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
No, no, no. 16 This is just numbers. This isn't 17 percent. So it's like 4% or 18 something like that. 19 DISTRICT ATTORNEY 20 KRASNER: Councilmember, with your 21 permission can we back up just a 22 little bit because I don't want 23 there to be confusion between 24 graduation and what happens after graduation. So, Caleb Arnold, can you explain to the Councilmember what happens if you fail during AMP and what happens after AMP?
Can we step one step back further. How many people were sent to AMP last year?
We had -- let me just pull my notes. So last year, there were -- I don't have the numbers of how many people were sent to AMP just last year. I have more global numbers. I apologize. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: About how many were in AMP last year?
I just have the completion numbers. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: All right. What's the completion --
If you can send them to us and we'll make sure that we distribute them to the Committee, that would be great.
But to address your question, we have a good recidivism rate in both programs. The problem is getting people to complete AMP once they get in, right. And so, that's where we see a number of bench warrants where people either bench warrant and then they complete later when they get picked up and their bench warrants lifted or we just have people who are on bench warrants for a long time. And so, it's true like one of the things that we're looking to do is how to push AMP in earlier so that we can get people connected faster to treatment.
And I think that would be a goal from us also. I mean, I think if we see those numbers maybe we could help or at least brainstorm together how we could improve that because again, it's all about outcomes in the end. We would love to say we got people started, but that's one part is the getting started. The second part is to follow them through a process hopefully, right, to become successful. All right. That was my main question. If we could get that data information set to the Chair. And then if we have further questions, we could just do that through email to be able to get answers. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Councilmember, I want to make sure we answer your question properly. So you're looking to see how many people were referred to AMP, how many went into AMP, how many completed AMP and how they did after AMP?
Right. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRASNER: Okay. We can do that.
Thank you. Are there further questions? (No response.)
Thank you so much for being with us today. Will the Clerk please call the next panel to testify on Resolution 240896.
We have Chief Defender Keisha Hudson from the Defender's Association. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Thank you. Welcome. Please state your name and begin your testimony. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Good afternoon, Councilmember Jones. Keisha Hudson. I'm the Chief Defender of the Defender Association of Philadelphia. And with me, I have Andrew Pappas who is the Managing Director of Pretrial and specifically tasked with working with our Kensington clients and population and stakeholders.
Welcome. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you. And good afternoon, fellow Councilmembers. I do want to thank Councilmember Quetcy Lozada and this Committee for the opportunity to testify. We did submit very detailed written testimony, and I want to keep this brief and leave time for any questions that you might have. I want to talk a little bit about my experience as a public defender because it is relevant, I think, to the answers the questions you've been asking today and the answers that you seek and what I think some of the solutions are. I've been a public defender for 15 years. It'll be 23 years in 16 September. 17 I am, as my fellow 18 defenders are, experts in what our 19 clients' histories look like and 20 what they need in order to navigate 21 the criminal legal system and 22 successfully navigate the legal system and not to re-enter it. For 10 years, I worked at the Federal Defenders in the Capital Habeas Unit representing clients who were sentenced to death row. And a critical component of that work was what we called mitigation work. And I will tell you that one of the recurring issues in our clients' histories that recur generation after generation in addition to poverty was drug dependency, mental health issues, and these recur. And so, our clients are incredibly complicated. They did not just fall into drug addiction or serious drug addiction. There's a history to how they got there, and we know the solutions to how to help them. I never come to address this body without talking a little bit about the scope of the work we do and our needs as we are in the midst of budget cycle. And just to give you an idea, last year, we represented 44,000 adults last year. In calendar year 2024, we represented 44,000 adults. 1500 of those were linked to arrests within 3000 feet of Kensington and Allegheny. And the majority of the clients were of course from Districts 1, 6 or 7, and 6% of them were homeless. We have -- with that 44,000 client population we only have 29 social workers, 29. One of the questions that you've been asking of each panel is whether or not you can follow clients through treatment as they're going through addiction treatment, whether or not you can measure outcomes and bring that data back to show are these programs and diversion programs effective. And one way you can do that and must do that, as I've been advocating every budget cycle, is we need more social workers. 5 million to fund social workers. I did not 4 get that allocation. This year I'm 5 specifically focusing on Kensington 6 and asking for five social workers 7 to start. It won't be enough, but 8 five social workers to start 9 working exclusively with people in 10 Kensington. And my budget ask is 11 million to support not just an 12 expansion of Wellness Court but a 13 place-based strategy to do the case 14 management where we follow that 15 client the entire time they're in 16 the system, post-treatment, connect 17 them to housing, connect them to 18 other resources, help them get 19 their benefits, help connect them 20 to jobs and make sure that they are 21 not going to filter back into the 22 system and do that re-entry 23 planning component as we're 24 supporting them on a case management basis. As you know, the Defender's Association we don't create diversion programs. That is the Police, that is the District Attorney, that is the courts. But we are the experts on the people who go through them and we can tell you parts of the reasons why we think they could be more successful and ways that they could either expand to address and meet a higher need. So the current diversion programs we see the successes and challenges. For AMP, it's a program I think that is essential. It is successful and provides treatment instead of jail for low-level nonviolent offenses. There was expanded eligibility in November of 2024, which allowed improved individualized assessments.
The key success metrics from our data, right, there were 446 referrals in the last four months, we looked at the last four months, with only one revocation for the people that we represent from the data that we collected. The second -- and we haven't heard much about this today -- is the Forensic Intensive Recovery or the FIR program, something that I know Councilmember Lozada has been asking questions about, how does FIR work and it is for effective. It was designed to reduce the jail population and jail overcrowding by connecting incarcerated people to treatment. The issue we are having with FIR, which the courts are aware and are looking at, is that it takes over two months on average for people to be released through FIR, and 18% of people who are referred, individuals who were released before evaluation, came back through the system and were re-arrested. So that's missed intervention opportunities that we are not getting. The assessments are taking way too long and people are getting out they could be getting out variety of ways, they make bail, their case is resolved, but we are seeing 80% of that population that did not get evaluated come back through our jail system. And then Neighborhood Wellness Court, you have heard a lot about today. It is the pilot stage. It is only one day a week on Wednesday mornings as you know. It is incredibly important that we are lifting bench warrants same day. We have to avoid the necessity of sending anyone to State Road. And we are hopeful that we can navigate issues around detainers so that people who have detainers do not go to State Road. As you know, we've lost two clients -- in addition to Amanda Cahill, we lost two clients in the last year because of bench warrant detainer issues and the jail just was not prepared to treat this population. The numbers coming through now are low because I do think it is one day a week, one morning a week. Well, today is a beautiful day but it's been very, very cold, and we are right around the time when our clients go home and their families accept them back in and there is forgiveness and there's redemption. But I do think you're going to see the numbers rise significantly in the spring and summer months. And so, it's going to have to expand if we're keeping Neighborhood Wellness Court. My part of the 1 million ask as I said before is to be able to staff that expansion addition to the five social workers that would just be dedicated to Kensington. My recommendations and then I'll close for any questions. I do think we should expand pre-arrest diversion. I see what happens once my clients come into the system. The outcomes for them are incredibly poor once they are in the system. And so, for our youth and adults I think expansion of prearrest is important. We have to invest in the Defender Association. We absolutely have to. 44,000 adults last year and 29 social workers is just not a tenable way to make an impact on our client population, much less the high-needs population which are our dependent kids and our drug-addicted and mentally-ill population. So we need more social workers. And we have heard now a lot of discussion around housing and housing being part of the solution. So I do think these diversion programs are working. They can work better. They can have a much broader reach. But I think the answer you've been seeking today about how can we measure outcomes and whether people who successfully go through PAD or AMP or Wellness Court, are they cycling back through, is you have to have someone who stays with them the entire time they're in the system from start to finish. One last point, our highest population of dependent children that we represent is in the Kensington area.
