive kind of approach. And if that were the case, we would not have as many issues with DBHIDS, I believe, if we really did have a full partnership with full oversight from DBHIDS. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Thank you for that question. It's going to be a two-part question. I will tee up and then I'll punt to Donna Bailey from CBH to talk a little bit about how CBH not only partners, but we embed care managers in Family Court. We have care manager stations at DHS and they've been there for over 20 years. We have care managers in all of the spaces where children who are in child welfare care are able to access behavioral health directly. So we may not be in the CUAs, but these CUAs are behavioral health providers. And so, they should be able to do an assessment and determine what is right for that child, because that's literally what they're being paid for. And that was one of the reasons that DHS contracted with behavioral health service providers to ensure that there's an interdigitation, if you will, of social welfare and behavioral health --
I want to interrupt you before you go forward. Apologies. But the fact that the CUAs have no direct oversight from you in their behavioral health, they're just contracted out, because that's where we're having a lot of the breakdown. And so, I wanted to know how much oversight do you have of this entire process of the child welfare system? Just saying that we have this there and we gave this out to -- it doesn't matter because we're just looking at what is the outcome. And I am seeing there's a lack of engagement from DBHIDS or type resources, even though on paper that is happening. So there's a lot of things on paper, boxes checked and things done, had a virtual meeting here and there. I want our children to be able to be impacted by the care you're giving, the wraparound services. I have not seen that yet. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: So a lot of the CUA providers are not CBH providers or DBHIDS providers, but they provide behavioral health services. And that for us is actually a good indicator of ensuring that all of the children and families that are coming through these agencies have the assessment, a behavioral health assessment, a child welfare assessment and they're able to make a determination about what the family and that child needs. But DBHIDS as a county, we don't pay for these services.
So you have no oversight to check the quality of this, correct?
We need to fix this because that is where the breakdown is happening. You can see that they hired a behavioral health expert to be in that CUA. How well are they actually executing? What is the outcome? So if we as a city where we have two agencies, public health and mental health, is not able to give oversight to make sure child welfare is working, that's a problem. So we need to all come together, whether it's legislatively or programmatically, figure out why there is no clear oversight of any behavioral work that is going on in our -- because CUA money is a contract that comes out of our money. So this is all tax dollars. So to just say that we said, oh, they have behavioral health, that's enough. That is not enough. So we have to figure out how you have full agency over accountability in these CUAs, because this whole system was set up in response to a terrible death of Danieal Kelly, and here we still have no accountability of exactly how these processes and services are being given to our most vulnerable in our city. So we have to have another callback or some questions answered about this is not acceptable. This is not acceptable. The state we are in now, because we are having so many problems continuously, even though we have given so many things. So you might have some ideas. We'll have some ideas, but thank you. I know the bell rang. I have some more questions lined up, but we'll have a second round?
So we will be breaking shortly. I will check with our Council President relative to additional time after the break, although we do have another department after the break. And so if possible, I'm going to move beyond our Public Health Chair. We thank you, Dr. Ahmad, for your questions so that we could recognize the additional members who were in the queue before break. Okay.
I will definitely get the answer and then circle back to you. Okay. But I wanted --
-- to make sure you had ample time as our Chair of Public Health. Okay. All right. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Landau -- really quickly before recognizing, I'm sorry, Councilmember Landau, I wanted to recognize the Coalition of Culturally Competent Providers as they start their citywide Mental Health Awareness Month events and activities. They will start today at 3:00 p.m. at 69th Street. And they'll visit also Fern Rock Station, Frankford Station and Suburban Station for their final event. And this is in partnership with SEPTA, and they have invited DBHIDS, CBH, PECO and a host of community providers and organizations to provide behavioral health resources throughout the city at our major transportation stations and hubs. So I just wanted to recognize that work and also that partnership. I will now recognize Councilmember Landau and Councilmember Gauthier.
Thank you. I will be as quick as possible. I know this will be a fast round. The state has an affordable insurance marketplace that opens for enrollment yearly with a special enrollment period for unplanned circumstances, like losing a job or recently released from incarceration. Do we have any protections in place for folks who lose their Medicaid or need to sign up for health insurance on a similar marketplace?
So what I can tell you is that the county pays for behavioral health services for the uninsured. And to my knowledge, right now that would be the only protection. For other folks, the marketplace is available, but we also know that those subsidies have been scaled back as well.
I'm looking for tech solutions for us to make sure that we capture as many people as possible. On your website, it says that health counselors at health centers could assist with finding insurance. But I've heard from constituents who are calling our office that making an appointment is difficult, the wait is long and the closest date is usually months away. Is there a website like Pennie where they can browse their options? Do we know who will be cut off so we can proactively -- and do we know who's going to be cut off? Do we have an idea? The tech in the City of Philadelphia is not where it needs to be. I feel like we should know more about who these folks are who are getting cut off than we do. And do we know who they are and can we proactively reach out to them?
So there's also Benephilly that folks can reach out to. We do know that the county assistance offices, there's challenges often times with getting through on the phone. And so, we're telling folks to physically go to the office. And you are asking do we know who these people are who are potentially going to lose coverage. Yes. So CBH has looked at our data to identify the folks who fall into the expansion category and of those, the subset who have used behavioral health services at some point. We are now stratifying that data additionally to understand who is their physical health insurer, who was the last behavioral health provider that they saw, all towards giving those providers their list of people so that they can engage more directly with them. So that data and analytic work is happening right now. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Councilmember, there's one other option to help people maintain their insurance. The state is encouraging what they're calling Community Partners to help individuals in different spaces, at school, faith spaces, community centers, provider agencies, community action centers to help people enroll and re-enroll. Since we have a lot of people, 73,000 individuals, who may need to have more frequent redeterminations every six months, if we expand the places and the spaces people can go to for their re-enrollment, I think it's going to make a significant difference in terms of reducing the churn.
Thank you so much for what you're doing. Last question is, given the federal attacks on gender-affirming care, has the department, the Health Department, taken any action to protect these services for trans and gender non-conforming folks in our community, especially young people?
We have continued and will continue to provide the care that we have been.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Landau. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Gauthier.
Thank you. My questions are for DBH about our Community Mobile Crisis Response Teams and the Philadelphia crisis line. How does the data for outcomes of dispatches to CMCRT compare now to this time last year? How many calls have ended in voluntary hospitalization so far in 2026 and how does that compare to last year? At last year's hearing, I don't think this data was available for us. And then how many calls have been transferred from 911 to the 988 line as of February this year compared to February of 2025, which we have as 4288? And then lastly, at last year's hearing we heard that you were expanding 988 to meet demand and that we were getting 6000 calls a month. What are those numbers this year? And are we currently meeting demand with our current staffing levels? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: All great questions. And if I forget all of them, I will ask again. So to start, I think we began with the call volume for 988. So the call volume went up by 24% and that is 31,692 calls. And of the percentage of those, 83% of those calls were resolved by phone which is what we expect, which is great, but 15% of those calls resulted in a mobile crisis dispatch. I think you also asked how many calls were transferred from 911 to --
Yes. How many dispatches of the CMCRT teams and also how many calls have been transferred from 911 to 988? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: I can get the data for the 911 to 988 dispatches. And I have the data here monthly, so I'm going to have to tabulate that before the end of this hearing to give you a number. But the average dispatch per month for all providers hovers around between 500 and 600 dispatches per month. And I can give you the comparison too. From 2024 to 2026, there was a 3% increase in mobile dispatches from 2024 to 2026.
Okay. And how are our staffing and capacity levels? Do we have the staff necessary to manage the PCL line? And do we have the capacity with our mobile crisis teams to meet demand? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: In all honesty, we are actively, actively engaging with OHR to support us in increasing our ability to bring on qualified staff for PCL. The process right now can be fairly lengthy, takes a little bit of time. And because we have a need, we're looking for about -- how many are we looking for? About six more staff. So we have a meeting coming up to say, is there a way that they can be a little bit more flexible because we're 24/7 and we need clinicians, so we can be more intentional about who we're targeting who can support. From the mobile crisis side or the provider end, we've actually been good in spite of one provider that we've been challenged with and we are sticking with them. We're still in there to win it. And we haven't seen any -- I mean, think about it, we haven't seen any significant increases in response time because of some of these challenges. It's actually gone down --
That's great. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: So we are doing something great. And so, once we get the provider stabilized, I have no doubt that this time next year we're going to get a 30-minute dispatch to response time.
That would be great. If you could follow up with the data promised -- COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: The 911 to 988 calls, yes.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Oh, we have the number. We have the number.
Very quickly please. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: 1632 calls from 911 to 988.
Thank you. And is that an increase? Just remind me. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: That was Calendar Year '25 so I'm going to have to see why '24, but we'll get that to you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Young.
Thank you. My question is along the same lines around 988. It says that 83% of 988 calls were resolved in 2025. How are you determining that those calls were actually resolved rather than simply closed out without any escalation? Is there follow-up data that exists or repeat callers or later emergency utilization? I'm just referencing our own system we have with 311 that just says things are resolved when they are not. So just trying to get a sense of how this system works and is this 83% accurate? And what is the definition of resolved essentially? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: What is the definition of?
