COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON KENSINGTON Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106 Wednesday, February 26, 2025 2:05 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA, CHAIR COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR., VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Philadelphia City Council and the Special Committee on Kensington. I now note that the hour has come. Mr. Clerk, will you please call the roll to take attendance. Members that are in attendance please indicate that you are present when your name is called.
Thank you. Thank you everyone for being here today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Special Committee on Kensington hearing on diversion programs in our city. The Special Committee is dedicated to fostering a collaborative effort to analyze and evaluate the efficacy of current policies and develop solutions to restore stability in the Kensington community. Today's hearing will focus on a critical component that we believe must be a part of the solution to restore the Kensington community diversion programs. Diversion has a potential to improve the lives of individuals suffering from substance use disorder, the quality of life of a neighborhood and the overall safety of our city. These programs seek to treat substance use disorders and prevent the cycle of incarceration. It's clear that putting everyone in prison is not the answer and we cannot simply arrest our way out of this situation in a matter that punishes people for their addiction instead of treating it. Diversion is a tool that we know works and we know of success stories in our city and beyond. We also know that there are many programs that already exist in our city. Today we will examine the landscape of these programs, identifying what has worked and what has not, what programs need to be expanded and what programs should be reconsidered. With the budget approaching and as we continue to develop our report, we must be honest about what is and isn't effective in our diversion system. By coming together with experts and administrators who have built and oversee these programs, we can identify both successes and areas for improvement to ensure we're investing our tax dollars and resources wisely and effectively. Thank you to my fellow Committee members for being here today, our panelists who are offering their very valuable time to testify today and to all of our residents who have made time to provide their input as well. I'd like to offer the opportunity for any of our Committee members to make opening statements. (No response.)
I'd also like to recognize Council President Kenyatta Johnson. Thank you for being with us today. Mr. Clerk, will you please -- this is a public hearing on Kensington regarding Resolution 21 240896. Mr. Clerk, will you please read the title of the resolution.
Yes, Madam Chair. Resolution No. 240896, authorizing the Special Committee on Kensington to convene and investigate the processes and effectiveness of the current and past diversion programs in relation to individuals suffering from substance use disorder in the Kensington area.
Thank you. Will the Clerk please call the first panel we have to testify this afternoon on Resolution No. 240896.
First we have Adam Geer, Public Safety Director, and Deputy Commissioner Fran Healy from the Philadelphia Police Department. Deputy Commissioner Healy will be presenting a presentation for us. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
State your name for the record and begin your testimony.
Adam Geer, Chief Public Safety Director. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and esteemed Committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding Resolution No. 240896 relating to diversion programs for people suffering from substance use disorders in Kensington. Diversion programs are indispensable as a tool in addressing the overdose crisis and the plague of open-air drug selling and use in Kensington and across the city. It is a truism that we simply cannot -- use jail as a way to get out of our overdose crisis. We need an array of proven tools along with innovative new tools. This challenge is massive and longstanding. Nothing but an all-out-big-ten approach across government and community is sufficient. To that end my office, the Office of Public Safety, leads or supports a wide variety of diversion efforts in collaboration with a diverse array of partners. Attached to my written testimony is a diagram of the diversion continuum in Philadelphia. I'll provide an overview of this continuum and describe OPS's role in each program that we touch. Looking at the attached diagram, we have mapped out Philadelphia programs that provide alternatives to prosecution and incarceration within the sequential intercept model framework. This model is a widelyadopted public health framework that organizes diversion programs according to the procedural timing of offramps from criminal justice system involvement. It ranges from the top of the diagram with the most upstream offramps to the bottom with the most downstream offramps. First and foremost, there is a need for the entire continuum. Every component of it plays an essential part in a range of touches from light to heavy, in balancing accessibility of care, minimization of the impact of system involvement in ensuring safety and accountability. There's broad consensus that more upstream offramps are preferable. That's because they provide opportunities for treatment and other services while minimizing the harms caused by system involvement, including incarceration, court deaths and collateral consequences of conviction, including barriers to employment and housing. The Administration has primary responsibility for the offramps of intercepts and on the diagram, which are enclosed in the black rectangle. The District Attorney and the courts also provide important offramps further downstream. We are glad to support some of those diversionary offramps with resources, including clinical staff and peer supports, as well as funding to satisfy some diversionary program fees. We're also proud to work with community- based partners at the bottom of the stream via the Philadelphia Re-entry Coalition convened by OPS's Office of Re-entry Partnerships. Returning to the top of the diagram at intercept 0, we have non-911 crisis response. This includes street outreach through DBHIDS and OHS. We have representatives from them here today, including 988 and the 24-hour homeless outreach outline. At intercept -- hotline rather. At intercept 1, we have 911 co-response with both police and paramedics going out to certain calls with civilian behavioral health staff. OPS supports these co-response efforts via our Office of Criminal Justice, whose Executive Director Kurt August is here, with funding and program oversight. Collectively, these most upstream interventions that intercepts 0 and are categorized as deflection because they provide connection to services before an arrest occurs. Philadelphia's deflection infrastructure has expanded rapidly in recent years. We are now at the point where we are able to provide citywide coverage 24/7. The rest of the continuum along the sequential intercept model is categorized as diversion because they provide post-arrest offramps from system involvement at intercept 2.
Our police-led diversion initiatives, PAD and Neighborhood Wellness Court, a pilot program that launched in Kensington just last month, both programs are housed at the New Kensington Wellness Support Center at B and Lehigh along with our Social Services Referrals program, which offers health and social services to walk-ins as well. I'm glad to share that the Wellness Support Center is already open extended hours, Monday through Saturday, and is on track to go 24/7 in April. PAD is a prebooking diversion program that offers same-day referral to treatment and social services. My colleague Deputy Commissioner Healy will get into more detail there with an indepth look. But I'll take just a moment to note that we're seeing very positive indications on PAD outcomes. 5% were rejected as ineligible because they had already passed through PAD twice before. The story of those numbers is clear, people who get into PAD overwhelmingly stay off the streets of Kensington. Meanwhile, Neighborhood Wellness Court brings an innovative addition to Philadelphia's diversion continuum. " Let's talk specifically about how this new model works. First, the Kensington Court pilot starts with a light touch charging people with summary offenses for actively related to open-air drug use like public intoxication, obstruction of the highway and criminal trespass. Summary offenses carry lighter penalties than misdemeanors and felonies, and do not trigger collateral consequences like direct probation violations or immigrant enforcement. Moreover, summary arrests follow a procedural fast track that guarantees the same-day judicial hearing and accountability that day. Before going to that hearing, people first go to the Kensington Wellness Support Center where they get medical screening right inside the door by Penn's Medical Center for addiction medicine. For anyone who needs urgent hospital-based care, Temple Episcopal is right across the street and our staff coordinates with their staff to make a warm handoff. Once and only once medically cleared, people have access to experienced legal counsel who are bilingual in English and Spanish currently. We are also able to support same-day clearing of bench warrants. For Philadelphia warrants, the Defender Association, who we're proud to have as a partner, they're here today to testify, are on site to advocate for their clients via secure video link with the Criminal Justice Center. That is also a support, tremendous support from the courts for allowing us to do that and the District Attorney's Office for also staffing that bench warrant court. Meanwhile, for out-of- county warrants we are able to advocate with our judicial and law enforcement counterparts to address that. Without this feature, which is unique to the Wellness Court, people would otherwise be detained on those warrants and excluded from diversion and sent up to the prison if they are not released. Those who accept diversion receive immediate behavioral assessment and placement, along with the case management intake by staff from DBHIDS. Social services, including housing assessment and placement courtesy of OHS are available onsite. Once a placement is identified people are transported down the street to 3901 Whitaker for judicial approval of the diversion. Diversion length may range from 30 days to a maximum of 90 days. If the judge approves diversion, certified recovery specialists provide transportation right then and there to treatment. Case management staff follow up with both the pretreatment provider and the participant to provide support, track progress and provide updates to the court. If someone leaves treatment, case management, certified recovery specialists with lived experience and police are all able to assist in locating and re-engaging the participant. And those who decline diversion also go to 3901 Whitaker but for same day trial.
It's crucial that I emphasize that Neighborhood Wellness Court is not intended to be expected to be a cure all. It is just a key addition to the existing diversion continuum tailored to the needs of people using drugs on the streets of Kensington. We don't expect perfection from the get-go, but we are relentless in pursuing it. That's what a pilot program is for, to gain experience and continuously refine and improve. To that end, we have members of leadership from every partner agency onsite on Wednesdays to allow us to sort through complex or novel cases in realtime. I personally spent time in the Wellness Support Center and in the courtroom on Wednesdays, and we hold four hours a week of debriefs on Thursdays and Fridays led by my Deputy of Strategy, Joshu Harris who has done a tremendous job in standing this up along with my First Deputy Evangelia Manos. Would not have been possible without them. Already just four weeks of this once-a-week pilot, we have translated lessons learned into over a dozen program improvements. So from those meetings and from our own analysis in a month, we've made already 12 system changes. They include expanding staff, streamlined screening and intake process, improved withdrawal management, enhanced protocols to warm handoffs and additional treatment placement options. After a low volume due to cold winter weather in our opening weeks, we are ready for warm weather and the likelihood of warm referrals to Wellness Court. It's very early. Not enough time has passed for even our very first referrals to complete a treatment program, but we're already seeing encouraging signs. Due to the successful warrant clearance, 1 out of 20 referrals has ended up going up to State Road. That's only one. Indeed we've successfully addressed bench warrants from Philadelphia, Montgomery, Bucks and Chester Counties. After a few early participants left of treatment within a few days of intake, our last three treatment referrals have stuck with it week over week. One young man who initially accepted housing services has since sought out and received a referral to mental health care. In another case we were able to connect a referral with an AMP bench warrant back to AMP Court, where she successfully restarted diversion. This is very hard stuff and this is a work in progress admittedly, but we have tremendous partners, again many of whom are in the room and will testify here on other matters in this cutting-edge work nationally. We know that the road to recovery is not smooth and straight or even the first, second or fifth attempt of sobriety may not succeed or may not stick forever. But if we can increase our touches, we increase the chances we catch the right person at the right time at the right point on that continuum. If we can treat people with dignity, if we can offer quality help, if we can build accountability into the process, we can and we will succeed. For the sake of the people suffering in the streets and for the sake of the residents of Kensington who have suffered too much for too long, we will never stop working at this and we will never resign ourselves to the status quo. Thank you. I'm going to pass it to my colleague now. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Good afternoon, Chairmember Lozada, Vice-Chair Jones and other members of the Special Committee on Kensington. My name is Francis Healy and I'm a Deputy Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department. I oversee the legal affairs and I serve as the Chief of Staff for the Police Commissioner. On behalf of the Commissioner, thank you for allowing me to testify here today regarding Resolution 240896 as well as the Police-Assisted Diversion program. Before I get into slides, I just want to give a little overview of where PAD came from very quickly so you know where it came from, why it's here.
The concept of Police- Assisted Diversion originated in a response to the growing recognition that traditional punitive approaches to low-level offenses, particularly those related to substance abuse and mental health disorders, were ineffective in addressing root causes. The first PAD program was launched in Seattle in 2011 under the name LEAD, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion. The success of LEAD demonstrated that offering individuals an alternative to arrest coupled with immediate access to social services could in fact reduce crime and improve long-term outcomes. While inspired by Seattle's model -- Seattle's not necessarily on par with Philadelphia -- we reached out to Baltimore who also had a LEAD program at that point in time. So we went down to Baltimore because it more closely tailors the challenges that we have here in Philadelphia. We studied the Baltimore program and the Baltimore model emphasized close collaboration between law enforcement and the community-based service providers as they did in Seattle, but integrating the harm reduction principles with a focus on long- term stability and participants. Using the lessons learned from Baltimore, we launched the program here in Philadelphia technically in 2017, but we were operational in 2018 as a collaborative effort among the Philadelphia Police Department, Managing Director's Office and the service providers that were designated for the program. This was initially piloted in the 22nd District and has since expanded citywide. And PAD operates with the goal of addressing systemic issues in neighborhoods across the city, not just in Kensington, where the opioid crisis and homelessness issues are particularly severe. With that, I'll move to the slides and then I'm happy to answer any questions. This is just a basic overview. I can't see that. Hold on. I brought backup.