I do think we have to take a holistic look at the fact that our clients who are substance-addicted have children who are in the dependency system and whether or not reunification and helping them reunify with their children can be a path for them to get better, because I will tell you our clients who have their children in that system talk about the impact of not seeing that light or reunification at the end of the time and whether or not that would help them stay on track so that they can their families back together. Dependency is a multi- generational recurring issue that we see when I talked before about the indicators that we see in our clients' lives. Not just poverty, not just substance abuse and drug addiction and not just mental illness, dependency recurs generations after generations after generations. I see this as a particularly important time with our budget. And I say that to say that our client population at the Defender Association is going to be and has been in some real pain and I think is going to be feeling even more pain across the board in the next four years, and arming us with the ability to actually do case management work and not the light touch of referrals is going to be key if we're going to weather now and weather the next four years. And I'll take questions now. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you for all of the work that you're doing. I want to go back to something that Dr. Ahmad referred to, and I'm sure that you all have heard it sitting in this room. There are a lot of programs. At what point or do you believe that it is important for us to sit down and figure out, lay out all these programs and figure out how do they overlap? Right now everybody's working in their own silo. And I think to Dr. Ahmad's point I think that is the problem, that either we are refusing to do it, we don't have the capacity or the systems to be able to do it, but everybody just -- instead of figuring out how to better improve a diversion program, how to invest in order for this diversion program to work effectively and respond to hundreds of people, we decide we're going to create another program, right. How do you think that is -- what barriers do you think that is creating? What additional barriers do you think that is creating, right? We already know some of the barriers. We've heard of them today. But having all of these programs and having people work in their individual silos, how do you think that's hurting us and what do you recommend? What do you recommend that as a committee we advocate for moving forward to continue to respond not just to the crisis that we're seeing in Kensington, but to the need that we have in the city of Philadelphia, right? Yes, diversion programs are extremely important. Yes, we want to keep people from entering our systems or going up to State Road and, yes, we believe in opportunities, opportunities that you're going to take advantage of right, not opportunities for you to beat the system, opportunities that you're going to take advantage of that are going to lead you to a quality of life. What do we need to do? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: So at the Defender Association we have two data people, right. And we, I think, do an excellent job because we can ask questions and we have information that none of the other stakeholders will ever have about our clients. They won't. We are covered by attorney-client privilege. We have access to information from them and their entire family history, their medical history starting with prenatal to the day they came into the system. The police will never have that data point. The DAs, the courts won't have that data point. We have that data point, so we can see what is what got you here and what is working and what is not working. We can look at your record and see, okay, you've been through AMP, you've been through three other programs and you're here again on your 5th or 6th or 10th arrest, clearly what is happening there. We specially assign our clients with complicated needs to social workers, but with 29 that is a triage that we make the really high-needs population, particularly with mental health. And we have a very large mentally-ill population of clients that we represent. So we actually can -- we have the solutions now. We have to desensitize the data. We can't tell you names and other information, but we can at least tell you key markers about what we think are some of the issues that need to be worked on and fixed. Is it more resources? Possibly, but the right type of resources. I think it's much more effective to invest in social services for us and then put aside some Kensington specific housing, right. Much less expensive to say I'm going to invest 2 million into very modest apartments or across the city for people to see a light at the end of the tunnel and know I I actually have a place to live or if I my child is in the dependency system and I want to reunify in addition to my addiction, I have a place where we can stay and sleep and be a family. So I think it's where we are investing.
And while I'm all for prevention, and I've always said I would love to be out of a job, I don't want our clients to come through our doors because their outcomes are much worse once they are, if we're not doing the prevention and interventions, we have to support the prevention, interventions like diversion and even before then. But once they're in the system, if you're going to effectively get them out of the system, then you have to devote resources in the right ways. And connection to housing is one of Philly's biggest problems right now, but a housing first model to addiction recovery works. If I know -- even for outpatient or inpatient if I know I have a place to lay my head or I will, that is going to help me actually succeed rather than if I know I'm going to go back to the streets of Kensington where within two days I'm back on drugs again. So I think we have that information. And if we're invited to the tables, we want to be invited at every table with the city and the courts and the DA and the Office of Public Safety, we have a lot of ideas in terms of what works and what doesn't. But we have to take a new look at where we're sending our dollars and where they can effectively make the most impact.
Thank you. One more question. In your testimony you refer to a Kensington pretrial diversional hub and shifting towards prearrest diversion initiatives. Could you explain how the proposed hub would function within the broader arrest model and what immediate steps would we need now to implement a hub like that? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: And the funding that I've asked for would be partly dedicated to this. Right now our office is at 15th and Sansom. It is not easy to get to. Transportation is an issue for a lot of our clients and for this population. We want to have a presence. We want to be there every day. We want to have a place-based model with staff, with social workers who are also case managers, with five -- again, we're not going to meet every need and every client, but then I can come back before you next year or the following year, whenever you want to measure it, and say here is what we are doing, here are the clients we worked with, and here are the outcomes because we stayed with them. The only reason I say when we come back is the legal system sometimes takes a very long time for things to end. And so, what data would you want to see at what point to see is this place- based model working. We are over here in our interesting but comfortable offices at 15th and Sansom. We want to be in Kensington with that presence, with people who are going to stay with that client for that downstream data that you want to see.
What would that cost? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: 1 million.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jones.
Thank you, Madam Chair. To go back to the original question of what the Defender's Association can do to help the situation in Kensington, it was crystal clear to me. 29 social workers, right, that can help to a case management and they are uniquely positioned to be able to go from beginning to resolution unlike other people. And I think by investing in that way, we can get a better outcome. And my question becomes, the children that you mentioned that are in the Kensington area that are victims of some of this abuse through drug use, do they wind up becoming your adult clients? Is there a trend? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: There will be a forthcoming article 13 in The Inquirer about what we call the womb-to-prison pipeline. So in of our dependent children do end up in delinquency, and that's 25%. And 1 in 5 of our adult clients started with dependency system involvement. And as I said before, it is cyclical and multi- generational and the outcomes for their children will be similar unless we can really effect that change with -
It's like breaking a cycle. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: It is a cycle, yeah.
Thank you for your work you do. I'm a fan. You guys know that -- CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you.
-- I'm always glad to see you guys and I really appreciate the work you do. I've been through that part and I remember sitting over there waiting and seeing everybody that was in there and going, what the hell am I doing here, part of my wake-up, I guess. But I'm working on some stuff with the restorative justice and I'm seeing a kind of disconnect as far as women are concerned. From what I'm gathering, women in the system end up doing almost all their time because there's no place to parole them to. There's not enough halfway houses for women. There's not enough programs for women. And one of the things that I've been asked a few times is what happens with a woman with a child or a pregnant woman being denied service at the Wellness Court because of those issues, you know what I'm saying. I don't want to see a pregnant woman go to jail because we don't have a program to put her in. It's common sense, you know what I mean. I don't want to have a pregnant woman sent to jail when she should be in rehab or she should be in an alternative program. So is that what's going on right now? How do we fix that? And then the other question was about money so you already answered that. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: And I'll just ask Mr. Pappas to just address how Neighborhood Wellness Court has been going. And we overall need, I think, more expansive services, especially for women. Currently in the state of Pennsylvania we have for our young girls absolutely no placement that is nonsecure for young girls. So regardless of how they came in, they go to a secured facility. So for women and girls in general we need more programming. But in regards to Neighborhood Wellness Court in terms of the people that we're seeing, certainly we would not want a client like that to go into the system because then that baby is going to be removed and possibly if there is no family or kinship care, possibly enter the system. But we can talk about --
And it gives them another added trauma that's going to affect them. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Correct.
And thank you for that question. With regard to the people that we've seen coming to Neighborhood Wellness Court, they're all being arrested --
Andrew Pappas, Managing Director of Pretrial for the Defender Association. The people that we've been seeing coming into Wellness Court by definition are being charged with low-level summary offenses. And the first person that they see when they get to Wellness Court is a triage nurse from Penn Addiction Services, who is there to assess their medical needs, whether that's substance use disorder. I don't believe we've had a pregnant woman come through Wellness Court, but certainly looking at their big picture in terms of the medical needs. And the people who are not stable enough to proceed through the system are immediately transported to Episcopal Hospital and they're given a summons to come back to Wellness Court the following week if they've been released from the hospital. So that's kind of how it's been working in Wellness Court. I agree that our system is severely lacking in programs designed specifically for women. There's an initiative now through the MacArthur grant to look at creating a problemsolving court for women that would be more expansive than the former project Dawn Court, which was limited exclusively to women who had been charged with prostitution. So there are ideas in the work. We would like to be involved in those conversations and have a say in how that court looks and is formed if it's going to come to fruition. And that is our ask of every diversion court and problemsolving court that is created. We are the experts in the field. If we're not at the table when these courts and ideas are being talked about, they are lacking when they are rolled out. And we've seen that time and again.
That's good. Thank you. I'm going to be reaching out to pick your brain about a bunch of different stuff. I mean, I know that we said a million dollars to get you guys into K&A. But how can we better fund the Defender's Association to pay for the influx of services we're going to have to be using besides -- CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: I know this isn't my budget testimony, but you all know me that I go high and I'm asking for 15 million overall. That was my ask last year. I'm asking for 15 --
15? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: 15 million. I need 15 million. And I can sit here and go line-by- line of what that need looks like and had a really great meeting with your team, and happy to do a one-on-one and follow up in terms of the line item for that need. But a lot of the requests in addition to starting our first Immigration Defense Unit, which we think is key right now for our fellow citizens of Philadelphia, supporting re-entry for youth and adults, Kensington Initiative of course is important, and we want to take on because we are best-suited to take on up to 40% of homicides. We now do 20. We'd like to do 40% because we're the best lawyers and we end with finality. The cases do not come back again and again. It is the best homicide unit in the country. Every defender quite frankly that we have our experts and fantastic representatives here in the city of Philadelphia. But my ask is 15 million.
Thank you. Yeah, for sure. And you're right on with the -- I'm seeing an influx of younger people out there on Kensington Avenue and they're not selling drugs. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: That's correct.
These are other kids that are out there. And like you said, it seems like they're getting younger. But I appreciate the work you do. Thank you. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you. Appreciate the remarks.
Thank you, Councilmember. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Squilla.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Keisha. We really do appreciate your input and services. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you.