Resolved. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Yes, so that's a great question. So the 83% of the calls that are resolved means that they didn't have to go to a Crisis Response Center. We didn't have to send a mobile team out. We didn't have to activate any emergency services. The resolution could be that person was stabilized in the moment. But we also have a 72-hour follow-up process in place where we're calling it to check in. It depends on the level of intensity of need that person is experiencing. So we can call them every day or every so often hours or maybe kind of space that out. So we do follow up also to make sure they're connected to services. For the most part, if we looked at the trajectory, we could find out where people are going post that call. So we feel fairly confident that if we're saying that the call is resolved, that that person is stable, they're connected, we've followed up. And if anything bubbles up, they can always call back and we do have some repeat callers.
Could you give us the data on that -- COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Sure.
Thank you. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Can you be more specific on the data that you want?
So on the number of follow-up calls or repeat callers or later emergency utilization. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Sure.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Young. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to get a few more of the questions that I had on the record and I'll try to get them real tight so I'm just going to say them, and then hopefully you can respond to that if that's okay. If 67,000 Philadelphians lose Medicaid coverage, another major concern is lack of Medicaid reimbursements for providers. How do you -- I wanted you to hear some forward thinking about this. How do you plan to protect the agencies who provide services, including all services on the crisis continuum, from closing due to insolvency? Your economic impact report estimates that 810 -- I apologize if this was already spoken to -- 810 Community Behavioral Health jobs will be lost due to the cuts that we talked about earlier. How do you anticipate the shrinking of the Medicaid roles will impact community mental health in the city? And two more. In 2025, how many people moved through Wellness Court? Of those, how many were connected to ongoing services? You may have already asked that question. I apologize if you already answered it. And how do you categorize and measure outcomes for people who participate in Wellness Court? Thank you. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: For the first two questions related to the individuals that are losing M-aid, the 67,000 and how we plan to support those agencies, I'll have Donna say a little bit about some of the mitigating strategies we have, and then I'll speak to the county side.
Sure. So really, our focus is on ensuring that individuals know about the changes that are coming so they can stay covered. I think the issue about agency solvency is a bit more complicated. We know that coming out of COVID there were providers who closed lines of business or in some cases, closed their agencies altogether. Sadly, I think additional agencies are going to close. Our rates are going to be capped, our rates are going to diminish and we're going to have to make hard decisions, I think, about what the network looks like and who and how much we're able to contract for. In terms of agencies, we are having conversations with them about what does cooperation look like among providers. They tend to compete. And what we're suggesting is looking at what one agency might do really well and disinvesting of those services that they might not do well in and partnering with another agency. So we can't broker those conversations, but we know that they are happening out there. Right now today we feel like we have sufficient capacity across all levels of care. I think if those numbers increased to the extent that we think they might, then there will be serious concerns about access in Philadelphia.
So what I hear you saying is that you're clear about your priority, which is making sure that individuals have the care that they need. To the degree that you can address the financial insolvents, what's going to come with this, you're trying to encourage cooperation amongst groups to kind of move away from a competitive model to one about all of us trying to provide -- COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Coopetition.
Say that word again. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Coopetition, Managing Director Crystal Yates-Gale.
Well, said. Stolen, I'll use that now going forward, coopetition. And also, you currently feel like you're staffed up enough to be able to address what concerns are. But if you feel like there are deeper cuts or what have you, then you will have some concerns --
-- of the state of mental health in the city. Perfect. Thank you so much for those answers. Did you get a chance to walk me through the Wellness Court piece? COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Still waiting for the data. We don't have it readily available. We'll be happy to share it as soon as we get it.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember O'Rourke. I'd like to reserve the last one minute for Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad -- so if you could just please quickly 15 seconds. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: (Inaudible).
Okay. Well, thank you very much. Please get back to Councilmember O'Rourke. I will now recognize Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad for one minute.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Quick question about measles. And as we know, 95% vaccination rate is needed for MMR immunity for measles. Can you speak to what is happening in Philadelphia because we were doing very well? And I just wanted to know where we are now, given what the federal government has done. And a second question very quickly is about maternal health and what things have been changed outside of the Joy Bank that we are doing to really reduce maternal mortality?
I apologize for the interruption. 30 seconds please.
Absolutely. As far as the Joy Bank is concerned, we are continuing that pilot and we're in the evaluation phase so we are continuing to work on that, and we can get you some additional data for maternal mortality. As far as your question about vaccinations, we are in a very good place in terms of we know that the MMR vaccine, which is the measles vaccine, is given when folks are children, so we are monitoring that through our School District and Childhood Immunization program, and those vaccines are not given to adults unless there's some sort of an issue and there is a case and we need to verify titers and everything, so we are in a good place with those vaccines.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Councilmember Ahmad, our Chair of Public Health. We appreciate all that you do on our behalf. This committee will now stand in recess until 2:00 p.m. We thank you all so much for testifying. Have a great day. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Thank you. (Lunch recess.)
Ms. Loughead, could you please call our next panel.
The next panel to testify is District Attorney Larry Krasner, who's also joined by Chief of Staff, Jennifer Lynn; Chief of External Engagement and Government Affairs, G. Lamar Stewart; and Director of Finance and IT, David Benson. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
So before we get started, one, I want to welcome you to City Council, District Attorney Larry Krasner. I want to also acknowledge Mr. G. Lamar Stewart, that's a part of your leadership team. Thank him for all his hard work in making sure he's keeping the line of communications open between the District Attorney's Office and members of City Council. And also, my good friend Mr. Bill 22 Fritze and the work he's done regarding the Gun Violence Task Force going after those who carry guns here in the City of Philadelphia. And also the work that the District Attorney's Office has done when it comes to the Integrity Unit, helping individuals who may have been wrongfully convicted the opportunity to have a chance to take a relook at their cases. And so, to the whole District Attorney's staff, those are a couple key areas that I've always focused on. And also the next level around the issue of domestic violence and making sure that we're helping women who are impacted by domestic violence, and the work that you have been doing also around supporting victims and co-victims of gun violence, Mr. District Attorney. And so, I just want to start off by setting that tone. You've always been an open and willing partner when it comes to issues that we want to see addressed in City Council, by not only coming and listening to us, but you'll find a way to come back and say, here's how we're actually going to address the actual issue, rather it's individuals with stolen cars. We came to you, talked about it being an issue, you followed up on it. Rather the issue of retail theft, you adjusted the policies from COVID to make sure we're going after those who are not only on a low level engaging in retail theft, but those who are fencing goods in the City of Philadelphia as well. So I just wanted to start off by setting the tone. Let you know we have been paying attention to the partnership that we have at the District Attorney's Office as well as keeping the lines of communication open as we make this a safe city. And so, with that being said, you can begin your testimony. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Good afternoon, Council President. I will say good afternoon to everyone as well in a moment, but I just want to say that in light of your most recent comments, which touched on the partnership, that really is true. There has been a very interesting and very positive partnership when there is an issue that the city has faced and Council has conducted hearings. Even if some of us were reluctant to face the reality that we were up against a big challenge, I have always found that those hearings in the long run were a very positive thing for the city. They were a very positive thing for safety and freedom and a very positive thing for our office. I would say it's a template that was put down in many ways by you, Council President, and also by our friend Curtis Jones, when we were looking at a gun violence crisis. Obviously, we are in a different place now. But I genuinely appreciate that partnership. I'm not just saying it because I want money, and I do want money. I'm saying it because it has been real and it has been positive and I truly appreciate that. My good afternoon therefore is not just for you, sir. It is also for Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson, all of our other good partners in Council. It is for Minority Leader Kendra Brooks, all of these folks who are either here in spirit or in person, Appropriations Chair Squilla, members of our esteemed Philadelphia City Council as a whole, who are here, many of whom have been tremendous partners just in general, but on specific issues of interest to them. And I will reference some of those issues for the record. I am Larry Krasner. I'm the District Attorney for the City of Philadelphia. I'm here testifying on behalf of the 600-plus attorneys, sworn law enforcement, victim service advocates and support staff professionals employed by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.
I'm joined by several senior and executive level colleagues. Among them, Chief of Staff Jennifer Lynn; G. Lamar Stewart, who's the Chief of our External Engagement Government Affairs Division; and I'm joined by several supervisors of crucial units, some of which are of special interest today. I'm going to identify them and I'm going to ask the heads of these units to stand up so you can see them. Because when you see them in the hallways, you'll know who they are. Gun Violence Task Force seated next to me, Mr. Bill 12 Fritze. And by the way, you can all sit down after you stand up. Family Violence Sexual Assault Unit Chief seated with me, Katrina Wadas. Elder Justice Unit seated with me is Gillian Dagress, and also we have Alex Blumenthal, the Chief of the unit who is seated nearby. Information Tech Unit, that is a very, very important unit anymore, David Benson; Economic Crimes Division, Kim Esseck; Dangerous Drug Offender Unit, Paul Riddell, and Keion Cook is not the Chief but he is here with him; Juvenile Unit, Annie Ambrose, who may be familiar to many of you from other positions she has held; our CARES Unit, which as you know works specifically with families and homicide victims, Tania Leonard; Victim Services Unit, Mariel Delacruz; Relocations Unit, Donna Woods. We'll talk about CIU which you also highlighted, Council President, we'll talk about CIU, which is the Conviction Integrity Unit, the one that does exonerations of the innocent, we'll speak about that a little later. Our entire executive team and DAO staff remain committed to a balanced and comprehensive approach to prioritizing public safety through modern enforcement strategies and supporting violence prevention, intervention and interruption efforts throughout the City of Philadelphia. Yes, it is about safety and freedom. Yes, safety and freedom go together when you handle both of them in the right way. And, no, they didn't get it right in the past. Look at the numbers right now and you will see that we, all of us together, collectively all of us, we are getting it right. The number of homicides this morning, and no homicide is okay, is 39. We are past the first third of the year. ) DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: You are looking -- that clap, I believe, is for so many of us in and out of government. But you are looking at fewer than 10 homicides a month at this point in the history of the City of Philadelphia. At the height of the pandemic, it was about 45. That is where we are under difficult circumstances in many ways. And I think many people in this room and many people in the gallery, whether they're here or here virtually, should be patting themselves on the back because something good is happening in the City of Philadelphia. The nation as well as our city are going to highlight several themes or have highlighted them. In the month of April, we highlighted Sexual Assault Survivors Month, Re-entry Month, which is was also Second Chances Month, National Child Abuse Prevention Month and National Crime Victims Rights Week, which was April 19th through the 25th. This month, the month of May, we recognize Mental Health Awareness Month. And every one of these issues obviously is of great significance to public safety and to freedom. I want to open my testimony by thanking victim advocates, both within the Philadelphia DA's Office as well as our external partners for their advocacy and support to families and communities impacted by violence and trauma. It is the work of these victim services groups that continues to help our communities heal in 100 ways. I won't list them because we ain't got the time, but in 100 different ways. They help with our safety, they help with our freedom, they help with our healing. I am joined today by our partners in work among these nine external, contracted victim services providers.