Before you continue with your presentation, I'd like to note for the record that Councilmember James Harrity is with us as well as Dr. Nina Ahmad. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you. This is just an overview of the status of PAD. Just as you know, we rolled our Crisis Intervention Training, our PAD program and our CERT program, the Co-responder program all enter one unit, the Behavioral Health Unit in the Philadelphia Police Department now. So in that unit we have eight police officers now. Two of them serve in the PAD capacity. The others serve in this certain capacity, which is like I said the co-responders with mental health clinicians. Like I said, this was created in 2018 effectively, is when we got it off the ground running. It's a citywide program. We went citywide in 2023 and we started -- basically what we did here is understanding and collaboration with the Director and the Wellness Court, we created a special program for PAD in East Division specifically. And I'll get to more of the details in that. But for the most part, PAD has been historically centered in East Division. And I'll get to the percentage, a high number of our jobs are from East Division. These are the service providers. And this is important to note that DBHIDS are not the one actually that provide the services. They contract out with a lot of individuals. So we've worked with multiple service providers along the way since 2017 to '18 to today. Merakey is probably our largest contractor that we work with and we work very well with. And by the numbers, these are some impressive numbers. Obviously what we have -- let me back up. PAD is made up of two components, an arrest aversion and a social component. So an individual does not have to be arrested to take part of the services in this program. So what we have is you'll see arrest referrals in blue and you'll see the social referrals in red. These are individuals who just came up to a police officer on the street and said, I need help. And we've opened the doors and we allowed them to all the services that are available to someone who gets arrested. So that's what that red number represents. The blue number represents the individuals that were arrested and then opted for services through the PAD program. The gray represents the individuals that were either uneligible for PAD and there several reasons for being uneligible -- or ineligible. I'm sorry. One would be you have an outstanding warrant. Number 1 cube, you weren't cooperative towards the police officers and if you've already been through the program. As you mentioned yesterday, this is not a revolving door that you get every shot every time you come. Two shots and that's it. After that, you're arrested and you don't get eligibility for PAD. So we wanted to have that accountability built into that. But those are the numbers. You've seen how they've expanded. Kind of we're up to over 2000 interactions with like I said two or three people in the PAD unit. They're doing amazing work. This is where we're focused mostly. The next slide shows the zip codes where most of the individuals that are getting PAD services identify as a resident. So these are the zip codes and you can see they're overlap with Kensington. They overlap with the lower end of the 15th District. And that's a lot of the areas where most of the PAD referrals are coming from. So this is not a really surprise. I just put it in there so you can see graphically where most of our services are being provided with the PAD. Now, the next one talks about what I just mentioned, the ineligible cases, the three issues. These are the type of ineligible responses. I just threw this in there just so you have a bigger picture of the type of referrals in Narcotics. You can see a lot of them are rejected because they have open warrants. Prostitution arrests as well as open warrants and the retail thefts.
And that's the reason, right -- honestly that was one of the biggest issues when we developed or the Director helped develop the Wellness Court, is that we had a process for the warrants. The issue is in-county warrants we have a very good system. We still have work to do on the out-of-county warrants. And that's where my PAD -- myself get involved in often times calling different counties to say what can we do because most of the -- and by the way, these are not serious warrants. These are not body warrants for robberies, rape, anything along those lines. These are low-level failure to appear for retail theft or those type of offenses. So we're able to resolve a lot of them. Even now talking to the counties, we've been successful when we actually intervene directly with some of the sheriffs and some of the county officials that lodge the warrant. So it's working, but I think we need -- that's one area I would like to see improved, between PAD as well as the Wellness Court, how we can do that more efficiently. And Commissioner Bethel has scheduled a meeting or it's in the process of scheduling a meeting with the county, our collar county peers, to see how we can better do this in a more efficient manner without making it with phone calls. So we're working on that process. These are some of the successes. This comes directly from Merakey. This is just for 2023. Of the 1333 arrest diversions that we had, a total of 581 took services. Okay. That's an incredibly high number. Okay. So they took services so that's a good thing. Of the other ones that took services, what they received, 82% received inpatient placement. 157 received outpatient placement. 60 of them were actually directly transported to a CRC, that's a Crisis Response Center, for serious mental health issues that needed immediate attention. 231 received social services. And I know you can't see the small bullet, but this is what we learned with this program. This program has evolved since we put it in place. And the issue is here we never realize upfront some of the social services that individuals need out on the street the most is identification. They can't get services, they can't get benefits, they can't get anything if they don't have an identification card or birth certificate. So the PAD officers have been directly involved in helping facilitate finding family members, and I'll show one of the success stories actually finding family members to help get that type of documentation because that's the first step towards getting the services. It sounds silly, but they can't get services without identification. So we noticed that early and that's what my officers spend a great deal of time for the social referrals as well as for the PAD. This is just two of the stories that I thought were impressive. With PAD there's one individual who was basically -- it came to PAD's knowledge he's basically living in a vacant house, not sufficient clothes, no food, anything along those lines. The PAD officers were able to intervene and get him the housing, the services and actually the food benefits services like with SNAP that he was entitled to. So that was a really impressive thing. Now, this is the second one which is where you can see where my PAD officers are directly involved, is where this individual is trying to get services. He's been trying repeatedly to get services but been a lot of problems, couldn't get the services. But the biggest problem from getting the services was the documentation, couldn't get any documentation. Well, the officers actually were able to use social media, track down his mom and actually they were able to get the birth certificate, get this individual into some type of services but also were able to connect him with his mother again. So this is the work that the officers are doing day-in, day-out. We actually have it on a public dashboard now too. So our behavioral health unit has an open- facing web page so you can see the actual numbers.
I know you can't see them, but this is impressive when you can see on the other side -- I don't know if this will click to the actual site. But if you do, on the right-hand side you'll see all the services provided and it's a list of going from direct transportation to an ER, to an emergency room, employment resources, connection to outpatient services, engaging in shelter placement linked to community resources, housing assistance. These are all the things that PAD is involved in, in getting services to the individuals on the street. That would conclude my testimony. I'm happy to answer any questions at this point. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Just a few questions before I will bring it up to my colleagues. There are tons of or to me there are several diversion programs. And I guess this question is for Adam. Can you tell us which diversion program besides PAD fall under your responsibility? How do they work with one another? How are they different from each other? Because I think part of the questions that we have is how do all these programs work with one another. How do they complement one another and are all of them necessary, right? Can we integrate some and do away with others in order to provide more deceptive, efficient services?
Thank you for the question, Councilmember. Yes, we're going to be as an Administration flexible and nimble and we're going to go towards what works. And if it doesn't work, we're going to try and change that because we want to succeed. That's what we're in the business of across the board. If there's a good idea, wherever it is, we will take that good idea. I hope our partners understand that as well. We do have as I mentioned again the Defenders on board with that bench warrant part of it. We know that they have tremendous experience here and we're building the relationship where any feedback they give, we're happy to take that and we're happy to make changes where we need to. As we said, we've already made 12 different changes to Neighborhood Wellness Court. To answer the specific question, I feel that each of these programs brings something important to this continuum that we're talking about. So PAD in that -- when we go back to the sequential intercept model, PAD is the first intervention with law enforcement in terms of the diversionary programs that the City of Philadelphia currently has. So that's the first time -- and right before that would be in contact with like AR2, AR3, our paramedics who are dealing with substance use disorder. The first time someone would actually be arrested and pulled into the system is through PAD. That's why a bench warrant would preclude someone from having access to PAD because it's really just for the folks who it is their first time touching the system. The police department has made the decision by policy to divert, to deflect them immediately because it's the first time they're touching the system. That's why I think that's important. And you see how many folks that is the case for. There are thousands of folks that fit that bill of a very first contact. So we're going to deflect you. This is a touches game. A lot of times with substance use disorder it is a numbers game. So that's the first one. There may be another in PAD. And then according to police department policy, that's it. If that person were to then pick up a retail theft and then bench warrant from court because they were in the throes of addiction, so they bench warrant, they have an active bench warrant, they go back to Kensington and they're picked up, then they're not eligible for PAD. So if there was no 18 Neighborhood Wellness Court, it would go to DA, right, to real court, real prosecutor, real misdemeanor time, and they have their own diversion programs by the way, AMP, that they can benefit from. But we squeezed in this Wellness Court model, which acknowledges that it's not going to be maybe one or two times, it could be the third time, and that third time we ratchet it up a bit. Same day accountability. You're seeing all the stuff in the Support Center beforehand so you're getting cleared medically. You're getting some withdrawal treatment, you're getting access to housing assessment and other social services. And we can clear your bench warrant if you got a bench warrant on that retail theft. We can remove that lower-level bench warrant. On that day you'll still have to appear in court on that. But on that day, that will enable you to avail yourself of these additional services and hopefully offramp you away from the criminal justice system. So that's why that's important. And then after Neighborhood Wellness Court, we're still in the pilot phase. The courts understand the issues surrounding substance use disorder and it's not going to be you can just get arrested and go into Neighborhood Wellness Court at infinitum. I'm sure they will need to for accountability be a point where they are no longer going to be eligible for Neighborhood Wellness Court. That can happen on a case-by-case basis. But after Neighborhood Wellness Court they will no longer be allowed. And then they'll go to the next interim and so on and so forth.
So I think to answer your question, they're each -- and you might clarify something in a second, but I think they're each important. We think though that Neighborhood Wellness Court is something that we want to expand. We were currently only at that one day. We've currently only had three real days of Neighborhood Wellness Court because one of those days we couldn't stand up with some police manpower. So we want to continue to test this. We want to continue to build it with our tremendous partners to expand it to 3, 4, 5 days, maybe 7 days a week to match up with PAD. And there's some other interesting things that I think we can talk about later perhaps that I think would improve this aspect, this part in the sequential intercept model.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is when is the person held accountable, right? Yes, we can't arrest people that are suffering addiction. Yes, I get that. We're trying to connect them with services and we're trying to give them every opportunity possible. But at what point, how many times you are diverting them from your program, the courts are diverting them through their programs, the public defender is diverting them through their -- at what point does somebody say, okay, John Smith has come before us 10 times. At what point do we say John Smith now needs to be held accountable and is no longer eligible for any diversion? He needs to be held accountable. At what point does that happen? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: First, to be very clear where PAD sits, PAD sits between the police department and Office of Public Service -- or Safety. It was originally with the Managing Director's Office. It's a shared responsibility. So we have the front end and Office of Public Safety has the back end with all the support services. As to accountability, as I mentioned they get two shots. That's it. After that, you come across the police department again with the same behavior we have your name, we run you through our PAD list and you're arrested. So you'll go through that process --
That's after the second time? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Twice.
Okay. But then after you're done with them and they go through all these other systems, they are also offered diversion or they're not offered diversion? I'm trying to understand -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: When they're first offered it, it's the option if they accept it. We don't go any further with the arrest. The police officers don't go any further. So at that point, we're not going backward on a warrant or anything along those -- that's why we have two strikes because these are low-level offenses. They're not serious crimes. So the issue is we made the call, and it's very similar to the other programs that we're going -- there's a limit. You can only do it so many times. Now, if you go through the program and you -- we've had people on their way to the program stop at the red light and say, no, I don't want to and they're out. Well, that's Strike 1. Okay. So they come back around again. They want the program. They've already got one strike on them. So we're not in the business of just having this revolving door. The issue is these people are very serious trying to get the services to them. And if they don't want to be a part of it, then they could be arrested. And like I said, they're only low-level offenses, number one, to start with. A lot of these offenses, we all know they're CVN-related offenses as of now. And that's why as I mentioned yesterday, we had to actually increase it, reinstall the nontraffic summaries for the Wellness Court. But for the PAD purposes, it's two strikes and you're out.
And if I can just add, Councilmember, so after the ones that the Office of Public Safety and the police department have in terms of diversion programs that we engage with, Neighborhood Wellness Court and PAD, before that it would then go to DA-led diversion which they could be offered AMP, they could be offered another diversionary program perhaps. If they don't accept that or if they fail out of that, my understanding is then they go to the misdemeanor trial on the charges that they were originally arrested on, and then they would have their misdemeanor charge trial in Municipal Court.
What are some of the -- we saw some of the successes that you guys have on PAD. What are some of the challenges? Where do you guys see that there are gaps in the PAD program, for instance, that if given the opportunity, you would like to do better, you would like to have?