I know sometimes you feel excluded in that process, but it is important that the Defender's Association is there because you do see what you see not only within the system, but also within the streets. So that input is invaluable and I believe it is invaluable. And you were very supportive of the diversionary court programs and working with the District Attorney's Office right before you to try to get some of those numbers to see how maybe we can improve on them, whether it's AMP Court or Wellness Court or Drug Court or whatever other court is being created, even the support for Community Court, right, to get people in and out of -- instead of becoming part of the system, there are challenges that we could face, and then people could get the help they need so that we preventively stop them from going to that next level. And you mentioned the resources necessary to do that. Now, one question on the warrant release that you guys are working with also right now that courts only happen in one day a week; is that correct?
That's correct. So Neighborhood Wellness Court is operating Wednesdays at B and Lehigh, starts at B and Lehigh and then goes to 3901 for the afternoon summary list. So that's one day a week. Myself and Sarah Allen from the Defender Association have been staffing B and Lehigh for the purpose of addressing Philadelphia bench warrants.
But to go five days a week or to have that, obviously there's a resource needed.
There's a resource need associated with that obviously, but the benefit to that is every day when we're out there we've kept someone from being transported to State Road. Given the current state of the prisons and the understaffing, every person that we can keep off of State Road is a benefit not only to that person but to the entire system.
Do you believe with the additional funding, if additional funding is there for that, that you would be able to operate five days a week as far as that is concerned, as far as least releasing the warrant part of it and to be able to work with Wellness Court for five days a week? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: That is correct, yes. We cannot do it without the resources. Sarah Allen is my second in command and Andrew's on the upper leadership team, and this is what they've been doing. It's ours every Wednesday. So we are working with the City to do the pilot. But if we go beyond Wednesday, we need additional staff.
If you go beyond Wednesdays, you need additional staff? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Yes.
And I think that's important to hear too because I think if this is successful, if it's working the way we want or if we have to make changes, we can't say that. We can't do it because we do not have the resources to do it, right. And I think that's something we all have to work on with the Administration obviously, but seeing that you're involved in that and as we talk even with AMP Court, right now is it still only three days a week, is that correct, no?
And we want to work on that to even work with the DA's Office and you all to see how do we get people into those programs, into that instead of just going to court and what we could do together. And those conversations obviously with you and the District Attorney and with us, if we could get the people into these programs and then follow them, and that's what you said about caseworkers, right. You have how many caseworkers and how many clients? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: We have for our adult 5 population. We have 29 social 6 workers for 44,000 people that we 7 represented last year. 8
9 That's amazing. And they follow -- 10 they try to follow. They do not 11 follow? 12 CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: 13 Only the very, very high-needs 14 clients get someone that will work 15 with them. And we have a different 16 unit called the Mental Health Unit 17 and we have a couple of social 18 workers there because that's a 19 high-needs population, and the 20 bureaucracy for our clients in getting access to Norristown and then placement once they are coming home is a lengthy, lengthy process. When I asked for social workers last year, that was a 2.5 million ask. I had a more realistic view this year of just focusing on Kensington which is part of what would be the 1 million ask. But just any social workers we get would be dedicated to the Kensington population.
And they would then be able to follow those individuals through? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: If it's five social workers, which is part of what that 1 million ask is, they can only have -- I think the recommended caseload is 25 to 30 for that kind of population. So it won't be everyone, but it'll make an impact, right. And then I can come back and answer your questions about what our data shows.
Yeah, exactly that. And that's what we want to see, right. We want to see outcomes because it's easier for us to make decisions based on that. And I think at the end of the day -- I said I'm going to be real short so I will, but I think it's important to make sure that you're at the table along with the District Attorney's Office along with the courts, right, and along with the police department so that we all could work and follow this together. So thank you all for your effort. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you all for your support of the Defender Association.
Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Good afternoon.
So first, I want to say thank you for your service. Thank you for fulfilling what our Constitution says that everybody has to have legal counsel, and I think that should be the bedrock of how resources are allocated between DA's Office and Public Defenders. I said this to you before and we've had a conversation. So I think that's the premise of where we start with your office, but that's going to be a budget conversation in this frame of addressing the needs in Kensington, addressing people with substance disorder who are your clients. The follow through issue is really what is coming up, right, then people you have intake. And so, you're saying that if your office had social workers and who would be case workers following them through, how would that add or how would that be in the whole frame, meaning you would be a portion of resolving people's needs, right, those who come to you for counsel and then the rest go through other diversionary programs? You're almost acting like a diversionary program. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: I wouldn't call it a diversionary program. Best practices has always been a holistic one. And what I said earlier about all of these issues being multi-generational for our family is that we often can address issues with our clients without getting an understanding of what's going on around them in terms of their family and other support networks because there's a reason they are where they are and often times it's the family's history and encounters issues that led them into or contributed to the system. So case management really is ensuring that they're getting to and from treatment, that they have the resources to get there, if they're outpatient, checking in with them. Auditing the actual organization, is it appropriate -- is it meeting your needs, the needs that you need, is it geographically good for you, are you actually getting the medication and the type of medication and the type of treatment. And it's that kind of case management where you're constantly following up and checking in with the client, that when you look at research of how other PD's offices that have this kind of holistic practice, Bronx Defenders is one of them. They're the gold star of a public defender office is the Bronx Defenders, because inhouse they have civil legal aid. They have an immigration. You just have to walk down the hall at Bronx Defenders. You don't have to cross the street and go to one agency or go across town to one agency. Everything is housed in the same organization. So this case management if it's place-based, community will know us, right, and we get to know them. And our clients know where to find us, not at 14th and 15th and Sansom, but we are right in the neighborhood and we can follow them and work with them throughout the entirety of their ecosystem involvement.
So what you are doing is also being done by other entities who encounter people in this continuum? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Yes.
And you're serving a certain population, but you're checking in with other providers who are serving the medical needs, mental health needs, so you're like the coordinator of understanding that, and this is what reduced recidivism in terms of people getting back on the vicious cycle? CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Yes.
All right. I just wanted to make sure I understood what your role was in this whole ecosystem. Thank you. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: And the overall goal really is to move the entire adult social work team to increase its capacity so eventually 5, 10 years down the way we're in that kind of model because I do think you will then see a real impact on the recidivism issues that we have here in Philadelphia. Thank you.
The benefit that we have in doing case management is that we also have the legal team in house, right. So we're not only looking at the social service needs and our client holistically, we're also looking at their legal needs and how is their case impacting their social service needs, how are their social service needs impacting their case. And at any point, one of our social workers can call up the attorney who's assigned to that diversion program or to that client's case and say, hey, they're not going to make court this week because it's more important for them to be in inpatient treatment and everybody knows what's going on.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony today. Are there any other questions?
I just want to know if the 12 million, is the 1 million included 13 in that? 14 CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: 15 It is.
Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for your testimony. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you.
Before the Clerk calls the next panel, I'd like to take a moment to recognize David Ayers on his retirement. David, stand up. Stand up. Thank you so much. (Applause.)
David has led the diversion program for DBHIDS and has been a public servant for the city of Philadelphia since 2005. Thank you so much for everything that you've done for us as a city and for other citizens that live here. Thank you. Will the Clerk please call the next panel to testify.
Yes, Madam Chair. Dr. Evan Anderson from Thomas Jefferson University. (Witness approached Witness table.)
Welcome. Thank you so much for being with us this afternoon and thank you for your patience. I know it's been a long, long afternoon but an important topic and important conversation. Thank you. Please state your name for the record and begin with your testimony.
Good afternoon. Evan Anderson. Thank you, Madam Chair and select Committee members for having me here today. I'm a researcher at Thomas Jefferson University and I was asked to come here today because I've conducted research on a number of the programs listed in the resolution.
Oh, my goodness. All of these programs that we heard about today?
Particularly PAD and CERT, so Police-Assisted Diversion and CERT, Crisis Intervention Response Team and a little earlier work on some of the court programs as well. I've published that research in seven peer-reviewed papers and I submitted fairly lengthy and detailed written testimony. I'm happy, delighted to answer questions about that written portion that I submitted. My oral testimony today is going to be brief and general and targeted mostly at PAD, but I'm happy to talk more broadly. And I think the place to start, I know that this Committee is rightfully very interested in how PAD is experienced in Philadelphia, but I did just want to take a moment and recognize that outside of Philadelphia, PAD is really viewed as an incredible example of transformative systemic change, interagency collaboration and sort of relentless and persistent problemsolving. Deputy Commissioner Healy mentioned earlier the sort of history of PAD and how the police department went down to consult with the Baltimore Police Department, which was planning to create a similar program. They were never able to get their program off the ground. Their program really never got beyond the pilot phase and it's not working now. So I just want to recognize really the impressive work that all the collaborators have done locally, too many to mention, and obviously the support from City Council too. When I travel and when I present my work, people are always astonished at what Philadelphia has accomplished in standing up PAD. So I want to make sure that that, you know, I want to make sure that I say that to start. I think the broad question is does PAD work as intended, right. And my overall answer is, yes. I can confidently say based on my surveys and my interviews and my research, talking to stakeholders all across the sort of PAD process, people who have gone through the program, police officers, people who developed it, residents living in communities where PAD operates, that people broadly believe that PAD provides an important pathway away from unproductive involvement with the criminal justice system and, two, potentially supportive services and resources. I wish I could quantify the benefits of PAD for you here today. That's difficult for I would say two main reasons. One is it's very resource-intensive. It's not easy for some reasons that I'm happy to talk more about. With colleagues from Brown University, Johns Hopkins and NYU, I have submitted a proposal for a large federal grant to comprehensively study outcomes of PAD, including really robust cost-benefit analysis which I think is really important, and hope would be very valuable to all of you. Can't say for sure what the status of federal funding is, but we did submit that with important support from the police department, from other agency heads locally. The second reason, and I'll sort of broadly wrap up my comments after I make this point. Second reason why it's just hard to be very precise about the effect of PAD and a lot of these diversion programs is because they still rely on the general ecosystem for providing treatment and housing and all those supports. They are onramps and pathways to those other systems, and those other systems continue to have inadequacies. In preparing for the testimony today, I read the transcript from your hearing in July which was an amazing hearing. And I think a lot of the issues and the problems that you elevated in that hearing they continue. There's been important work, but I just want to be really clear that even operating as well as possible, the ultimate effect of our diversionary programs will be contingent on our ability to provide accessible, high-quality resources and care in all the ways and the people, especially my wonderful colleagues from Thomas Jefferson I think, could articulate the limitations of that system much better than I can.