They are special guests in my view and they are also absolutely essential to the work of the DA's Office and the work we do together for safety and freedom. I would like to briefly ask them -- well, ask them to briefly stand as we acknowledge their organizations and there are nine, so I'll go through them expeditiously. Northwest Victim Services, Anti-Violence Partnerships, Victim Witness Services of South Philadelphia, Women Organized Against Rape, now known as Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence, Concilio Central Division, Victim Services, Women Against Abuse, Northeast Victim Services Support Center for Child Advocates. ) DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: -- these nine. Inside your packets are letters from each of these organizations in support of our budget and in support of the work that we do together. We are very grateful for that work, and we hope that Council and we hope that Philadelphia in general understand the incredibly important close connection that we have with these groups. We sit here today 50 -- let me make sure I got my numbers right, 55 months into historic declines in violent crime. 55 months into improvements, and it's not just violent crime. It's also nonviolent crime. No, not every single crime down every single month. That's not real. 55 months and it hasn't stopped. This is an incredible achievement. And I don't think there's anyone, any group, any aspect, any factor that can claim to have done more than has been done by our nine external contractor victim services providers and the victim services providers within the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. And I thank you all for the work that you do to continue to help Philadelphia heal. If you're standing, you may be seated. And if you're not, then you're smart. Now, let us be clear and I think it is clear at this point, the idea was never just let everybody go. The idea was always that there were some minor crimes being overenforced and we needed to focus on the most serious crimes. We needed to take the limited resources. We continue to vigorously pursue appropriately lengthy consequences, serious consequences and accountability for offenders who harm others in ways that are serious, and we will always do that. We will also work however to be diligent in exonerating individuals who, in prior administrations or even in ours, were wrongfully convicted and innocent of a crime. It was always a double- edged sword. You're letting the guilty one go, you're emboldening the guilty one by putting away the innocent who weren't even there and don't even know what occurred. That is, in many ways, extremely important because it restores faith that we are trying to be fair, which unfortunately was not always the case. And it enforces the notion that it makes sense to engage the government, not to settle your things on the street, but to actually be willing to testify, to be willing to report the crime and to be willing to engage a system that tries very hard to be fair. These exonerees, these innocent people who sat in jail for the crimes of others, were always victims themselves and they are victims now. The families who were sold a bill of goods that Joe committed a crime when he didn't when Bill committed the crime, those families were victims of a system that was inaccurate, inefficient or didn't care about whether they got it right. And we do care that we get it right. We also remain steadfast in funding anti-violence community- based organizations. This, I know, is an issue of great interest to many of you, including of course Councilmember Gauthier, through the DAO's Violence Prevention Grant initiative in partnership with the Philadelphia Foundation. This money, of course, is money we're not allowed to use for our own salaries. We're not allowed to use really for our own purposes. This money by law must be put back into the communities from which it was extracted by drug dealers, by people who harmed other people.
This is money that comes from crime and goes back to try to heal that crime, and we continue to push that money back into the community. Next week, the DA's Office will announce nearly $500,000 in grant awards in support of community-based organizations that lead summer camps, mentoring programs, athletic programs geared toward providing safe spaces to Philadelphia's youth during the summer months, which we all know from a criminological perspective, are always the months when we need to be especially careful about safety. 5 million in grant awards to 501(c)(3) organizations that put boots on the ground and focus on violence prevention, violence intervention and violence interruption. And let me be clear, that money goes back to the communities it came out of. I love Chestnut Hill. I love Rittenhouse Square. It ain't going there. This money is going to the communities that have been most harmed, and that's how it's supposed to be. I want to affirm the professional, integral and hard work of our law enforcement in the City of Philadelphia, police officers and others who go to work every day, sometimes risk their lives while ensuring the public safety of the residents of Philadelphia. The DA's Office supports our law enforcement who are committed to integrity, service to community professionalism and modern community policing that constitute effective modern enforcement. We strive in every way to collaborate with the Office of Mayor Cherelle Parker, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and his executive team, Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal and her executive team, other local and state law enforcement, not to mention all of our federal partners, but I am now speaking of the city so I'll stick with that, as well as FOP Lodge 5 President Roosevelt Poplar, who's been a tremendous partner since he became the leadership of the FOP and his executive team. I want to thank you all again for the work each of you do daily to improve the criminal justice and to ensure the safety of our residents and to the collaboration that we enjoy or hope to improve so that we can do even better. As for the DAO's FY27 budget request, I want to take a moment once again to thank Mayor Parker, Council President Johnson, City Council, for your support of our FY26 request to launch the DAO's Cleaner and Greener Enforcement Unit, which has focused on the prosecution of quality-of- life crimes that are serious, like short-dumping. Assistant DA Teresa Benavides-Sexton, who previously was working in the Homicide Nonfatal Shooting Unit, has been working very closely with our partners in law enforcement in the investigation of new cases in this difficult area. We have also hired a Victim Witness coordinator Jada Rudisill, who has provided support to communities and victims that are impacted by these damaging crimes. Today I am testifying and respectfully requesting funding support above the FY26 proposed operating budget from Philadelphia City Council in the following amounts: And then I have a comment for you, because I know some people come in here and say, can I have $100 million and their prior budget is a third of that, okay. That's called bargaining. That's called tug of war. That's called I asked for a ton so give me some of it. We're not doing that this year. We're coming in with what is, in fact, a minimalist request of what we absolutely need in order to continue to do this. And I will be the first to admit that might not have been what I did in 2018 or 2019, but some lessons are learned. The lesson here is that I understand how serious you are about trying to get this right and I understand that we are in a time of some concern about austerity, due in part to the federal government. Well, we are coming in for what we need. We're not coming in here for everything we want. Now, on the other hand if you have everything we want, we'll take that too, let me be clear. But these numbers represent not a starting point.
I hope it represents a request that our partners here and also the Mayor's Office will meet. 25 million for witness relocation. 5, which is actually $3,417,833 is for us. It's for payroll, which is 90% of our budget. It's for our people. The other two amounts, in fact, don't go to us. The $1 million in Class 200 is for nine external contracted victim services providers who are here and who need that. City Council answered that need to a good extent last year after 15 years of not answering it, and we are very grateful for that. But I'm just going to be direct. It wasn't enough. They need more and we need them to have more because they are such close collaborators. 25 million that we are requesting in continued support of the DAO's Witness Relocation program doesn't go to us. It's timely and it's critical. An essential role that we play as law enforcement and prosecutors is to protect and ensure the safety of witnesses and victims who are being harassed, threatened, bullied as a result of their cooperation and participation in prosecution. Funding relocation doesn't go in our pockets. It goes for those expenses. And it makes it possible for us to prosecute some of the most dangerous people who are out there. It makes it possible for people to want to come forward. It makes it possible for witnesses who are reluctant to say, I can get over that reluctance because I know that you're going to protect us. So that million in Class 200, not really going to us, not going to our employees, not going to fund things we need. 25 not going to us, going to protect others. What is going to us is the 3,417,833 in Class 100. And of course, the crucial question is for what, what you going to spend it on, why do you want it? Well, in many ways those requests are based upon your priorities, and I say that to the Whole of Council, your priorities and the Mayor's priorities that have been clearly expressed by you, but also by your and our constituents. It goes to a group of areas that we think are vital. I will tick them off and then I'll talk briefly about each one. The first is expanding the work of the DAO's Gun Violence Task Force. That's Fritze sitting over here. Number two -- I mean, he's not going to keep the money, but that's the work. You're not going to keep it, right, Bill? He's not going to keep it. He's from Michigan. They don't do that stuff. Launching the DAO's Repeat Domestic Violence Offender Unit. And that goes to Katrina Wadas, but she's not going to keep that money either. Then there is information technology support. I know it's not the most exciting topic, but trust me, it's absolutely essential. And I will explain to you, and David Benson will help me explain to you, what it would mean for a DA's Office not to have email anymore. Imagine if that happened in your office. What it would mean for us not to have the ability to pass discovery with our new electronic discovery system, which is Axon, what it would mean if we can't do closing arguments because we can't use PowerPoint anymore. What does it mean if we can't Word Process so we can't write motions anymore. I mean, come on now. That's kind of silly, right. So that is one of our requests. We have raised this flag a couple times, but we are at a precipice. As of July, I don't want to say we're going home, because we would never do that. But I do want to say I guess we'll be writing with a pen, because I don't know what else we're going to do unless that need is met. And I know you understand its importance. And the fourth issue is strengthening investigations and prosecution for crimes committed against seniors. Now, I must admit this is a little selfish because I just turned 65. So I've joined the category of people who need our protection. All right. But it's important, our seniors did a lot for us and we need to make sure we're doing what we can for them. As to these four areas, let me start out talking about the DAO's Gun Violence Task Force.