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say before Neighborhood Wellness Court the primary issue with PAD was the bench warrant clearing, and we fixed that with Neighborhood Wellness Court. I think largely, and we got into this a little bit yesterday, Councilmember, the folks who we're seeing are in real distress. They're in real distress in the throes of drug addiction, medetomidine while thank God the wounds aren't presenting with medetomidine. But there's a whole other host of issues associated with medetomidine in terms of the next generation of these horrific killing drugs. When they come in through Neighborhood Wellness Court, we are able to and we will be able to give them withdrawal management. But the faster we can get them that withdrawal management frankly, the faster we can stabilize them. Then the better head space and the healthier they'll be when they go on those first steps of their journey. So something that we're focusing on is how can we address that issue. How can we make sure that when they come in, they're safe, they're healthy but they're also -- they've come down a bit frankly because of those withdrawal meds, because of those interventions and then they won't -- we believe that that will reduce their walkaway rate from treatment. Now, this is preliminary. As I said, we are scaling up. We're learning lessons. That is an initial lesson that we're learning.
I'll start with Vice-Chair Jones and then Member Harrity.
I'm getting ready to quote Member Harrity anyway. So we were over in another hearing finishing up and he said some of the realest things to us, where he said that people going into true recovery have that clarifying moment and they decide I'm going to try to get better because I've hit rock bottom. An opinion changed against its will is an opinion held even still. I'm looking at one of the stats that said you have a 47% successful completion rate once placement happens out of I think it's 82 people placed. Doesn't that defy industry standards? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I'm sorry. I didn't hear your question. I didn't hear you.
So if you have a 47% success rate, in my understanding of recovery that is far above the normal success rate for people trying to see recovery; is that true?
So I'm not an expert in numbers admittedly, Councilmember. I can tell you this: We think that these programs have value. We think that these interventions work. There are folks who are going to say that it does not work. We heard from one of them yesterday that an arrest cannot lead or should not lead or whatever that case may be. The good thing about PAD and Wellness Court is that the touch is light, that you're going to get the four chances and then you're going to go on to big boy court with the DAs and their program. But with us and the systems that we've built in terms of the dignity and the approach and how the Wellness Support Center looks, we're hoping that that has something to do with these folks coming in and saying, hey, listen, they're giving us a fair shot. These are real options that they're giving me, including housing options, et cetera. This is not a jail cell. It looks kind of like a wellness center. It feels a little bit better. And we think that it helps. Again, I'm not going to opine here and get into some of the expert back-and-forth stuff because I'm not prepared to do that. I will say that many people who I'm familiar with, who I've spoken to, interventions from police have led to that moment of rock bottom or what have you and they are now sober and living, even living with healthy productions.
I just need you to check that stat for me because if that is in fact true, that's good news. All right. That's great news. First, let me back up and say thank you because four years ago none of this, none of this, was even in the top 10 issues for the city of Philadelphia. So thank you for making Kensington a priority. So that's number one. Number two, what would be helpful for me is a linear chart of what happens from point of contact A to possibilities of placement to what happens if they strike out, if you would, and what you -- so a kind of roadmap that plugs into what really occurs in these courts, these diversions and whatnot. To the degree that we can measure success, let's do it. I know it's new so you may not have a complete set of data, but that's okay. We're building this plane while we're flying it according to the Mayor, so we want to work with you to do that. But we need to kind of look at it in a way that says, here's on average how long it takes, how many times they mess up, how much it cost. You gave me a statistic a while back of $80-something million worth of services we're sending down there. So we need to measure the results of that. And because what's going on at the federal level, we're not sure if this is sustainable. So we need to measure our successes where we can and create that process review technique so that we can reward what's working and change what isn't. My final point on this is when it's time to divert who determines who gets diverted, A, is it the police officer making the arrest, is it someone else at the assessment center, who says this person is eligible for diversion and at what point do we measure. Did they really go through that program completely. Who determines that statistic? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: The police officers make the initial determination whether or not someone's eligible or not based on our policy, and that would be whether or not they've been involved in the program more than twice already, they have a bench warrant or they're a frequent flyer, there's other offenses. So it's the initial officer. But you also have to understand also the individual has to accept it. They have to want to. So if they don't accept it, then they don't get it. It's a part -- it's a two-way street, but it's the police officer on the street. But as for the downstream impacts, I can only track the connection to the services. The police department can't track exactly what you just asked for, what happens past what we do. So when we say success here, success for the PAD officers is connecting them to the service. What they do after that is where I do believe we do have to have a better --
So that's a screw that we need to tighten up a little bit so that we understand this is not a revolving door of, yeah, yeah, I went but I didn't. And so, that's something I think, Madam Chair, we should look to. The individual that you gave all of the chances to that winds up going to State Road, another exit ramp, not a good one but an exit ramp, because I was told by Jimmy Harrity that sometimes it takes that, you know, I've got no more bottom to go to, I can only go up. How are we assuring that at the prison level folk are being treated in a way that doesn't cause catastrophe in the abrupt stop of using narcotics?
Thank you for that question, Councilmember. And going back a bit to your astute observation, Neighborhood Wellness Court does have built into it case management that follows, that tracks the individual and their progress in treatment, how they're doing that week, and that's reported to the judge, that judicial supervision. So we have built that into Neighborhood Wellness Court. To answer your question about prisons, it is a priority of the Prison Commissioner to make sure that if we don't do our job or if we can't lift a bench warrant because that person has a serious felony and they're going to have to face justice, that they are prepared to take that person into their custody. There's fantastic, tremendous communication between Commissioner Rosario and their deputies and their staff if someone is going to be transported or more than one person is going to be transported so that they know the person is coming and can prepare. I know that Commissioner Resnick is planning and is already putting into place greater protocols around folks who are coming up, who they suspect might have the possibility of declining due to substance use disorder due to withdrawal. Those safeguards are going into place. And of course, their pilot program of having the bracelets which will monitor the health of folks who again they suspect of withdrawal. So it is of grave concern to us. It is always top of mind when we do this work. When we began this work with our team, the principle of safety for the folks we would be engaging was at the very top of the list, that we would do no harm. And that's how we built this system to proceed.
So I appreciate that. But we sat in this chamber listening in to public comment to someone who lost a loved one and it was heartwrenching, chilling. So as we hear these kinds of critiques of what we are doing and what we want to do but what our unintended consequences are, we pose those questions to you to make sure that exit ramp is a safe one. And so, when we bring it to you -- this is in partnership -- to say we might want to take a look at tightening up this area of the system. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: If I can just add on that. That's a huge concern to us as well. The issue is when somebody has serious warrants on them, not much we can do. We can prepare prisons for the receipt and do everything we need to do, but we need to make sure that those low-level individuals don't end up in that. So I'll be honest with you this is not the perfect system, but we've had certain cases where I've made the call. We're not putting them in a cell. We're going to put them into services. And I've made that judgment call myself and DC Rosario. When those cases come up, we make those judgment calls for that very reason you're talking about. So it has to be very personal upfront and somebody's got to take responsibility. Technically they're wanted, they're in a system. And we have made a couple calls where, I'm sorry, but if you want the person, they're going to be somewhere in the process of getting services but I'm not putting that person in a cell.
So I'm of the opinion the imperfect should not be the enemy of the good, fix it. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Thank you, Member Jones. We sat at Rock Ministries last year, the year before last, and we talked about the fact that 60% of the prison population was substance abuse- dependent, 60-something percent. And so, the fact that we're still here, we're here now, we're talking about the possibilities of them potentially not being ready to be able to receive individuals that are substance abuse-dependent, the fact that we had someone come testify before this Committee to talk about the pain that their families are experiencing as a result of losing someone that went into our systems is a bit frustrating, right. And I think that's why these hearings are so extremely important because we need to talk about proactively what we should be doing in order to continue to restore quality of life in Kensington and respond to an opioid crisis that we have across the city of Philadelphia, but we need to make sure that our systems are right. And so, as we enter into budget season these are the kind of questions that we're going to continue to ask, right. And I think that together we need to think about what is it going to take for us to get all of our systems in place in a way that will allow us to respond to the crisis or the issues that we're seeing across the city of Philadelphia. We also have a huge issue across the board as a government in quality assurance, right. With all of these people that you all are partnering with is there a process in which you determine are these people delivering the services that we are contracting them to deliver, right? I know that in that same meeting we had a conversation with DBHIDS and we heard that there was a breakdown in that process, right. Has that been resolved? We don't know. But DBHIDS has a large contract with people that provide services to this very same population. And if there has not been quality assurance measures put in place by that department and those folks that they're contracting to, that's a problem, right. But we should use these hearings as examples of what we need to do when we're starting to build these programs and put these things in place, especially in the Kensington Initiative where we heard from the community and we heard from the Special Committee hearings in the neighborhood what the issues were, right. So I just want us to think about those things because as a legislative body, we're going to be more conscious about how we're spending money, particularly in the Kensington community and who's getting that money, right. Because I can't help but wonder if what my community is saying is correct. And, that is, there are a lot of people that don't want Kensington to be clean. There are a lot of people that don't want to restore quality of life in Kensington because they won't have a contract, because they won't have an organization, because they won't have a business, because they won't have a negative part of the city where they can just push everything to, right. And that's the reality. For those of you that know, you know I'm honest, right. I don't care about people's contracts. I don't care about who's friends with who and who needs to get this proposal approved. My main concern and I think the concern of this Committee is to make sure that we do what we said we were going to do. The priority of the Mayor was to restore quality of life. And so, as we're restoring quality of life we need to make sure that there are measures in place where we're being effective and efficient again. Member Harrity.
So I'm just going to clarify a little bit what my brother Curtis Jones was alluding to. What we were talking about was the fact that people have a misconception of what we call in recovery as that moment of clarity or touched by God's grace as we say. Doesn't usually happen when you're out getting high is what we were saying. The numbers of the success rate from the people going through that diversionary PAD program shows by the numbers that that's definitely the case. They're getting that moment of clarity after they've been off drugs for a week or so in the program and that's what happens. They have that moment, okay, maybe I can do this, maybe I can get it this time, and they put in their effort and finish the program. But they're not going to get that moment of clarity while they're out there getting high. It doesn't happen. I can tell you firsthand it does not happen like that. All we're interested in when we're out there getting high is getting high. Everything else is on the back burner. But just to get back, so I'm just curious about people, absconding and stuff like that, because I'm following stuff that's going on with the community court and all that other stuff. And I know there were five the other day that absconded before they got there. I think there were seven or something like that, eight cases, and five of which who said they were going to go take the program. At some point jumped out and took off. So like you said, that would be considered their first strike if it's not their first strike -- if they don't have a first strike already. So after that point, right, they're no 14 longer allowed to -- after two strikes of the PAD program, they go through -- you have to go through the DA and whatever charges they had they're charged, right. Now, the other program that we were talking about you said there's more chances, bites at that apple or --
At Wellness -- you're talking about Neighborhood Wellness Court, Councilmember?
It appears that we're going to be -- we will limit that number. You've heard from the Deputy Commissioner. This is police-assisted diversion, right.
They make the decision on the front-end and it's two bites at the apple.
And, listen, I get giving people chances. I'm about chances. You know, the whole idea like we said is so they don't get a criminal record because then once they finally get recovery, it's hard to find a job. I'm all with that. But there does have to be consequences, is what we're saying, you know I mean. At some point if they're trying to buck the system and work us, they need to get the responsibility that was on there for their crimes. You know, whether it was petty or not or whether they have other charges that they're facing. We just want to make sure that people who are trying to buck the system, that are trying to jump out, get away, whatever it is to go out and that necessarily means they're not ready. But anyway, we just want to make sure that there is a number of how many times that they can take a bite at this apple, at least at one -- now, I'm not saying somebody completes the program, does a little time, relapses, that's different, you know what I'm saying. It's different than somebody in active addiction who's just trying to avoid going through the court process so that they can stay out getting high. At some point there has to be some kind of recourse to help them save their lives. I mean, it's the bottom line. I've said it numerous times before. When you're in the rooms, as we call it, and you're talking to people, if you talk to people that got recovery during the '80s during the crack epidemic if they're being honest with themselves, they're going to tell you, I got sober because the judge sent me to jail because the programs they had in jail, it's kind of funny how it starts out when you're in jail. You get out of your cell for an hour to go to a meeting, you get a cup of coffee and some cookies. So everybody wants to go to the meeting to check it out because you're getting a cup of coffee. You're out of your cell for an hour and you get a cookie, you know what I'm saying. And what happens is once they're there and the person is telling their story, they end up finding somebody that story relates to theirs, and then they have that moment where they say, wait a minute, I might have a problem, maybe I do have the problem, because the first and main thing is actually admitting that you have a problem. That's why it's the first step. But I thank you for your efforts. I just wish that we can think out what the consequences are for people who are trying to purposely buck the system.
Thank you, Member Harrity. The Chair recognizes Dr. Nina Ahmad.