But I just want to end by noting that PAD and these diversion programs often work as important pathways understanding their effects and really maximizing their effects (inaudible) us to continue to come back to these questions of what do the back-end services look like. I'm delighted to take any questions and thank you for having me here today.
Thank you for being with us and thank you for your work. I guess my question in your research and what you heard here today, right, do you feel like some of us up here feel, right? All of these programs -- I think no one is challenging that all of these programs are good programs. They all serve as pathways to treatment and prevention and recovery and housing and education and all of those things we know that people need. But did you hear what I heard which was that everyone is kind of working in their own silos and often times don't communicate with one another, whether it be by choice or just that systems don't talk to each other and that they could be providing better quality service over quantity, right. I think that part of my issue is that there are so many programs that often times we don't give people a real opportunity to succeed because we push them through the system and say just finish this and they came back into -- they took that program, they succeeded, they were sent about their business but no one ever really did what the Defender just said, right. Nobody really followed them to say, here's what you need to do next, here, here, here. And after, I don't know, five years of us holding your hand you are now prepared to live a successful life in the city that you choose or was that just me? I don't know.
No, I appreciate that question. I want us to highlight -- I'm a data person so I want to highlight two uses of data. One use of data is operational. It's having data to be able to make decisions about individual people, like the Defenders were just talking about. That's important. Another type of data is to inform your decision-making to give you a sense of how the whole system is working, right. And you're in a difficult position because you're asked to make decisions about these programs and people come up and talk rightfully about the benefits of those programs, but it's hard to see them without seeing them in the whole context, right. So we can talk about Wellness Court and I'm happy to do that. My perspective on whether investing in Wellness Court makes sense given the scarcity of resources, what I would want to know is for that person going through Wellness Court, have they had 10 hospitalizations in the last year and have eight of those hospitalizations ended in that person self-discharging? Have they had 10 contacts with our housing support services, 8 of which haven't worked out? Have they had the same amount in our outpatient treatment? Because diversion is really important. It will always be easier to intervene and to provide health services at a health services setting and it'll always be harder to do that at a criminal justice (inaudible). And that's not to say we should do all of this diversion stuff, it's important. But as you think about and as I think about what could really guide your work longer term, it's just visibility into all of these touch points, being able to look and say, how are these folks who are touching a lot of these different systems, what does that look like, where are the best opportunities to intervene, where are the dollars spent. I think about PAD as a health service I think about it as a pretty lean budget. And it might not feel that way if you think of it as a public safety intervention. But if it's a health service, $3, $4 or $5 million is a rounding error on the health services that are provided around town, right. And I think that's really important to think about. It's also important to think as you think about the value of these programs. If PAD succeeds in helping people get onto healthier trajectories, it prevents -- for every 10 people that go through PAD, that prevents one hospitalization. Those dollars add up very, very quickly. And there's lots of savings there that can be recouped, reinvested in things like housing. So that's just something that I would encourage the Committee to think about.
What do you believe -- in hearing and studying all of these programs, what do you believe we need to do to, give me three things, to make a person's journey in the process a successful journey if you had to pick three topics?
Immediacy, stability -- and I'll come back to these. Immediacy, stability and humanity. People are ready for change in one moment. And if you wait a week, they're out of it --
Hours, right. Lots of benefits to court programs, but we all know those court programs are months down the road, right. I think the logic of PAD is we can in that interaction in that moment, if we can provide a real warm handoff, then our batting average is going to be much higher. So I think immediacy, and that takes resources. It's hard for the people doing this in the field to do this. It's complicated. My second one was stability. It's also being able to -- someone talked about identification earlier. It's being able to handle the other issues that people have going on in their lives so they can make those changes. People might have child care issues. Someone wants to join a program, but I need someone to watch my kids. There's all these things. And from having done research on PAD and we're talking about the relatively better outcomes, I think a lot of that has to do with the people that are helping with all of these things that are kind of around the supportive issues. And then any system has to just put the humanity of people first. We have to just keep talking to people and asking, why does this program work for you or not work for you, right. And that's hard, you know. It's really hard work, but it's really important and we can create those. From what I see locally, we're trying to do that across a number of places. I think we can do more.
Thank you for that. In your research did you examine any diversion programs that are currently in place that you believe were not effective?
This stays between us and the thousands of people that are watching online.
No, no. 9 You know, one thing I would say is that maybe almost 10 years ago at this point I did a study where my team, we worked with the medical examiner's office to get the identifying information for all the people that fatally overdosed in a year, 900 people, that's 2016. And then we worked with the District Attorney's Office to look at all their previous arrests and hearings. And one of the things we noted is that very few of those people had been through drug treatment court -
Drug treatment court. And when we looked at the people who had an arrest in the year before they fatally overdosed, something like 98% of them weren't eligible. And that study I think was actually fairly influential and that has changed, which is good. But it's important for us to really mind the eligibility criteria. I think Philadelphia is a leader. Unlike a lot of cities that have diversion programs, they put on eligibility criteria that filters out people with the most complex needs. It makes the programs look good. Doesn't change people's lives in the way we want, or communities health in the way that we want.
I agree with you on that. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Harrity.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Anderson. I was glad to hear some of the things you said which goes right with what I tell everybody all the time. It's about services and giving them services to succeed. I always tell everybody that the two most important things that we could help with outside of them actually getting sober is mental health and housing, two keys. So I was glad that you said that. And of course, the fact that we need to get them out of Kensington because in the program we have a lot of sayings, one of which are people, places and things. If you stay around the same people in the same place, you're going to do the same things. You know, a little bit of a clichรฉ but it's the God's honest truth. So that being said, how would you suggest that PAD and the entire drug treatment system better develop and adjust to the current cumbersome program to better connect individuals treatment? In other words, how do we streamline this process to get people into recovery? PAD is great, but like you said there's other ways to get people in and some people aren't having court cases and ended up having to go through that justice system. What would you -- if you had something that you could do, what would it be?
Thank you for that question which is really important. Again, I would refer back a little bit to the June hearing, which really had the experts on that issue. And I think there's still important work to be done on some of the issues that you raised. Programs like the L4 program, programs that address the medical complexity of people are really important. More supportive housing. There's an important initiative, the Hospital to Home Program that I think you've heard testimony on, those need to be expanded and the impact of them needs to be measured. And I would just highlight for sort of city finances that when the city contributes to these programs, the city pays. Often times when they work, they save state and federal dollars, right, because so much of health care spending is state and federal. Just have to think about how we can document it and then recuperate that or make arguments to the state that, hey, we've spent all this money on PAD and we're saving. You know, we spend $4 million on PAD but we've saved $10 million in Medicaid spending for infections and amputations. And then the conversation would be if you give us more, we'll save more and that's a virtuous cycle. And I think the same thing with housing, too. And I'd like to think that's where research can play a key role.
During your research, what were your findings as far as inadequacies but the differences between male and female opportunities? Because what I'm hearing is that there are more opportunities for a male to get into a program than it is for a female. And also, we already had this conversation yesterday with our group at the Wellness Center, we're able to take men right now but we can't take women. And the messed up situation is that I've been saying and spouting to anybody that will hear it is the fact that we got women that are doing most of their time in prison when they could have been paroled or released to another program earlier on. I mean, they're doing an extra month, an extra year or whatever it is because we have no 15 place to send them. How do we fix those inadequacies? And did you come across any of that in your studies?
I have come across that generally in other research. I would say at the time I was studying the experiences of PAD that wasn't -- I studied it a little earlier and I think things have changed a little bit. But I'm very confident that's still an issue and that would be an important area to expand and a place to dedicate some resources.
My final question is, based on your expertise how does the current diversion programs align with the latest versions of or the latest research on public health and the criminal justice system reform?