We just had a press conference this morning. Gun Violence Task Force, with the help of state agents and our local and federal partners, including Philadelphia Police does tremendous work. Today was not their greatest achievement, but it's an important achievement. A man in Roxborough who is 6105, meaning he's a felon and he's not allowed to possess any firearm, he had of them. He was manufacturing silencers. Okay. Silencers have been illegal to own in the United States since about 1936 because Al Capone wanted to run around and shoot people to death with them. They serve no 9 lawful purpose whatsoever. They are especially useful for what? For mass shootings. Yeah, we need him arrested, we need him charged and we need him off the street. That's important. He was running essentially a little firearm shop where he would manufacture these things. And as our investigation continues, we'll see for whom and for what. But I think probably the most significant achievement of this Gun Violence Task Force is that it has gone from being an entity that was well-known for stopping illegal sales of guns, this was often a process of gangsters, victimizing women who were within their control to go buy guns that these gangsters would then use for gangster stuff. That's what it was. And that is a worthy project, but it was not a unit that was dismantling for good, big chunks or all of shooting groups. Some of these shooting groups have been around for decades. They can't even remember the reason that the shooting started. And yet for decades, they have continued to shoot each other, kill each other, terrorize neighborhoods. And whenever somebody got out, one way or the other, let's just say the penitentiary or the cemetery, someone young would step up. To my knowledge, and I'm almost 40 years in, this is the first Administration where we have been able, with a lot of support from Council, a lot of support in state funding, where we have been able to take a much more modern approach that does deep-dive investigations of actual shooters, of actual shooting groups. These investigations are heavily based upon forensics. And that's why we have been able to communicate to young people by saying things like YBC, and this was requested by the mother of a victim. YBC doesn't mean young bag chasers anymore. It means you've been charged -- actually you've been convicted is what it means. That's why we were able to say these things. That's why these things got to Tiktok, because it became a topic of conversation among young people who are constantly being tempted by portrayals of violence that glorify the violence and the lifestyle. It's why we were able to get there. These are just some of the groups in South Philadelphia, in the Northwest that have been, in part or in whole, dismantled: 31st Street, 27th Street, CCK, PNB, 02DA4, YBC. You've heard these, because there were busts that involved 30 shootings, 3 homicides, 12 people, 19 people, people. 14 It makes a difference when we shut 15 down whole shooting groups, and even the criminology around the locations where this occurs shows these drastic drops in shootings and murders that occur within that area for a very long period of time. It has truly made a difference. Well, you know, as is common, there was funding for the Gun Violence Task Force. It was a good idea, but it doesn't always go on forever and we need to make sure that this work goes on forever. Because this is the work that is going to reap incredible benefits in terms of Philly going from being known as chronically violent to going to being known as consistently safe. This is what's going to drive up property values, and not in a bad way, not in a way that is predatory. For those who live here, drive up property values, increase revenues. Every dollar that goes into this is going to come back 10 to 1, 10 to 1.
And that's not even when we talk about the psychological effect on Philadelphians in knowing that they're not going to have to keep their kids away from the window and keep them inside all night, every night, which is kind of how it felt at some points at the worst of the pandemic. That is our Gun Violence Task Force. I encourage any and all of you call me anytime. We will give you a tour. We will show you the effective use of license plate readers, the effective use of cameras all over the city, the effective use of social media analysts, the effective use of machines that crack open cell phones and produce maybe the most abundant source of criminal investigative material that we have seen since the beginning of DNA. We'll show you how all of this works together and why our federal partners, the FBI, ATF, why the Philadelphia police, are all coming in the front door with our blessing to work with us on how we can do this. We'll show you the incredibly effective work of the state agents who work with our Philadelphia DAO attorneys on these cases. And I know that those issues obviously are of extremely high interest to the entire Council, but also to Council President Johnson, to Public Safety Chair Jones, to Councilmember Phillips, to Councilmember Bass, among so many others. Repeat Domestic Violence Offender Unit, our second point, you called a hearing, we came and we made a commitment to you at that time. Once again, it really is a positive process when we do this. We made three commitments. The first one was to do additional training, and that was requested by Councilmember Phillips. Well, we're doing it. We have elevated someone who is essentially a full-time trainer. She is here and, that is, Erica Vanden -- I'm not going to do it again, am I -- Vandenekart. There we go. That's Erica Vandenekart. Instead of having a weekly meeting for all the supervisors, we now have one a month. And the other meeting occurs in units. We go unit by unit to train. I go myself. There's other training as well, but I go myself to make sure not only that the training covers the policies, but that any adjustments in the policies that are being suggested by the line attorneys are considered so that we can try to make sure our policies line up. And thank you for that suggestion. A second commitment that we made was to follow a model from the gun violence days. We take the new DV cases, new domestic violence cases. We sit down with our partners in the Philadelphia Police Department. We have in the room 4 Women Against Abuse, and we looked at the new cases as a roadmap for how we can do better with these cases. It worked extremely well when we did it with gun violence. We're following that same process here. Those meetings started out weekly. They may, much like the gun violence meetings, become biweekly or monthly at some point. But the lessons we learn from actual cases are much better than the ideas we have in the abstract. And the third commitment we made, the only one of the three that requires additional funding, because we did the other two with no additional funding, is for a special unit where we can have our more senior, more experienced attorneys under the leadership of Katrina Wadas who's sitting here, we can have them take the case from beginning to end, use their expertise, make sure the representation is consistent, because these experienced attorneys take it from beginning to end. We can have the specialized investigators that we need to do these cases. And simply put, we can do what you asked us to do and what we always wanted to do, which is do better. The third thing is information technology. I know that this is an issue of interest to all of you, but perhaps especially to Councilmember Landau and Councilmember Squilla, who are the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee on Tech. I'm going to ask Dave Benson to talk for me for a minute. I've already mentioned to you we need our email. We need these other basic office systems.
In an era when communications is king, our systems have to be able to communicate with other systems and we have to be able to move in modern ways within this system. But I am going to ask Mr. Benson to be available to you for any questioning on these topics, because there's a cliff. That cliff is called July. And if we don't have funding by the time we get to that cliff, we're all going to go over and none of us wants that. And then finally, with reference to strengthening investigations and prosecution for crimes against seniors, a topic of interest I'm sure to all of you. But let me also mention Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore, Richardson, Kendra Brooks, along with Jim Harrity, is on the Committee that takes special interest in Intergenerational Affairs as well as Aging. Let me say that we all understand the importance, especially in a time when a city known for its very high homeownership and that homeownership's relevance for generational wealth, especially at a time when there is a targeting, there is a weaponization of technology against human emotion that has, among others, targeted seniors. I don't feel like being a target. Now that I got my AARP card for 10 years, I don't feel like being a target. And I don't think anybody else who's had that card as long as I have or longer should be either. I think it's incredibly important that we address that. My final remarks here, which I promise will be briefer than what I've done so far, I just want to end today's testimony where I began. One of our very top priorities is to ensure that every survivor, co-survivor and community impacted by crime knows that the DA's Office is seeking justice in their case and is supporting them throughout the prosecutorial process and in many instances throughout the investigation. That support comes in many forms, including the advocacy and work of the DAO's CARES Unit, this is the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement for Survivors Unit, that provides specialized services to the families of homicide victims in the first 45 days, the advocacy and work of our Victim Services and Relocations Unit, and last but never least, very importantly the advocacy work of the nine external victim services agencies contracted to provide specific support to witnesses and crime victims. And they are one more time, Northwest Victim Services, Victim Services of South Philadelphia, Anti-Violence Partnership, Women Organized Against Rape now known as Philadelphia's Center Against Sexual Violence, Women Against Abuse, Northeast Victim Services, let me see -- okay, Central Victim Services and the Support Center for Child Advocates. Thank you once again for the incredibly important work that you do. And I wish to thank you, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Appropriations Chair Mark Squilla and the entire Council of the Whole for the opportunity to present at today's hearing. My team and I are here to answer any questions you may have at this time.
Thank you very much. Just a couple of small questions before I turn it over to my members. I want to go into the Gun Violence Task Force. Not receiving $500,000 from the state, it has an impact on your operations. I want you to kind of give us an overview of what that will impact as it relates to your overall operations. I want to get an idea also on how the use of the grand jury investigations play a role into how you're going after individuals who are carrying guns and wreaking havoc on our City of Philadelphia. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: There's a lot I can say, but I think I've already said a lot. With your permission, I would like to ask Chief Fritze to talk about it a little bit. And then I may have a comment at the end.