Thank you again, as I said yesterday, for having the courage to move on this and having a multi- disciplinary way to address it. I had a couple of questions. First one is how much of what you're doing has been shared with the community in terms of those with substance use disorder, those who live in spaces with people with substance use disorder, do they know about all these initiatives and how we are sort of moving on addressing this in a way that they can know about the two strikes and you're out kind of thing to know where to go, how to engage, even if they have family members they can tell, do we have that on the way?
Yeah. So we have our community engagement folks who are specifically assigned to Kensington. We have two of them, Neftali Ramos and Marty Lafferty, who I think do a tremendous job of being out in the community and dispensing this and being at those meetings. We also have individually our PAD folks, and I think that -- I mean, they do a tremendous job in Kensington of just being out and about. And I think folks know who PAD are. I think to your point, Councilmember, we can do better. We can do better. I think the Kensington dashboard will help with that. As we continue to build out the specific Kensington model, having information access to that will be helpful. But first, we're going to continue to take it to the community and let folks know what we're doing. We just actually published a plan. We're putting the final touches on it so that we can do the mass production. We released one for the first version on Monday, and we will be distributing that to community members and businesses within a week.
Yeah, because not everybody who's in certain spaces will be looking at a dashboard, but we will probably. We need the dashboard, but we also need the outreach in a way to meet people where they are, so that's really critical that we're able to translate all this for this to be effective because we want more people to voluntarily want to engage with all these resources. The second question is sort of a more global perspective of we have multiple diversionary programs, right, from what I understand. We talked about that here specifically. What is the data that shows which ones need to continue to exist, which ones could be folded in only to make this a more clear space? So we know is this all going to be feeding into what you have as a sample of the Wellness Court, are there going to be more wellness courts and the diversionary program to feed right into there. I know you're figuring all of this out so I understand that. But just to know sort of philosophically where are we hitting with this because this is going to take a while. This is going to take a lot of communication and we have to be patient while we make sure all the kinks are worked out and they're still going to be worked out. So I just wanted to know globally what are you thinking in this disruption mode?
Councilmember, the good news, and thank you for the question, is that I think we're all rowing in the same direction here and we kind of have identified some of the system challenges, and I think we can agree on a lot of that. We have some of the best folks in each of our industries in the world. That goes for our judiciary. That goes for our Defender's Association. That goes for our city-servicing agencies. I think that goes for this Administration. And we recently had a convening held by the PA Supreme Court Justice Dougherty who's also very, very, very interested along with members of the First Judicial District in getting to just what you're saying, how can we -- where are we going with this, where are we going with all these diversionary programs, where are we going with mental health by attacking that into it specifically. And so, we're having those conversations. They're meaningful. I think we're beyond the first stage of that. But to your point, some of this is coming together. Somebody's brand new Neighborhood Wellness Court, and we are going to be intentional this year and it'll be this calendar year of putting it together and making more of a concerted effort to make sure that everything understands what everyone else is doing and works together.
To Councilmember Jones' point, a roadmap, a roadmap that we can all view. This is more than just a dashboard. This is about prospectively looking at this so we would really appreciate something of that nature that we can share with our constituents to talk about what is the vision around this. I have a specific question about data. If you recall, I had asked about data yesterday. And I was told, oh, we can't provide that. Yet we're seeing all this data here today. So we know how to track. We do track. We're not asking for identifiers. We're not asking for anything. As I said before, if we are being asked to put dollars into our budget, we need to know what are you using it for, how useful has it been, do we need to pivot to something else. We cannot put out money without knowing what is that accountability and transparency process for all of this. I know sometimes it's hard to share information because there are a lot of naysayers waiting to jump on it to say, oh, it doesn't work, we're wasting money. I think this team here is going to have a lot of patience because we are, as we said, 10 toes down. We're not letting go. We're going to make sure there is no world-renowned space where there's an open-drug market, and people are suffering both those with addiction and those who have to live in that space, and that's been all over the city. We're not going to abandon you. But we need from you clarity. We need from you accountability because at the end of the day, the tax dollars -- just think about this. We are putting so many resources into one disease. We have multiple other problems in the city, multiple other things that other people who are towing the line, doing everything right are not getting these resources. So in order for us to spend money in these resources, we actually have to know what's working, what's not working and where that account -- I did not see that accountability yesterday at all, and I'm seeing a little bit more today but we need a lot more. Just putting that out there.
Understood and frankly taken very seriously by us. We had a meeting late last night about it. We've scheduled a meeting as a result of that. We understand your concern.
So when they said, oh, we can't -- I don't know who said it about, oh, we can't track who these people were who got into the system. I'm sorry. That's nonsense. We have scientific reports coming out daily about people who are in studies. We're not giving names. We're not giving identifiers. So that answer was zero unacceptability and we need to do much better. This is a start though. So I want to thank you and hope you can move along in that process.
You guys mentioned -- before I recognize Councilmember Squilla, you all mentioned your interest in expanding PAD. How much is that going to cost us? And before you answer that, how many employees are in that PAD space, right? How many people are there? Are they police officers? Are they social workers? Are they outreach workers? Are they medical support staff who are the folks who are managing this space? And how much is it going to cost us to expand the important work that PAD is doing and what is that additional money going to get us? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I just want to clarify. I think we're talking about expanding the Wellness Court. PAD is citywide right now. PAD is citywide. We have a centralized office for PAD, but PAD is citywide in the --
PAD is citywide. I'm talking about the PAD space on Lehigh Avenue that we talked about expanding. I'm not sure of that. Right now it's actually more than what we've ever had so it's actually working rather well for the PAD, but it's also being used for the community court as well -- I'm sorry, the Wellness Court as well.
Councilmember, I think we'd have to get you -- and I think a lot of it is contingent on a few different things. I know Kurtis -- we're in the middle of a budget cycle. I know that that's a part of the Office of Public Safety's plan and there certainly will be more to come from that, but we're still in that process as an Administration.
Okay. You said PAD is citywide. So do you have other locations like the one on B and Lehigh throughout the city of Philadelphia? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: No, we never had what we had at 265. Before we had an office. We had several offices and we've consolidated now into the one office based upon the resources that are there because it's a much better. It's much better, but we just had an office we would facilitate and it really wasn't as conducive as what's been created on 265.
You want to give me the percent on who's on B and Lehigh --
And are they police officers, medical professionals --
Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Kurt, August. I'm the Director of the Office of Criminal Justice with the Office of Public Safety. So including the officers assigned to the Behavioral Health Unit, the PAD program funds approximately 53 full-time employees, most of which are concentrated in Kensington but not all. There are also sites in the heart of North Philadelphia, in University City as well in addition to this work on Filbert Street and also on 16thth and Susquehanna. But most of the staff fall in the social services realm, typically folks that are outreach workers, social workers and case managers and sort of the accompanying supervisors that are connected with that. Councilmember, as you know the operations are now day and night also with the dedicated overnight staff that works with the police department in Kensington. So a large concentration of the City General Fund dollars that go into the program are in the Kensington Wellness Support Center with some additional dollars that fund community centers at 16th and Susquehanna and 38th and Filbert as well.
Thank you. Thank you for that. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I'll just say one thing from the PAD office site. We are citywide, but we have now moved into 265. We were previously at police headquarters at the 24th, 25th Districts. As a result of moving, we need additional supervisors and we'll be doing that internally. So we'll increase the number to about 11 ultimately of officers assigned and supervisors assigned. But the money for that is actually -- we bear that ourselves out of our own budget.
How much is it going to cost us for the expansion that we were talking about earlier? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: I can get you a cost breakdown of police. I can give you the police cost breakdown. I'll have that to you.
We will provide that to you as well, Councilmember, once we get those numbers correct.
Thank you. Are there any additional questions? The Chair recognizes Councilmember Squilla.
Thank you. And I want to follow up on Councilmember Ahmad's questioning. And we do appreciate the numbers here, but we saw numbers from PAD before and Kurt was involved with those numbers. But when we say inpatient placement, outpatient placement, they're good to see. These numbers are great. But then again, are we going to be able to follow these folks to see if they are in inpatient placement? Were we successful instead of just engaged like even social services, 231. All right. They went to service centers. Are they back out on the street again, are we doing future engagements with them. Is there a way to be able to track that so we know the outcomes instead of just saying, all right, they took this one thing and then we're done. Are we able to continue -- because the whole part about this is to be able to have a continuum of care, right, to be able to follow them through a system to make sure you have the social workers that could follow them through their path to recovery. But it doesn't seem like we have that, say, all right, out of them the inpatient placement, 82, you know, 57 of them stayed through and completed. Is that possible?
So it is possible with Neighborhood Wellness Court because as part of the acceptance, as part of them being accepted into the program, they sign a consent form which is what happens in a lot of these cases. So they sign a consent form to be able to share their medical data. So that's why we have these numbers here. On the front end with PAD which is a step up, it's further upstream, it's the first contact, we do not have that yet. There are some resource limitations to that. Not the collecting necessarily of the data which we will look into, but the case management of all of those folks, that means that we would have to assign a case manager to all those folks. There's probably other ways that we can look at being able to not only get that data but incorporate it in. But the first robust set of data at this point is going to come from Neighborhood Wellness Court because that's consent form.
But I think -- because we're going to have different levels of diversion, right, whether it's PAD, whether it's Wellness Court, whether it's AMP, right. But shouldn't they be able to talk to each other because somebody who went through PAD might end up in Wellness Court, right, may end up in AMP. And I think that's good for us to know so that we can follow and then really be able to say what are our outcomes for each program, right. Like initiating first contact, sending people to social services. It sounds good and the numbers look good, but then are we really helping them, are we following them alone. And I think that's something we need to work on in the future of this. And I know we have a lot of people to testify so I'm not going to continue. But as we work through this understanding that we do need to figure out our outcomes and then follow that so we can make changes in case things aren't working properly.
Just a question on the thing, like Mark said the numbers. They look good, but some clarification on the numbers. So when it says you have gotten so many people into outpatient and so many people in an inpatient program, as we're tracking them do we know if they completed those programs or is that just a number of people that you put in? Do we know what happened once they went in? Were they successful? Did they complete the program? You know, outpatient's a lot different than inpatient. Inpatient is a little harder to get away than when you're an outpatient. You're supposed to report every morning. I was there, I did them all. But I'm telling you numbers are good, but like I said is it the real numbers. How many people that were put inpatient actually stayed inpatient and completed the program? How many people who were put into an outpatient program, which is just beyond me. I don't know how anyone that's out there on Kensington Avenue is put in an outpatient program. I can't see that working at all. But here nor there, but would like the real numbers like that, you know what I mean. Like, we know this many people we got to go, how many actually completed, how many actually did their full stint in the place.
Understood. Absolutely. Neighborhood Wellness Court, we will be able to do that.
And that was the -- I'm sorry. That was the other part of that. If somebody is in the Wellness Court, could they still end up in AMP Court?
So that's a very good question, Councilmember. The way that it's situated now the same judge hears AMP cases and Wellness Court. That's Judge Lewandowski. We've already had some success where we picked someone up in Wellness Court, they had an AMP bench warrant. The judge knew them. So he/she came before the judge and I think they -- I can't remember exactly what happened but it was seamless. It was seamless in terms of her reintegration and she re-accepted and re-engaged in services. So it's the same judge. We have the benefit of that --
-- who's going to be seen by the same folks. Presumably if they come in and they're arrested on -- so they're out for Wellness Court, they've had their strike. Now, they get arrested, they get put into the system. Maybe they get AMP. Frankly, I think we're -- that's outside of our purview. But they would come before the same judge and they would have access to their medical history and their treatment history from Neighborhood Wellness Court because we made them sign that consent form. So he would have more information from that experience. He would have that personal experience from them and I think that only increases the chances of whatever happens to them at that next stage.
Just one more follow-up. So -- I lost my train of thought. That's all right. I'll come back if I remember what I was going to ask him.
Are there any other questions from members of the Committee?
I got it. I figured it out. I think it's all up there jumbled at times. Somebody completes the program, right, AMP, Wellness Court, whatever one, I don't care. They relapse, all right. They get picked up again. Will they be able to go back into the program again? Because they had successfully -- I'm asking for --
-- they successfully completed the program. They maybe were able to keep six months together and maybe they go out and they end up getting in trouble and they get caught. Will they be able to go back into the program?