I think in theory, they align really well. Warm handoffs, you know, no wrong door, right, being able to act quickly, being able to address people's social needs and increasingly health needs with the wounds, really multidisciplinary care. It is not easy, but that's the model that is being built in Philadelphia and that's great. I think the issue is still invest more in building that up because it is so challenging and it's hard to coordinate all these services. It's a real challenge. But I think in theory, I think it's designed the way it should be.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for staying so long. I appreciate it. Just a generalization, if one can make it in the sort of trajectory of someone who has substance disorder and goes through treatment, say they have a year of treatment and they have all the social services, they get housing, they get job training and they're ready to re-enter into regular society. What is the rate of recidivism for someone who has all of these resources and someone who has maybe a three-month -- because you talked about the financial model and to justify this long-term investment, we need to show the dollars saved by doing the long- term which would happen if someone was just cycling in. So I don't know if there's numbers like that, a generalization of someone with this disorder what is the expectation of someone?
I'm not sure this is fully going to be answering your question the way you want, but I think the best opportunity to understand the cost savings is to look at hospitalizations. And that's something that's measurable, and it's also something that's very costly. And my belief is that, and I hope we get funded and can do this and I hope to do it otherwise because I also have some funding from the Sheller Family Foundation, my sense is that you'll see those cost savings accruing pretty quickly.
So if one were to generalize, as I said, somebody who gets that yearlong investment, the chances of them relapsing is that correlated with that amount of care or is there something else in the chemistry or the brain chemistry of the individual that doesn't -- we can't predict that? I'm just trying to understand can we say, you put one year, get them all in and then the relapse rate is 0 or or whatever. And if you don't -- but I know people's brains are different.
So thank you so much for that question. This is not my area of expertise I would say and there are clinical psychiatrists and addiction medicine folks who would answer with more precision. From my sort of not fully expert perspective, there's a lot of variation in people and it has to do with a lot of factors in people's life course, and it has to do with their social networks and their engagement with family and friends and hope and these things that are hard to sometimes measure. But broadly speaking, the more social connection the more basic needs that you can fill for people, it is directly correlated with their likelihood of engaging with treatment and having success when they do it.
Kind of quantifying that is tricky. But again, if the City can build up its data infrastructure you can start to make those arguments. And it's likely to be a little different in Philly than in some other places, and it's a legacy investment that can help the City be nimble.
Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for your research. I wish you success in your application in the future and I look forward to being able to continue to communicate with you because I know that we're going to have a thousand more questions after this. So look out for us continuing to tap into your knowledge and your expertise. Thank you so much.
Will the Clerk please call the last three panelists all at the same time.
Yes, Madam Chair. We have Mr. Solomon Jones, author and radio host; Mr. Seth Williams, former District Attorney and CEO of Second Chances Strategies, LLC and Raquel McNichols, participant in the First Program. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Thank you all. Good evening. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your patience. I know some of you have been here since the very beginning. Please state your name for the benefit and begin with your testimony.
My name is Solomon Jones. I am a radio host, columnist and author, and I thank you for having me here this afternoon. I know you'll be pleased to hear that I'm not here to ask for any money. I am here simply as a lifelong Philadelphian whose family has called this city home for five generations. And as we talk about the issue of Kensington, we need to talk about the things that I believe drive the push to fix Kensington and drive what has happened to Kensington to this point. I think those three things are race, class and cash. I don't talk about this lightly or without an investment in the issue. I don't speak as someone who lives outside the city. I speak as a taxpayer and homeowner, a father of two children who graduated from Philadelphia schools and have gone on to college. I speak as a voter and as a community activist who owes a lot to this city. But before I talk about what I owe to the city, I want to talk about what the city owes to me because I'm the person that this government represents. I'm the reason there are lights and heat and offices in this building. I'm the reason there's gold inlay in the paint and the ceilings. I'm the reason that there are marble floors and stone columns and spiral staircases. I am the taxpayer and everything here belongs to people like me. And this city owes a debt to our taxpayers, a debt of service, a debt of representation, a debt of respect to every taxpayer and every homeowner and every person who's trusted each of you not to represent yourselves but to represent us. But for far too long our city failed taxpayers of one of our poorest communities, Kensington. It's an odd thing to watch because the problems in Kensington can be traced to one thing in my view. They can be traced to addiction. But addiction is treated differently based on who's experiencing the problem. During the crack crisis, for example, when the problem was thought to be Black, there was a language of destruction. But when the complexion of addiction changed, so did the approach. For Black folks there was a war on drugs. For White folks, there was an opioid crisis. For Black folks, helping people use drugs was enabling. And for White folks, it was harm reduction. When we suffered from this illness, it was addiction. When the complexion changed, it became substance use disorder. When Black and Brown folks went to a place to shoot heroin, it was called the shooting gallery. But for the new users, it was called a safe injection site. I call it the gentrification of addiction because for Black and Brown folks, addiction ended with jails, institutions or death. For the new crop of users that brought Kensington to everybody's attention, the treatment has been different, less punitive, less real. The community has often told me that these youths have been treated much differently than we were. That's structural racism and it's wrong. But it's about so much more than race. It's also about class. It's about people like Shannon Farrell and Tim McCloskey in Harrowgate and Kensington, people who are lifelong Philadelphians just like me, who live at ground zero in the opioid crisis. I don't look like them. We don't share the same backgrounds, but they're Philadelphians. I consider them my neighbors and I will fight for my neighbors no matter what they look like, no matter where they come from, no matter how they vote because they understand like I do what it means to have drug addiction invade a neighborhood. They know about the car break-ins and the burglaries, the robberies and the gun violence, the prostitution and disease, the hopelessness of being trapped in a community where drugs are at the center of the economy. I've been to Kensington and seen human waste on the ground, watched dozens of addicts shooting up against the back of a day care center, heard the cries of neighbors who just want their children to be able to walk to school without traipsing through dirty needles.
Kensington is the visible part of the problem, but the problem really exists in the shadows. That's why safe injection sites were never the answer. Because allowing somebody to watch people using Kensington, it does not reach into the shadows. 75% of the people who overdose in Philly do it at home and they shoot up at home to hide. They shoot up at home so nobody knows. They shoot up at home because that's part of their ritual. How do I know so much about it? Because I've gone through an addiction of my own. And after 28 years clean, I know more about this disease than any so-called advocate who's never lived in a community where drugs are the ultimate trap. Because conquering addiction is never instant and it's never soft. You can't beat addiction by just moving it someplace else. You can't beat addiction just by blaming somebody else. You can't beat addiction just by calling it something else. So calling it substance use disorder might sound nicer, but it doesn't change the nature of the disease. Addiction is progressive, incurable and fatal. And no matter what you call it, where you move it or who you blame, addiction will kill the addict if he or she continues to use. While we tend to focus on the instant death of an overdose, the more common truth is that addicts die one needle at a time, one puff at a time, one day at a time, as addiction eats away at our bodies and our spirits and our minds. So we try to get clean and we fail. We go a little farther and we fall. We stand to our feet and then we stumble, and the lessons we learn from each fall allow us to finally stand with the help of those who love us and care for us and assist us along the way. But no matter how much help we're given, we can't succeed unless we want to. Addiction operates the same way in the neighborhood. It eats away at the bones of the streets. It whittles down the sense of community. It embeds itself in the cells of homes and schools and businesses. And so, it will take time to treat the community of Kensington. I believe we have to work to get people off drugs, not help them to keep using. That means that there has to be an opportunity for treatment. There must be opportunities for housing and for those who continue to hurt the community, there must be discipline. You can't coddle someone into wanting to get clean. They have to want it for themselves. When those who are living with addiction can do that, the demand decreases. The supply dries up and the community starts to heal. Providing a place to get clean and sober is a first step. Providing the presence of social workers is a second step. Providing the presence of support systems and housing is a crucial step, but there has to be order. So the presence of law enforcement is also a vital step. But the final step is up to those who are living through the hell of addiction. They have to want to change. If they do, then not only will they heal, Kensington will heal as well. Thank you.
Wow. I had a question. I don't have a question anymore because that was right on point, right. And I want to thank you. I want to thank you because my very first opportunity to talk about something that I was extremely afraid to talk about because I didn't know about it. I didn't experience it. I was only a new Chief of Staff walking into a government office that I had no clue what in the heck I was doing. The one person that gave me an opportunity to represent that office and be able to speak my truth for the first time and advocate for my community was you. And I was in that space probably with a whole lot of people not thinking the same way that I thought, but you were there and you had my back and I appreciate that. But this is the first time that I hear that. And so, I want to say thank you. Thank you for continuing to fight. Thank you for continuing to be a voice for the people of Kensington even though you don't live in Kensington. We always get the opposite. We always get people that want to be louder than the people that live there telling us that we have to put up with that, that that is what they have to look at every day. We don't hear that. We don't hear people who are not from that community saying all of the things that you just said. And so, know that I'm grateful. I appreciate you, and I'm proud to say that I know you and that you are real. You're not afraid to speak truth because everything you said is true, right. We can't fight that. It is the truth. Thank you so much. Thank you for your courage.
The Chair recognizes Vice-Chair Jones and then Harrity.