Good afternoon, Council President, Councilmembers. William Fritze for the record. Council President, we receive a total of $1.6 million from the state. $14 million is awarded by the state for the Joint and Local Task Force. There's only one in the state. The way the fiscal code is written, $8 million comes to Philadelphia. And out of that, the City of Philadelphia through the fiscal code is only allowed to get 20%, so 1.6 million out of that 14 comes to us to support not only the DA's Office, but over time, with the Firearms Identification Unit, and that's been as of 2022. So we used state funding as well as a one-time grant of $20 million, and that grant allowed us to expand and create a $15 million digital evidence lab here in the City of Philadelphia, it allowed us to give equipment to the police department for their license plate readers, for their cell phone cracking technology for their cell site, location information, anything you can think of digitally. Without that funding, each year about $1.6 million we're in a deficit for because we have to pay for license renewals for that equipment. So if we don't continue to get funding or any matching funding from the state, the ability to map cell phone towers for the City of Philadelphia, all of them, because we pay for all of the police department, will no longer happen. You won't know where a defendant is. The cell phone equipment, we have machines. We 6 give two to the police department. 7 Those won't be cracking any phones. 8 The license plate reader, we were 9 able to install some of the 10 equipment for the city and also pay 11 for OIT to install them. We won't 12 be able to do any of that in the future either. So basically, the unit shuts down, the digital forensics lab. And again, that was a $15 million investment. So we're asking for 1.6 to keep the lights on and keep the software going. When we look at the grand jury investigation and how that works, we use that digital evidence, right. People tell on themselves a lot. And I think you can see the effects of that. If you go to 31st and Tasker, right, that that corner store is no longer a corner store. It's Korea Taqueria, right. And the park down at 30th Street, 30th and Tasker, that's where our gang members from 31st and Tasker used to sit with their guns out on the picnic tables. And now, you have little leaguers out there playing T-ball on the weekends. So a drastic change. So what we're doing is we use that digital evidence, gives us a lead. And then we use the power of the grand jury, the members of our community who are fed up with this, and they're hearing all this evidence and they're hearing about all of these people who are involved and they're taking 1% -- .1%, I'm sorry, not even 1% of the community that we're arresting, and we're getting extremely long sentences on those individuals because we're arresting them not for one crime they committed, but for the shootings 5 they committed, and we're doing it 6 all at once. 7 And so, we've seen a 8 drastic reduction. I think even 9 our numbers from the police 10 department had us down 52% in the 17th Police District. It was the lowest number in six years that they had seen, and that had continued after the grand jury. As a result, the University of Penn has embedded a researcher within the unit to figure out if our grand jury system can be a model throughout the country. But that is how we're using the digital forensics lab and then using the grand jury process. But really, I think it's allowing the community to come in and actually see what's going on and making those decisions and help us make those decisions to get the right people.
Okay. This year you and your team, from my notes, aim to double the number of phones extracting and analyze and complete grand jury investigations for 11 2026. What performance metrics 12 will be used to measure the success 13 of these goals? And how will they 14 correlate to reductions in gun 15 violence?
So I think -- it's easy for us to kind of look at these and give you a report back. So each time we do a grand jury investigation, anything that we're doing at the task force we're already obligated by the state to respond back to our funding and tell them exactly what we've done. We would be able to look at time of incarceration and the length that the case can go through the system by using digital forensics, we can see that it's a faster process as a result. We can also look at shooting reductions in the neighborhoods of what we've affected and the spillover from those neighborhoods based on the crime data that we currently have, and we can account for every single cell phone that comes into the city. We pay for it's called Guardian, and we pay for that account so we know exactly what phone is being extracted and what phone is being used within the court system. We know that we've doubled each year the amount of phones. I think we're now at 2600 phones that we brought in. So we'll be able to account for anything that this Council asks us for, for any usage of money.
When you talk about the work that the task force is doing, how do we ensure that investigations into firearms trafficking and straw purchases lead to successful prosecutions and long-term reductions in gun violence going after those that sell guns to our kids?
So I think a big part of what we see with straw purchasing is that if we can bring those individuals in who are doing the straw purchasing, right, those are usually the people that are being taken advantage of, they face mandatory minimum sentences for each gun they purchase, beginning with 5 to 10 years of incarceration. And we're able to bring those individuals in and talk to them and make those connections of where they sent that gun and then arrest those individuals as a result. So we're able to reduce crime again and again and again as a result of that. If we see an increase in the purchase of firearms or the transfer of firearms within the City of Philadelphia, you can rest guaranteed that we will use the grand jury or any other investigative technology in order to increase the amount of guns recovered from those areas. Just like today, right, 16 guns recovered. We're going to look at every single one of those guns. We're going to find out where he bought them from or who supplied them to him. And a big component of that is that cell phone that we recovered from him today, it's going to tell us a lot of information. But we're going to be able to continue to chip away at the amount of guns recovered within the city and also chip away at those who are making money off of the sale of those firearms.
All right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate your dedication on that particular area, which is near and dear to me as it relates to keeping guns out of the hands of young people and making our city much safer. So with that being said, the Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips, then Councilmember Jim Harrity.
Thank you, Council President. So I want to begin by thanking the District Attorney because we were able to work together on an initiative in the Northeast section of our district in Lawncrest that's going to really impact us with addressing illegal dumping. So I want to say thank you for that. I also want to thank --
Member Phillips, could you speak into the microphone please.
Also, I want to thank you for just being able to answer a question that I had, that was actually the first question I had for today. I'm glad that we see changes around how we're supporting our ADAs to make sure that they have the same grit, tenacity and thoughtfulness as their leader, as you, so I think that's really important. So I just had a question, a couple questions. We're spending over $13 million on outside counsel when it comes to -- yeah, what types of cases require outside firms versus internal handling? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, thank you for your kind words. I suspect you're referring primarily to outside cases, outside counsel in civil matters; is that what you mean?
Yes. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Through the Solicitor's Office, because obviously there are court-appointed criminal counsel who are absolutely necessary in the system due to conflicts among criminal defendants. But I think what we're talking about now are situations where the City Solicitor's Office due to conflict or some other important reason cannot represent everyone who is involved as a defendant or as a plaintiff, usually a defendant because it's usually the city being sued or some subpart of the city being sued. In general, those will be situations where there is a conflict. It will be situations where one attorney cannot properly represent multiple different entities because those different entities either are factually in a different place or have defenses that contradict. I can't say whether that's a good number or a bad number in terms of what the City Solicitor does. I'm not in that room. It's not my specialty. And obviously Renee Garcia, with whom we work and have worked in the past, is probably better-positioned to do that. But I will say that, especially in government, it gets quite complicated because the City Solicitor's Office works very closely with the Mayor. There may be moments when elected officials are not placed in exactly the same position as the Mayor, and I don't say that to cast shade on anyone. That's just our legal system. There may be times when a particular city entity wants to do things and the Mayor's Office feels differently about who should have control over that, and that presents a natural, reasonable conflict that requires having different counsel, but also just at the individual level. For example, in an area that I do know pretty well, which is 42 U.S. Code, Section 1983 lawsuits against law enforcement, allegedly for a violation of the civil rights of a civilian. It's a common type of lawsuit. When that occurs, you may have a police commissioner who thinks that what the police officer did was just right. You may have a police commissioner who thinks that what the officer did was dead wrong or it may be somewhere in the middle. So there will be instances, depending on whether that individual police officer and the commissioner are on the same page. There will be instances where separate counsel is required, but there will be other instances where everyone's on the same and a single counsel can serve for all of them.
Thank you for that clarification. I just wanted to make sure that we were using as many internal resources as possible, so that was good clarification. Also, I've been on the theme of responsive government with every agency in the City of Philadelphia. I do want to say that through your work with G. Lamar Stewart, who's been really helpful for a lot of us on Council, and a lot of your ADAs and folks have been supported, so I want to say thank you to him --
I think he's saying that because they both go to -- well, Enon is in his district and got this whole Northwest Philadelphia thing going on. Mt. Airy, West Oak Lane and all that type stuff.
Enon is a great church. Well, I also want to thank the DA for his responsiveness as well, but in terms of efficiency and also helping neighbors understand the role the DA's Office plays in the city, I was wondering if we can perhaps get a service level agreement on the following, just all of the things that the DA's Office offers beyond prosecution that communities and families can take advantage of, such as the grants that you have to offer, the grant program, how to access that. If there could be a one-pager, it could be distributed to especially our office, but all of Council offices. Maybe a one-pager on some of the youth diversion programs so people can understand how tax dollars are being utilized. But I just want to be able to say, hey, the District Attorney's Office is doing some incredible work. If you want to access these services or things that they have, you need any support. Here is a one- or two-pager on all those things and also just a one-pager describing from requests to finish how you get those things? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, the short answer is absolutely. I think it's a wonderful point. People need to know that their government is working for them. They need to know what opportunities exist. And in electronic era, it's so easy to do that at no additional taxpayer cost. So, yes, we'd be delighted to do that. However, I have a subject matter expert here to comment a little further on it.