Councilmember, you raised an excellent point. And I think that's why some of these things, it is kind of -- I don't want to say it's an art, but that judge sitting there who's seen these cases before, who knows that person's treatment history, to Councilmember Ahmad's point, the more they know medically about the person, where they're at, what they've done, that might be a judgment call where the judge says, appeals to the police department, let them back into the program, I know this person, they did a good job the first time, let's give them a second chance. It could be the judge says, not sorry, you relapsed, we gave you your shot. And then they go up and the DA's Office of Diversion sees that treatment history and it's ratcheted up, there's a bigger lever. And so, they're up in that next sequential step is my point. And so, that more touch, they've got a better shot.
They were making a commitment to it. And they relapsed, they get picked up. You know, they're there, they go to their court hearing --
That's what we want. We want that re-engagement. We understand --
I don't think that should be, like I said, the second chance. This is completely different. They were doing well for a minute, they messed up, they should be able to try to jump back into that program. Different than them not completing the program and committing other crimes and then, you know what I'm saying. I'm saying somebody that was legitimately trying, but the judge -- I know the judge is a great guy.
Are there any other questions from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Thank you very much for your testimony. Thank you for being with us this afternoon.
Thank you, Councilmembers. Permission to be excused or would you prefer us to stick around for a bit?
Permission to be excused or would you prefer us to stick around for a bit?
Councilmember Harrity may come up with another question. Hearing none, will the Clerk please call the next panel to testify this afternoon on Resolution No. 240896.
Yes, Madam Chair. We have Larry Krasner, District Attorney, City of Philadelphia followed By Keisha Hudson, Chief Defender of the Defender Association. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Good afternoon. Thank you for being with us this afternoon. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Good afternoon. I must admit to all of you I was on the witness stand for four of the last five hours so I'm delighted to be on the witness stand again with all of you and I appreciate the opportunity to address you on these incredibly important issues that we have. I must, you know, because I was on the witness stand for those hours, I'm not sure exactly how much time you want to take. I want to honor your schedule and I also want to make sure there's plenty of time for questions. So is there an indication of how much time you would like me to take?
Mr. District Attorney, do you need water? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I have this. I think I'll be all right. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you so much for being with us. Begin your testimony whenever you're ready. No time. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: No time?
No time limit. We're here as long as you need us to be. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: All right. Well, please feel free to jump in with questions anytime that you have them. I want to make sure since I haven't been able to hear the rest of these proceedings, that what I'm doing connects to the questions that you have and the issues that you are seeking to address. I do want to start out by saying that I have with me a number of key members of our team and they are here to make sure we can answer any questions that you have. I'm going to ask them just to stand up where they are so you'll know I'm not making it up. We have First Assistant DA Bob Listenbee here. G. Lamar Stewart, Chief of our external Engagement Governor Affairs is here. Bill Fritz, he is the Chief of our Gun 2 Violence Task Force, the unit that 3 has done so much important work 4 taking down shooting groups in 5 Kensington and throughout the city 6 is here. 7 Bob Wainwright, now the 8 Chief of our Homicide Nonfatal 9 Shooting Unit is here, and he's 10 pretty unstoppable. We have ADA 11 Paul Reddel, who is and has been 12 for years the Chief of our 13 dangerous Drug Offender Unit. 14 Those are the hard core, serious, 15 deep-dive investigations of drug 16 dealing. 17 ADA Kim Esack, the Chief 18 of our Organized Retail and House 19 Theft Task Force and also the Chief 20 of our Economic Crimes Unit is 21 here. We have ADA Caleb Arnold, 22 who's the Chief of our Adult 23 Diversion Unit and ADA Jordan King, 24 who is the Chief of our Juvenile Diversion Unit. All of them are here. In order to save you time, I know you all. I know you all well. I thank you all for allowing me to be here rather than run through all that. But I mean that sincerely. I think a lot of the conversations that we were able to have with the Kensington Caucus and that I've had individually with many of you, a lot of the investigations we've done around gun violence, for example, with Councilmember Jones have been very, very constructive and I appreciate your input into all of that. I want to start out by just telling you a couple of quick examples of things that I think connect closely to this inquiry. One of them is that our Gun Violence Task Force will be charging Defendant Angel Velez with attempted murder and other related offenses. He's temporarily in federal custody on other charges for his role in a triple shooting on 300 East Allegheny in Kensington May 23rd of 2024. There were three victims in that case. One was a Philadelphia School District teacher. Another was a 5-year-old and another was an adult male who was just walking down the street. That is of course intolerable, but I'm telling you as soon as that guy gets out of federal custody we got some state custody for him. Next, last week our Gun Violence Task Force charged a defendant whose name is Nicholas Dotzman, D-o-t-z-m-a-n, who legally purchased 18 firearms and then made a whole bunch of false stolen firearms reports to law enforcement. Why? Because he wanted to sell the guns out the back door. Further investigation through forensic and phone technology determined that the defendant illegally transferred those firearms on the streets of Kensington. The defendant is currently charged with multiple counts of violation of the Uniform Firearms Act. But probably the one final point I want to make on the enforcement end, because we really can't talk about diversion unless we contextualize it with accountability, we contextualize it with what we have to do to people who hurt people. Okay. There is a difference between the disease of addiction and people who hurt people.
And, that is, that not only do we have a very lengthy list which I won't go through of the shooting gangs that have been shut down for good throughout the city of Philadelphia, I can point to ones that are either completely shut down or almost shut down in Kensington through the excellent partnership with the Philadelphia Police Department, with the FBI, with our Gun Violence Task Force, with our Homicide Nonfatal Shootings Unit, and they include: The Fully Gang, F-u-l-l-y, Gang, 2400 block of Kensington Avenue, the 3100 Weymouth Gang. That's of course 3100 block of Weymouth. The Risk Takers, Risk takers, 2400 block of Kensington Avenue. Black Flag, this is a 22nd Police District group but they operate in Kensington, and Zoo Gang. This is also a 22nd District and Northwest group but they operate in Kensington. I am delighted to say, and I've been at this since 1987, that I went decades hearing the same names of shooting groups decade after decade. They're shooting each other without even remembering who shot who years 7 ago. And I am delighted to say 8 that the list is much longer of the 9 shooting groups that are gone and I 10 mean gone for good in Philadelphia, 11 and there's a long list of ones 12 that are half gone. And then 13 there's a long list of the ones 14 we've dented. And we want that for 15 Kensington because it is essential 16 for all the people who live there, 17 the residents, and also those 18 people who are struggling with 19 addiction on the streets in 20 Kensington. Now, having said that obviously it's not all about enforcement or as Councilmember Jones has said, the hand of mercy and the hand of justice. I can't remember which hand it is, Councilmember.
(Inaudible). DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: All right. Right hand of fellowship and the left hand of --
Punishment. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Of punishment. Okay. I mean that's real. We have to use every tool in the box. We have to do individual justice. There are individuals who need to be locked up for an appropriately lengthy period of time, and sometimes that's the rest of their lives. But there are other individuals who have come this way because some doctor put in their hands an opioid prescription believing that it wasn't that addictive, and it is. People start to get addicted according to the Center for Disease Control or whatever is left of it, sometimes at 48 hours, 48 hours. That's when it starts. And the proportion of people who end up addicted after they have finished even a two-week cycle of medication is extremely high. So we need to be able to tell the difference between the people who are in a bad spot and the people who are making Kensington a bad spot. And those are two different groups of people. And therefore, we need to have in that toolbox not only enforcement, modern enforcement, modern enforcement with a lot of forensics, but we need to also be engaging in prevention and we need to also recognize that there have to be resources to get people out of that bad spot who have gotten into that bad spot as a consequence of addiction, poverty, mental health issues, unaddressed trauma, things of that sort. Now, obviously I think many of you are aware that this is an office that does believe in prevention. We have used the funds that are given to us through civil asset for sure. In other words, money coming from drug dealers that we are not by law allowed to use for salaries or for other purposes, we are required to use to try to deal with the blight that is caused by drug dealing and other criminal activity. We are now up to almost $4 million over seven years of investing in local community-based organizations, often small ones, ones that need a leg up, ones that need to build their resumes so that they can qualify for the bigger grants that they deserve, ones that can't front it. In other words, they can't do the work for a year and then seek reimbursement. They need the money now to be able to do this. And we have done it vigorously in Kensington as well. For example, Rebel Arts, gave them $10,000. This is a group created to provide a place of belonging for underserved communities while working on their physical and mental health. They do, among other things, circus arts. They provide a sense of acceptance. They deal with people and their various different kinds of disabilities. They address building confidence, leadership, et cetera. Kensington Soccer Club, I think that's pretty self- explanatory. We gave them $25,000 in 2022. As you know, this is an organization that serves something like 1200 people, many of whom don't speak the same language. And we gave them another on May 20th 5 of 2024 because the quality of the 6 work continues and it is serious. 7 We also gave money to a 8 group called the First Stop 9 Recovery, where the mission is to 10 empower individuals to embrace a 11 "victim to victor" mindset through 12 the creative and unique programming 13 that they offer. So no question 14 prevention has its place. 15 But I know that one of 16 the primary concerns you have here 17 has to do with diversionary 18 programs, restorative programs, 19 treatment programs, the kinds of 20 things that can really change the 21 quality of a neighborhood, the 22 lives of the residents who are 23 there, and the lives of the people 24 living on the street. And I just want to say this can work. It can work. There have been things, and I won't get deep into the details, there are examples of places where it has made every bit of difference. One of those examples is Lisbon, Portugal where for the last years they have separated out 10 the drug dealers, who they 11 prosecute vigorously, from the 12 people who are addicted who are not 13 drug dealers, and they have their 14 own way of doing this.
I'll be 15 happy to talk about their 16 methodology another time because I 17 do think it informs. But the 18 reason it matters is they 19 succeeded. The reason it matters 20 is it made a tremendous difference. 21 They went in Lisbon, 22 Portugal from 5000 people living 23 and dying on the streets to 1000 24 people, an 80% reduction, 80%. And they did it with a plan invented by a doctor and they did it over 25 years. It's a fascinating program. I won't get into it. But it is not the case that this has to fail. It is the case that it can succeed. But I share with those of you who are interested in the science behind this, interested in the data, who want to know what works and what doesn't work, and I think that's probably all of you who want to resort to evidence- based methods, I want to share with all of you that I feel that this is a very important aspect of it, and I'm actually willing to volunteer our data lab in the DA's Office, which is comprised of about 15 people, our Co-lab which is supposed to be data directed by the community. That's why it's a co-lab because it's community lab. I am very interested in sharing our resources in order to assist in the process of monitoring what works and what doesn't work because we all want the same thing. We all want people who are not living and dying on the street. We don't want to have three to four people dying of fatal overdoses a day while we talk all day understandably about the less than one who are dying from homicide every day. We need to care about everybody. That means every neighbor who lives there, two generations, three generations. I don't care how many generations. We need to care about all those people. And there is no doubt in my mind that if we really focus on the criminology, we focus on what has worked in other places, it's not necessarily going to apply identically here, but it's a lesson. It's something we can look to so that we can take the programs we have, modify them, modify them again and continue what's working well. If we can slam on the gas for things that already work and then find what doesn't work and replace it with innovative programs and monitor their success, it is my belief that after decades of very severe challenges in Kensington that we could go from being even in Kensington, a city that is chronically violent, to a city that is consistently safe and a city that lifts up its residents and gets people back on their feet who are down on the ground on the sidewalks of Kensington. In terms of diversion, I am happy to address issues around that, but let me just start out saying this: I'm a believer in AMP. I've always been a believer in AMP and have never wavered in that. And I think even Councilmember Squilla will probably tell you that those have been my conversations with him for years. There is some conversation about the number of people in AMP, but the reality is the number of people in AMP is reduced, but that's a direct result of the existence of diversion before arrest. The PAD program, which in some ways is modeled off a very successful program in Seattle, Washington, the LEAD program, Law Enforcement-Assisted Diversion. The PAD program in concept is a really good one. I don't have insight into the inner workings because my office does not do it. It is done by the Philadelphia Police Department, and I have no 23 doubt they're trying to do the very best with it that they can. But simply put, if you take 100 people who would have been arrested five years ago and you put them into PAD, we don't even see them, for them to get into AMP. Okay. I'm not saying AMP is better. I'm not saying AMP is worse. I am not here to dog out pre-arrest diversionary programs, including the one that Commissioner Bethel has proposed for juveniles. There's a lot of data that shows that pre-arrest diversionary programs properly run, and that means a whole lot of decision-making about individuals, can be very good. But that's also not my lane.