Mr. Jones, you ain't no hustler. And that's a personal -- he has a speech that he does. But you are a clarion voice of truth. And I appreciate the fact that you don't live in Kensington and that you're advocating for Kensington. I do not live in Kensington, but I understand until Kensington is safe, no other area is safe. There is needle injection, Narcan vending at 60th and Market. And there's a dirty little secret in parts of my District that people travel down to Kensington and bring it back up to that part of the District and do their thing. So the reason we are here, just like I believe you are here, is to help nip it in the bud and fight for it. Our Chair Lady and Member Harrity live in that area, and he faces it every day when he walks out of his door. And people have threatened Member Lozada because they're interrupting, you're interrupting their commerce. But she's not scared and we aren't scared. But what we need is that voice that you bring to make people understand that this section of town is important too. So thank you, brother.
I just want to commend you, man. I like you am open about my recovery. Congratulations on 28 years.
I'm halfway there, but I'm only living for today. I got ahead of myself before and ended up back. I ain't going back this time. And I want to thank you for saying what I have been saying. People don't understand if they're not in recovery, that the way we were going about this before we got involved was not the way. You mentioned safe injection sites. I went all after that. When people were telling me to keep my mouth shut, it's a hot button issue and I said, no, I live there. I live at G and Allegheny on Willard Street. I'm in the heart. I'm there. I ain't going nowhere. I really made up my mind. I'm staying. I'm fighting. They're going to bend my will. But people like you with your name coming in here and admitting that it doesn't matter who you are, we all can be taken down by this thing, but we can all also rise like you did and be an advocate and come out. Man, I thank you so much because I live there. I appreciate you coming in and fighting for my people, for my relatives, my neighbors. That's all they want is a little piece, you know. I'm an addict, so I understand about addicts. I also understand, like you said, we can't coddle an addict. You can't give them everything because you give us a foot, we're going to take 9 yards. Got to show them love, but 10 it's got to be tough love. It's got to be regimented. It's got to be on point. And I thank you for coming and speaking the truth when so many people, especially in your stature, would not because they wouldn't want the comments to come with it. So I appreciate you and I thank you.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much, Solomon, for making it. I know you have things to do. But as everybody said, speaking truth to power is what you have been doing as long as I've known you, right. And I have a question about an important thing you have said and others have said, that the person has to want to go to treatment. How do we solve that because what's happening now is there's a vicious cycle? People are going in for detox and there's no long-term or don't want to do long-term and then cycle right back and they're very vulnerable, and then the dose they had before is enough to kill them, right. So, how does one -- and, you know, I'm sure there's psychiatrists and others who can address this even more, but we need to get to this crux of what is with saying they need to be ready to go in order for that to work. Because the rest of us ready or not, we're having to deal with this. So I just want real reality around this, that what do we mean by waiting for people to self-select to do something when the rest of the community is sitting there imprisoned by the circumstances?
I don't know how fair that is, right. So someone who's in recovery, I know you have gone through this. I read all of your things you've written about this. I just would like your insight into -- I know this is one person's insight. I don't know if you can generalize, but I'd like to hear about that.
I think that people have to reach the point where it hurts more to continue than it does for them to stop. And that's an individual thing for everybody. You can't say what that might be for someone else, but for me it was a hospital room. So doctors tell me you might not walk out of here. You know, it's different for everybody else. For somebody else it might be, oh, my God, I drank out of the bottle. You know, it's different for everybody. But I think that as government and as society we have to make sure that when a person reaches that point, that the resources are there for them to walk into. We can't say we don't have any beds, we don't have enough room, we don't have the professionals to treat you. We can't say that. Those things have to be available when that person is ready. And I do want to reiterate that you can't coddle a person into wanting to be ready. They have to want it for themselves.
Yeah. So in the interim while they're waiting to be ready or we're waiting them for them to be ready, what is our responsibility as a society to host this, to allow this? Where is that line? Everybody else you violate something, you're held accountable, and there's consequences. But here we are saying, no, we'll wait until you're ready. No consequences until then. But how does that work for everybody?
It doesn't. That's why I said one of the things that you have to have is order. You have to have that. People have to face consequences for their actions no matter who they are, no 5 matter what consequence they're going through, because if they don't they'll never stop.
Yeah. I just wanted to air that because, yes, we seem to skip over that part a lot. We seem to skip over that everybody has responsibility in society regardless of how inebriated you might be because you are living not on an island. And so, we as government serve the people who are imprisoned because they can't leave that area and the people who have substance disorder, all of them. And when we see the differential in resources going to one space over the other, that's a fair question for the constituents to ask us, how much are you spending, which is why I asked the guy before you to tell us what the value is so that we can say it's worth it to spend this money because in the long run all of us will benefit from that, right. We need that business model, that financial model to put in front as we are doing these things. But the personal responsibility is still there regardless, and I would love for our city to start talking about that some more. We seem to skip over that for certain people. Thank you. I'm, like, this has been bothering me for a while.
Thank you for your testimony and thank you for being with us today. Please state your name for the record and begin with your testimony.
Madam Chair, Lozada, how are you? Mr. Vice-Chair, my former Councilman, how are you, Mr. Jones?
That's my line. Dr. Ahmad, how are you? And my very good friend and fellow cigar aficionado, Councilman Harrity, how are you?
I'm just honored and humbled to have been invited by you to come here to share my professional and my personal experience. I was telling a person that was out here earlier that I've been coming and testifying before City Council for years now. 5 First time was when I 6 was the Inspector General when 7 Mayor Street appointed me to be his 8 Inspector General. I later came as 9 the District Attorney of 10 Philadelphia and I was the 24th 11 District Attorney in our city's 12 history. I came most recently with 13 my very good friend and fellow 14 Central graduate Police 15 Commissioner Richard Ross, when we 16 were talking about gun violence and 17 reducing gun violence. 18 But I think more than 19 any other topic, a topic we're 20 talking about today is the most important topic I've been called to speak with you about. And like my very good friend -- oh, I thought you were Solomon at first. I'm sorry. Like my very good friend Solomon who just left, I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm not here for any money. I'm here on behalf of the residents of Philadelphia. I've been one my entire life, on behalf -- Stacy's here with me, my children. I'm here on behalf of -- I'm here with a singularly unique perspective of everyone you'll hear. I was an Assistant District Attorney here in the city of Philadelphia. I was the Inspector General. I was a law school professor. I taught criminology at Penn State. I was the elected District Attorney. I was an Army officer, where at one point I was the senior defense counsel so I was the public defender for the 28th Infantry Division. I was a criminal defense attorney. And as you know, I had my own dispute and disagreement with the federal government which led to my federal incarceration, where I spent the first five months in single solitary confinement, 8 hours a day five days a week and 9 all day on Saturday and Sunday. 10 When I did have that one 11 hour a day to go to what they 12 called rec, which was my own SPCA 13 kennel, the men that were my 14 closest friends were there because 15 they were serial killers. But I 16 got to see them as three- 17 dimensional people in a way that I 18 never had before. 19 While I was 20 incarcerated, I taught GED, I 21 taught workforce development. I 22 learned how to play the saxophone 23 and the piano and became the beginner saxophone instructor. I taught Bible study. I went to every Catholic mass, every Catholic Catechism, every Protestant Bible study, Protestant worship service, held a hand with every Muslim I could at night. I was in a program called the Residential Drug Abuse program. And again, for the purposes of time I've submitted my written testimony. I'm just freestyling right now so you can get home with your families. I was in the Residential Drug Abuse program. For 13 months I lived with 90 men who they had decided were in need of substance abuse disorder or were struggling like I with a maladaptive schema. And now -- you know what blew my mind when I was there the guys that were with me were these White guys from Kentucky that were meth addicts that the feds had claimed were drug dealers, but really they were drug addicts. They lost all their teeth. There were these brothers from the city that were heroin dealers or crack dealers but they were really heroin addicts and heroin abusers. And then there was a few of us that were doctors and lawyers or accountants that when we wanted to numb ourselves from whatever our struggle was, we chose martinis or Jack Daniels or women other than our wives and girlfriends as a way to numb ourselves. And what I had to come to realize was that while I could never imagine sticking a needle in my arm, and just last week I was at Sunshine House on Kensington Avenue, I routinely go there and volunteer with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania's Clare Project, and we do a street ministry of just being present, and I would never imagine sticking a hypodermic needle into my leg or into my eyeline.