Hi. My name is Amanda Rivera. I'm the Assistant Director of the Community Engagement Unit at the DAO, so I can answer that question. So as community engagement, we do a lot of things in the community. We go to schools all around the City of Philadelphia. We do a number of things. Sometimes it's a reactive thing where a student unfortunately has been killed, we go to the school, we offer different things in conjunction with the principals. Sometimes we do healing circles with the kids. Other times we are just sort of there as support, somebody that they can talk to. Other times it's not as sad, which is wonderful, and we just come on a regular basis to the schools. We also go to senior centers in the community. A lot of the senior center work is times when we try to help them not to become victims of crime. So we talk to the seniors about scams. We talk to them about deed theft, house fraud, those kinds of things. And just spending time with our seniors is really nice and they're always really interested in what the DAO does. We also do a lot of --
That's what exactly I would love for you to do. I would love for you to put all of those great services that you do into a nice well-designed one-pager, so I can say to a senior, the DA's Office helps with deed --
Deed theft, excuse me. You help to support school assemblies. I can pass it out to our principals. Because you said, it's just not reactionary to go to schools. You could do it proactively as well. So just finding ways to collaborate in that nature. I just think you all do great work. And then a lot of the community organizations are always like we need money, we need money. And I wish there was a way which I can say, here are the open dates for the DA's Office, everything in a one-pager. Not I can't get them pages' of worth 11 of stuff. A flyer here, a flyer 12 here. If I can get a snapshot, 13 that'd be good too. 14
Thank you, District Attorney. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for your service as always. Just a couple questions. Your office put out a press release praising AMP Court's success. What has changed your opinion since last year? And I've been talking about the need to expand AMP Court every budget cycle. I think we should have two judges and two courtrooms to accommodate the number of cases. Can you tell me your thoughts on this? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think our position has ever really changed. We've always been big supporters of AMP Court. We continue to be very big supporters of AMP Court. As with all diversionary programs, we try to look to best practices to see in what ways they can evolve, whether it's drug treatment court, which is incredibly important or it's AMP Court. But I can tell you that the criminological results for AMP Court and the report that we released say that it's a success, that it works, that going from a couple days a week to five days a week makes a lot of sense. We are at a moment -- I don't want to speak for the courts, but I know for a fact where we have come to a moment when there are more judges available than there used to be in the Municipal Court, maybe not in the Court of Common Pleas, I'm not sure, but certainly we are better off in terms of the availability of judges. I'm not the one, I think, to determine whether there should be two judges doing AMP Court or three or eight or one, but I will say that we are vigorous supporters of carefully, carefully applied diversionary programs. A lot of what happened previously, I think was confusing to people, and this is a good thing, the police started to do their own prearrest diversion. When you do prearrest diversion, which can be a very good thing, it means fewer cases come into the system that are exactly the kinds of cases that would go to AMP. Some people I think honestly misinterpreted this as being why are there fewer cases in AMP. There are fewer cases in AMP because there was a different diversionary program that existed before people got charged. There are some changes with that. I don't control what the police do before an arrest, but I am delighted to deal with whatever comes to us by way of an arrest. So whatever that flow of cases is, small, big or middle, we are always going to support diversion where it's appropriate, where it works. No, we're not going to be putting the members of YBC into AMP. No, we're not going to be putting the members of YBC into some sort of gun diversion. That's not real. We're going to be taking people who either have walked the straight path or can walk that straight path again and who are not committing crimes that are incredibly damaging to their neighbors. We're going to be putting those people in there. I know you, Councilmember Harrity, well enough, and I say this respectfully to know how deeply you care about things like addressing people's addiction issues, addressing people's mental health issues, addressing people's unrelenting poverty issues. You live in a place where all of these things are in front of you. You can see them as you walk out your front door. So I just want you to understand that consistent with our reform approach, consistent with our progressive approach is, and always was, that we want to focus on the worst offenders. We want to catch them. We want them there to be a consequence. We want them to be separated from society as needed. But there's a whole lot of people who used to go straight to jail who needed to be in diversion. And now that we are doing that, we are much safer for it.
Okay. I'll respect the clock. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Mr. DA. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much, sir. Councilmember -- real quick I want to acknowledge Laquisha Anthony new Executive of WOAR, Woman Organized Against Rape. I remember when she first really started doing this work so I want to congratulate you on your new position as well as Tone Barr, who represents Philadelphia Masjid, community leader out in Southwest Philadelphia. But also Alison Sprague, South Philadelphia, she runs Victim Witness Services. We've been doing this work for a long time, way before I became elected official, since I started as a public safety liaison for State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams. And so, to all the advocate groups that are on the front line doing this work day-in and day-out, I attribute the majority of the reductions in gun violence that we have seen based upon the investments -- it's a collaborative approach with all of us, but we haven't always in the City of Philadelphia invested on our boots-on-the-ground organizations. And so, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that. And it was G. Lamar early on who came to us in a couple of our hearings and said, why don't we talk about prevention, right. And Larry followed up, why we don't talk about doing something different. Because mass incarceration obviously wasn't the way out of it. And I don't mind saying for the record under Lynn Abrams and Ryan Castille were two tough as nails, so to speak, hard- on-crime district attorneys, the homicide rate was like 500-plus. It's the early '90s. We had the JBM, Jamaican Shower Posse gangs running the street of Philadelphia, crack epidemic, right, and obviously that approach didn't get us anywhere. And I think even now we have more serious issues because we didn't have the proliferation of guns in the street and our young people having access to those guns, but we're doing something right. And so, I just wanted to acknowledge that for the record. Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad, then Councilmember Jamie Gauthier.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon. Good to hear so much progress being made. I had a question about how the DA's Office ensures that they're prosecuting actual perpetrators of human trafficking and not the victims? We have heard from our partners in the human trafficking awareness space that often victims of trafficking are revictimized by being prosecuted for crimes like prostitution while the traffickers and the johns walk free. And just to be clear, we're defining those who are trafficked as individuals who are forced, coerced or defrauded into engaging in commercial sex acts for the profit of traffickers. So I wanted to understand that space and how we're ensuring that those who are so-called prostitutes are not caught in the system if they're deemed to be those to be trafficked? And then I have a follow-up. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, thank you for the question, Councilmember Ahmad. As you know, we have had private conversations about this and we have also been together at public events that are built around the city's public education program relating to trafficking and relating to the reality that with all the special events occurring in Philadelphia, we are likely to see what has happened around the world historically, which is a big influx of traffickers who will be using and abusing women, among others, for the purpose of making money. And there is information indicating some of those victimized people who are being trafficked are younger than ever, that the money that is flowing is flowing in ways that are electronic and is flowing in ways that can be spotted through the effective use of law enforcement capacity that is there. I'm going to turn this over in just a moment to our Chief of the Family Violence Sexual Assault Unit, Katrina Wadas, who has also been with us in these spaces. But I want you to know this, I am not here to tell traffickers what's coming. But I am here to say something is coming, that there are meetings that are happening right now among people in law enforcement involving sources of information that perhaps weren't previously connected, with the idea not just of the public education, which is crucial, it's crucial, because it lifts up witnesses who see something that doesn't look right, it provides the kind of information that can have tremendous effects and it also just makes it much harder for these criminals to conduct their business and victimize the people that they victimize. But I am here to say that I would like Philadelphia not only to be studied for its achievements in other areas, I'd like it to be studied for its achievements in catching traffickers in the year 2026. I would like to see that the information that's been out there for 10 or 20 years gathered internationally about how this business is conducted, I would like to see that that bears fruit in terms of the clearest message there can be to prevent crime, which is people like you get caught. If we can catch them before they get on their planes and go to wherever, if we can hold them accountable here -- and by them, no, I do not mean the people who are trafficked. My position from the very beginning in 2018, and it caused quite a bit of controversy at the time, has always been you do not go after the people who are trafficked. They are victims. You go after the people who use them, who exploit them, who harm them in so many different ways. So I share your values on this issue. I think public education, simply put, is really much more for you, that's for you and your colleagues. I'll support it any way I can. But enforcement is for me. And I'm very hopeful that through meetings that are not public, that are private and rightly so, that we will be able to not only lift up the issue in ways that are helpful to the enforcement, but we will be able to lift up the enforcement in a way that supports deterrence and public messaging --
So I want to do a point of information also along the same line of questioning. I know a lot of times your approach is also to look at the big picture and not just the picture from a microlens standpoint. And on the same line of questioning just for additional information with Dr. Nina Ahmad, when we talk about trafficking, do you and your team have any strategies that look at some of the video game apps such as Tiktok, such as Roblox, right, where we see a lot of human trafficking taking place and those major companies -- well, in the City of Philadelphia we haven't really targeted them as they're going after them, but I have seen research in other states that have made it a priority to figure out ways on how we hold those types of companies accountable, because there's no 8 safeguards and they think that you can come on these social media apps when children are playing and all types of things happen where kids are trafficked and kids are groomed. And so, any thought process around that as it relates to specifically the line of questioning of Dr. Nina Ahmad, especially as we deal with 2026 and we're going to have people all around the world converging into this city and then you have these creeps trying to go after children? So I just want to get an idea has there been any thought process? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Council President, this is a perfect segue to our Chief of FBSA, Family Violence Sexual Assault, Katrina Wadas, who has taught me about some of the issues you just raised and who has been working in the area of enforcement against trafficking for quite some time. So I'm just going to let her say smarter things than I would probably say.