I leave it to the police department. I leave it to the City to talk about whatever successes, failures, adjustments may be appropriate for PAD. I am in no way discrediting it, but I'm saying let's just do the math. If you take 3000 people and put them into PAD over the course of a year, you're not going to have 3000 people who might otherwise be in AMP. You're simply going to have reduced numbers for AMP. But let me be clear one more time: I'm very much a believer that AMP, you know, it hasn't fixed all the problems. It's been around for a very long time, but it's a good program when it's used for the right people in the right ways with the right services. It's a good program, and I support that. My office has a very wide range of diversionary programs more than ever before in the history of the office by far, and it includes a wide variety of programs for juveniles that didn't exist previously. It includes programming in what we call our Emerging Adult Unit. Now, this is a unit that didn't used to exist. It's modeled off of other jurisdictions where they take people between and who are, 5 they're not juveniles but they're 6 also not necessarily making the 7 wisest judgments because their 8 brains in general are not fully 9 mature until after 25, and we 10 really focus in on them and try to 11 get them away from crime by 12 treatment, by programming, by job 13 training, by education, right. 14 They're more malleable. There's a 15 greater chance of pulling them back 16 from being involved in crime. 17 And so, we have an 18 Emerging Adult Unit that tries to 19 program very specifically to that 20 age group, 18 to 25. And some of 21 what they do, not all of it, 22 involves diversion. And then of 23 course we have our regular Adult 24 Diversion Program, and that takes various different forms. Everything got squirrelly during the pandemic so we were trying to hold this thing together with chicken wire and tape because a lot of the services providers weren't even available, you know, some of the voluntary ones like Alcoholics Anonymous, we're still out there, so it takes different forms. But we have a variety of adult diversionary programs. And for the right case, it's the right thing. And for the wrong case, we shouldn't do it. We have even gone so far -- and, yes, I know my whole staff will say, why are you raising this, but I will raise it anyway. We even went so far as to very carefully and selectively take people who seem to us not to be criminals, not to even smell like they might be criminals, people who, when we did a full intelligence check, were not coming up, didn't have much of a record, but they had, for example, a lawfully-purchased firearm but they hadn't gotten the paperwork to carry it, you know, working a job at night somewhere where you could understand why they would be scared, right, or people who had a permit but it expired, they didn't bother to get it. Well, we diverted them into a very intense, specialized diversionary program. And here's the outcome. When we compared the people who were diverted, they were getting re-arrested once, okay. When we compared the people who were convicted but not given all this special programming, they were arrested four times. We'll say it again. The way we structured this program, and it was very, very careful, and we were very selective. But the way we structured this program with cognitive behavioral therapy, with group treatment, with educational opportunities, with obtaining identifications, with a social worker, a social worker working intensively with a judge and with these folks for six months, the way that we structured it, there was only one quarter of the recidivism as what we saw with the same kind of people when they got convicted. Okay. You should do diversion because it makes us safer. You should not do it just to be nice. You should do it because it makes us safer. That might have failed. That experiment might have gone the wrong way.
If it did, we would have shut it down. But it didn't. It went the right way. And I do think there's something to be learned from the idea of having a dedicated social worker for a cohort of people using cognitive 5 behavioral therapy, developing 6 mentoring among the members of that 7 group, having judicial involvement 8 where that's going to make a 9 difference. There's something to 10 be said for that model that I think 11 might be applied more broadly for 12 certain kinds of cases in certain 13 kinds of situations. 14 And I'm not here to tell 15 you that everything we do works 16 perfectly. It doesn't. But that's 17 what the data is for. The data is 18 there to say, no, this one isn't 19 long enough. You did it for two 20 months. If you did it for 12, you get better results. And we've done that before. Everything that we do has to be adjustable based upon the evidence. And I am here to say, among other things, that if we can be of assistance to our partners in PPD who have an excellent data team, if we can be of assistance to Council with our data resources and our chief criminologist who's in the office, if we can assist in any way, if there are questions you would like us to ask moving forward or just questions you would like to ask now, I'm happy to take them back and see if we can provide additional information, whether it's specific to Kensington or it's more like show me programs that worked other places and other times. I certainly have more to say, but I'm going to do the thing I never do which is be quiet. And I'm going to wait for any questions you may have.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony today, and thank you for your work. I think that I want to start off the same way that I started earlier, right. And, that is, that we know that there are a lot of diversion programs. You mentioned yourself that you have several coming out of your office. One of my questions to the first panel was how are you measuring, right. What is the metrics that you're using to measure whether diversion program actually is working? How do you determine whether it's not? And how do you either reallocate the funds for it or do you just add on a different program, right? Because I think that what we were seeing for or what I have seen in the research that my team has been doing is that there are a lot of programs, a lot of diversion programs, some that overlap and they overlap because one of them wasn't delivering all of the services that they could have. And as opposed to adding to that service, they just created a new one and added the service, right, which to me is like we're wasting money because all of these things are doing exactly the same thing with a very minimal change. And so, none of them are giving 100%. They're doing the bare minimum to be able to get funding. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Thank you for that question. And I think it's actually a really interesting and important question because part of what happens in a court system is that as issues evolve that require addressing, you may have very well- intended and capable people who come up with a program. There were a lot of drug courts that were started, for example, a while ago. And they did some good but they were not nearly as scientific as they should have been because they were getting results like two-thirds of the people fail, right. Well, that that has been around for a while. It needs to be tweaked. You know, it needs to be adjusted. And a healthy criminal justice system will have these programs that have been a while around for a while, but they're going to require adjustment and they're going to require tweaking. I can certainly let Caleb Arnold who's right here, who is the head of our Adult Diversion Unit and is also involved with the Emerging Adult Unit, among other things, Caleb wears a lot of hats. I can let Caleb Arnold address it. But if the impetus here is should some of these things be combined, yeah, maybe so, maybe they should. Maybe there is a way to do that while understanding that when we're dealing with basically good people who are in addiction or they're suffering from mental health issues, they do sometimes have very specialized needs. So there is value in having some specialization when that's how you can get at the root cause. And I can also tell you that recently I've had some indepth conversations with some judges, very good judges whose names I will not use here, about the possibility of doing more diversionary activity in the context of specialized courts that would, for example, be trying to address issues of retail theft and issues of homelessness. S. last year than ever in recorded history. Okay. It's real. Being homeless is not a crime, but it's a problem. It's a problem for the people who are homeless and it's a problem for everybody else when there are alternatives. I think we should be constantly looking for innovation, but I also think we should be constantly looking for what works and the possibility of slimming it down, of consolidating. I suspect all of you know what I know, which is that when people come into leadership, whether it is in elected office or it is in the judiciary, they sometimes want to leave their mark, they're passionate about an issue, so they set up something new, whether it's Veterans Court or it's Mental Health Court, both of which were established earlier in Philadelphia, and that's a good thing. But even when they're gone, sometimes it's approaching it from the 1978 version.
And there may be a 2025 version of that that will be more effective or will be more -- it will meet the moment better in terms of what's actually happening out there. I hereby introduce one Caleb Arnold in the event you would like to get more specific. If you don't want to do that, then that's fine with me.
Good afternoon. Caleb Arnold, Supervisor of Adult Diversion. Thank you for inviting me today. So one of the biggest things that we look at when we're looking at effective programming is the rate of recidivism, right, how many people who complete our programming are successful at staying out of the system after they complete. And I'll say that across the board our programs are successful. The graduation rate for drug treatment court is 77%. The recidivism rate is 7%. In AMP last year, we had 641 people complete the program. Only of those 14 people have had a subsequent arrest 15 so far. So the programming that we 16 have I think is effective. I think 17 the other question that we look at 18 is how well are we identifying 19 people and how quickly can we get 20 them into programming. 21 So we know, for example, 22 that one of the biggest obstacles 23 to successfully completing AMP is 24 housing. So if somebody doesn't have stable housing, it's difficult for them to meet the required components of the program. And so, we do have a relatively high bench warrant rate out of that program, and a lot of it is because of the stability that people don't have in order to complete. Another obstacle is making sure that we're able to get people offers as quickly as possible, particularly if somebody does experience substance use disorder, so what are our screening mechanisms and our ability to identify those people. So we do have checklists and screening that we do at charging so that people are directed immediately from charging into those programs. We're in conversation with the courts about ways that we can do that even earlier and we're constantly trying to work on in partnership with the people that we run these programs with to identify the places where we're not doing as good of a job and how do we most successfully get people to successfully complete. But once we can get people engaged, I think that we're doing a good job.
I'm sorry. The program that you were just referring to, the diversion program you were just referring to that --
So we do have a pretty high bench warrant rate in AMP and to the extent that we're able to ascertain kind of why, a lot of it has to do with access to housing.
Point information is it 77% was not a success rate because I'm con --
So in Drug Treatment Court, which is our more intensive drug treatment program for people that have higher level cases, the graduation rate is 77%.
But now you're saying that the Drug Treatment Court is not AMP?
No. So there's two. We have two different programs. We have one program for nonviolent low-level offenders and that's AMP. We have another program for people who have higher needs, maybe they've committed a felony offense like a criminal trespass or a theft or even a low-level drug sale offense, and those people if they have been assessed as having substance use disorder may qualify for Drug Treatment Court, which is a more intensive minimum yearlong program.
Seems like maybe we should be able to combine the two to make sure that --
There's reasons that you want to keep those populations separate from each other -- DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Including some of them may buy from the others, just saying, or learn how to sell drugs from the others. There's reasons -- but I hear your point. I mean, one could structurally think about it as being a combined effort where you don't send the users to crime school with the dealers.
Right, right. All right. Thank you. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Members of Council, Mr. Listenbee is here. And as you know, he was Obama's Chief of Juvenile Justice in the second term for Barack Obama. He is able to offer you some insights into juvenile diversion if that is something that is acceptable.
Before we do that, I'd like to recognize Councilmember Jones.
Thank you so very much, Madam Chair. First of all, thank you for yesterday addressing some of the shootings in my District dealing with the Eid celebration. Thank you so very much for that. I've gotten all kinds of responses about being encouraged about safe places in Philadelphia, so thank you for that. What I want to talk about is macro, micro and measured; macro, micro and measured. So from the macro standpoint, I'm one of the few Councilpeople here that has gotten hoodnapped. And what hoodnapped means is Asa Khalif who is now my friend, who came in and took me of a workshop and he said, this isn't poverty, let me show you where poverty lives. And we went to K&A. And I will admit it was a different world. But what he explained to me in that tour was that there was a successful sweep of drug corners and the individuals happened to be of Hispanic descent, but they were in jail subletting the corners to African Americans. So, A, is that still a thing? And then how are we addressing that, if you would? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, I think this is a good time to call up Mr. Reddel so he can make sure I don't say something dumb. But I can tell you that the leasing of corners, leasing of blocks, that has been going on for quite some time. I can point you, for example, to the Kip Street takedown, which we did some years ago which to me was kind of a model of taking the best out of a federal approach and the best out of a state court approach. You had a couple generations, a family dynasty there, that had run the Kip Street operation. And they got so good at it they didn't even do it. They would rent out the blocks that they controlled to other drug dealers and those drug dealers would pay them, and those drug dealers would then be out selling and selling. I mean, fortunately, we were able to take down I think 65 or so people, every one of them a dealer, none of them a user, all of them professionals. We were able to take them down, including both of the generations that had controlled that corner. But the phenomenon you're describing of the rental of corners, even people who are locked up being able to still have ownership over that corner is real. And I can give you one more anecdote before he says something smarter. And, that is, it wasn't that long ago where we had a case where we were prosecuting an inmate who from inside of his prison cell with a contraband cell phone had arranged for the purchase of basically a machine gun, in common parlance, for his drug corner. And he did so with the assistance of a vendor up at the prisons, a food vendor who was carrying it out, right. Yeah, you can be locked up and still be running the show out there, especially in a circumstance. And I don't say this in any way to discredit our prisons. The fact is that I think Commissioner Resnick and his team are trying very hard along with our team to clean things up there, but you can do -- even from inside a jail cell you can pay people with your phone. You can direct activity. You can record videos that are communication with people on the outside. So, yes, it is -- you don't necessarily have to be standing there to be running the show. You don't necessarily have to be out there with your people to be owning the block. Some of that phenomenon absolutely continues, Councilmember. Paul, did you want to say something on that?
Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for allowing me to speak today.