But once you get past that, the underlying reasons of why we were numbing ourselves were universal. And that's what Councilman Harrity talks about and what we talk about in those rooms. And so, the reason why I'm here, and I'll try to expedite what I'm saying, is that diversionary programs work. And just sitting here, I've been here for three hours, four hours now, very educational. I was called before to testify about crime prevention, right, recidivism reduction as the District Attorney, and I created a diversionary program that is considered the gold standard of diversionary programs. It's The Choice is Yours. And what I include here in my testimony is that as a young -- you know, I'm no 3 criminologist, but I grew up in West Philly. I rode SEPTA every day to school. I then became an Assistant DA. D. in criminology while I was in prison. Where I learned most of the men that I taught GED, most of the men that I lived with were incredibly intelligent. They had gone to Yale and they had gone to jail and not Yale, or they'd gone to the state pen and not Penn State like me. But they were incredibly intelligent and most of them were great entrepreneurs. But almost all of them, all of us, were struggling with some sort of trauma that had led to either an emotional trauma that led to us numbing ourselves or some being having physical traumas, taking pills prescribed and then taking pills off the street. I wanted to come here and talk to you just being an honest broker because people were here earlier today. I think everybody's with good intentions. But there are some programs, right. Me speaking now as a returning citizen, right. I came home from prison April of 2020. Josh Shapiro used to work with me at Stradley Ronon, right. When I ran the Obama campaign in 2008, he helped me. He was one of the first State Reps to endorse then Senator Obama. Knew Jim Kenney. Everybody -- when I got home, did anybody want to give me a job? No. 20 But probation, parole, I had to have a job and I had to have a place to live. My probation officer told me he knows that Judge Diamond wants to send me back as quickly as he can. But did anybody help me get a job? No. Did anybody help me get a place to live? No. They just put an ankle monitor on my left ankle, and that's how I was. I was fortunate. m. m. and I've slowly rebuilt. We have to address we can't arrest our way out of crime. So I didn't always know that. I was a young assistant DA. And when I was in the charging unit, I saw on the criminal files there's something that always stuck out. And Councilman Jones knows when I would go speak to students in schools, I would say what's the number one thing people have in common that get arrested in Philadelphia --
Too frequently though -- you're correct, Dr. Ahmad -- but the kids would go, ooh, they're Black. And I would go, unfortunately a disproportionate number of people in our criminal justice system are Black and Brown people. But the number one thing across all race gender is they didn't finish high school. So if you were to ask me first off at the macro level what should we do to address the problem in Kensington and all across the city, we have to hold kids accountable that are truant in grade school. And when you're 17 and you're cutting school like I did to go see Star Wars III when it came out and I got in trouble that day, that's a different thing than 4th graders and 5th graders being chronically truant. And generally, the root cause of that -- the kid didn't decide I'm just going to stay home today and watch Jerry Springer. There's some sort of dysfunction in the home. They might need the child to babysit a younger sibling or there might be other issues. We need to address those root causes early on. Fast-forward in 2000 the District Attorney Lynn Abraham asked me to become the Chief of the Repeat Offenders Unit. I said, okay, what's that? She said, we don't know, we want you to figure it out. I was like, okay. Now, I had no training in criminology but I began looking at everybody who's getting arrested every day, right. Those are -- finally we determined to look at people who had been arrested who had or more felony convictions, or more total convictions, or 25 arrests or more. But what stuck out in my head was some of these people, like Chris Rock said, gotta go, gotta go, some people needed a time-out. But we as a society and as a system had failed these people the first and second time they got arrested. So asking me what should we do we need? Everyone has different criminogenic needs. That is the criminological term for what issues do we need to address in that person so that they don't commit, they don't re-offend. And Solomon and I might commit the same crime for totally different reasons. So it's not one-size- fits-all. We need to address what that person needs, right. Again, stats are important. Data is important. Approximately -- and to your numbers of the business model, we're spending in Pennsylvania close to $41,042 per person per year to incarcerate them, where we have a failure rate of 40% of all people get re-arrested in the first year they come home from state, county and federal prison. 4% get re-arrested within the first three years. 70% in five years. 80% in eight years after release. So from a business model, from a far right-wing Koch brothers business return-on- investment model what we are doing now is horrific. From a far left wing Mother Teresa let's-help- everyone perspective, what we're doing is horrific. So I was a DA for 10-and-a-half years. I decided I'll leave because it's got to be done in a better way. I ran against my predecessor and our T-shirt said Seth Williams, Smart on Crime Not Just Tough as a slight jab at my predecessor. I began learning all these smart things, to be smart on crime. So we try to go back and forth with this pendulum, tough on crime, soft on crime, tough on crime. We need to be smart on crime. So I started reading as much as I could. Before I became the District Attorney, I traveled to San Francisco. And I met with the District Attorney of San Francisco who had a great program called Back on Track. But I was totally enamored with all these different things that she was doing. And the first one I wanted to implement, she had a program called Back on Track. We called it The Choice is Yours here in Philadelphia. So what does that mean? At the time -- and you heard Brother Jones talking about the crack epidemic. Because of the crack epidemic we had a war on drugs that was completely a failure. We were sending people in Pennsylvania to state prison for selling two grams of crack. There was a mandatory minimum of one year.
That's like two Splenda packets will get you one year at then $35,000 a year with a recidivism rate of 63%. So what we did, I spoke with then District Attorney Harris, now our Vice-president most recently, right, Kamala Harris, and I replicated what she did there. And so, what we did was instead of prosecuting them, we addressed their criminogenic needs. We'd find out what each person needed. The three things they have the greatest impact on reducing recidivism, education, getting your GED. Number two, substance abuse disorder treatment, helping people that are addicted, learn how to have coping skills. When you have an addiction, you will give up everything for one thing. When you're in recovery, you're willing to give up that one thing for everything. So education, substance abuse disorder, and a third one which is incredible. I told you there's a 63% recidivism rate for people that get released within three years, get rearrested, right, 63%. It's only 14% for people that spend one hour a week while they're incarcerated in spiritual formation, in Bible study class, going to chapel, be it Hindu, Orthodox, Jewish, if they're going to whatever. What do those three things have in common? It's changing the hearts and minds of people, so diversionary programs work. And what I detailed here is that I went to San Francisco, met with then District Attorney Harris, came back to Philadelphia. See, nobody had any money to give me. Despite everybody think I had a great idea, all the money goes to the prison, the state prison system. All the money goes to all these other things. It was only because of Gerry Lenfest. My very good friend Dr. Keith Lee Park connected me with Gerry Lenfest. Gerry Lenfest said, it's a great idea, I'll give you all the money. So, you know, this great billionaire gave us the money to get started and we were -instead of spending $35,000 a year to incarcerate people, JEVS was only spending -- we're spending $4,000. Well, JEVS got -- we have the RFP. , former Mayor, now Reverend Dr. Goode was our chairperson. We had an RFP. JEVS won the RFP. They've been doing it for years. We're spending only 11 $4,000 a year to get people into 12 this program, and I detailed what 13 services they get here. Okay. There's only an 11% recidivism rate. 70% of the students get jobs. It's just phenomenal. That's just an investment that we have to make these investments. But the thing is when I first started The Choice is Yours, when I started -- we had de minimis amounts of marijuana, just taking them out of the criminal court. Well, my predecessor called me a-hug-a-thug DA. I was vilified for that back then. But these are the things that are smart. So what does it take? It takes the political will to know, and I detail in here that Commissioner Bethel with David Irizarry have a wonderful program in PAD. It's phenomenal. That's something we need to replicate to expand, right. The programs the way people get pulled into the system, right, I used to be the president of the Overbrook Park Civic Association in Councilman Jones' District. Who has the most power on the street? The person who's going to come into contact with the person first, so we need to have more programs. The last gentleman here, I wish I could just go have lunch with him right now, this guy that just left here. It has to be immediate. And a lot of these things don't cost a lot of money. There needs to be some of the greatest -- I had an Eisenhower fellowship back when people still liked me, and I went to Australia. I went to South Africa to learn about recidivism-reducing programs and diversionary programs. If you were to ask me, what are the things that are most important in them, you have to have community involvement, right. So we have the youth -- Lynne Abraham, good thing she did, she created the Youth Aid Panel. So that's a good thing in Philadelphia, the Youth Aid Panel.
In a lot of places around the country and I list three here: The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, the National District Attorneys Association. There are a lot of organizations that provide resources if you want to learn about the good, the bad and the ugly of diversionary programs. But as a person who is an advocate and a returning citizen himself and a person who's been in recovery since June the 29th of 2017, what I really think is important again is the humanity. We have to think about the people who are in it and how you're treating them. And again, there are people that represent organizations that were here today that have great ideas and concepts. But if you, as Councilman Jones went with them on a tour of this thing to treat people that are in their programs, it'd be great. If you went with a hoodie on and some Timbs and some jeans and just rolled in there to see what they do for Pookie and Man Man, you would leave disgusted. And that's what I've experienced as I've been home. And that's why -- I'm not just talking out of a book anymore, right. I teach in the Philippine prisons every Tuesday and Thursday, a class I made up for free to reduce recidivism by addressing the things that people need the most, right. They need the conflict de-escalation skills. Gratitude, I could go. I could talk to forever and I'll come back whenever you want. But I know she's got places to go. But there's so much money that needs to be directed on the right things and a lot of it isn't. With that, I will submit my written testimony and say good night.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you for sharing your story with us. I think that a lot of the things you said are some of the things we need to respond to in the Kensington community. And it's no secret, right. I mean, I want to start off with the fact that I represent the District with the lowest-performing schools when compared to other schools across the city of Philadelphia. I represent the District where the opioid epidemic crisis is happening. And the Defender said earlier, right, responding to a question that Councilmember Jones had, some of these children if we don't respond now will become part of our system, our criminal justice system, our DHS system, our mental health system, our substance abuse disorder system, which is why it is -- and all of that keeps me up at night, right. All of that keeps me up at night because I feel directly responsible for ensuring that when little Jose or Johnny see me in 9 years that they are not able to say 10 that I had an opportunity to change 11 their quality of life and I did 12 nothing about it. And so, it is 13 why I fight the way that I fight 14 regardless of who I take on as an 15 enemy or who I take on as somebody 16 that doesn't dislike me or who 17 thinks that I'm being reckless or 18 crazy when I'm responding to the 19 needs of my community. And that is 20 because of a lot of what you said, right. We need to figure out how we do better responding to not just those that are living in substance abuse disorder in the Kensington community but those who are raising their children in that community as well. Because if not, they will be sitting across from us in a few years as being part of a system that they believe that failed them. So thank you so much for sharing your story. My office is definitely going to continue to reach out to because we have a lot of questions, but I'm going to give Raquel an opportunity to share her story. And I have a 7:00 p.m. meeting that I'm supposed to be at in the District. And so, I want to make sure that I'm respectful to the residents over there as well. So please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. MS. McNICHOLS: So I am Raquel McNichols.