Good afternoon, Council. Thank you both for your questions. As the DA stated, my name is Katrina Wadas. I'm the supervisor of Family Violence and Sexual Assault at the DA's Office. You bring up a great point about trafficking in the space of social media and other gaming platforms. I know Council just addressed just a week ago -- unfortunately, I was not able to attend. However, I do have special interest in that -- and we absolutely see that in cases that we are actively prosecuting in the DA's Office. That is an area of trafficking that's often times overlooked. Holding accountable the platforms is something that I hope that legislation is put in place as it pertains to creating more safeguards for our children that are on these platforms. However, right now what we're doing in the DA's Office is actively prosecuting the people on the other line of those gaming systems, on the other line of those social media platforms, the individual defendants who are actively reaching out and doing online grooming. Those are the cases that we're actively prosecuting. We do see it amongst platforms, not just gaming systems, but social media platforms such as Snapchat, Tiktok, Discord, Telegram, to name a few, those are all platforms in which we have active cases currently and that we're vigorously prosecuting individuals who use those platforms to facilitate crimes of grooming against our children. Usually the crime that's associated would be unlawful contact with a minor. That's the codified crime for the offenses that we're talking about, and that's something that we're actively prosecuting across the board in our unit. To go back to the question as it pertains to human trafficking and prosecuting prostitution as an offense, I have not seen a meaningful prosecution of the charge of prostitution in a very long time. Since transitioning to Family Violence and Sexual Assault almost a decade ago, to that specialty unit, our unit does not prosecute the crime of prostitution. There used to be a time when prostitution was charged and was often times diverted, and there was actually a special diversionary program for prostitution offenses. However, often times now with policy changes and with better oversight of the Charging Unit in our office, I'm often times seeing more charges of prosecution or prostitution that come in that are actually declined. So instead of charging, arresting, having a criminal record for an individual for the offense of prostitution, we're actually not even getting there. We're often times declining those charges for a number of reasons.
Council President, I'm going to add a quick follow-up. So I hear you. But are you being able to prosecute traffickers and the johns and number two, those who you're not prosecuting who potentially would have been prosecuted as prostitutes, are they still being diverted to get support and some sort of ability to leave this space? Because we have a lot of other agencies, so I wondered what sort of connection you have or maybe this might be a police issue if they're not getting prosecuted at all or maybe your charging unit can send folks -- I just want to make sure we break that loop and put people together with resources.
So as far as charging, if they do decline a case, it is not often the practice that the chargers would then reach out and make any efforts to provide resources. I do believe that if it's going to be a declined case, that's something that usually PPD would be in the best position to then connect that individual with resources. But absolutely to your first question about are we prosecuting trafficking, yes, we have active cases in the DA's Office now awaiting trial for human trafficking. So that's absolutely offenses. I believe we have one trial coming up in May and one in June for individuals identified as human traffickers.
And those numbers would be reflected in the quality of life? Is that where we would see those numbers? I just want to get a number on what we are doing last year, this year or anything in comparison as to the focus has shifted and we're all paying attention to this now. So I wanted to see if there's a commensurate increase in what you're seeing in prosecutions. So I'd love to get that number.
Yes. I can tell you about the two that I just mentioned, which are the two active trials that we have. I know that there's also active investigations still with PPD. But as far as active cases within Family Violence and Sexual Assault, there are two active human trafficking cases currently charged and awaiting trial.
And finally before I go, any prosecutions or any work done on the gaming platforms? And we missed you at our hearing. We'll follow up after. It was a very, very informative hearing for us. But I would like to know is any work going on in that space in your office?
I would say absolutely as it pertains to social media platforms. Roblox is not one that I often see, although I know it does get a lot of attention for very good reason. But as far as the social media platforms, there are. I could pull numbers for you at another time if you'd like. But absolutely, the social media platforms is most prevalent and most often times what we see in our unit for our cases.
Thank you so much. We would love those numbers. Because then we can share with our public that we're moving dollars into these spaces and this is the impact and this is what we're doing about, so we have to complete that loop, particularly for us to say how we are allocating dollars. So thank you very much. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you. Member Gauthier, then Member Jones.
Yes. Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, DA Krasner, to you and your team. I want to start by commending you and your team for all of the hard work that you have done around gun violence. I started here in 2020 where we were just in such a different environment than we are today. And I know that we spent a lot of time during this hearing talking about your good work and talking about our collective efforts. But in general, I don't think you get enough credit on an everyday basis for the work that you've done to help us get to such a stark decrease in our shooting and homicide numbers. You have not taken this approach of spreading law enforcement resources all over the place indiscriminately. You've been a champion for focusing on the most violent offenses, for stopping the cycle of violence. And in West and Southwest Philly in particular, I've appreciated the work of stopping the shootings that were happening among all of these different street groups. I mean, these groups were terrorizing West and Southwest Philadelphia. And you all, particularly through the Gun Violence Task Force led by Chief Fritze, have put a halt to that behavior. And I also want to credit your efforts around violence prevention, particularly the efforts led by G. Lamar Stewart. But to your whole team, thank you very much. That being said, Council, just like the DA's Office, never loses sight of the fact that even one shooting is one shooting too many. And in West Philly, I've seen just kind of an alarming uptick in shootings over the past couple of weeks, in particular. And so, in the wake of the shootings that have happened around the 60th Street area, what is your office doing proactively to make sure that gun violence does not spike again this summer? Another thing that's concerning to me are sort of rumors that I've heard that these shootings are connected to street group activity. And so, what's your understanding of that? And what can we do to get ahead of a situation where we're again kind of experiencing a war between these different factions bringing so much violence to our neighborhoods? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember Gauthier, thank you so much for that question. Very quickly, obviously step 1 is prevention, which you have championed as have many others here and my office has championed, which has tremendous impact. And the reality is that it is those neighbors, it is those coaches who are uncompensated. It is those neighborhood leaders who look out for the kids on the block who have had a tremendous impact. That part's easy to talk about. The other part of course is not prevention, but enforcement. It's modern enforcement. And, yes, GVTF, Gun Violence Task Force, deserves tremendous credit, so does our Homicide Nonfatal Shooting Unit, which has been extremely effective in ways that we have not gotten into today. But if you actually look at how good they are at convicting, at improving investigations, at bringing in proper, just outcomes, they have had a tremendous impact as well. And Jeff Hojnowski is here. He is the co-chief of the Homicide Unit, as he has been now for a number of weeks. He is here as well. To the extent he wants to add some commentary, I invite him to come forward. But I'm going to turn the mic over to Bill Fritze. Because as you know, when an investigation is very active, when there is the possibility, I say the possibility, of secret grand jury proceedings, there's what we can say and what we cannot say, we will always try to say as much as we can because the public deserves to know and you deserve to know as a member of Council, but there may be certain things we can't talk about. So I'm going to ask Mr. Fritze to do what he does well, which is say as much as he can, and not to say what he shouldn't.
I could just say no comment, right. You know, we made a promise -- William Fritze, Chief of the Gun Violence Task Force. We made a promise a while ago when we went to West Philadelphia in the first grand jury that we weren't going anywhere. We haven't left there. You are, right, there are some groups out there that are still going back and forth. Without giving too much information, right, I can say the groups that we all know or the names that we've all heard, North Side, South Side, right, Christy Rec, we've got the Elmwood corridor, so we are in that area. We know that there's probably some back and forth between some individuals. We constantly are monitoring it in the ways that we monitor, but we're also working with the city's GVI program, right. So if we see something ahead of time that we can get ahead of, then we're going to make a referral over there. Because while we do our investigations, our investigations take a little while, right. And then if we have any information on cases as they're coming in, where it might be group related or anything else, what we will be doing is either adopting those matters ourselves to prosecute or we will inform the Homicide Nonfatal Shooting Unit or whatever unit has the case, that that individual is likely group connected and might be somebody of interest that is causing some problems in the neighborhood. So we are actively in that area of the city and we will remain active there until there are no more problems in West Philadelphia.
Thank you. Go ahead. Did you have something else, DA Krasner. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I just wanted to give Jeff Hojnowski, who is running the Homicide Nonfatal Shooting Unit, at this time I want to give him an opportunity to add anything he thinks he can add without spilling too many beans.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Councilmembers. Jeff Hojnowski. I'm, I guess, Acting Supervisor for the Homicide Nonfatal Unit. Just want to add a little bit about the collaboration that we have with our unit and the Gun Violence Unit. Maybe in Administrations past there was more of a rift between the two units. They kind of worked independently of one another. Under Mr. Krasner, I know in recent years the units have kind of worked together more to help solve a lot of the gun violence that happened in all throughout the City of Philadelphia, not in any particular area. Especially members of our Nonfatal Unit have worked with analysts -- I know I've worked on homicide cases with analysts in that Gun Violence Unit to help solve cases, to help prosecute cases successfully. So that collaboration is happening and it's become stronger over the last couple of years, especially under DA Krasner. I'll explain a little bit how I guess the process works in terms of charging homicide cases in particular. So in the District Attorney's Office, what happens is when the police officers investigate a crime, they'll get everything together, they'll package it and they'll submit it to our Charging Unit, which is primarily responsible for charging anything short of a homicide essentially. We have hours a day, 20 seven days a week, 365 days a year, 21 a charging unit staffed to review 22 those cases to see if there's 23 enough probable cause to make 24 arrests and charge individuals. The Homicide Unit's a little bit different, in that within the Homicide Unit we charge our own cases. All homicides that come through the City of Philadelphia are charged by homicide prosecutors, experienced homicide prosecutors and we review every single homicide that comes in, not only for search warrants, but also for arrest warrants and arrests that occur. I know over the weekend there was a shooting at 52nd and Chester, and that's a case that I know that the DA that's up right now -- and when I say up, the way that it works is this, from Friday at 5 o'clock to the next Friday at 5 o'clock, one DA will be assigned. They're on call 24/7. They handle everything that comes in from that Friday at 5:00 p.m. to the next Friday at 5:00, and at which point another DA will take over and they'll be up. That's in addition to any other court duties and obligations that they have, any other cases that they have. That's extra work on top of everything else. I know that the DA who's up currently is Cydney Pope, who has been thoroughly investigating and working with detectives on that recent shooting and the other shootings that happened over the weekend. And what will happen is every morning, we'll get updates on that investigation and see where it's at. We often will talk within the small group of chargers amongst one another, bounce ideas back and forth off of one another to see if there's enough probable cause and we help each other out. That's just kind of an overview of how the charging works within the Homicide Unit. And we're constantly working with the Philadelphia Police Department. Like I said, we're on call 24/7. We get phone calls at 2:00, 3 o'clock in the morning. We have to get up. We have to be responsive to those detectives, especially if they have individuals in custody and we have to make sure that we're available. So we are always working not only with partners within the office, but with all other law enforcement agencies. And it's not only confined to Philadelphia police. We also work with state police and on occasion federally.
Thank you. It's good to know that you all are out in these areas and focused on these areas, bringing these targeted approaches and that GVI is focused on these areas as well. And I look forward to continuing to talk to you and learning what you're able to tell me as things move forward. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council President.
So I want to thank Member Gauthier for talking about 60th Street. We share a border there where a lot of the activities happen. There are two spots and maybe I'll go to a third that are hotspots in the 4th Councilmanic District, 60th to 52nd to 63rd is one bordering Member Gauthier. And then 24th and Lehigh is another in North Philadelphia. Yes, I represent both areas. So we focus on that, so thank you for pointing that one out. I want to thank you guys. You have proven to me and to many others that two things can be true at the same time. You can have criminal justice reform and reduction in crime. I told you off the record there, now it's on the record, I said if I had to bet on that to my younger self in '08, I would have thought that that never could happen. So thank you for proving me wrong and being persistent in your belief. Because when you get the heat, sometimes people stray from the course and you did not. So thank you and your team so much. I no longer have a nervous twitch when you or G. Lamar Stewart call me. Before I used to see that, and my hands would start shaking, my eyes start twitching. So over the reduction in crime, that has dissipated. I'm thankful. A couple of questions. Number one is, how much does the crime lab play into the closure rates that you will -- by having these tools, how will that impact going forward even further reduction and closure rates in crimes? That's my first question. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: That's a great question. So I am a tremendous believer in forensics. The capacity of forensics in 2026 is so far beyond anything I could have imagined when I first started to work as a lawyer in this field in 1987 and frankly, so far of where it was 10 years ago that it has changed almost completely the way we try cases. We try cases now sometimes with no witnesses at all, no -- in fact, let me put it this way, no eyewitnesses at all. I'll just give you an example because I think it illustrates it -- and there are two types of forensics we're talking about here. One is the forensics that are actually in the Gun Violence Task Force, which necessarily needs to be a lawyer- led unit because the law around technology is changing constantly. It would be a huge mistake if we turn that over to our colleagues and our friends in the Philadelphia Police Department when the law is shifting all the time there. At least for the foreseeable future, there have to be lawyers making sure there's no goof-ups with that technology. The other part of course is the long-advocated, much-awaited and extremely necessary improvement in other forensics in the City of Philadelphia. I have been actually thrilled that the state legislature about three, four years ago and that the city has made a commitment to that. Because the reality is that the one kind of deterrence that really works is catching people. The other stuff just doesn't work. Mandatory sentencing, talking about a gazillion years if you steal a candy bar, that stuff doesn't work. What absolutely clearly works is when people get caught, they don't feel like getting caught so they don't do it. That's how that works, right. So I'm going to give you a specific example of how powerful this stuff is and how powerful it can be. We have a shooting. There are no eyewitnesses. Four people bail out of a car at night. Somewhere in the city of Philadelphia, they are wearing black athletic clothing, they have black masks over their faces and they're wearing hoodies and they shoot up a corner. They hit two bystanders, maybe or maybe not get their target. But mayhem, chaos, incredibly destructive behavior. We don't have one eyewitness. We don't know who the heck they are, but that car drives by a SEPTA bus. And on the SEPTA bus is a camera on the exterior, and that camera catches two digits in the license plate. Well, there are license plate readers in the City of Philadelphia.
And those license plate readers attach to the Gun Violence Task Force and they are constantly looking at license plates all over the city, whether those license plates are on cars that are parked or cars that are moving. And they register that and they put it into a database to the tune of more than a million pieces of data in a week. I think that's right. Fritze, you'll correct me if I'm wrong -- I got that one right. So they're going to put that in there. So you've all already taken a universe of cars, because you can tell the color maybe, you can tell the model of the year probably, and you got a couple of digits. You've already reduced the universe of cars that were involved in this from, who knows, half a million, maybe down to 50. You now start to look at possibilities there and you see that car traveling past additional public or private cameras, and you note that this car has a particular characteristic. One of the fenders has a dent in it. There's a sticker that's somewhere on the back of it. And now, you're honing in a little further. You go to your database, you're able to see that car or at least three or four or five cars are usually parked in certain locations because you got 50 hits for being in a particular block parked there. Now, you start to look at who owns these properties. You start to check to figure out who might own these cars. You check it against the database that includes people who are either in shooting groups or adjacent to those shooting groups. You find yourself in a position where you're already able to make an arrest or you've gone to the owner of these cars. What the heck do you know about this? I don't know nothing about it. I gave it to my nephew. Who's your nephew, and now, we're off to the races. If you can get that nephew's cell phone, nephew's not necessarily giving you the code to open it. But you handle it the right way, which is technical. You put it into a machine that will try to open it. You pop that phone open. And now, we have this, geolocation that shows you that that phone was at the scene of the crime. It approached the scene of the crime at the instance of the killing. It was at the scene of the crime and then it sped away at 100 miles an hour. You have all of that person's contacts. You have all of the phone calls and the texts that were made on the day of and on other days of. You have their social media. You may have what social media they are reading. This is why I say this is arguably as good as or better than DNA, and you have new capacities with DNA that never existed before. You have the ability -- and this was not possible really 6 years ago. You have the ability, 7 if we invest in it, if we care 8 enough to do this, to take from the 9 fired cartridge casings, meaning 10 the brass end of the bullet that's found at the crime scene, there are often 50 of them or 20 of them. You have the ability to check all of them if they're collected properly for DNA. Despite the fact you fired a bullet, despite the fact that you have incredibly high heat and explosive activity on that gun, you can pull DNA off of fired cartridge casings at a percent that's worth doing, let me put it that way. There's some debate about what that percent is. But at its best, it's 20 or 25% of the time. Now, you're getting DNA off of these things, which means you can potentially identify either sooner or later who loaded it and whether, because guns are passed around, the person who loaded it was associated with a different shooting, maybe an unsolved shooting. So we go from a world that used to look like the Salem Witch trials, where what you needed was an eyewitness to say something that you couldn't really test. Okay. I saw the farm wife flying around the farm on a broom, that was considered good enough evidence. And frankly, a lot of people died because of that stuff. Well, if you're really going to base everything just on what people say, it's not always right.
But when you start to take geolocation, videography, photography, you start to take texts, things like I'll get the front, you'll get the back, for a shooting where people shoot through the front and the back of a car, social media where people are showing the gun that matches the caliber that was used, DNA that connects up. And now, some of them are doing, you know, they're expressing themselves musically in ways that are either bragging about what they did or talking about what they're going to do next, you are in a different world. This is so essential that we do this. It is so essential that we fund the Gun Violence Task Force to continue with this work. It is so essential that the City of Philadelphia, which has for decades been behind other cities on forensics, that we go there. And frankly, it's so essential not only to catch those who have committed crimes, but to make sure the innocent people do not get blamed for those crimes. With us today, and I didn't really speak about him much, but the new Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, Matt Stigler is over there. He's going to stand up so you can see him. He's a humble soul --
He needs to come up because my next question was about drones and some of the cases we lost. So you might be helpful in that, but real quick because I'm going to get the hook. But two things. The best thing you did today was bring all of these resources that you fund here with you. I know several of them and have not just met them, seen what they've done in the community. And I'm so very thankful that you have them here to add because on one hand, see, the right hand of fellowship or the left hand of punishment, both are appropriate in certain cases. And so, stand up little Shelby. That's what I call you. I don't know your married name. Petals in a pond to prevent -- I worked at the House of Umoja a long time ago. And we would get young felons that came in and we would have them for a year under our watch and we mentored them. One of them is her father who graduated, became a good man, a taxpayer, a good dad. He's still one of us, but he was a good dude. But look at what a generation down the line he produced. And then Tone Barr, who I'm glad you brought today. Stand up, Tone. Before, you know, in order to be somebody, you should have helped somebody. Before he ever got into this, we were down at the Eid, he's giving away cars, not to the A student but to the C student, right, to make sure that they stay on the right path, so toys and food and clothing. So I'm thankful that you have the vision to have both balances. Because your name used to be nicknamed, and I'll ask the President what the real name is now, but it used to be, Let Em Loose Larry. You ain't that guy anymore.
Book Em Larry. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Point of order, I was informed it was Larry Law.
So I appreciate what you are doing and what you have done for our community. So drones, how can we do it better so that cases aren't dismissed? And that's my last question. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I think for that question, Councilmember, probably Paul Riddell, who runs our Dangerous Drug Offender Unit and of course, that closely connects with the user drones and closely connects with gun violence. I think probably Paul Riddell may be in a better position to talk, if he can talk at all, because some secret squirrel around us and some of us are secret squirrels. But let me see what he can say.