And I run currently the Dangerous Drug Offenders Unit. And first and foremost, my team is actually embedded currently with DEA. All my officers, detectives are now task force officers sworn with DEA and actually reside with the federal building and we do investigations with them also federally-crossed designated cases down with the Feds. So our work generally works on the federal and larger groups. So what I'll testify today to and tell you that we have known for a long time that there is investments made and these are true businesses. These aren't just some kid on the corner when you get up at these high levels, but these are true investments that people will make sometimes in New York City, sometimes from other cities, will come down and buy up corners, and then they will have other people run them for them. So the folks who actually manage the money, the folks who actually are running the larger show might be living on the Main Line. We've actually done a case over COVID where we had a guy living out in Montgomery County, $1.5 million mansion, who was ultimately indicted federally along with 18 others, which led from here to Mexico to Jamaica out to California. And that was a case that was under seal for so long. The pleas just resolved in this year, and that was done over COVID. So those kind of cases take a lengthy time to wind up and resolve themselves. But in this matter when we're fighting on this level, we're fighting massive organizations with huge budgets to deal with. And so, what we want to do in our group is to stop the big play of all the narcotics that gets tossed into this into Philadelphia. I can tell you this on a small scale I worked with the State Police on Friday and we pulled off two kilos of fentanyl. That was in the 15th District, but I guarantee you that's going towards your neighborhoods. And we do it all the time with the Pennsylvania State Police but then we do these larger cases with DEA, which, one, we want to find the source of supply and we want to find out the folks who are actually running the entire show. And so, we do smaller level directly and then we do larger with the federal government specifically with DEA, but we also participate with FBI's Drug Task Force. We've worked with ATF and we've worked of course with Pennsylvania State Police and the Philadelphia Police Department, all these levels. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: And by way of reference, I know all about the case Mr. Reddel is discussing. I think we provide a little bit of information about that in our private meetings with Kensington Caucus. But just so we understand the dimension of that case. It was $50 million in cash and drugs. The vast majority of drugs could be connected directly to one of the most infamous cartels in Mexico, and it was run by somebody from right here. Okay. So, yeah, there's some very, very important work going on that is not necessarily public because it can't be. We can't have people killed all over the world for a headline. We wouldn't do that, but there's some very important work that is done there.
So one of the macro things we were discussing, so an elected official in Jersey said to me in my face the most pure heroin on the East Coast comes from Kensington; and is that true?
That is -- Council, if I may, answer that. I've been a prosecutor 22 years and I'll tell you the cops who were the elder statesmen when I started would talk about heroin in Philadelphia being amongst the best on the East Coast. Now, in some way that has completely changed because the opioid epidemic has transferred that into the fentanyl epidemic, and that's what we see. In fact, I had one DEA agent describe it this way, fentanyl is Budweiser and Craft Brew is now heroin. So much more -- and it's even the new users want to go for fentanyl because of the way it affects the body and it's a quicker high, it's a more potent high and you're finding that -- and we can't barely find a pure heroin a lot of times when we do stops. A lot of that's already mixed with fentanyl. But there are still a group of users who prefer traditional heroin.
So down to the micro and I will then turn it over to my Chair Lady, commercial corridors. Member Harrity is toes down about 4 assisting the businesses along the 5 corridor. And one of the things in 6 that discovery was that many of 7 them were victims of shoplifting to 8 the point that it was so organized 9 that people were going into the 10 neighborhoods getting lists and filling those lists through shoplifting. In that regard, how are we treating shoplifting in the continuum of crime although we recognize many of them are victims of being addicted, but the other victim is the store owner that can't stay open because people believe it's okay to shoplifting in their facilities. Where are we with that? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, with your permission I'll give the two-sentence version and then we'll bring in the expert here, Kim Esack, head of our Economic Crimes Unit, head of our Retail Theft Task Force which is celebrating its actually first anniversary and has done such remarkable work that we're getting phone calls from other DA's Offices around the country. I'll let her get up here. But the real short version is how are we doing it, we are recognizing that there are a number of buckets. People who are operating a warehouse and are giving lists to addicted people, so those addicted people will come back with iPads or whatever it is they're stealing and get drugs. Those people are getting accountability, and that's what they should be getting. When you have prolific offenders, people who do it and do it and do it, those people are getting accountability. However, let's get real. If the underlying issues are not addressed even while they're in jail, if they have deep mental health issues, they've been living on the street for nine years, they're extremely addicted, you don't mess with those issues, they'll just come out of state prison and do it again. So we can't just say they're terrible people and we also can't afford to just keep them in jail for the rest of their lives, even when they're having to do a serious jail sentence. We also need to find ways to work on the fundamental issues. And if we don't do it, then we are going to continue to have that issue. When you get down to people who are on their first arrest, people who have taken small amounts, all the data that we have tends to indicate that they are overwhelmingly young people who are opportunistic, who are grabbing a purse because they saw it and got excited and did it. Young people do dumb stuff. As long as they're not going to do it again, then those people are deserving of the other hand. They are deserving of, you know, a lot of accountability that doesn't necessarily result in a conviction that will disable them from participating in the economy. Now, I can tell you that Kim Esack can give you a somewhat more nuanced version because the work that is going on here is extremely collaborative with the Philadelphia Police Department. It involves a wonderful app that merchants are using in the city so that people in the stores can communicate with the police and communicate with us. And when you have the frequent flyers, people who are stealing a lot, who get chased out of one store, it notifies all the other nearby stores and it notifies the nearby police. So even if police, understaffed as they are, and I have to tell you I have a lot of sympathy and compassion for police officers who have to respond to shootings and then get criticized because they didn't go to the retail theft instead, they have to use their resources for the priorities. But my point is simply even if a police officer can't respond immediately to Store No. 1, by the time Joe the Thief has gotten to Store No. 2 or 3, they're walking in the door before he even steals something. So it's been effective. With that, I will let Kim Esack say a couple words.
Good afternoon, Council. Kimberly Esack, District Attorney's Office, Supervisor of the Economic Crimes Division. And one of the units I oversee is the Retail Theft and Organized Retail Theft and Deed Theft Task Force. And to follow up on what the DA has already mentioned, we have been working collaboratively officially in the task force for the past year with the Philadelphia Police Department. We had started a pilot prior to that for at least a year before then trying to work out the mechanics of how we would bring this to the entire city of Philadelphia and all the divisions. And so far, the feedback we have gotten has been very, very good from the community members, the employees at the stores that we've been working with and the business community in general as well as with the police department. We stay in regular touch with each other. Just earlier today Inspector Evers, who is overseeing the entire thing now for the police department, reached out just to do a check-in with me to see where we are and if there's any issues that I needed to address with him. Last week I was at a meeting with the DA for a store that didn't really know about some of the things that we were doing. And as soon as we find that out, we get out there, we advise what's going on, we get them in touch with the right people and we let the police department know as well so that we all get on the same page. Our Community Engagement Unit in the office is reaching out to the businesses at least once a week to touch base with them so that we can reach everybody to let them know this is what we're doing and so that you can get on the same page with us. What the DA was telling you about with stores alerting each other, that is what this collaboration has allowed for, so that individuals are helping each other in the community as well as with the police department and us. We do vertical prosecution in my particular unit. Now, we are a small unit. We're still expanding and we're trying to take on more. But currently we have over 1500 transcripts and over 500 offenders that we've adopted into the unit for vertical prosecution. Meaning, we're seeing their cases through from start to finish as well as collecting the other cases that they may have picked up along the way and also working with the detectives in what the DA had mentioned about, even if we can't get them at one site for that one arrest but they've hit that store times before and the 8 police didn't make it out there, 9 we're now working with the 10 detectives to make sure they go back, collect that evidence and secure an arrest warrant for that offender. In addition, once we have somebody in our unit we get them into our arrest alert tracker that I get arrest alerts. I've gotten a few while I've been sitting here. The last Councilmember, our meeting that I attended, it's the same thing. I get arrest alerts all the time for anybody that we have put into the system so that we know there's a case pending. We can grab that case and get them off the street right away. And in addition, we get information from the businesses that maybe didn't speak with the police before, maybe didn't file 8 charges before but they have prolific offenders that they want us to know about, we put their names into the system. So even if they haven't established that background because they got away with it for a period of time, now we do know that they are a prolific offender and they are in our arrest alerts and we can tackle that right away, and we look at each case individually. As the DA said, there are some who clearly they need to be off the street. But then there are others that we're looking at the background to see what's going on with them and is there a program that we can get them into. They may need to go into jail but can we get them some treatment, can we parole them to a treatment program, can we monitor after the fact so that they don't just get released and we don't know what happens to them.
We do status check-ins maybe every 30 days, every 60 days so that we can know what's happening with them while they're on outside supervision because probation isn't always seeing people in person anymore. They do phone check-ins a lot. We don't really have control over that all the time, but we can request the court to schedule a case so that we can do a face-to-face with the people that we're supervising.
All right. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: There is. Councilmember, two quick final points on this. Happy to answer more questions. But number one, I know that there's been a lot of yap out there, lot of talking about how we don't prosecute under $500. That has never, ever, ever, ever, ever -- let me say it again, ever, ever been true. That was never, ever, ever true and it's not true now. We have always prosecuted at least at the summary level, and it depended on the individual. Under 500 bucks, we just don't -- I mean, it's been repeated falsely so many times it's become almost out there in the environment. So I do need to put that out. And finally, it's really important when we talk about this issue that we don't just talk about the big box stores with the big budgets. Target, for example, has a remarkably impressive state-of- the-art security situation going on. And we care about Target. We care about the customers. We care about the people who work there. We care about them. But we also have to care about all the commercial corridors, all the mom-and-pop stores, all the ones that are not in Center City. So part of what the DA's Office does through its community engagement team, and that's headed by G. Lamar Stewart who also heads 14 other things, part of what we do is we go to these corridors and we have our engagement people go door- to-door-to-door to talk to the shop owners to find out what their experience is to see what their needs are to monitor the situation. Because sometimes people who are not in Center City or maybe not in Chestnut Hill or not on Rittenhouse Square, they feel like they don't get the consideration -- they don't get enough input. And we agree with that. We think it's really important. We have gotten a lot of helpful information that way. It allows us to work better and more collaboratively with PPD. And so, that is also part of the retail theft effort that we are on.
Thank you, Mr. District Attorney. That was enlightening. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Thank you, sir.
Good afternoon, Mr. DA. How are you, sir? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: I'm well, Councilmember Harrity. How are you, sir?
I'm doing well, my brother. Just a quick question. I was just -- this is just for clarification. I have a couple friends, some of them go to court on occasion. But I heard your office is now offering the Emerging Adult Unit program as of Monday in court. That's something new, another program or something like that. What I'm curious about is and the case -- I'm not -- I'm just using it as an example. Somebody was there for drug sales, turned down AMP program, choosing instead the EAU program instead. Under what circumstances would they be referred to either EAU or the AMP program? I'm just trying to figure out what both programs are and how they interact and what's the difference between for a person to be able to switch it up or something like that? That's all. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Yes, Councilmember. I think I'll give the quick answer, and then I'll let the smart one correct me. But the quick answer is AMP, A-M-P stands for Accelerated Misdemeanor Program. Drug dealing is in almost every respect a felony program. It's more serious. So there is a distinction there. But let me let Caleb Arnold respond to that.
So especially in that instance what we're looking at is whether somebody has a substance use disorder and they need treatment. So if somebody is engaging in an activity that will qualify for diversion and they went to AMP but they didn't have a substance use issue, then we're going to push them into EAU so they can complete job training, education and -- DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: What is EAU?
Yeah. That's great. That actually answers my question. Great. I just wanted to know what the difference was between them. And it's higher charges basically, right? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Yes.
Good. And what happens with that? Do the defendants pay restitution in any of these instances they do?
Yeah. So in any case where there's restitution, payment of restitution is included as part of the required components of the offer.
Even if they go into the program, they still have to pay that?
Okay. Very good, very good. Thank you. Hold on. Just one last one. What's your overall opinion of diversionary programs in general? I believe you said a little bit on it, but what's your feelings on those? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, my overall opinion is that when they make us safer and they straighten out people's lives and turn them away from crime, they're great. But Charles Manson shouldn't get diversion. I think they are, you know, we need to do individual justice. We need to recognize as best we can where those individuals are. We are, like it or not, in criminal justice in the business of risk management and we get it right as much as we can. So I think diversionary programs can be a very positive tool, especially when they're robust with dedicated social workers, with finding the root of the problem, treating it, trying to make people more employable. But they're not for every case. You're not going to see us doing this on the kind of cases that rip apart society, that are terrifying neighborhoods. You're going to see us not only doing it on much less serious offenses but trying to carefully monitor whether our criteria are right. Are we too selective, could this make us safer with more people or are we not selective enough, and we're putting people into diversion who then go out and do bad things. It's the constant self-evaluation, constant self-correction that we have to do with these programs.
So just a follow-up to that, is there a program -- just for an example, one of the diversionary programs that you don't think is working the way it should or that needs to be changed? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, I can tell you that we generally tweak them and change them whenever we see a problem. We don't always have complete control. Sometimes the courts are involved and they have certain criteria. But I can tell you we had a program at one point that involved people who were stealing cars and we were selective of who was in the program. And we eventually determined it was a little too short. There was plenty of criminological science to support a short program being good, but we didn't like what we were seeing. Some of them were coming out and they were stealing another car. So we took it from what was essentially a two-month program to a one-year program and we got totally different results. After one year, the nonsense was over. They weren't running around and getting a new one and we had much better results in recidivism. But let's not kid ourselves. Crime's been around for a while, probably still will. But if we can outdo other similar cities, which is exactly what we have been doing the last four years in terms of reducing crimes in many categories, not every category but many categories, then we're doing pretty well. When you look at car insurance companies or you look at hospitals and you say, which car insurance company is doing policies for people who have fewer crashes, which hospital is saving more lives of people who have cancer, unfortunately, there's still going to be car crashes there's still going to be people who have fatal cancer. But the real question is are we doing better than other major cities that face similar problems, and it is an achievement especially when you're not the richest city in the world. It is a major achievement if we can outdo those other cities in terms of improving things. And let me just say one final thing if I may. I really believe that we are at a moment in this city when we have an opportunity to go from being a chronically violent city to a consistently safe city, but we all have to do what is counterintuitive to people in elected office, which is when the bad headline goes away or at least it's not there as much, people follow the next butterfly. They're going to go off and deal with the next thing that seems to be bad. We cannot take success and take our foot off the gas. We have to put our foot on the gas for success and switch where there's failure. And I am concerned, especially in these times with the leadership in Washington, D.C. and possibilities of austerity, that we could get wrapped up with new concepts and ideas to the exclusion of continuing what has already worked. We have to somehow find a way to keep working on all of our problems but never let our foot off the gas on what has been successful in improving public safety and the lives of people in Philadelphia.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon. Thank you for all these details. I mean, my head is spinning because I have so many questions and we can't obviously get them all answered now. But why don't you talk about again a global issue about supply and demand, right. We are working. You talked about cutting the supply and a lot of work going on with the task force and you've had some success and our demand, which is driving this market here, right. How are we addressing the demand side in terms of reducing this as an attractive place for that business to flourish? What can we do to reduce the desire to have this as the place? Why not New Jersey? Why not somewhere else? Why here in Kensington and Philadelphia as a result? Why are we the ground zero for this? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, are you speaking specifically of the drug trade or --
Yes. Second most or the most profitable industry in the world? DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Well, you know, there are certainly some criminologists who could say more interesting things about it, but I have been around Kensington for a very long time, partly because I speak Spanish. And so, when I was a private criminal defense attorney and civil rights attorney, I had a lot of clients who resided in Kensington. I've watched it over the years and I've taken some time to read about it. I think there are a number of factors that make Kensington vulnerable to this kind of situation. One of them is its proximity to Route 95, its proximity to water, its proximity to trains. For someone who wants to come from Baltimore, D.C., grab whatever amount, even a kilo, and get it back down there, they don't have to spend a whole lot of time getting off the main road, getting back on and then driving 75 miles an hour straight back. Another one is that it's kind of central on the northern part of the East Coast. So if you are trying to operate in New York City and in New Jersey and in Baltimore and in D.C., it's relatively central. A third factor, which I think is significant, is of course the economic history of Kensington, which as many of you know involves industry that left at a certain point and there was an influx of people, many of them from Puerto Rico in that era, but there was an influx of people who came to fill jobs that were being abandoned by workers in the factories who were being offered less per hour, right. They came in for those jobs and then those jobs disappeared completely. And so, you had a significant bunch of people who needed jobs, who wanted jobs, who wanted to work, and then it went away. And in some sense they were there and something had to happen. So it created a situation where there were employment needs, there was significant poverty. It was a place where, you know, I'm not speaking of this commission or this police department or even my seven years in office, but there were decades when there was less police concern and less political concern about Kensington, Port Richmond, that general area, than there were in more affluent and vote-rich locations. As I said, I know there's an interesting article by a guy named Philippe Bourgois, a professor who studied this. I would recommend to any of you take a look at it, not because I think it's authoritative but it is an actual history of Kensington that's pretty interesting. I think those are some of the factors that are involved, but I'm sure there are wiser people who could say more on that.
Yeah, we understand in broad strokes. So the reason I asked that question is to say all these efforts we're doing right now, how impactful and how do we measure their impact, is it by looking at how many people are using? Is it by looking at how much retail theft that's happening? So all of these things everybody's doing at all different levels of all different branches of government, for it to be effective and to really have an impact and transform Kensington because that's ground zero, hopefully it'll spread elsewhere, how are we giving ourselves like a pilot phase to say, DA's involved, police is involved, social services's involved, the executive branch, the legislative branch, judicial branch, what are we -- how are we looking at the progress on this to say we're doing it right? I'm concerned that we might be throwing a lot of spaghetti on the wall and hoping -- and the reason why it's critical right now is our funds are going to get reduced, our federal dollars are going to be impacted. So we are going to have less resources and we have to be wiser about how we use them, which is why we need to be evidence-based and data- driven about what is working and what is not and focusing on where those intersections are and deploying resources there. And I have not seen that. I have seen, you know, everybody doing their own conversation on this from every different corner. And I think it requires us to have leadership from every sector to say I'm going to put my pet project aside even though I know it's excellent because this other one is better, but someone else did it. We need to give ourselves a timeline. We need to have some deliverables, and all of us have to be accountable for those measures. And I think we all need to come together to do that and set aside our petty differences. Because at the end of the day, there are people dying. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Understood. What a great question. And knowing you a little bit as I do, Councilmember, and your scientific background, you know me. I'm not scientific, but I love me some data. So I hear all of that. I think part of your question is what are the metrics we use to say are we failing or succeeding. The number of people using on the street is important. The number of people living on the street at least to the extent we think it's a consequence of drug activity and drug addiction, and it almost always is, is important. There's a third metric people don't talk about much, but it's something I saw when I actually went and visited the program in Lisbon that I thought was really enlightening, really, really enlightening. And that was this: We walked up into the hills where a lot of people, historically 5000 people now down to 1000 or fewer. And when we went up and we were actually engaging with people who were using who were up there, I was with an outreach team and we were just walking around talking to people. They were old. They were -- I'm old so I can say this. They were old. They were people who were in their 40s and they were in their 50s. And when we talked to them, what we heard over and over was, you know, I had a relapse of my brain cancer and after eight years I went back on heroin. My mother died and I got really depressed and after being off of it for 12 years, I went back on heroin. Those were the stories we were seeing. You didn't see what you see in the United States and in Philadelphia, which is apparently able-bodied 18-year-olds, 20-year- olds, 21-year-olds who are, you know, a significant portion of that population. When you get to the point where you stop seeing young people becoming so addicted that they're living on the street, you're making an impact. And as I said, I mean of course you don't want anybody on the street addicted. Nobody wants that. But they went from -- they had an 80% reduction in that population with the program that they were following. So I think that is another metric.
I think it's very important also that we not make things worse. It's really easy when you go into a situation that's problematic, to do things without thinking of the consequences. If the consequence of the activity is that you reduce the number of people in Kensington, that's a good thing. But it's not a great thing if exactly the same number of people just migrate to other neighborhoods. Why? Well, it's the same number of people. And I understand. I don't want all of this suffering and harm to be served on Kensington. I want to be clear about that. But the other thing that happens when you take people who have Hepatitis C or have Hepatitis A or have HIV and they all disperse to other neighborhoods where they start sharing dirty needles with other people or having sexual intercourse with other people is you spread diseases that are awful, that cost a fortune that we have to some extent try to keep under control, right. We need to at least think about that. I'm not saying let's be paralyzed. We can't be paralyzed. We have to innovate. We have to do things. But we need to at least always say, well, if we do this, is there a downside and can we handle the downside and what can we do about it. But I think the most important point is exactly what you said. There has been too little effort. In my experience there has been too little effort to get the right people in the room, Vegas rules meaning we don't talk about it. We did this with Council and Caucus. We at least started this conversation. Too little effort to get them all in the room before somebody comes up with a new plan. There really are models of things that have worked in the United States and worked in other places that we ought to be discussing as we come up with plans. Everybody has good intentions, but our gut is not always right. Sometimes what our gut says turns out to be less effective than what our gut doesn't say. So I could not be more sincere when I say I think a lot of the failures that we have seen in Kensington over the years and potential failures right here and right now are when people are often separate silos because they don't trust some other player in the system. They won't exchange information collectively and talk to each other collectively. Now, having said that I will say this: I'm encouraged by some of the rhetoric -- and I don't mean that in a dismissive way -- but I'm encouraged by some of the language that I'm hearing. I see what seems to me to be a positive evolution, even if it didn't all happen in the same silo, some of these silos are coming together a little bit more and we're seeing an evolution in the language that seems to go more in the direction of trying to fix the problem. So we're not always punishing and criminalizing the problem, but fix the problem insofar as it is addiction, mental health issues, homelessness, unaddressed trauma, things of that sort. And on behalf of my office, I'm all in to have that sort of a think tank where everybody who should be in there having private conversations, not trying to smack each other in the press but having private conversations, is there and I'm all in to the extent we can do it, to use our data lab and our criminological resources to help provide that information. Obviously in no way excluding criminologists who work with PPD or criminologists from other sources, but I'm all in for that conversation. I think we might save ourselves a lot of heartache and a lot of frustration if we are all in the same room instead of having, "the plan" announced to us later.
Thank you. And I hope that proverbial room will occur only because, as I said, limited resources have to get some bang for our buck at the end of it. It sounds awful, but that's how we need to do it because our funds are limited. And the last thing I'll say, and I don't know how your office addresses this, we are talking a lot about people with substance disorder and how they're impacting our city, our criminal justice system. I never want to forget those who do not have this disorder, who are living in Kensington who seem to be overlooked constantly, whether that's by design or not, because they're not needing the immediate services that this other group does. I want every office in our city in any capacity to make sure they know they're not forgotten, their children having to step over needles and exposed to all kinds of disease that is being bred there. There's accountability somewhere, right. Those children did not ask for this. So I would love to see that mental construct across the board for everyone to be able to acknowledge that, and that does not mean that we're harming anybody else. I have not heard that enough in this short time that I've been here in elected office, that articulation except from my colleague here and these colleagues here who have said it and have received a lot of negative attention for that. And I think it behooves all of us to stand up and say, these are folks who are imprisoned there just as much and every agency, authority, elected person needs to acknowledge that and actually say sorry to them because we have neglected them for so long. And I would love to hear what the District Attorney's Office is doing about that. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: First of all, I could not agree more heartily. I don't see however this as being a tug of war between people suffering from addiction and people who live there. They are both served by the same outcome, and that outcome is that they don't see as many addicted people on the street because we're dealing with those issues. On the other hand, it is a tug of war between professional drug dealers and shooting groups. That is a tug of war. They are against the community simply put. So that's a different situation. But obviously, to the extent that through enforcement we can reduce shootings, reduce professional drug dealing, the community is better. To the extent that we use all the tools in the toolbox to deal with addiction and reduce addiction on the street, I mean can you imagine what it would mean in Kensington to have an 80% reduction in onstreet unhoused drug users? Can you imagine what that would mean for enrollment in the schools, for the integrity of the business community there, for property values, for the interest of people to develop in a positive way, not a crazy way? It would be a tremendous plus. So we have spent quite a bit of time in Kensington. We have met with community groups and individuals, including ones who are not friendly to us. We have done that. We have spent that time, and I think it has been very positive. But I completely agree with you that the focus should not just be on those people who are suffering with addiction or worse yet, people who are feeding that addiction. The focus here has to be on making the lives of the residents there better, which happens at exactly the same time as you make the lives of addicted people better.
Thank you for that. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Squilla.
Thank you. And thank you, Larry, for being here. My question again is on both -- I know we worked really hard on AMP Court getting up and running. I heard two things. One is the one diversionary program, the Drug Court has a 77% success rate. And you say AMP court with over 650 people last year who went there as a bad success rate. So I'd like to see those numbers to understand why because the challenge would be if we're doing something wrong in AMP Court, and out of the 632 -- what was the number of AMP Court last year?
So we actually have good rates for people that complete the program, right -- DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Which program?
So for AMP last year we had 641 complete and of those people picked up a new 12 arrest. 13