You can begin your testimony. MS. McNICHOLS: So thank you for the opportunity to come out to share my story with you all. It was pretty cool sitting next to the former District Attorney because I was actually convicted when he was in office. So thank you for that.
(Inaudible). MS. McNICHOLS: We both were. We have a lot in common. I'm also in recovery, but thank you for being part of my story that saved my life because that was exactly what I needed. So I am going to read a little bit off of -- I don't want to get in trouble by Gianna because I'm going to go a little bit off of my testimony. I submitted it. So I've been in long- term recovery from substance use and alcohol use disorders since August 5, 2016. I've been working in behavioral health since October 2017, so this is not only my just my job but this is my purpose as well. So I was once part of the problem in Kensington. Now, I am a tireless advocate and I try to be part of the solution one day at a time. And I don't live there anymore but that was where -- I grew up in that area, Port Richmond, Fishtown, Kensington. My mom is still over there. My grandmother's in Harrowgate. You know, everyone's still there. So I began drinking at 12 years old. And by 15, I started using Percocet. It was easier to get Percocet than it was to get a cigarette. I had my first Percocet before I even smoked the cigarette and it escalated. By years old I was using heroin daily. So I am very afraid of needles, not tattoo needles but like needles when you have to go to doctors. I became addicted to the needle when I was using heroin, which is wild. I've literally traumatized myself and can't go get blood work. I'm always sitting on blood work because I'm so afraid to get it. So before I got sober this time, my first encounter with the diversion program was the AMP ARD program. So I had gotten arrested for possession and then I was entered into the AMP ARD program. And I got several, I don't even know how many, but several bench warrants from that program because I wouldn't show up for court. But then I did start showing up and I would always go and talk to the social worker there, but I still wasn't quite ready. What pushed me to finally enter into treatment was in October 2014 I was finally homeless, so the family was finally like we're done with your shenanigans and we would like for you to figure things out. So I didn't run away, but then I went to treatment. But I can say this, like I was -- I might have looked physically broken, but I was not emotionally broken. But I did go and I did give this a shot. So then by January 2015 I did complete the program of ARD and had my record expunged. I did remain in recovery for a while and found employment, but I eventually disconnected from my network, put everything in front of my recovery and I truly didn't know then what I suffered from. So then when I relapsed, I will say that it was an eight- month relapse and it was the eight- month relapse of hell. So I relapsed in November 2015. I wanted to die every day. It was that powerful that I wanted to die, but I didn't have the guts to kill myself. And they had such a power over me. I remember I would get home, I had an apartment in Port Richmond and I would make a right on Somerset -- or I'm sorry, I would drive and I would be like, all right, got my turning signal and I'm making a right on Somerset. My car would just take me to Kensington Ave. I had no control over it. And it is just that powerful. I remember crying when using drugs, crying when drinking. I remember getting on my knees and praying and begging God, whoever was up there, to remove it. It was just that powerful. And I couldn't stop. So my addiction, now I had my record expunged, nothing. But on july 29, 2016 I robbed a bank because I needed money, and I needed money to get high and that was my only motive. I did not want to hurt anyone. I just went in there with a note and passed a note and got some money. And then I was arrested on August 4, 2016. My mom turned me into the FBI. And I'm a mom now and I get that. I totally get that. And I remained in Philadelphia County so I came through this system. And that was when Mr.
Williams -- like, I was under the system when he was there because the amount of money was not enough to be considered a federal crime. While incarcerated, I experienced severe, severe withdrawal symptoms and was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts in there. Before my arrest, I was receiving methadone maintenance. I was an outpatient. I went every day. I went to all my groups, but I always had dirty urines during that eight months. It was never offered to me do you want to go to a higher level of care ever. There was a missed opportunity there. When I was incarcerated, a fax didn't go through to the provider that was giving the methadone. So I ended up withdrawing from methadone, heroin, benzos, alcohol, every other substance I was using. While I was incarcerated, I participated in the Options program. I attended AA meetings and began therapy. I pled guilty on October 19, 2016 and the judge ordered a FIR evaluation. Two weeks later I was informed -- I'm sorry. Two months later, it was not that quick. Two months later I was informed that I would receive a 6 to 23 month sentence with time served, immediate parole to FIR and three years probation. I entered the treatment facility on January 17, 2017 and was discharged February 12th. I was attending outpatient treatment, meeting with my probation officer weekly and engaging in biweekly sessions with my FIR case manager. By May 2017, due to consistent engagement and treatment, 12-step fellowship meetings, volunteering and attending certified recovery specialist classes, I was discharged from FIR and continued regular probation. I was able to get off of probation two years early with an early termination, probation termination. FIR played a crucial role in my recovery. After incarceration I needed a therapeutic environment to transition before reintegrating into society. It provided the necessary stepdown treatment that I needed. I had to work on myself and heal from the root causes of my addiction. Through FIR, I learned that I could learn how to survive, how to live. I learned that I would -- and through my 12-step fellowship that I didn't have control over my drinking and I needed to do some work internally, and I need to begin the process of self forgiveness. However, there are significant delays which we did hear about earlier in the FIR process that need to be addressed. Individuals in need of substance use disorder treatment often wait for extended periods in prison custody, which costs a lot more money too, sometimes for six months or more before receiving an update on whether they qualify for FIR, followed by another six to eight weeks for bed placement and transport. This process feels inhumane as people are held in limbo after experiencing withdrawal and uncertainty. I have personally supported individuals who have waited for FIR evaluations only to be released in the middle of the night with no treatment or place to go and return back to Kensington, and then that's a missed opportunity. So what happens, what I've been noticing is it seems like everyone's not coordinating proper communication. The lawyers aren't, the judges aren't, the prison isn't, you know, or the social workers, so then people are falling through the cracks. And I always tend to get these really hard cases. I think I'm just like a magnet for them, but I've learned over the years how to navigate them and it's amazing. So I strongly believe it needs to be more efficient and person- centered. There must be a time or way to receive updates on assessments and sentencing with better communication between the person getting the services, attorneys, the District Attorney's Office, the FIR department, and judges to ensure no one falls through the cracks and the prison. The system needs to be more coordinated to avoid unnecessary delays. I would also recommend that prison staff is better trained to manage individuals going through withdrawal.
I can relate to being that person that was very mistreated by prison staff and couldn't see a doctor for days when I was going through withdrawal. I -- hold on, I'm trying to go through this quickly. I think this will also promote the well-being of those incarcerated and create a more compassionate and effective correctional environment. I also think that medical staff needs to be better trained, maybe a better medical provider. I don't know who it is, but someone that's used to our population. So I just want to say this, this addiction is the opposite of connection. When individuals are connected to services through diversion in a humane and compassionate way, recovery becomes possible. Thank you for concluding with success stories. Today we've heard a lot of quantitative data demonstrating the effectiveness of diversion programs, but the qualitative data, the real-life stories are just as powerful, if not more. Success is measured in the ripple effect of recovery, from the individual reclaiming their life to the families who heal alongside of them. It's seen in the children who get their parents back or like myself, the new children that come into this world and don't have to see their mom drink or get high and the mothers who no longer have to search for their child on the streets of Kensington and in the connections that are rebuilt. Thank you for taking the time to hear my testimony. I hope these recommendations will be considered to enhance the treatment and support for individuals involved in the criminal justice system who are struggling with substance use disorders in our city. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for your willingness to continue to show up and be supportive of those who are going through these challenges in the community, right. In another situation, the person would not want to stay in their neighborhood to be able to give back and do the work, right, just for a lot of reasons. So I applaud you and I appreciate the fact that you do, that you do what you do every day and that you're always willing to tell your story regardless of who you're in front of. Appreciate you. Wish you luck on your continued journey, right, because it's a journey every day. I've heard from Councilmember Harrity that every day is an opportunity to stay on course and not always is it easy. And so, thank you. Thank you for what you do every day.
Thank you so much for being with us. Hearing no other witnesses to testify today, this concludes the business before the Special Committee on Kensington. Thank you all very much for your attendance and for staying with us. Thank you. (Special Committee on Kensington concluded at 6:37 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL