Well wait, right?

That's a moratorium.

Oh, I'm sorry.

He extends the moratorium on until it's chairman.

He doesn't let us know.

I did not know that the lawsuit in the CPP from Brooklyn was dismissed until they told me.

I know, I know.

Madam Clerk, do you have the legislation?

Are you going to um you want to read this submission?

This one you sent over to us.

Because I'll have them run a copy of that for you.

Okay, you don't want to read it.

Okay.

Okay.

Hi, how are you?

Why are you out of me?

Okay, Madam Clerk.

You told me I want to do it.

You ready?

No, I said it for Thursday.

Will the public safety committee at Cleveland City Council come to order?

Madam Clerk, do we have a quorum?

You would please call the roll.

Present.

Present.

Present.

Present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Those of you wishing to testify from the public, there's a sign-up sheet to your left.

Uh at the clerk's desk there.

Uh we're gonna hear from um four people initially who have uh expressed interest to testify.

We're gonna hear the four, and then we'll get in with the legislation, and then anyone else who comes in afterwards who would like to make public comment, we will do that.

We are here today to hear ordinance number 1198 to start the process, 1198-2024 as amended by council members House, Jones, Slife, and more, an emergency ordinance to supplement the codified order of Cleveland, Ohio, 1976 by enacting new chapter 147 relating to the creation of the Department of Community Crisis Response.

So what I want to um, because I know there's some confusion out here.

The first time this was read, and I want to explain to the audience and to the viewing public when an uh when a piece of legislation is submitted before council to council, it has to have a first reading, then it goes through departmental review, and then it comes back to the council for proper hearing.

So this the first time uh this legislation was read into the record as submitted by the administration was November 4th, 2024.

Um there's been contents noted by the director of public safety, contents noted on 11.

It looks like I think that's 11725 by Director of Finance, and there's no legal objection to the direct by the director of law on 111025.

So it came back to our committee and came back on uh the week before um Thanksgiving week, and there were people, including members of administration who are out of town due to the holiday, so that's why the hearing was scheduled for today, and I appreciate all my colleagues who are here in attendance and the audience that is here.

Um I'm gonna call upon the four individuals who have signed up initially to comment on Tanisha's law.

You will each be given three minutes to direct your concerns, your comments, your opinion to the members of the safety committee as it pertains to ordinance number 1198-2024 as amended being referred to as Tanisha's law.

Our first speaker, you would like to come to the table.

You can sit to my right to the director's left would be Michael Anderson.

Michael Anderson is here.

Please come up to the table.

And I'm gonna let you know who's gonna be called in order.

Michael Anderson, Pete Van Lear, Stephanie Ash, and Josiah Quarles in that order.

Mr.

Anderson, welcome to the table.

And I'll ask Councilman Slife if you would time do the timing.

If you can do that.

Just hit the button.

There we go.

Just pull the microphone close to your so the viewing public can hear you.

Mr.

Anderson, thank you.

Yeah, good morning.

Well noon.

My name is Mike Anderson.

I am Tanish Anderson's uncle.

So this meeting is very important.

I don't pretty much understand a whole lot about the public safety part of it, but I do know that we received a response.

And we were not the family was not in agreement with that response.

So I'm really here today to listen and to understand how can we get to a common ground with Tanisha's law.

Okay.

Do you have any other comments, sir?

Not at this time.

Okay.

Thank you.

You are more than welcome.

Anyone has any questions for Mr.

Anderson?

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much for coming to the table.

Our next speaker, public speaker will be Pete Van Lear.

Through the Chair, to the committee members, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

So I'm here today, as I was at a recent City Council meeting as a concerned resident advocate.

Some of you may know me from my work with policy matters, and that's how I first had the opportunity to learn about this issue over the past five years.

Where it's working, where non-police response is working, why it's important, and how the kind of response that's outlined in Tanisha's law can improve public safety.

Community safety.

At policy matters, we did surveys in our community about what people need and want from first responders when they are experiencing mental and behavioral health crises.

And we met with people doing the work in other cities and hosted visits to Cincinnati and, for example, and webinars from people farther away.

I no longer work at Policy Matters, so I'm really just here as a resident and advocate.

And I'm also not speaking.

Some of you know me as a member of the police commission.

I'm not here on that in that capacity either.

Um although, of course, how the city moves forward on Tanisha's law is certainly relevant to improving community safety here in Cleveland.

So we need this, Tanisha's Law, because people need help.

They need people with the experience and training to provide support, compassion, understanding of a level that most police officers, even with crisis intervention training, are not able to provide.

We need this because our police department is understaffed, and diverting mental and behavioral health calls to civilian community responders will allow them to do the work we need them to do, responding to violence and solving crime.

And we have to start.

We have to start now to keep our community safe.

Cincinnati's mayor took office in 2022, and within six months they had implemented their pilot program.

We have a pilot here with amazing community responders, both clinicians and peers with lived experience, and they're doing the work at frontline service, funded by the Adams Board.

But the effectiveness of their work is limited by the hub how the program is set up.

Since it's not integrated into the city's infrastructure as it needs to be.

It's not diverting 911 calls away from police.

It's only taking 988 calls.

And that's problematic because, unlike 911, most people don't even know about it.

I go out in the community, you think people would know about and they don't.

I have also personally had negative experiences calling 988 for people who need help.

And I've heard from community members about problematic responses after calling 988, even situations where police were sent, even though that's not what was needed.

It's problematic right now because the city has no real control over or say over the pilot.

I serve on the care committee as a community group established by the Adams Board to provide feedback and help publicize the pilot.

That pilot was supposed to run through September, expect and it's now been extended through December.

But we still don't know what's come of an evaluation of the pilot or its future.

Not even next month, let alone a year from now.

So Cleveland should not put the safety and well-being of our residents with an outside unaccountable group.

It needs to be part of the city so it can be responsive, transparent, and integrated.

Creating a standalone department like Tanisha's Law would do is I is the ideal.

It would establish clear lines of authority and command, integrating the coordination of the co-response clinicians and crisis intervention training also makes sense.

So all these aspects of mental behavior health are working in tandem, not as disjointed parts of an approach to public safety.

Thank you.

Is my time up?

Yes.

I'm available for anyone.

Councilman Casey has a question of the speaker.

Councilman Casey.

Is this something that if it passes has to be okayed by the community police commission?

Can you Ms.

That's my knowledge?

No, it's not at all.

Not at all.

Setting a new department.

Through the chair.

So you don't you cannot answer that question?

Through the chair, yeah.

I I would be surprised if it were, but I can't definitively answer that question.

Through the chair, to Councilman Casey.

Um as it stands, the way the legislation written uh would not be under the Department of Public Safety.

Um as it stands, the way the legislation written uh would not be under the Department of Public Safety, it would not include police officers.

So since it would not be under Department of Public Safety as written and not include police officers, it would not come under the preview.

So this is not this is not a safety.

This is not a safety piece then, correct?

This is a health piece.

I just want to get clarification.

It's been directed to public safety because it has an impact on emergency response.

Is it only going through public safety?

Um goes on to finance diversity, equity, and inclusion after this.

So it is only a safety piece.

Yes, at this point.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh Councilman Slife, you had a question, the speaker.

I agree with uh Chief's response.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Mr.

Vandaler.

Thank you for the table.

Our next speaker is Stephanie Ash.

Stephanie.

Thank you so much.

Uh Chair Palenci and members of the public safety committee.

Thank you so much for allowing me to give public comment today.

My name is Stephanie Ash, and I'm a licensed social worker who works in the city of Cleveland.

I also represent social workers and students in Cuyahoga County as a board member of the National Association of Social Workers, Ohio chapter.

And I really wanted to come here today to speak about how important it is for a mental health crisis response.

I spoke at during public comment on Monday, and I definitely wanted to be here today to just emphasize how important it is that we have this specialized skilled care available to Clevelanders in crisis.

For me, it's really important that we create a new department.

I have the memo that the um Mayor Justin Bibb had sent to the council president and members of council.

And I'm glad to hear that we're aligned to that.

Something has to be done.

Yes.

And I'm also in agreement with Mr.

Anderson when he talked about needing to find common ground.

I think that's really good as well.

I think it's really important, though, to codify the creation of this new department for a few reasons.

I think it's important first to build sustainable infrastructure that's in alignment with the values of these professional uh codes of ethics.

I think it's really important for the sustainability of the program to attract the best people that are available to provide this critical care in our community.

I also believe that we need to codify this new department to ensure dedicated funding to the department.

If we put it under a different department or we have you know a third party doing it, there's no there's no um we we can ensure that it won't be erased by a new administration who maybe isn't as supportive of mental health crisis response.

And lastly, I think it's important to codify this uh new department and codify Tanisha's law because we need a system that is responsible and accountable to the people.

When you have something that is farmed out to a third party provider, they may be skilled and they may be wonderful, but that there's a lack of accountability and responsibility for something that is so critical in our community.

So I want to thank you again for giving me the opportunity and just emphasize that National Association of Social Workers Ohio chapter, including myself, we are very happy to help in building whatever this program looks like.

We're happy to connect you with the mental health professionals who may staff this program and help design it.

And I welcome any um questions you might have.

Thank any questions of the speaker.

Thank you very much for attending.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Josiah uh quarrels.

Josiah, excuse me.

Ms.

Quarrels.

Uh good afternoon.

Thank you for having me.

Um my name again is Josiah Quarrels.

I am the director of organizing advocacy at the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.

Um, also co-founder of REACH, responding with embassy access and community healing, as well.

Um served on the same advisory board as Pete Van Lear, the care committee for the care response pilot that is being funded by the Adams Board and run by Frontline.

Uh in addition to that, also serve on uh the MRAC board, which comes out of the consent decree, and to answer one one of those questions that I think was relatively well answered that because this is not um police response, it does not, and we've seen uh assurances from the DOJ that this would not interfere with current consent decree um matters.

Um what the reason that it does find itself in this position and the reason why it is of such import is because it does have very much to do with dispatch, which um you know is is run by the police, right?

Um so integrating that within dispatch so that there is no wrong door for entry um is really important.

Um, our folks have been using 911 for a very long time for a lot of reasons, um, whether it be uh a cat in a tree or a neighbor bother them, the the uh some music too loud or something life-threatening.

Um, and so folks have been conditioned to do that, so we need to provide the services in the ways that people are most able to access them.

Um CIT has been, you know, um expanding within our in our area, and CIT International has said that care response is the best response for these sorts of situations.

We have a uh a cyclical um problem of mental health and poverty and incarceration at a very high cost, um, not just to the city, but for the individuals who are caught up within that cycle.

And this is a proactive opportunity to engage with folks at intercept zero before there actually is any involvement in the car school system so that they can be diverted to to receive the care that they may need, whether that is mental health care or whether that is just um some physical care that is manifesting in a way that seems like it is mental health.

Um, I think it's really important um to pass this and also to embed it within the city.

Um, as serving on the care committee, that was something that community had to push for.

The Adams Board was very much content to run the program as itself and in a black box, and we don't believe that it is ever um the appropriate way to do that.

And so having actual community involvement um which leads back to the BJA grant um around dispatch.

There's supposed to be a committee that is established to shepherd that uh mental health dispatcher into uh programming, um, which has yet to exist.

Um, and I think the last point that I'll make is that waiting for uh the call type analysis, which was the recommendation of the mayor's office, is something that we don't think is necessary to proceed.

There have been studies across the country in many of the cities that do have these programs that recognize generally the types of calls that are are able to be responded to, and as far as I know, there has not been a single incident of severe injury or death by either a responder or someone being responded to in any of the cities that have programs like this.

So, what I think we need to do is move forward and figure out how to build the structure of it as that data comes in and and work with community and government to make sure that that data is integrated into um the program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions of the speaker?

Without any, thank you very much for coming to the table.

Still read that if you want to.

I do want to add this, and I should have read it when I the amendment, because the legislation is as amended.

There's no legal objection to this legislation if amended as follows.

Number one, strike the fourth whereas clause in its entirety and insert the following.

Whereas the city wishes to honor Tanisha Anderson, a beloved mother, daughter, sister, niece, and resident of Cleveland by putting in place these policies and that was it and signed by assistant, excuse me, chief corporate counsel for the city of Cleveland, Stephanie Melney.

Um, let me see what else.

I do want to read as well.

There was a submission, which is part of the legislation that has been presented to us by the administration.

Uh read this in its entirety, so there's no question.

Um this is dated November 10th, 2025.

Uh this was directed to the council president and all members of council, including myself as chair of public safety.

The administration supports the spirit of Tanisha's law, and we wish to share the intent surrounding care response and non-law enforcement innervation interventions with were appropriate.

However, the administration does not support the current vision of the legislation as drafted.

This is not because of a disagreement with the intent, but because the legislation as structured today is not yet administratively ripe.

Through the connection and protection and protect grant, a third-party call analysis will be conducted to determine the scope of need, which will provide clear insights into how this should be structured.

Legislation, legislative action should follow that call analysis.

Administration's commitment.

Our roadmap for this is clearly underway.

The Connect and Protect grant, in addition to funding the third and third party analysis will support implementation of mental health dispatching services within EMS once federal approval is granted.

Specific administrative concerns with ordinance 1198-2024.

We do not support the creation of a new department.

Creating a new cabinet level department is structurally unnecessary and creates duplicative bureaucracy.

According to our research, no city in a country has codified its CIT or care response programs.

This suggests that jurisdictions nationwide recognize the importance of allowing these policies to evolve over time rather than embedding them in an ordinance in a way that could limit necessary flexibility and adaptation.

The city should carefully consider this precedent to ensure any legislation preserve the ability of these programs to continue evolving and improving over time.

CIT co-response programming is already occurring and is compliant with federal courts' expects expectations.

We do not yet have the call analysis required to determine staffing or structure.

Therefore, this legislation is premature.

If council chooses to move forward with against our recommendations, we would recommend the following actions.

Number one, remove the creation of a new department.

Number two, relocate division of police, CIT language in Chapter 135.

And number three, clarify that non-law enforcement unarmed, unarmed response services are aligned with existing non-law enforcement department or third-party provider.

Conclusion, we support the intent.

We support the outcome.

We do not support the creation, creating a new department, nor advancing the legislation before the call analysis is complete.

However, council intends to move forward.

We respect the request that council consider adopting our suggested recommendations.

That came from the administration, that came over on 111 to my office.

Okay.

At this time, I'm going to call upon the sponsors and for their thoughts, their opinions.

They put the legislation together.

I will start.

Let me see if I can have legislation back.

Okay, that's all right.

I will call upon council members Stephanie House Jones, Councilman Slife, and Councilwoman Mauer for comment on the legislation as submitted to the body.

You can remain where you want.

If you could remain over here, that's not a problem.

You don't have to sit here.

I was trying to not block the apologize.

I feel like I started.

Oh, y'all trying to be fine yourself.

Oh, yeah, right.

Okay.

You guys, you guys are color coordinated with the screen.

I see that, okay?

Okay.

So I'll I guess I'll advance.

And why don't why don't uh the councilwoman begin with a brief comment, so then I will tag along and then we can ask for comments from the administration.

Okay.

Yes, so good afternoon, everyone.

Um basically a lot of people probably trying to figure out how did us three end up being sponsors to this legislation.

Um I was actually uh soon after I was elected um and started serving in War 7 as the councilwoman, um, Mr.

Answer Anderson reached out to me in early 2022 to let me know about um the work that him um and you know students at the Case Western Reserve University Law School have been working to do Tanisha's law.

And um I I was like, okay, you know, I wasn't you know familiar with him or this work.

And so from there, um I actually worked with uh the policy team and the policy team um had let me know that Councilman Slife had been working on some stuff, and so that's really how um you know I had a partnership with um uh councilman uh slife, and then I'm gonna turn it over to Councilman Moore, who then kind of chimed in because of some of the work that she did.

Um, but we're we're all wearing purple today.

The presentation is in permanent purple today.

Um, just playing um homage and honor to Tanisha Anderson, which is her favorite color.

So, Councilwoman Moore.

Councilman.

Thank you very much, Chairman.

Um, and I'll I'll just echo um Councilwoman House Jones's uh sentiments that I think all of us have I either you know we we've either learned from or or grown with or reacted to the Anderson family and um seen the way that this impacts Clevelanders.

I think many of us have had lived experiences of loved ones who are in a mental health crisis.

And you know, I have the people in my life who I worry about who gets called at what time and who might show up, and you know, do they do they have a badge or do they not, and what's gonna help the situation, what's not, and then we see it all unfold in our wards um all the time.

And and so knowing that there is a best practice out there that Cleveland needs to step up to uh was really critical for me, and I'm really grateful, particularly that Councilwoman House Jones and I were um admitted to a national cohort of elected officials all over the country who have been learning from each other, visiting sites um everywhere.

We went to Chicago, we went to Pittsburgh, um, we learned from folks in Durham, Albuquerque, um, folks all over, just knowing that this is a national best practice and thinking about what we need to do to make it work here in Cleveland.

So I'll hand it back to Councilwoman House Jones with that.

Thank you.

And and and I'll just say my my path to this moment might uh just slightly different and and less uh about even in one particular instance, but uh since coming into office, engaging with residents who have uh made me very aware of sort of I call it the full suite of models of how to uh deal with uh mental health, public safety, when they overlap and when they don't.

And um it it it's it's I think there's a lot of things that we do as the city, uh things like funding violence prevention programs, things like doing supplemental programming at our recreation centers that we do because they're good things to do, but we also know that they have the benefit of having a a spillover benefit to public safety that not only makes our community safer but also allows police officers to focus more strategically on the things that require the attention and eyes of law enforcement and not expecting our police officers who we unfortunately we are understaffed right now, expecting them to send up sort of be cure alls for all of the challenges we face.

So I've been viewing this as a way to strategically add an option to our tool belt so that we can meet the needs of individuals experiencing a mental health crisis while simultaneously not overstretching our public safety forces, especially in scenarios where we're stretching them arguably beyond the confines of what is public safety.

Um with that um I'll do a present, I'll I'll speak more in a moment, but I'll let Councilwoman House Jones speak to the legislative goals.

Um so when you look at um the uh what's in the actual ordinance, um there are a couple of things that you will find.

Uh first and foremost, uh we did introduce the idea of creating a department of uh community crisis.

Um and this is just based on uh there was a thought and a belief that just if you look at the current trajectory of the pilot program, um, both in public safety and public health.

Um at times it seems like this has not been prioritized and it has fallen to the wayside, and unfortunately, we don't see a real champion to actually evolving um work that needs to be done and actually having a real decision maker.

Um and so we thought in order for this work to actually get done, um, that creation of a new department will uh allow a level of um say so and being treated um as an actual partner in this work and governing and the creation of a new department would afford the opportunity for care response, community response to actually happen.

Um and that's that part.

Um when we talk about just uh being able to collect data, uh one of the things that you will find currently is the data is everywhere if you can at all access it, and it is very important as we are making uh financial decisions, um, understanding what we are doing, how we are doing, and being able to ensure that we have that level of data is important um along with uh some of the issues of having some minimum baseline training requirements and codifying it.

Uh one of the things people talk about the federal consent decree and things of that nature.

None of that, even when it comes to crisis intervention training, none of that is actually in our laws.

And while again, as everybody that there has been a recent push to get rid of the consent decree, where would that leave us?

What does that mean for future administrations, future legislators when you don't actually have a legislated um your actual uh processes of how you are going to care for your people?

Um and then also, you know, what how we got here is being in honor of Tanisha Anderson who tragically lost her life when our family was reaching out for support.

You know, um, Mr.

Anderson, you know, uh initially we had sent something is like this is not just about Tanisha, this is about a community when we know that people are struggling, and how do we change and elevate our way of service to ensure that the appropriate people are responding to the crisis at hand.

We know that here in 2025, we are not where we were in um 2014, but ensure that that those things never uh occur again.

We have to be sure that we are giving our future public service servants the guide and the direction to ensure that it can be so.

Um I won't read this uh because we can read, but just to let you kind of know the presentation order, linger, linger, click.

Okay, so um just to kind of set the stage for everybody and and my colleagues, uh I want to just uh briefly kind of explain the difference between crisis response, co-response, and care response.

There's a lot of jargon out there uh uh and and and acronyms and things, but just for the sake of this presentation, breaking it into these three categories.

Um the the progression of of the the title in the middle of the slide shows that one has evolved out of the other, but I want to be clear that evolution doesn't mean replacement.

These are three versions of mental health response that coexist alongside each other because they are all kind of catered to a specific need or the specific scenario.

Uh beginning with crisis response, which we would really call CIT in our uh our stuff through the consent decree, uh this is a a solely uh response from a uniformed police officer, typically maybe a police officer out of uniform, but a call comes in through 911 and officers who have uh mental health training uh which I'll get into what we require through the consent decree are able to respond to scenarios where an individual is having a mental health crisis.

Uh there's a need for this going forward.

Uh I can say um a friend of mine uh was a second district police officer and was called out to an issue and you know what was fired at.

Like there are issues when unfortunately when people are dealing with when we're dealing with mental health where not everybody is in the state of mind to be acting uh in a safe manner towards themselves, towards others, especially when there's weapons involved.

And and none, I just want to underscore that none of this is to suggest that we should be so bold or brazen as to say that there's not a role for law enforcement and mental health uh as we move forward.

Um co-response is is sort of a a mix of what we have and what we're looking to achieve on scale.

Uh and the idea is that uh police officers alongside uh trained mental health professionals are able to respond to a situation and with the dual expertise of those of those backgrounds, able to simultaneously provide high quality mental health care uh while also addressing any law enforcement concerns that that that might be at the forefront.

Let me see if mine is opening, Councilman, because if it is or here, do you want to take this?

For summary, I can't believe this.

No worries.

Um care response, uh, which is really what we're here to talk about today is the idea that in many scenarios, an unarmed mental health professional is the appropriate, most appropriate way to meet uh the moment.

Uh I don't I don't want to give overly detailed uh descriptions of calls and challenges that my office has had uh due to privacy concerns, but I can think of any number of of individuals who call my office and um they're hearing a voice or they believe there's people in their home or uh that's it's it's I think we've all experienced it.

I always say credit where credit's due.

When I've called the division of police and asked somebody to go out and uh you know knock on this individual's door and and see how they are and see if they need help.

The Cleveland Division of Police does that in every single scenario.

What my concern is the maybe the first time I make that request, it's understandable that there's uh gonna be a public safety question.

After the tenth time when we know who the individual is, people have been there a couple times this week.

I think it there's there's a certain point where we can triage away, especially from public safety and recognize that this is a scenario given what we know, given who the individual is, given our lived experience, that this is an opportunity to divert this away from police and towards a mental health professional.

Uh, this provides targeted mental health support and it allows police to focus on the most critical matters of policing, which we don't have to uh extrapolate on.

We we know what Cleveland's challenges are.

And and I will say in my day-to-day conversations with police officers, I know many, it's not an unwillingness to respond to these calls.

It's it's one an acknowledgement that their the level of training they have is not comparable to the level of training that a uh a social worker would have, for example.

And and the the amount of time and and subsequent follow-up and things are things that they feel torn because they are being pulled away from the things that we are calling them about.

Traffic enforcement, violent crime investigation.

So this is really about trying to figure out how we can do more given the resources that we have.

So, kind of where we are with Cleveland's mental health response network, we should celebrate that Cleveland has a very successful crisis intervention uh program as we speak.

Uh, it's active across all five police districts.

You can see that this is something that's required uh within the consent decree.

Every officer's uh going or CPD is going to provide enhanced specialized training, it's 40 hours.

Uh officers are able to voluntarily sign up to basically become a CIT officer and and they can opt into this specialization.

Uh they're out on patrol, but if a call comes in and this specialization is needed, they're kind of diverted from their regular patrol over to this specific incident until uh the the time that it's appropriate to uh divert back.

Our success in this pillar of the consent decree is our this is this is our kind of crown jewel right now in consent decree compliance.

This is under assessment.

Uh this is uh the closest we are in any aspect of the consent decree and being in full compliance.

And I underscore that because one of our questions coming in had been, and I don't I'm not happy to report this, but the consent decree is a data document at this point.

And our ability to comply with the consent decree essentially requires us to fulfill obligations put on to us 10 years ago that don't necessarily appreciate that there's been an evolutions in how we can address any given scenario.

So right now, in order to become comply with the consent decree, and we can get more into our conversations with the Department of Justice about this, the police are it's it's really critical that we continue this crisis response program.

And if we were to divert away wholly from police, we would actually fall out of compliance with the area of the consent decree that we've been most successful in.

And if we were to attempt to alter the consent decree to appreciate that there can be a hybrid scenario, it wouldn't be so simple as continue with the assessment and achieve compliance here.

It would actually push us back many years because we'd have to come up with new metrics, new training, new data over time to demonstrate that we are are meeting that that that amended version of the consent decree.

Um so this is something that should continue.

I want to congratulate the Cleveland Division of Police for all the hard work they've done in this category.

Um co-response, uh I I would say we don't purely have uh the co-response, in my opinion, as I outlined in the previous slide.

Uh we do have a pilot program underway with the Adams Board.

Again, co-response is this idea that police and social workers work uh alongside each other.

My understanding is that it's a bit of a hybrid uh where uh sometimes they are working together, sometimes social workers are coming as a follow-up to an incident.

Uh the challenge we have right now uh principally, and I let councilwoman more get into more specifically the challenges, it's only active right now in two Cleveland zip codes.

So if you live on the near west side or the southeast side, you have access to this program.

If you dial 988, and I'll again I'll let Councilwoman Moore explain why that is a um a limitation as we have it.

Now if the way this program is functioning right now, if you're on the wrong side of Union Avenue, I I don't think that they are saying, sorry, you're across the street, you're not in 44105.

Uh, but suffice to say, this is not operating at a citywide level at this point.

And then finally, uh uh to have a full care response program requires additional work uh from us to establish it, which is why the councilwoman and I came forward with 1198 about 13 months ago with a proposal for how we feel we could achieve that.

And I can say that I'm happy that we are finally here having this deeper conversation so that we can figure out how to move towards having a more robust citywide care response program for Clevelanders who are undergoing a mental health crisis.

So with that, I'm gonna turn the clicker over to Councilwoman Moore.

Thank you, uh Councilman Slife.

And and I think as we turn to the next uh couple of slides, uh, this one I want to spend a uh a bit of time on, which is the sort of limitations.

I'll I'll maybe frame up two two ideas.

Um is just like what is the correct moral best way to handle folks who are our neighbors who are struggling and are in a mental health crisis.

And we can say, no holds barred that having a care response model is the gold standard.

It might not have been that way 20 years ago, but we did a lot in policing different 20 years ago, 40 years ago.

And now we are behind what is the the clear moral correct standard that we should be striving towards.

And what we want to do is find the way to build that system here in Cleveland and understand the ways that it can support um the rest of our public safety model.

So I want to talk a little bit about why these co-response models are not haven't gotten us all the way there, and additionally, the Adams Board model hasn't gotten us all the way there.

So the first, I want to really emphasize that we know through our policing system that we have a high volume of calls.

Our officers are asked to respond to calls 24 hours a day, all types of calls, so many that when something is labeled a priority two call, a priority three call, the response times can be longer than we hear it all the time from our neighbors.

They're a little bit longer than we want them to be.

Um, and we ask extraordinary and exceptional things of our officers, and they rise to the occasion.

And I want to thank Chief Drummond for that.

But one of the premises, one of the reasons that we're here is that we don't think police have to be the correct people to respond when someone is in a mental health crisis, that there are other folks who are better positioned to respond and who can then actually help officers respond to the types of calls that we want them out at, the types of immediate safety situations where we want a police officer on scene very quickly, something that might be labeled a priority too, but maybe we can get them there faster if we are taking off of their plate these types of calls.

Also, something that really um uh educated me around this was just listening to dispatch.

Um, dispatch is a public, it's on the public radio.

I really encourage everyone in the audience, like tune in for a night, um, you know, while you're cooking dinner, listen to the types of calls that are coming in, how officers are trying, dispatches trying to stack and arrange what's happening, everything that can go on in any given evening.

And what you'll hear, you can just I I I'm telling you, if you listen for a couple hours, you will hear a call that is requested for CIT.

Where some it's requested for a mental health call, and what's happening there is we're having a police officer respond.

But if we have a program where we could have a non-police officer responding, we could free up our officers to respond to other types of priority to calls that are currently getting um shuffled uh down the board.

Um, so the last part of this that I really want to tie into is that I I know that um our our teams are really proud of the co-response model we have where we have both police and a clinician responding together, but they are not responding live over 80% of the time.

I was able to do a ride along with them.

They're incredible folks, but because right now our policies require two-man squad car to clear the scene before the mental health team and the co-response team can come in.

We're essentially not getting to those calls live.

Those co-response teams of the city are actually responding after the fact days, sometimes weeks later.

And so we're not actually integrated with dispatch.

Now we did have the Adams Board model.

The Adams Board has had this pilot.

I think something to emphasize in addition to what Councilman Slife said is that my understanding is that the pilot is ending soon.

So the pilot is coming to an end.

So even these two zip codes won't be covered in the same way.

And then again, with those zip codes being integrated into 988, not 911, it just is not a viable program that will get us to that gold standard response we need.

We have trained our citizens over the years to call 911 in a crisis.

Not enough people will be calling 988.

And what we've seen in other cities is that their dispatchers can then differentiate.

They can be trained to say, hey, here is a 988 call versus an or here's a mental health call versus a police call.

And that's something they're capable of doing.

If the if um the council wants a baseline, we do have a current coding system, so you can look at how calls are coded even before the call type analysis.

And if all you do is look at the codes that are labeled as 25 for EMS, those are psychiatric labeled calls, that's over 2,000 calls a year.

So even if all you want to look at is EMS, things that are labeled as 25s for EMS, you're looking at over 2,000 calls that are already right now through dispatch being labeled as psychiatric situations.

Lastly, um I just want to highlight the point about the implied one-to-one correlation between public safety and mental health.

I think this is a great line from Councilman Slife when you put this chart together.

That basically the idea is that we we think we can just sub out that public safety could go rather than a clinician, and it would be the same response.

But what we know is that it's not.

What we know is that a clinician showing up can much better de-escalate, and that for many members of our community, just somebody showing up in a uniform with a badge and a gun can escalate things on its own.

And so we know we don't want to pretend that it's one-to-one.

And in fact, we are asking so much of our officers to be on scene in these situations when many times a clinician could be better.

Um, so we have uh models of best practices from all over the country.

Um, these are the 89 programs, and actually, this is from the uh LEAP website that's a law enforcement uh analysis law action partners leap, and they have a really great timeline where you can see how these popped up over time.

And what you'll see is that this really is in the last 10 years that we have started getting more of these, but they're they're growing rapidly, and we see successful models in areas that have similar demographics and size to us.

Um, and I I I in fact I we were sort of bemoaning that we couldn't fly out some of the folks from Evanston or Durham to talk to us because you should hear the pride and excitement with which both the non-police responders and the police officers talk about these programs.

Once they get up and running, people are so excited to have a model that works for everybody.

Um we have a couple of slides here about best practices that we've seen from other cities, just some of the data in terms of the call volume, the cost of the program, um, the types of responders.

And you know, so here is Albuquerque.

We also, oh, this is the um uh behavioral uh health responders.

We have the A team in Allegheny County, not that far from us, um, covering parts of Pitts Pittsburgh, and then Durham Heart, um, holistic, empathetic assistance response teams.

Um and this is in Durham, North Carolina, which has um a roughly comparable population to us, if I'm remembering correctly, and they have their model has just been exceptional.

It has expanded, and um, they're now handling over 8,000 calls uh that are again freeing up their EMS police officers and first responders.

Um, so with that, oh, I apologize.

There's one more slide here from Evanston.

Um I'll hand it back to uh I believe Councilman Slife for the legislative details, or do you want me to do this one?

Oh, okay.

Um so on this final slide, we're talking about the specifics of the legislation as presented before you today.

Um the biggest, the the there are numero numerous levers, right?

Um and I I think if we can walk away from here with a mutual understanding that we want to do this, um then our question, of course, is how.

And um we have a version here that has been uh painstakingly researched and drafted with our partners at Case Western um alongside uh the family of Tanisha Anderson.

So this launches a department of community crisis response.

It codifies the existing co-response program so that way it doesn't go away under the consent decree.

Um and then it establishes unarmed response teams, i.e.

care response.

It requires data reporting on effectiveness, fiscal impact, annual reports.

Albuquerque has annual reports and they're really, really great to review.

So if you want examples of what that could look like, we have those available.

Um, and then provide it also codifies the consent decree required CIT training for officers.

I've come to distill this into two big ideas.

There are basically two ingredients we need to make Tanisha's law work.

We need integration into dispatch, it needs to work with 911, and there needs to be people to be dispatched.

And where those people live, i.e.

in their own department, um uh is is what matters.

And I I think you've heard arguments about uh, or you might hear today about should those be third-party people, like the Adam, should we just take the Adams Board program?

And I think one of the things we're here to say is that this works best in the gold standard is when those teams are housed at the city, when they're housed at the city, um, and and also not within public safety.

They're not a public safety branch, they're their own branch.

And um, this as drafted envisions a department of community crisis response, and I think that should absolutely be the starting point.

Um, and I will with that um hand it back to um, oh, am I doing this one too?

I apologize.

I thought I oh, okay.

Uh I apologize.

Um we're looking at um uh we've put together a draft that includes a a pipeline, like how do you get here?

And I want to be very clear, this wouldn't be a switch overnight where suddenly we were diverting thousands and hundreds of calls.

The first version of this in what I've proposed and and what we've proposed and sent to the administration is a first year budget of only about $800,000 with which has which would create a departmental structure ahead of that department, uh clinician supervisors who then are working to start the process.

They can do that simultaneously with the call type analysis.

Uh I I frankly propose we we already have these co-response teams that right now aren't responding live.

We could pilot live response with just those teams until in future years we can hire in the clinicians.

There's a lot of ways to ramp up to this, and we don't have to start with flipping a switch where thousands of calls are getting diverted, but unless we put the structures in place with legislation, we will never get there.

We have to start with a with a baseline and a model.

Um, and so with that, I will hand it back to councilwoman House Jones for the timeline.

So I just really wanted to take the time to go through what we have done since July 22nd.

Um, as you can see, we had the conversation um with Mr.

Anderson and the team.

Uh they sent over the draft of legislation that they had worked on years prior to us joining in November of 22nd.

Uh council um uh passed legislation that gave us this this start uh or more of a start when it came to uh CIT co-response program.

Uh January 2024, which was the connect and protect grant where we were supposed to have uh call analysis done, um, which is a connection.

Like again, that's one of the things in our learning is if you don't, if 911 is not working, you don't have all these different programs.

Um July 2024, uh uh there was a request from the administration to uh provide feedback from uh Tanisha's law because we've had to language for a while.

Um in September 24, we actually met to kind of go over people's thoughts, concerns, issues.

Um October 24th, uh we as a group actually reached out to the monitoring team because that was part of the issue is that the administration had shared with us we can't do care response because of the consent decree.

And so we were going back and forth, um, even though we had come to an understanding.

If you are the the consent decree is the foundation.

You can go up and beyond that.

That was always our understanding, but we were on a consistent back and forth.

Um and so we got to the point where we just said, well, we're gonna introduce the legislation because we believe very strongly that the community, you know, we just had we need to have real conversations in an open forum where there is disagreement.

Um, and that's where we are.

Um in February of this year, uh, we actually got an official um uh uh uh uh an official response from the Department of Justice, and I want to actually take a moment to read it so that there we are very clear.

Um this is from their letter.

It is our understanding that paragraph 156 applies to calls for service which necessitate a police response, not calls for service, which do not require a Cleveland division of police member to be dispatched.

Other paragraphs of the consent decree include the first paragraph of the crisis intervention section, expressly contemplate non-police responses.

See um section 131, CBD CDP will build upon and improve its crisis intervention program with the goal of reducing the need for individuals with mental illness to have further involvement with the criminal justice system.

It is our understanding that the parties have long acknowledged that the existence and use of alternative to police dispatch in um in Cleveland.

Indeed, in September 2024, the monitor and the Department of Justice approve dispatcher training required by paragraph 141.

That training included the ability for dispatchers to utilize alternative in-person or telephonic responses to calls for services either in lieu of police response or as a supplement to police response.

Some existing alternative responses include 988 for basic questions about assessing mental health and substance use disorders, mobile gripe, mobile crisis team operated by frontline services, children response team operated by frontline services, warmline services operated by Thrive, care response operated by frontline services, and mental health response stabilization services operated by Fail Bailfair Children's Services.

In some, the consent decree does not prevent the city from utilizing nonpolice response to individuals in crisis when appropriate.

Use of alternative to police response when appropriate are intended to lead to better outcomes for individuals.

Such alternatives may also become a force multiplier for CDB, freeing up sworn members for responses to cost that necessitate a police response.

We hope this clarification resolves any misunderstanding about paragraph 156.

So that was that.

Next, we are going, we went as council member more indicated.

We applied uh to local progress as community responder cohort, um, which are currently our offers ongoing technical support for the city if they choose to utilize it.

Um, and in this, we were with colleagues where we really understood, you know, we got the opportunity to tour um and and go to the A Team, that's the Allegheny County, um, to go into their dispatch center to go through.

And it's just, you know, that it was just that experience where we came back, which prompted us to do a slight visit to our own one, right?

Because who knew that was an option, but we were in a space that was welcoming that led that allowed us to learn um bit best practices.

We got an opportunity to um go to Chicago to learn about their care system.

We heard from Evanston, Illinois, where one of the things that really was just, I feel like really amazing is A, it is codified, but it actually their care response is in the Department of Recreation.

We was like, what?

I mean, so there are some amazing things going around in our country, um, leading to some great res great great results that center people to ensure that the appropriate professional is responding to the appropriate um crisis at hand.

In June, um oh, and I forgot to mention, which I probably did, there is um, and it was in February.

I I'm I forgot to mention this.

Um we actually, because people have asked, well, where has community been in this?

So in February of this year, we actually have established a Tanisha's law advisory team.

And I want to say thank you, uh, you know, to our initial um Gorge, and I because I'm going to make sure I call them by name because it is very, very important to acknowledge that, um, which is made up of Mr.

Anderson.

We have the Case Western Reserve Um University Law Clinic with Profession Professor Aisha Um Hardaway.

Um we had our the team from um Policy Matters, then um Bree, uh Brie Easterland, um Pete Van Lear.

Uh we also had um uh uh care uh Josiah Curls um here and that team who have really been through this journey, not just meeting, but literally meeting on um every two weeks to kind of give us like guidance and thoughts, and even when we weren't as council members, because you can't do this work, you have to have partners.

They've been together putting things together, um, which will actually resulted in us having um this strategy table, which uh we had again at least at least 25 to 30 people from various organizations that have come together to think about how can we get this to work?

How can we get this to work in Cleveland?

So this is not a thing of just the council members wanting.

This is really working in partnership with community members uh of seeing a different vision, a a billing upon some of the building upon some of the things we've done and expanded from there.

Um, as we talk about in July, um, there was a community letter um made up of 29 people entities um urging the administration to look at um um supporting a care response.

Um, again in August of this year, there was a Power Alliance uh letter that included Tanisha's Law as part of their policy platform.

Um in September 25th of this year, the Department of Public Safety uh wanted, I guess they put the uh they put the official modification of their budget and rescope of the Connect and Protect Grant.

We are mentioning this because a lot of people don't realize in 2023, um council approved legislation to do this work of a call analysis.

And it wasn't until earlier this year that we figured out that it wasn't it it hadn't been done.

And it wasn't communicated, it wasn't updated, and you know, so we've been having some barriers.

Um, and then November 25th, uh, we got the formal response from the administration um and as well as um approval from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to move forward with the Connect and Protect grant.

Um, and at the end of the day, like I I hope that we can get to a place where we can move forward.

Um, but it has been extremely frustrating and disappointing um to work.

No, we haven't been working together.

We haven't.

Um I I can speak specifically from my perspective, is that as much as a a difference um that I've in good faith, really trying to work with the administration, um, it just seems like the administration has been very unwilling to even listen to be a partner.

Um, and even in the response that was presented last month, I'm like, this the best that you can give after over a year.

Like, I mean, it's like how how do you say you want to be a partner, but you don't even give real guidance.

It's just like, well, it could be somewhere we don't want to partner.

And I just feel it's just it's just so disheartening when we know, like you're not the smartest person in the room.

You know what I'm saying?

I don't, and again, people ask, like, you know, there have been questions from colleagues to say, well, where, you know, why is the administration resistance?

I don't know.

I can't answer for you all, right?

But I know that you all aren't giving guidance.

So without guidance, this is what we have.

And I hope that we can get to the point, and then people have pressed us, well, why we need to figure this out behind closed doors.

It's just gotten to the point where that doesn't seem to be working.

Having a, you know, trying really working in earnest in action to ask real questions, and then you just get like whatever from the administration, it's like it's not a priority, and it's like how do we move forward?

Because people deserve the best from us.

So I'll end it there.

Next slide's question.

Oh, yeah, questions and answers.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sponsors.

Um I do have Councilman Starr.

I don't know if you want to uh councilman star, you have a question on the sponsors, or you want to wait till the administration makes their presentation.

Okay.

Assistant.

Oh, excuse me.

Got this.

Because you was asking me a question.

Okay.

Do you want to speak address the sponsors or to the administration?

So I wanted to move it on for um for the when they get through.

Overall.

Okay, thank you.

You are down.

Okay.

And same thing.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Director, the floor is yours.

And assistant director.

Identify yourself again for the viewing public.

Afternoon.

Thank you.

Also, Chair Blandzik, um, Wayne Drummond, Director of Public Safety, and to my right is uh Jason Shachner, assistant director.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a presentation as well.

Very brief.

A lot of the information that we are going to cover actually has been covered by the council members.

Really appreciate the information that they presented.

And it's important to understand that from an administrative standpoint, we support uh the uh intent of Tanisha Law, as Tanisha's law, we we we understand that it's not necessary for for uh CDP or uh armed um officers to respond to every call.

We understand that as well.

Uh so we we we support the intent of this administration's of the uh intent of Tanisha's law.

Um and we're not here, and it's important.

I'm gonna stress it, we're not here in an adversarial role.

Um we understand um what the sponsors want to accomplish and we want to get there as well.

It's just how we get to that particular point.

Um the crisis intervention program and co-response program that currently exists or lives in the division of police is what I consider the gold standard.

Um relative to how our police officers who are now trained, every single police officer within the uh division of police are trained for crisis intervention, and as stated before, and again, I'll probably have uh probably repeat some of the things that was our articulated already.

Um there are officers who are specialized CIT officers.

Uh we have licensed clinicians now who are not police officers, they're licensed clinicians that work with our um our specialized trained uh CIT trained uh uh police officers that respond to sometimes live um to situations, crisis, folks that are in crises.

And the reason why I say live is because in other meetings and so forth.

I have a cousin that suffers from mental illness.

Um, and uh she is currently in California now in a facility.

Um she's out um she's interacts with the police on a regular basis.

They're the ones that I've encountered with, been very compassionate with her.

Um I know because she tells me.

Um so I've had experience with her here in Cleveland before she went out to California, where I had to myself uh call our crisis or co-response uh members to respond live to her crises at my mother's home.

And uh at the time I was the chief of police.

Um I had the ability, capacity to monitor their interactions because I went live on their body camera.

So I watched, and again, I repeated this before, and I it's important to kind of lay the foundation in context, um, watched the co-responders, um, a police officer, specialized training, as well as a licensed clinician respond to my mother's home where I grew up in on the 95th.

Um, showed nothing but extreme compassion to my cousin in their treatment of her.

Um they worked with her almost well, almost as well over two hours to get her to comply willingly.

EMS responded to the location, and EMS transported her to get treated.

Uh, and that's why I said this is the the gold standard, in my opinion.

Uh, it was mentioned before that the um monitoring team, uh, independent monitoring team uh did an assessment for our CIT program, and they did, and they're complete with that pro that assessment, as a matter of fact.

Um, just completed this year, and there was uh we I'm I'm happy to to report that we passed all sections with substantial and effective compliance of the CIT program.

And that's important.

Uh that's extremely important.

I know it's not a care model response, and we're working towards that, but that's really important.

Um to understand that we have officers who I believe are well trained.

We have other officers who are specialized CIT trained and clo uh clinicians that are working every day and every day on two shifts to provide a service to our residents who are in crises.

Do I believe that they should they should be responding to every single call for service?

No, uh no, because uh our are armed officers, no, I do not believe that they should.

That's why we have this program in place, and I believe this program is working very effectively.

Um I'm gonna go through the program, go through the slide here, and bear with me.

And this is starting with our CIT program, and I also have an audience with me in case there are specific questions about it.

Uh Lieutenant John Mullen back there, um, he's in charge of it.

He's a coordinator for our CIT program.

Uh he can answer specific questions relative to the program, the training that our officers go through.

And also important to note as well is that our dispatchers, our dispatchers are all trained.

Every single dispatcher in our communication section is trained through the frontline services how to handle folks in crises on the phone.

Um they're not mental health dispatch, but they are trained how to handle uh incoming calls for someone that potentially is in crisis.

So we have that level of training for our dispatchers currently.

We have that level of training for our uniform officers, every single officer in the division of police are trained every year in CIT.

So we have that level.

So again, we have the specialized co-responders, and I I'm not gonna read everything uh that's on the that's in front of you, uh, but I it's uh important to highlight some of the things on there.

My eyes aren't that good, so I'm gonna have to get on my phone, so bear with me.

I should have brought my glasses with me.

So bear with me as I I go through some of the slides here.

Some of the arcade, yeah, the specialized uh co-responder team, which is a CIT trained officer paired with a licensed clinician to respond to mental health substance use and behavioral health crises citywide.

Um of course I said it was uh led by a CIT coordinator, which we have currently in a clinical supervisor, uh clinical supervisors and the teams work day and afternoon shifts, and they do respond to live calls uh at times and conduct risk-based follow-ups.

Um the officers are there to make sure that the scene is safe.

And they also we have documentation and compliance and the ultimately it's about the safety and have the outcome focused for the the folks that uh our our folks are dealing with that are in crises.

And this is the current process I've talked about a little bit um relative to our current dispatch process, um to call this tree uh triage, um, calls then transferred to uh fire EMS or police, and one thing that we have committed to um during our conversations, during our meetings, even with the co-sponsors, is that we're committed to adding a fourth component when uh citizen uh calls in to our 911 center, generally as police fire EMS.

Our commitment is that we'll also include uh mental health.

We can come up with the the right terminology, but that's our commitment that we would add that to our dispatch center.

Um and then, of course, the um uh the last slide there is uh uh CRT, I'm sorry, and uh officer uh dispatched uh to a mental health uh crisis situation.

As you can see, again, I'm not gonna read every single thing that's up there, but our our our our part our plan is to through the Connect and Protect grant is to have a call type analysis that we're still going to do that.

Um through the Connect and Protect grant uh mental health dispatch through our EMS uh emergency um response uh uh EMS uh folks will have uh uh mental health dispatch under them, um, the professionals, um EMS, once the calls are come into EMS, mental health dispatcher will determine whether or not uh EMS needs to respond, or it needs to be police response and make sure that the appropriate response is uh um sent out to whoever may be in crisis.

So that's our future uh dispatch process.

And then this is the connect and and uh protect grant status.

Um again, I'm repeating some of the things that was already mentioned from uh the co uh uh sponsors and so forth during the process.

Umce we get the final approval, we'll start the uh process.

This is uh important.

I mentioned before about having the mental health dispatcher live in EMS.

And I have uh Commissioner Wheeler here, the Commissioner of EMS, he's here.

Um he's starting a program.

Um this is the uh EMS community outreach and engagement.

Um as you can see there, they've visited um Columbus, and there are some of the programs that they have there, and they learn quite a bit from it.

We are uh hoping to implement something similar here with through our community outreach, which will have uh um uh have an EMT or uh paramedic respond to uh individuals that are in crisis so we can get them the uh the appropriate level of care they need.

Um and this is a program that we will be implementing through the division of uh EMS.

And again, this is a little more information into the actual uh program itself.

I do have, I don't want to read every single part of that.

I have uh Commissioner Wheeler here who can actually get into more of the specifics of the program and answer questions as well.

And that's it.

Uh we're we're available for questions.

Again, we have again CIT coordinator here, um Lieutenant Mullins, we have Commissioner Wheeler here, have uh assistant director Shachner to my right.

Um, we're here to answer questions again.

We are here in a supportive role.

Thank you.

We understand and we want to support this.

Um again, it's just how we come about it, though we do not support, and I have to say that would not support the creating um a new department.

Thank you.

Would all three of those individuals come to the table that you just mentioned?

Lieutenant Mullen, Commissioner.

Mr.

Wheeler.

Come to the table.

Thank you.

Um I have down uh uh I have Councilman Starr, um uh councilwoman Welch and Councilman Casey again and then others.

Yeah, I'll add you to the list here.

Before we I call upon my colleagues, um to the viewing public um in layman's terms, walk us through right now what happens.

Um I call EMS, and I have a family member that I know has issues.

Um what do you do now when I call you 911?

And that that that that that individuals threatening violence or I get maybe against themselves.

What what do you do now?

Okay, uh to share uh the scenario that you just talked about, someone called, it's gonna go to our 911 dispatcher center.

And and in our 911 uh communication control section, we have uh call takers and we have dispatchers.

Call takers answer the phone, they'll again police fire EMS.

Um the individual will say what it is, EMS.

If it's CMS, they'll send it to the EMS dispatchers, if police they'll take the information, start answering qu asking questions to clarify what's going on, see again what's the the level of uh response that's necessary.

But what uh what I'm trying to get to see uh if I identify that this is a family that has that has mental issues, what do you do with you're just gonna what do you do now?

At this particular point, if there depend on what is going on, if it's strictly medical, if it's strictly medical, it will go to EMS.

Go to EMS.

Yes, sir.

But what if there's a potential for violence?

If there's a potential violence, it's gonna go to the front line uh zone cars.

So but now I'm just a resident in the neighborhood and I see somebody acting, I'm at the store and someone's acting just bizarre.

Um I don't know if they have mental issues.

I don't know if they're under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

So what do you do in these those cases?

The great question to the chair and to the council members.

And in the scenario that you are talking about, which happens quite a bit actually.

Right.

Um that will go again right to 911.

Uh again, they'll ask uh the the questions, police fire EMS.

In this particular case, they'll probably say police.

Okay.

And explain what's going on.

The dispatcher again, uh all of our dispatchers are have crisis uh training to determine what's going on.

Um if they can determine from the questions that they're asking the person that's calling that is strictly medical, that call will be diverted to EMS.

Otherwise, it is going to go to a zone car to respond to that particular situation.

And and to the chair, um speaking with our communications bureau, our dispatchers are able to and are trained to identify whether there is a mental health component.

If there is, they will um call out on the radio and ask the CRT team to go to Channel 4 if they're available and direct them to the location.

If there's no team available, they will ask for a SCIT officer if they're available in the district to be sent over.

So again, so the viewing public and to the members of the body.

Tell us how the CIT team works.

Um they dispatched by 911.

Who actually does this who calls them?

Who dispatches them?

Lieutenant Mullins can answer that, but uh uh assistant director Shatner's right.

When you have calls come in there, there is an assessment that's done.

Okay.

If there is a mental health component, that's the caller or my medical.

Right.

But if based on what they are asking, right.

You know, the person is talking to themselves, the person's, you know, whatever the case might be that may indicate some type of mental crises.

Okay.

Uh then they will go off for a CIT officer.

Okay.

That's that's the protocol right now.

Okay, so Lieutenant can get into more than the other.

Lieutenant, explain to me uh to all of us into the being public the CIT staffing, where they're at, how many, and how do they respond?

All right, to the councilman through the chair.

Good evening.

Uh currently we have 175 uh specialized CIT trained officers in the division.

I believe 151 of those are on in patrol.

Um so those are the officers that are working, you know, 24-7 in the zone cars.

Okay.

Uh we also currently have seven full co-responder teams.

Um those are the teams that are staffed with uh a specialized SCIT officer and a licensed clinician.

Um those teams work from 7 a.m.

uh until 10 p.m.

And how many of those do you have again?

Well uh currently we have seven full teams.

Seven full teams.

Which is a officer, especially trained officer and a licensed clinician.

And they work out of where?

Uh so our home base is public safety central.

Uh each of them are assigned to a district.

However, uh they go citywide.

So there's nobody physically working out of a district at this point?

Not the district building, no.

Everyone is out of, at least the co-responder programs are out of public safety central.

Okay.

And you believe that is that is um set up in a way to provide a reasonable response?

Uh to the chair I do.

Uh it's a centralized location.

Um as soon as they get on in the office, they look at the the reports and what they're gonna follow up, and then they go on the road uh to help out with radio.

So the 911, the dispatch would call one of the the one of the seven teams.

Is that what you are telling us?

To the chair.

Uh so it could happen a couple ways.

Uh uh CIT call could come through to a zone car.

Okay.

And also if there's instances where it's kind of a tougher case, uh they would probably uh directly ask for the co-responder teams just for their expertise.

So what do we do after 10 o'clock at night?

After 10 o'clock at night, the co-responder teams are off-duty.

However, we have those, um, the 175 SDIT officers.

Um so has there been any to the directors been any internal discussion about having people working from what to what when do you start in the morning?

Uh the first team gets there at 7 o'clock in the morning.

So has there been any discussion of working someone or a team or teams from 10 to 7 a.m.?

This particular point, uh, the reason those hours are selected is based on the the the data that we have.

Those are the prime call times for for calls for service.

But also I, you know, there was one slide that I did not show.

Um this slide I thought was really important to highlight what our officers are doing in the City of Cleveland to serve our residents that are in crises.

Right.

Um and this particular incident um that I did not show uh because I believe it's about 18 minutes, maybe a little bit longer, uh, happened at 3 a.m.

right before Thanksgiving this year, where um um the officers received a call for uh mail that was in crisis at a Greenhouse Station on the bus refusing to get off the bus and so forth, and two officers at 3 a.m.

responded to the Greyhound stations, the individual in crisis refusing to get off the bus.

They wanted him off the bus.

And then the actions of the two officers, by the way, one being a probationary officer also trained.

Uh, neither of the officers were a uh specialized CIT training officer.

And to see the two officers in action based on their body camera footage was again very compassionate.

Um I can tell you that to watch them in action, this is emblemic uh, I'm sorry if I'm um because I get really uh uh passionate about this of the actions of our officers on a regular basis in the city of Cleveland, what how they're treating individuals are in crisis.

Um again, I I it's a long one, but just to highlight it, um they spent um time with this individual.

Individuals trying to get from date from Cleveland to Dayton.

The officer, and again, I wouldn't advocate this, but that's what he did.

He felt the best way to to um take care of this situation he paid for this individual uh through Uber to drive from Cleveland, Ohio to Dayton, Ohio to alleviate the situation and so forth.

Not advocating for that is just how they dealt with this particular situation.

Again, they were not specialized, CITE trained um and didn't have a licensed clinician with them, and one of them was a probationary officer and they handled this the situation.

But again, I believe that's what's happening across the board with our officers and how compassionate they are and the training that they have to deal with individuals who are in crisis and so forth.

And again, I could show it, but I'm mindful of the.

When we might at some point we might want to watch it.

Uh uh hope that officer was reimbursed.

I'm not sure if he put in for it, but he would be in the case.

Okay, I would hope he would be ready.

The whole point of it is that uh that's again what happens on a regular basis with our officers and deal with folks in crisis.

And and and we all know, and I think you only reinforced, we know we have many dedicated men and women in the department of the division of pol in the division of police.

We know that for a fact.

How many actual clinicians do we have to the council people through the chair?

Uh we currently have seven clinicians, and then we will have our eighth one that is starting.

Uh he started this week, but his first week is orientation at Mertus Taylor.

Uh next week he's gonna go through our SGIT class, so the week after is when he'll come to our unit.

Okay.

Are they employees of the City of Cleveland?

To the chair, they are not.

They're employees of Murdoce Taylor and also frontline services.

Okay.

So we contract with them.

Yes, sir.

That's a requirement contract we have in place.

To the chair, I believe it is.

I can double check.

Okay, I would like to know as quick.

And what the the cost of that is of that contract.

Um, so it's your testimony before I go to uh questions on my comment.

Your testimony at the table today.

This is what I'm trying to understand.

You believe that the present system we have in place is working.

Yes.

The system they have in place is is working absolutely.

Our co-responders program, a CIT program, yes, is working.

Um not and but it's important to understand that we are also open to the um idea of exploring having a care response as well, because we do agree that an officer does not need to respond to all uh situations where someone is in mental crises.

So when the clinicians respond, they're accompanied by a police officer, correct?

To the chair, yes, sir.

Okay.

One officer?

Uh one officer per team, but they also can team up, so two correspondent.

And that's in a mark car.

Uh those are in our unmarked cars in the new RAV for us.

Okay.

And that's important as well, because we want to make sure and the uh the officers as well as clinicians are in plain clothes, their soft clothes as well as the vehicle and so forth, because we understand sometimes individuals may see uh uniform and also mark cars, so we also understand the importance of that, having a soft car, soft clothing.

Okay.

Uh and just before I start with Councilman Starr.

Have any of the officers working on the seven full-time teams and with the seven clinicians, have any of them received any physical harm, received any assault?

Oh, there is to the councilman uh through the chair.

Uh, there has been no injuries on two calls to either.

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to start with Councilman Starr.

Councilman Starr.

Floor is yours.

You have I'm going to just try to ask everybody to keep the 10 minutes and then we'll go back on if people need to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um, me, I just like to get straight to it.

Administration, why y'all don't want this?

Through the chair.

Through the chair, Councilman Starr.

Can you repeat that question?

You say why do y'all not want us to pass this ordinance to create the Tanisha Law in effect for the City of Cleveland and having a department?

Why don't y'all want it?

Through the Chair, again, we we believe in the intent of having uh care response.

We believe in that, but we do not believe that it's necessary to have a create a department, a brand new department for that, to add more bureaucracy, bureaucracy.

We do not believe that's necessary.

Through that process, so what do you propose that my colleagues who worked hard on creating this and writing this legislation?

What should they do instead that you think it will be good instead of a department?

So what right now, what we uh are intent is to have the call type analysis.

Once that's conducted, we'll have a better idea of how we should respond.

Uh coupled with uh what we have committed to already.

We've already committed to um having another option to a 911 calls, police fire EMS mental health uh mental health.

We also committed to having a mental health dispatch uh that would be housed or live under EMS, that's our commitment as well.

And as far as codification, uh as far as we could codify um the CIT, which is already in police under 135, which is police, that could be codified under that as well.

So those are the commitments that we have.

But I think it's important that we have a call type analysis and we go from there to see how we can parse out um and have a care response to uh some of the uh calls that uh we receive here in the City of Cleveland.

Thank you.

Councilman Starr.

Yes, so through all of this last year of you and the administration to the chair coming up with all this different research, it took you a year to come up with that plan to the chair that you just mentioned, Director?

Through the Chair.

Now it didn't take us a year.

There was the connect part of this process involved having uh the connect and protect grant.

Um we had an individual that was in charge of that initially.

Uh that person is not uh employed with the City of Cleveland.

We had to uh we had a scope for the Connect and Protect Grant, which is important because that's part of the mental health dispatch.

Um that component uh was part of the uh connect and protect grant.

Um we had to re-scope the uh the grant, and that takes time uh with the Federal Government to get a rescoped after we had a rescoped with the input from council members more as well as uh councilmember House Jones uh was resubmitted, and uh that's where we're at right now relative to the Connect and Protect Grant, mental health dispatch component of it.

Definitely.

So I would definitely ask some more questions.

So in your letter, can I we're gonna go right back to the other?

I know can I just on this point though?

Because I think it's important.

Just through yes, I allowed it.

We're gonna, you know, as the council president, we're gonna this whole point stuff, we're gonna change that after the and the beginning of the first year, because really if you want to get on the list, I'll put you on a list, but briefly.

That's fine.

I will wait.

Okay.

Go ahead, Councilman.

Yes.

And to the point that you are making, I definitely would like to ask my colleagues who are sponsors for this a couple of different questions.

So to the sponsors, um, not very detailed, but just in a broad sense, not broad, but just real straight to the point.

The goal of this ordinance that you introduce, what are the top three things that you are expecting to happen, um, including obviously a department, but what is the actual goal and how does it flow through the chair?

Whoever's anyone.

Anyone who can answer that, whoever.

And the reason why I'm asking that to my colleagues, just for the viewing public for them to understand the information that we have, they do not have right there as they may be looking, just for them to understand obviously the history and the portance of a Tanisha law and the reason why you work to hard to come up with a plan to be able to enact this law to be able to help provide um the services that are needed and not necessarily providing police officers for every 911 call.

So just if you can just hit three points of what it would do, how it will flow, and what you believe should actually occur, just three points, any one of them.

So, councilman, you're directing that to the three sponsors.

Yes.

Okay, so the chair.

I I will begin and then you guys can jump in.

But uh, so obviously, in addition to creating a department, which we we see is valuable in that it uh allows, you know, we have a number of other roles uh within the executive branch that uh say, say, for example uh sustainability uh works kind of interdepartmentally to achieve sustainability across the enterprise.

We see this as an opportunity for people to not only be able to, in the immediate moment meet the mental health needs of the individual, but also be adept at connecting them to services across city government that are going to be helpful to them.

Um I think that the the call type analysis is important.

I don't think anyone's gonna dispute that.

It's something that we've been eager to uh have happen for a long time.

I will say one of my uh feelings is that maybe we had the a paralysis through over analysis when we simply know that today there are any that well, I could go down the table and we could all name cases where we know that it would be appropriate for a clinician, not a police officer.

And by being able to stand up the infrastructure, one and do what they do in Pittsburgh, where they actually uh in encourage police officers to triage away from themselves towards clinicians because a police officer could say, I've been there four times this week.

This is this is best for a clinician.

We're able to begin to come up with the bare bones of a department so that we can build this out without having to wait for a duration of period so that we can have every question answered, many of which I think we can easily speculate the answer to today.

Thank you.

Anything else to add?

Anything else?

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Starr.

Yes.

Now, to that, thank you, um Councilman Sly for for that detail because that is very important.

Um now in the request when I'm looking at this response that came from the administration, in your letter responding to the sponsors, you indicated that no city in the country has codified CIT or care responses.

But according to this research of law enforcement action partnership, there are at least three cities that had codified these programs.

And do those cities, can you explain the disciplinary based on the administration's research through the chair?

To that structure to the administration, yeah.

Through the chair to the councilman, I did look at leap and overall that 89 rather than looking through it.

They are mentioned in the code dependent, but the actual department and outline as of what it does is not codified.

Okay.

So the responsibilities, the policies are not codified.

They're mentioned, like for example, Albuquerque's department.

It's not like they're mentioned in various parts of the code, but there's no code section that says that I could find that says the Al Kirke crisis response, I forgot what the name of the department is, shall exist, shall be responsible to this, this, and this.

It was an um from the that city's administration, uh department they created and implemented.

Thank you.

Councilman Starr.

In addition to the letter, um, through the chair, I definitely gonna let the sponsors come after these questions because I know um they're gonna want to ask more detail.

Um, in your letter, you indicated that CIT is already occurring and that under the CIT legislation passed 894-2023, the director of police was to provide quarterly reports on the program effectiveness.

How many quarterly updates have you provided to this city council through the chair?

Director, assistant director.

Through the chair to Councilman Starr.

I don't have the information uh presently in front of me.

I can get that for you.

And and and the reason why I asked that question, because we're we took a year to get here.

Those type of information within a year should be automatic.

It should be automatic.

So therefore, if we want to talk about a partnership, a partnership is not just one side, it's both sides working, reaching the medium.

It's both sides working reach in the medium.

But therefore, now my colleagues go over time to do their part for the administration to basically say no and not come up with something else that can be able to help them.

So that's why we are here, and that's what the frustration that you hear each and every Monday night, because it seems as if one side of the branch of government wants to try to do something, and the other is trying to figure out every way to say it doesn't make sense.

So to my understanding, the administration indicated back in June 2025 that the council will be brief before the implementation of the program and before any substantial changes to amendments to the to the connect and protect grant.

When did the administration brief the council on its initial implementation and when were the subsequent updates regarding the changes and amendments to the grant was provided to the chair?

Through the chair.

Don't have that date in front of me, but we're part of the uh conversation involved uh the re-scoping of the grant and then sending the rescope.

Well, even before we scope it, send the the uh grant uh and propose rescoping to the council members that were part of this meeting for their input for their input in the uh the crafting of the uh rescoping of the grant.

I don't have the data in front of me.

Go ahead.

Through the chair to the council member.

And I want to be completely transparent with you.

We always are to the chair.

Yeah.

Through the chair.

And look, we had a conversation, we articulated what um amendments we may like to see.

For example, what I tried to do is let's try to see what the goal, in my view, um, I was trying to understand the goal of the legislation.

If it is because oftentimes when you're on council and it's that constant battle battle between council and administration, council wants to have more control and say so, administration wants more flexibility.

Um I wanted if it was council's desire to make sure that a CIT program or SCIT officers are always going to be in place and that training is always going to be provided.

We're on board with that because we have no plans on getting rid of that program with or without a consent decree.

It's this is best practice throughout, or one of the practices throughout the country.

Um and on the care response portion, if there wanted the certainty about the care response existing within the city, we're happy to commit to that.

Um if there was a language that said, so to speak, that uh care response model shall exist within the city after uh analysis and target as an idea and not after a call analysis, um, either through um uh within the city under a division that is not public safety related or through contract through a third party, we'd be okay.

That I mean we we spent time and looking at the ordinance, doing amendments in our office.

We didn't ultimately send them over because we didn't want to, in my view, it's council's legislation, the usual processes, law would provide amendments to make sure that it's not as an opinion whether um legislation is adequate or not, but whether it falls within legal bounds.

All right.

So didn't want to provide something to make it seem as if, oh, we don't think this is you can legally do this.

We have different ideas.

We're happy to discuss that at the table, but to provide a set of amendments, I think um it was our determination and terminally in internally that we didn't want to um represent that this is not an idea we that we didn't want to express make it seem like we don't agree with care response, which we do.

It's really how we go about providing that, whether it lives within a division that already exists in the city or the creation of a new department.

Okay.

Now just wait a second.

Um you've indicated that you have amendments that the administration put together amendments.

So we we know you stated in writing and the document provided to us that you were opposed to a standalone department.

But I think what would have been helpful to us is to see what amendments you were suggesting, and I'm gonna ask, since you stated it, you have prepared those.

I'm gonna ask that you provide those to us.

So uh and it doesn't have to happen rate at this moment, but we have an opportunity to review those, because I'm assuming those are suggestions, correct?

Okay, and again, we're not opposed to care response.

We're not here to be adversary.

Sure, absolutely not, yeah.

I think we're all from my uh my uh you know take on this.

We're all here to try to get this uh a better system implemented.

You know, we don't want to be adversarial.

So councilman started.

Yes, and and and that's the point.

And that's sometimes often frustrated.

That's the that's where the conflict have.

We're the ones who can make the ordinances and pass the legislation here.

And sometimes we could pass it and we don't have to care what the administration think, feel or whatever.

But we oftentimes me and my colleagues try to make sure we reach that balance, and then for them not to get those amendments, those examples and thoughts brought to them and saying, Hey, here's an email.

Let's sit down so I can walk you through all the stuff that we have so we could then land end up in a place that makes sense for we could be able to move forward on something that is needed.

The thing that we don't want to happen is a 911 call comes and we have another incident like Tanisha occur, and they're trying to be proactive, then there's a nothing but fighting back and forth as if it's a reactant.

So therefore, I commend my colleagues and the sponsors of this ordinance will bring it to the table.

I'm just looking to say I support Tanisha Law, and whatever way we need to do to get it through the finish line, I'm gonna happily vote for it whenever it comes to the table for that vote.

And I yield thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

Uh next member up is Councilwoman Welch.

Thank you so much.

I just want to say thank you for being at the table today.

Um I especially empathize with um members of this body and the administration who have had firsthand experience with mental health.

Um I think um one, I want to also thank the co-sponsors of this um piece of legislation because it requires a lot of work.

Um I'm here because I think I might be the only person who's actually implemented this type of work.

Um as vice president of RTA previously.

Um we had an ambassadors program, which is one of the first initiatives that I worked on to implement social workers into the agency, and then from there we worked on um the civilian oversight committee, which allowed us to have a real more transparent system, and I worked on that with Commander Hudson and uh Chief uh Doc Fonse Caber.

Um and I what I witnessed firsthand over the last four years how having social workers present um during police calls or calling them to the scene or having them around influenced in a and impacted in a very monumental way how we bring policing up to 21st century policing.

Um and for me, you know, it I've gone through actually police training because it was a requirement for us, actually, Commander Hudson and I were like, I think I should go through the training, we should have these social workers go through police training.

We should have our ambassadors go through the training.

So I sat through ride-alongs, I sat through hours and hours and hours of footage watching how the officers responded before we had social workers and how the officers responded after we had social workers.

And I have to tell you there's such an improvement in having someone with a trauma-informed understanding present.

Um, and I understand that there's intention, right?

But we also know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and uh sometimes when we're in these spaces, I always say to people possible until we make it possible until we make it happen.

And I will say at RTA, it's not a different department.

I agree with you there.

I understand like it might not need to be a different department, but that did have a home, and that home had some oversight.

And um, I have to ask one.

I know we couldn't get an answer on the seven or eight clinicians and their overall salary, but I mean I would assume that you had an idea off top around how much one cost, right?

So do you have an understanding of how much one of the clinicians uh their salary of one clinician cost to the uh through the chair?

To the chair to council member.

Um I don't have that.

I just don't want to put anything out that that's not accurate.

I prefer to give you the accurate salaries and benefits.

Because I think that that would be helpful in that some of those dollars can translate to the budget that was proposed by the co-sponsors, right?

I think that it is one thing when we have clinicians that are outside of the house, but when they live within the house, you all get to have oversight over how this system is operating, and also we get to take back the data and better serve the community.

The other thing is um I just was wondering when it comes to uh the CIT training, how much training do they actually have in hours?

Who can answer that question?

To the councilwoman through the chair.

Uh every officer gets 24 hours of CIT training when they start in the academy.

Uh every officer in the division also receives four hours of additional training every year.

Um that's specific to CIT to crisis response.

So the CIT training.

And then in addition to that, the officers that uh are the SCIT, they receive 40 hours of training, and then they also received an additional four every every year.

So SCIT officers will receive at minimum eight hours of training every year, whereas the rest of the division will receive at least four hours.

Thank you.

And and what percentage of that time do you think um our officers are responding to crisis?

Who can answer that?

You can.

To the council.

To the chair.

Uh to the councilman through the chair.

Uh so when we started this program in 2020, uh, we SCIT officers responded to 10.6 percent of CIT calls.

Um back last year, 24, uh, that was up to 54.3 percent.

And I believe the latest numbers for 2025 uh is at 62.9 percent.

Thank you for that.

I I just lastly, I'll just say I'm really in support of this.

Again, I've seen firsthand um uh the benefits of having social workers present with our officers.

I appreciate the work the officers are doing.

No need for them not to have an extra set of hands around, right?

Like we already know the job is extremely hard, and if they can have that help, it would make their job just a little bit easier.

And I'll also say um I just think uh you know, when it comes to 21st century policing, I also have seen the ways in which our community feels safer with social workers present, right?

When we implement programming like this and um social workers, again, I've been a part of NASW and CSWE for a number of years as somebody who's social work adjacent.

It it it's when we talk about modernizing City Hall, this is a part of it.

It's not just the tech, it's not how we update the halls with the signage, it's about also how we respond to make sure the well-being and the safety of our citizens are number one and at the top of mind.

And so I just want to thank you for your work, but also I'm very much in support of this and hope we can get this implemented as soon as possible.

Okay.

Thank you, Council Lee.

Um, just a question, so of the seven full-time teams.

You that's there's seven officers, police officers assigned.

To the chair, yes, sir.

There are seven full-time police.

And they receive how much training?

So they receive would have received 24 hours in the academy.

Uh they all went through the 40-hour uh training.

Okay, and then they receive eight hours of additional CIT training every year.

Okay.

That and they're the ones that signed that the clinicians are assigned to.

To the chair, yes, sir.

Okay, thank you.

Um Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr.

Chairman to the lieutenant, does everybody receive those 24 hours training in the academy?

To the councilman through the chair, yes, sir.

Right.

So that's nothing above and beyond what these seven officers have, correct?

The 175 officers who are S.

They all have those, they all have the 24 hours training.

Yes, sir, too, as well.

And then our seven co-responders just have an additional eight hours.

So it I'm sorry.

Uh to the councilman through the chair.

Uh so it's the seven co-responder officers and all and they're included in that 175 SCIT officers.

So 175 officers receive that training.

Right.

So 175 officers that are claimed CIT officers, right?

All received the 24 hours when they were in the academy.

These are newer police officers who received that 24 hour training.

Because I remember when former Director McGrath was here starting to initiate that after an incident in 2010.

So though of the 175 officers, they all have the 24 hours that you get in the academy.

Correct?

Correct.

Then you're saying that the additional seven co-responding officers, aside from that 24 hours, get how many more additional hours of training?

So the seven co-responder officers are SCIT officers, and so they get the eight hours every year.

So they get just an additional eight hours every year, and then anybody who is not a co-responder gets four hours.

No, the whole department gets four hours.

Uh every officer on the department gets four hours, and anyone with that SCIT training gets an additional four hours to take them up.

But if I can add I'm sorry, to to the through the chair to Councilman Casey.

Yeah, and I know you've probably mentioned it, but uh the special CIT officers get an additional 40 hours in order to become specialized as well.

Okay.

Okay.

Um Mr.

Chairman to our our assistant law director, you said that uh no assistant, I'm sorry, assistant safety director.

I'm sorry.

But you said that it's it's the uh it's the job of the administration to make sure that legislation falls within legal bounds.

Those were your those were your words.

So my question is, Mr.

Chairman.

Sorry, it's all right.

Let them finish.

Does this piece of legislation fall within legal bounds?

Through the chair, um the law department did not have any objections to the legislation for legality.

All right, except for that one amendment.

Correct.

For that amendment.

Right.

This says no legal objection.

Right.

But there is an amendment.

Yes.

Right?

Correct.

Smaller.

Okay.

So my reputation on council, um, I have always advocated for individuals with developmental disabilities and mental health issues.

And the reason I do that is because I live it every single day.

Every single waking hour of my life, I have to deal with somebody who is developmentally disabled and suffers from mental health issues.

And I wear that with a badge of honor.

And what happened with the Tanisha Anderson is absolutely tragic.

Should have never happened.

And the reason I ask about the training hours is because my daughter is 18 years old, and I'm still learning every single waking moment.

And I do not complain at all.

But in 2010, some people know the story, some people don't.

I know you know it, Director.

Juan Ortiz was a 16-year-old kid with Down syndrome, who's four foot, maybe 10, 110 pounds, and our local police department did not know how to deal with him at all.

Now, if you know anybody with Down syndrome, the minute you see them, you know that they're different.

They're more alike than different, but they're different.

How in God's green, and I am all for this legislation, but how in God's green earth are we supposed to do what we're supposed to do with only seven people, don't work 24-7, only getting four, maybe eight hours of training a year.

A year.

There are individuals out there who deal with with with the developmentally disabled mental health people who get training constantly.

I just don't know how we're supposed to expect the police department, we have to do something, but to be able to handle mental health issues when they come up on the street.

And if I take that 2010 incident, right, those were just two police officers who were looking for somebody else.

This kid just happened to be wearing the wrong clothes that day, right?

And they didn't know how.

Now we know that we have changed a lot of training and everything since then, maybe because of that incident, right?

Um, but how are we?

If if uh if a regular police officer is just rolling up on somebody, just like it happened back then, and they're not trained, right?

My question is we can could we have a victim?

Could we have somebody who is having a crisis?

And we're losing time because we're looking for somebody who is trained as opposed to not trained, or only four hours and don't know how to react because it's only four hours, and it they had the training in January and it's December, and how you know I don't know if there's a question in there or not.

There is a question.

Yeah.

Through the chair, to the chair to Councilman Casey.

I do remember the the case that you mentioned back in 2010.

And I can tell you unequivocally shouldn't have happened.

No question.

Um just thinking about it.

Uh thinking about it, it chokes me up.

Yes, same here.

Um so I understand that shouldn't have happened.

Um the officers involved did not have the training.

That's not an excuse.

Please, I'm not making any excuses whatsoever.

You should not need in the case that you referenced, you should not need to be have CIT training to handle that particular situation.

But we do have, we, the division of police and his members, we have training.

I know you mentioned the four hours and uh for the uh officers through our continuing uh professional education in service as well as the eight hours for the specialized CIT um officers.

I can tell you now, just based on my experience as the uh commander of a district, uh as a deputy chief, as the chief of police and reviewing multiple numerous body cameras footage of how officers handle CIT uh situations now.

It is night and night and day.

And that's uh uh exemplified by the um the independent monitors uh now saying that our CIT uh program uh meets uh um all sections uh with substantial and effective compliance.

That's significant.

Uh that's because they they've taken body camera footage, they looked at it, assessed it and so forth, and that's what is happening on a regular basis.

What happened back in 2010, I can comfortably say would not happen today based on what I have witnessed and based on the video that I didn't show, if you have seen again, and these officers, by the way, these officers were not specialized CIT training, trained officers.

And not only that, one of them was a probationary officer, and the level of compassion that they are shown.

So we're a totally different police department, we're handling things completely different, again, as evidenced by the uh CIT assessment.

Thank you, Councilman.

Um Mr.

Chairman, to whoever can answer it.

Who does the training?

Through the chair is through frontline services, correct?

Lieutenant.

Uh to the councilman through the chair.

Uh it's yeah, it's organized through the Adams Board.

All right.

And then um, Mr.

Chairman, to I think one of our co-sponsors, or or first of all, Mr.

Chairman to the director, the it's budgeted for I think it was 791,500.

Can anybody ask answer where where that is going to come from, where the 791,000 is going to come from?

Um, whoever councilwoman more.

Thank you.

In the um memo that we provided, I'm happy to um make sure you have a uh copy, Councilman.

Um we did identify which vacancies and FTEs we were moving uh money over from.

And in addition, in future years, if that money grew, we did provide a proposal about where uh that money could come from specifically out of the general fund.

Um I'll note as part of this conversation that we did send that proposal to the administration in October and did not get a response about uh their interest in uh what I had laid out.

And are these FTEs from safety forces?

Uh council.

Some of some of them and others, uh you know, you have departments like uh PYO or community relations that have vacancies that also do community-facing work um just to try to find the money from uh different locations that could all benefit from having this type of staffing.

And is the goal of this legislation to partner up an actual police officer with a mental health uh who you are directing it to?

I don't I don't know.

I I don't I I mean I don't want to through the chair, go ahead.

I think that's best for us to answer.

No.

The goal of this is fully non-police response, so only the clinicians responding live via calls coming in from 911 dispatch.

Okay.

Stephanie Councilwoman.

Is that you want to respond as well to that?

So so the so for salaries and benefits, that's for not non-police personnel.

Correct.

Correct.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilman.

Um Mr.

Chairman, to to the director.

I understand the officers are trained, but what about like the lieutenants, the commander of whoever is over it, are are they trained as well?

Through the chair, I'll let the the yes, every single officer in the Cleveland Division of Police get the CIT training.

Not every single officer gets the specialized, that's the volunteer, the voluntary, those officers again have to volunteer for the program.

But every single officer, division of police get the CIT training.

And are the bosses are they specialized?

If a supervisor wants to volunteer for specialized training, they will receive the training.

But every single office from the chief down to the patrol officer have the four arms of CIT.

Who is the commander of the co-response or the co-response team through the chair?

The chair the specialized, right?

Whoever can report who's the sergeant, the lieutenant, the captain, and the commander.

Uh to the councilman through the chair.

Uh Sergeant Matt Brown is a sergeant.

He's at OIC.

He has a specialized uh CIT training.

Okay.

I am a lieutenant, but the acting captain and CIT coordinator.

I also have that specialized CIT training.

And our new commander is Commander Mussel.

And is he is he back there?

Are you specialized trained?

I am not.

All right.

And then what about you, Commander Drummond?

I mean, Director Drummond.

I I received, I was CIT trained, but not the specialized.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Gray.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to say most of the questions has already been asked and thoroughly discussed.

But my only question is to Director Drummer and Commissioner or Safety?

No.

Assistant Director Shachner.

Assistant Director of Dr.

Shachner.

Safety.

Safety, okay.

All right.

My question is the only gray area that both of you guys have a problem with.

Two different uh departments are due two different training areas in the in the ordinance, per se, because she said you you support it.

But you have a great area of um of the CIT training uh in two different sections of like Tanisha Law will have one and you guys already have one.

Is that the only problem that you foresee?

Assistant, the director or assistant director?

From my understanding and listening all this time.

Chair to the director.

Through the uh chair to councilwoman grab, I'm uh make sure I understand your your question.

Um we don't have issue with the CIT training.

I think again, I uh the training that our officers receive now is fabulous.

Um can obviously uh in we also can use training, um additional training and so forth when we get that.

But the training right now, no, we have no issues with it.

We believe uh in the intent of the Tanisha's law.

Uh what we don't support at this present time is the creation of a department, an independent department.

We want to make sure we get a call type analysis conducted.

Uh if that uh indicates that you know care response is where we should go to, and we have no issues with care response, then we have to decide where that would live.

Um right now, EMS has a great program that the Commissioners has uh uh proposing to start.

They already have the program, but to expand upon the program, uh which we have his folks uh responding to folks in crises.

So we don't have an issue with uh the training.

We just uh are not in total agreement with uh starting a new department.

A new department.

Okay, Chair to Director.

So you believe a new separate department will be created under Tunisia law separate with what you already doing.

And in addition to that, second half of the question, have this been discussed thoroughly with the uh with the two three councils who have uh uh submitted this ordinance for that can have have a conversation on how that can be merged or uh or how that can be worked out, Chair to the director?

Director.

Through the chair again, I make sure I understand your your question.

Uh we're again we're not in agreement relative to the creation of a new department.

Um we're not, but however, we believe in the intent to have uh potentially a care response as well.

Again, is for us it's just where after the call type analysis, where that will will live, because I believe uh through the co-sponsors, the sponsors don't believe that it should live under Department of Public Safety, and we're okay with that to a certain extent, but we believe to a certain extent.

Um again, EMS has a program that we support that potentially uh could be a place that uh something like that could uh reside.

Okay.

Councilwoman?

Yes, okay.

I'm gonna continue on with this because it just kind of bottled my mind.

So the creation of a new department under Tanisha Law would that would that be subject to more uh uh people being employed and more training need to be done under this separate department with Tanisha Law versus what all the training and and the officers and the specialized clinicals and that you already have.

Is that also one of the concerns, Chair to the director?

Director or and to the assistant directory, to the chair to council councilwoman Gray.

I I I I think some of those questions probably can answer by the the sponsors, because uh they they're the ones that sponsored this uh legislation relative to the creation of potential creation of a new department with uh obviously the individuals that would be employed there and the budgets associated with it.

Okay thank you uh sponsors could one of you guys through the question chair chair to the councilwoman yes we will that would require us to have uh more employees that work for the city of Cleveland yeah okay and that's part of the um that's part of your um that's what yeah different legislation impacts okay all right so okay thank you for that appreciate that and and chair to the director is this something that was brought up a while ago about amendment about uh showing a some a um uh amendment as the council as the chair acts when you said it could be amendments made uh is that something that's referred to that particular part through through the assistant director through the chair to the councilwoman we believe we made our objections to a department very clear from the outset and made our um objections known in that memo that that that um the city sent over to council that we do not want to depart uh do not support a new department being created but would um prefer if the if there was some sort of care response team or division to have a division that lives on already under an existing department within the city but we you know as department of public safety we're just one department we can't speak for other departments of where that would live because it doesn't it was the council people's um desire for it not to live in a div be a division under public safety okay well thank you for the answer yes and so I'm saying it as I'm going back to the uh supporters of this amendment so uh so due to the um the employees that uh be separate from this from the uh public safety um uh clinical or CITs um you know where would your employees be um under would they be partner up where they come from okay who do you want to direct that to which to one of the one of the sponsors in three of them could this we have three of them here so one of them can answer so you're trying to keep so you understand what I'm asking you know since this is a separate department they said it's going to be separate from these employees but have the same have the same training and the background where would these employees be uh be uh stationed at or uh partner up with the employees that's already been trained and under the CRP program whoever can respond to that chair to any of the yeah the chair to the councilwoman that's the challenge the administration has not given any ideas they are the ones who are responsible for implementing but since we are lacking guidance and direction this is the reason why I have come to the conclusion they are not supportive of this because the administration has not actually said where would they like to do it because they will be responsible for it.

And we cannot get them to say anything.

Okay that's great answer.

So do you okay all right I'm just okay I'm just leave it at that too until that um that is uh in the that's has to be further communicated uh among the um from the sponsors and also from the uh administrative so I just say that I am fully support of technician law um we got to start uh moving forth in a different direction for protection for our citizens uh it could happen to anyone I could I could just use I'm gonna just gonna throw this example out by a lot of the discussion has came up uh about the young man I believe that that was the young man that was in was that an acronym uh chair I'm just gonna have a this does the young man that was an Akron that was in the bar and he he had an accident you remember that incident of it on the news I'm not aware of that to the chairman I'm not yeah that doesn't ring a bell for me on the news for a little while he had I think it was in Akron where he ran uh damaged his car he was in the bar you know he had some issues some mental issues some problems everyone knew him in the neighborhood over there and he was he was acting erotic and just loud and stuff but that was part of who he was due to his um due to his mental condition or whatever I'm not uh I I can't say that but I'm simply saying that it was on the news for months and then the police was called because the people in the bar could not control his actions they knew who he was this is how he always was and and always hung in the bar because he lived in the neighborhood but then when the police came in and try to settle him down he got more um he got more uh neurotic and loud and and it was all over the place

I'm not uh I I can't say that, but I'm simply saying that it was on the news for months.

And then the police was called because the people in the bar could not control his actions.

They knew who he was.

This is how he always was, and and always hung in the bar because he lived in the neighborhood.

But then when the police came in and try to settle him down, he got more um, he got more uh neurotic and loud and and it was all over the place, and then they took him down to the ground.

They took him down on the on the floor and they held him down, and he said, I can't breathe, I can't breathe.

And then um by the time he by the time they decided to uh uh because one somebody had a knee in his back and they had him face down on the uh on on the bar on the floor, and he kept saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe.

And by the time they uh realized that he wasn't breathing, that's when they um called uh EMS in, and when they came in and stuff, um they couldn't revise him.

So it's been on the news for months.

I believe he's an acronym cat in one to two.

But that shows another example of what is still going on, and I can't say if the acronym officers are having the training like they have CIT training, but that just showed that even after the effect of George Floyd, it happened right here in Ohio.

And to say the least that uh training is always needed.

Training is always needed.

So we all on the same page of agreement of training.

I see you have a central training here.

I really appreciate how you laid it out there and how everyone is trained in hours and the places everyone is trained and what everyone is doing as a whole uh per se.

But say the least, it just going to happen if if the officers have training or not, something still happens in the midst of someone going uh going to the hospital, or someone dying due to the struggles or the structure of how things are done, when some when officers have to rise um in these conditions.

So just saying the least I do support Tanisha Law, so whatever else that needs to be pursued to uh to uh uh to uh collaborate and to bring this together.

I hope that we're able to do that, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Lady.

We have uh councilman more.

Thank you.

Um I I am just reflecting on the I wanted to make sure to get on the list to both engage in the conversation, um, ask a couple clarifying questions, and as we head towards the end of this um committee and the term, think a little bit about clear next steps, um, which uh frankly don't necessarily need to involve the administration.

We would like them to, but in theory, this council could pass a version of Tanisha's law as it exists right now.

Um, but if we wish to engage in a conversation, I I want to make sure we understand what those next steps are so that early in the new year uh the next council can take decisive action.

Um and I want to balance that with I think a frustration that um I have certainly felt and that I think you heard through the presentation, which is a feeling of unnecessary delay up until this point, and I don't want to um I I don't want to sacrifice the clear next steps for the sake of the um re reflect like look back and reflection, but I actually think it's critical to understand why we do feel frustrated and why um it hasn't felt like a collaborative effort up until now, so I don't want to fully ignore that, but I also don't want to lose sight of both things.

So I'm trying to hold both in tension.

That's my goal with my next couple of questions.

Um so first I just want to clarify on the record, I've gotten a bunch of texts from people who are listening in and still kind of remain confused about what is co-response, what is care response, and how the current the seven teams that we've referenced a lot, Lieutenant Mowens, as you know, I had the opportunity to ride along with one of your teams.

I found them to be exceptional, truly skilled at what they do.

Um, but what they are doing is a combination of police and behavioral health.

Is that correct, Lieutenant Mowens?

Lieutenant.

To the councilman through the chair.

Uh there is a combination of police work and mental health services.

Thank you.

Um, and is it accurate that for the most part your teams can't go on to see a scene unless it's cleared by a first responder two-man squad car through the chair?

Lieutenant.

Uh to the councilman through the chair.

Uh the scene does need to be made safe before we're comfortable sending the clinician there.

Um, however, uh, when the zone car is not available, we can send two co-responder teams and they can pair up.

And and and through the chair, you know, because of the staffing and the timing, what's your sense of how often your um officers and clinicians are able to respond live versus how often they are going out?

Um, you know, uh I'll just say like when I met with them for my co-response my ride-along day, they had a list of here are the calls that had come in in the prior days that they were hoping to make it out to over the course of the ship, so it was clear they were following up, you know, later.

What's your sense of that balance through the chair?

Yeah, to the councilwoman uh through the chair.

Uh we've always pushed through a live response.

Uh that's where their expertise is used best.

Um currently, uh which we're really proud of, our teams are at the and this is just the co-responder teams.

15.6 percent of all CIT calls are uh there's a one of the seven co-responder teams on that.

Okay.

And that's maybe a different question from the one I was asking.

Your co-response teams, how often are they responding live?

Fifty to 15.6 percent of all calls.

Just the co-responder teams.

That okay, so I I that's fascinating.

That is not the data that I has been shared with me and is not reflective of the my understanding.

I what I hear you saying is that your teams are responding to 15 percent live of all calls that are requiring CIT.

Uh to the councilwoman uh through the chair.

Uh, that is correct, and that number has jumped dramatically.

Um we've gotten so a few more teams since we're right along.

Uh but in just for reference, in 2021, we're at 2.3 percent.

Okay.

Uh 2023, it was a 7.2.

Uh so we've almost uh we've doubled almost every other year.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, even if it's 2.3 a couple years ago and you're getting up to 15, that's like sevenfold.

Um but still your co-response teams as a fraction of their time, their time is not spent majority responding to live calls right now.

Is it through the chair?

Uh to the councilwoman through the chair.

That's kind of hard to say.

Uh I mean that any time a live call comes up and they're available, they'll go to it.

Um, but they do um I say probably the the majority of their time is on the follow-up calls from either calls that they were on or calls that were handled by the districts.

Yeah.

That's reflective of of certainly what I saw in the crew's own understanding of their work, that they understood the majority of their time to be doing follow-ups after the fact.

And you're the teams that I talked with were really eager to do more live calls.

Um and so I I want to highlight this to the sense of like who is responding live.

And again, this idea that we are trying to move towards the gold standard, which is clinician only response on live calls, not a co-response model.

So I just want to be very clear.

I'm asking this line of questions.

It would not be a satisfactory result to me to get the co-response teams bulked up and then responding live.

I I just I I because I what I what I truly think we want and need as a city is clinician response.

But this I asked this line of question in response to the administration's arguments that we're essentially already doing live response, and I just want to be clear at that in many ways we we still are not.

So we we still have a long ways to go.

Thanks.

Um I want to get back to uh that's kind of the one the balance, the side of like kind of what's it looked like in the past versus what is it looking like moving forward.

Um I I want to ask about this idea of amendments.

Um It was news to me that you had drafted amendments.

Um I I frankly I have spent many meetings with you trying to get a clear assessment and understanding of where what would make the public Department of Public Safety comfortable with a version of this, and I would like to see them.

Um I think uh as the co-sponsors who will be moving forward to the next council term, they have the right to see them as well.

Uh, would you be willing to share the amendments that you had drafted with the council through the chair?

Um to the assistant director.

Through the through the chair.

I I believe those amendments were shared verbally at the last meeting we had.

Um happy to share them in a written form.

Thank you.

Um I also had provided amendments to you uh or or a proposal of a sort of a term sheet, you know, like what it's not the legal language, it's the broad idea.

Um and I can only speak for myself.

Uh but I I had proposed a model to you that was a division within the Department of Public Health.

And I had sent a budget and uh uh a draft um and certainly uh did not get a response to that.

Um so through the chair, if we were and I I can only speak for myself, I do not know this is where anyone else will land, but if we move to a division of an existing department, would you support this legislation through the chair?

To whoever can respond to the chair to the chair to a council member Maurer.

Uh we're looking at well well, let me back up.

We want to do the time call type analysis.

That's that's very important to us that we do that.

We're gonna do that.

Um we will look at all um options uh available to us after we get the call type analysis to see which way is best, which options best to move forward with.

We will take in consideration what you put forward as well before we make uh a final determination.

Thank you.

And and I've I've got to explain this point.

The the key issue from the administration for months has been the issue of departments.

I then supported or I I proposed what would it look like for a division?

And all of a sudden, for the first time in November, we got a response back saying the call type analysis is actually the first barrier.

And to be very clear, the administration has had the funding through the BJA grant for call type analysis for years.

They've had it for years at this point.

And in fact, you were trying to divert that money away from call type analysis, and it took letters and efforts from the three of us to move it back towards call type analysis.

And so when the the goalposts keep shifting, that is what creates this sense of maybe we're not actually as much on the same page as we keep saying.

Um and I I want to be very clear, there are we all want the call type analysis to happen.

It should have happened already.

Um and we can also do this, we can do the call type analysis while staffing up the the skeleton of the department.

But if we wait, it's gonna take more than a year to do the call type analysis.

We haven't even issued the RFP yet.

Um we haven't even done the RFP, we haven't gotten the responses, we haven't evaluated those responses, we haven't onboarded those people, we haven't sent them the call type data.

This is a year to 18 months.

It we're it's just gonna get dragged out.

And so I want to be clear to the audience, to the listening audience, to my colleagues, um and I know many of you are in the same spot.

I do not think the call type analysis is a necessary thing before we pass this legislation.

It should happen concurrently, it should have happened already, we support it, but we should not wait to do this to pass this law until doing the call type analysis.

Thank you.

Uh, I I want to just end with one final note.

I was just thinking about some of the ways that lawyers can sometimes, you know, we confuse things for the public, right?

Codifying what what's codified, what's not codified.

Um I want to be very clear that when we pass laws as the City of Cleveland, not everything we pass as a legal meant as as a piece of law that we pass that we sign off on, then becomes codified in the sense that it's then written in our ordinances as the city.

All the time we pass, for instance, like approval for the airport to enter into a contract for salt procurement for the runways.

That's not codified anywhere.

And in fact, when we passed pretty substantial legislation around lead safe law, um, elements of that lead safe law that created parts of the lead safe advisory board and the screening and testing commission, that was not codified because the codification is the idea that it needs to be like you know, written for all to see for all eternity rather than an action that the department has to do.

And so it makes total sense to me that other cities don't have a codified creation of a department, but they might have passed legislation saying create this department, because then that was an action of of the mayor's office.

And by the way, cities might have different rules about how you create a department.

You know, under under Cleveland's rules, you would need to have an ordinance passed.

It is in c in fact to create a division, you would need to have an ordinance passed.

And so this idea that other we haven't codified, other cities haven't codified, and so we don't need to, so this is overkill.

I it it's just a it's just a misdirection.

It's a red herring.

Um and we this is absolutely appropriate within Cleveland's system to create a new structure, and I I am not gonna say that just because another city doesn't do it exactly the same way as Cleveland or it's not ultimately codified that it changes things.

And I will pause there and hand it over to my colleagues.

Thank you.

Uh I have councilwoman House Jones up next.

Uh yes, through the chair, to the team here.

Um for the uh seven co-response teams that we have.

Um what are the uh backgrounds, the professional backgrounds of the seven members who are not uh police officers to the councilwoman through the chair?

Uh we have a couple of social workers.

Um we have some uh MS MASS.

Well wait a minute, you're referring to the clinicians?

That's that's what I'm at clear or the office.

This I the seven individuals who are not police officers, what are what are their professional?

Yeah.

Uh I can get the I don't know all of them offhand, but I can get those two.

Um and through the chair to the team.

So what are their actual um training requirements?

Who actually supervised them?

Who tracks their you know certifications, making sure that they are staying on top of their credentials?

Who does that work?

Whoever can answer.

To the councilman through the chair.

Uh so they're each of the clinicians are employed by either frontline services or Murta Saylor.

Uh they have their own individual supervisors who keeps who keep track of all that.

Through the chair to Okay.

All right.

So I think and this is in and again, so through the chair to the team here, is there any coordination of that with anyone who works within the city of Cleveland?

On their, you know, their their uh credentials and things of that nature.

How do you know they are they're they're the how do I how do you know they are up to date on their certifications?

So to the councilwoman through the chair.

Uh when they first get hired uh and through the background check, they provide their certifications, which we check against a state license.

Um, and then after that, it's you know, uh I believe it's up to their supervisors to keep track.

So that and this is one of the and this is one of the reasons why um I'm I'm I'm lifting this one up in particular, um, is because how do we know, like as a city of Cleveland, they're doing work in the city of Cleveland in this co-response model.

How do we know that it's actually being done?

And a that has been part of my perception that we don't.

We don't, because their certification is very different than the police certification.

I know that you all will be able to clearly say the police are on, they they have their certifications, but we don't technically know what those credentialings are, the maintaining of your license is for the clinicians on that part.

That is part of the reason why a creating some level of department division within the city of Cleveland, so we know that, and they can be supported in that because it's a lot of work, you know, all of that type of stuff.

Um quite frankly, this is part of the the challenge is, and and again, I don't know, I part of me want to say it, but no, I am gonna say it.

Part of the challenge of why the person who was working with you all is no longer here from my understanding is because people don't listen to the clinicians.

That's what my understanding.

I don't know if that that is true or not, and I would would want for you to lift it up.

It's because when you have clinicians that are working in this space, it it is always trumping whatever the police say, that's what we do, even though these issues are clinician-based.

And I don't know how we get over that.

That that's like a fundamental challenge that we're having right now.

Because people don't know and understand what it takes from the clinician perspective.

And if we when we talk about alternative responses for even uh a peer specialist, right?

Because that's one of the things of designing a law to that you have peer-to-peer um uh a trained people.

Who is actually gonna give care to them?

That that's that's that is my challenge.

And again, as my colleague has talked about, like why through the chair to the team, why haven't why don't we have the call analysis today?

We had the money at least since January of 2024.

It is now December 2025.

Why isn't the call analysis done?

Who can respond to that?

Through the chair again.

Uh initial scope, that the scope was changed initially.

Um the scope as you to the chair, the council member.

Uh scope was changed initially.

We had our conversations, um we re-scoped it.

And then we had to wait for the approvals of the federal government before we could move forward.

And obviously, we're still waiting for the final approval.

Right.

But through the chair.

No, it's not federal model.

Through the chair to the team here.

But in January 2024, when council passed the legislation, wasn't a part of that original scope to do a call analysis?

Through the chair to council member, that's correct.

Okay.

So I just so to be clear for the um listening audience, be very clear.

The call analysis, even to now is from my perspective, we're only getting to the rescoping of the call analysis, is because council member Moore and myself had urged for it.

If it wasn't for and slife, if we had not uh fought for the call analysis, because again, when we talk about the rescoping of the connect and protect grant, it wasn't even in the preview of the administration to even do it, because it was going to be re-scoped to something else.

And you can say, oh, we had a change of mind and things of that nature because the rescoping of can you do the chair to the team um here?

Can you tell us what was rescoped when when we did this initial rescoping away from the call analysis?

What did you at that time want?

What did the Department of Public Safety and Administration want?

Director.

The chair.

I don't have that in front of me.

I can't, and I wasn't ready prepared for it.

Okay.

To answer that particular question.

And that's the this is the type of things too where it's like my level of frustration at times.

It's like like it's like playing with my intelligence that I'm not sure understanding what is going on here.

And it is very clear, you know, you can say that you have a commitment to something, but commitment to something means that you actually take action.

And the lack of action from this administration has got me to a point of being frustrated, right?

And again, to say, you know, and again, we we we're talking about the introduction of legislation is a starting point.

It is not where to go.

Where is the imagination?

Where's the things, right?

I I mean, I can I can go through a list of things.

We can then create PIO to create, become a department.

You know, m merging the things together for years.

Uh, council members have been talking about we don't know what's going on with um crisis, you know, um uh violence interruption.

I mean, you can reimagine community healing, you can reimagine it.

But we have gotten nothing.

Nothing.

And I I just, you know, and I I pray that in 2026 we would get it.

And again, I hear what you are saying is that we have police officers, and yes, we do.

We have committed police office, like I'm gonna always shout out, you know, third district.

You know what I'm saying?

Calhoun, Malcolm Sutton, like a coupas, like I know we have people that are loving on our people, right?

But the reality is far too many people, the experience that I have and I get is far too many people that live in my streets that don't have that experience.

That's the reality.

That is not the perception of when they see a police officer for whatever reason.

That's not the reality.

Because if you did a survey today, today, from Clevelanders asking who you know, what is your oppression?

Who do you call if if somebody is in crisis?

A lot of times, based on the surveys that we see across this country, it is not to call the police.

A lot of people avoid it because they don't know what's gonna happen.

And I I just, you know, oh Lord Jesus.

I just be like, Lord, how why why why it take this this much to like do right by people?

I I don't understand this, and again, I hope that I'm gonna stand because I know we still have community members who want to give their opinions.

Um, but I am committed to this work, and I am I am, you know, more so than anything as I came in.

This wasn't a thing on Stephanie's agenda, but moving forward, this is because our people deserve it, and to see where other people in the country have been in the time span that we just been fighting about a call analysis.

People have lift up departments, they have invested, they have expanded.

This ain't the work of somebody who is committed to something.

This ain't how people that are committed to things.

This this ain't how they move.

I'm gonna just let you know that.

And the demonstration of what has happened across this country and other communities shows a a real commitment because it's led to action and money.

Thanks thank you.

Thank you.

Um thank you for keeping time.

Uh, Councilman Slife.

All right.

Am I am I bringing this home and then a little more public comment?

There is uh we're gonna wrap it up because we're gonna be out of here by four, I can assure you that.

All right, I'll make it quick.

Here we go.

Um, so you know, the problem as I see it, and I I'm reminded after National League of Cities was in Atlanta.

I flew home.

I I told my wife I take RTA home, kids' bedtime, and I had about a five-minute layover at the West Park Rapid Station waiting for the bus.

And there was a woman there, um clearly experiencing a mental health crisis.

And and the challenge now is when Councilman House says people are reluctant to call 911.

There's a lot of reasons people could be, uh if only because it doesn't seem to fit squarely with what they're experiencing.

This person was not a threat from a safety standpoint.

Um certainly wasn't on fire.

And granted, we do have a problem in our society where we disconnect mental health for like health above the neck and health below the neck.

Uh, but I think when we talk about what EMS is really strong at of emergent life-saving care and the need for a transport to a hospital, that it it wasn't it wasn't neatly that either.

And then what we've had and what is going away with the Adams Board of 988, unfortunately almost implies that a mental health crisis and uh suicidal thoughts are one and the same, which certainly isn't the case.

We've conflated the conversation understandably a lot about what is the crisis response, what is the co-response, what is the care response.

And I want to underscore again, to me, this is about building out each as a strength because there's a room for each to exist within our community.

In our research, the best way to implement care response has been to do it alongside, but not necessarily within the structure of the division of police, what we would call the division of police.

These are two separate entities that certainly have a large overlap.

It's a Venn diagram, but they can work independently of each other successfully, they can work alongside each other successfully.

So the whole, you know, and and and I'll say it's it's really an I don't you don't have to answer this because it's not a fair question.

It really comes down to what uh the mayor and and and those directly next to the mayor, if if it's not uh an individualized department, where would it be?

That's that's I think the question that we're looking for.

But in in any case, when as my my my my sloppy analogy, I like kind of describe things through analogies is um whether it's a department or a division or uh within an existing department or uh uh uh uh some other third, fourth fifth option.

If you're on 271 in Warrensville Heights and the lane split for the express lanes and the local lanes, this isn't about whether the express lanes are inherently better than the local lanes or if the local lanes are better than the express, they offer a different uh a different service for people traveling through.

And if you take both routes will successfully take you to your end destination of Ashtabula, I don't know.

It's it's it's I the reason I'm I'm saying this is because in our analysis it was really important to us to not overly conflate this with public safety so that we wouldn't end up with consent decree issues, so that we wouldn't be stepping on the toes of CIT, so that we would be able to create the scenario where we're able to do multiple things together well.

And and uh and I I will just kind of end and then I will end with one quick question and then we can wrap it up.

My concern my my my macro concern coming into this six years ago was that police officers are overwhelmed, we're putting too much on police, police are amazing generalists and can uh receive additional training to be more than a generalist, but we can't expect to call 911 and just a police officer to show up for every situation under the sun.

That's not what police officers are charged with doing.

Uh they are charged with uh first and foremost attempting to prevent and investigating crimes that have occurred.

Similarly, we are blessed to have a very strong and adept division of EMS.

And and I that is also overburdened, that is also uh doing successful work that uh really goes under uh appreciated and we we we we could spend every day talking about how great EMS is.

I wouldn't want to create a scenario where we're shifting the problem over to where now we're having challenges with um emergent medical care because we are we overcorrecting by sending ambulances to situations where maybe a paramedic isn't needed.

I just keep coming back to my senior citizen who really just needs to be checked in on and determined if she needs to maybe be scheduled for an appointment or something, but it's not something that is her her her life is not in danger at this moment.

So I'll wrap it up just by saying that to me, I think Councilman Moore's analogy of the lever being pulled and we're gonna pull the lever and magically on day one we're gonna have this fully operational system is exceedingly unlikely.

The truth is there will be a learning curve, and I think there's an eagerness from this side of the table to get onto that curve and to begin to learn.

And and I want to just push that forward, that conversation forward as we move into the new year.

I'll end with a question.

Through the chair, councilwoman Moore speculated that at this point in time, uh call type analysis would take 12 to 18 months to be completed.

Would you all agree with that characterization of that duration of time?

Who can comment?

Through the chair, I don't know if I agree with it because I don't have the basis to answer that, that how long those normally would take.

Okay.

And it's fair, and and I think the absence of knowing specifically, just I think under uh reinforces our concern that we all we all know what the goal is, but we don't seem to be moving towards it as quickly as we would like to.

Uh I will end it there.

I'd like to thank my colleagues.

I'd like to thank all of you and all of the audience who have sat with us on this chilly December afternoon.

Uh but this is really important work, and I'm glad to have you had this conversation today.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, let's see if we can get some um resolution here uh to the um requests that have been made.

Uh I'm gonna ask for the budget for your seven full-time teams, they're full-time, correct?

Chair, yes, sir.

So for the clinicians, we want the budget for them.

Uh we want the pay band or or the um or if they're on a salary or whatever it whatever it is.

Listen to what I'm saying.

I want the budget.

I want the pay bans or salary bands.

Um do we pay Murder's Taylor or frontline for administration?

Right.

To the Chair.

Uh we pay the Adams Board and the Adams Board, to my understanding.

Okay.

Then we want to know what that dollar amount is.

Um as it pertains, Councilman Casey had a question as well.

As it pertained to the district, how many, how are they assigned?

Are they you're indicating they work out of one location downtown?

But how many are assigned to each district?

To the chair, each district has at least one co responder team.

Uh, and after the five, then we split them up into the highest districts with those calls.

Uh which will be second, third, and fourth.

Okay.

Um we also want job descriptions for the clinicians.

And as it pertains to the officers that are assigned, how are they picked?

Through the chair, uh, the councilman, uh, we have uh um anticipated assignment that goes out, correct?

Um I don't want to speak out of turn here.

Um there's an interview process, and they're ultimately selected uh by um the lieutenant, I believe, correct?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Is there anything is is there anything within a collective bargaining agreement that has any impact on who uh the officers are?

Yes.

It's uh that's a good question.

To the chair, that's a good question.

Yeah, it's uh we have uh management selection as well as the seniority selection.

Okay.

Um I'm gonna quote uh well, we have um before I wrap it up, I have um one other person who wish to testify.

Alicia Bell Hardaway.

If she's still in attendance.

Can I refer my time to Mr.

Anderson?

He would actually like to speak.

Well, Mr.

Anderson spoke already.

No, he didn't he came in.

He got his bearings and he would like to speak, actually.

Wait, Mr.

Anderson spoke all first he's with the first speaker we had.

He wants to speak again?

He does, sir.

Okay, Mr.

Anderson, three minutes and just that there'll slide it over.

So um, so what I would like to say is this.

Um go ahead.

I think that the way to move this forward is to do some internal research.

I think everyone here knows what happened to Tanisha Anderson, but I don't think they really did like an internal research.

You know, like read her her uh autopsy report, you know, read the uh police's report.

Go ahead.

Um but more than importantly, you know, I think when this case first happened, um the case was shuffled around from city to city, right?

From county to county.

And uh Governor Mike Dewan said that this was one of the most complicated mess he's ever seen.

And all right, so then it ended back up into Cleveland, and uh they they decided not to indict, which is fine because I'm not here to re-indict anyone.

But um Tanisha pass um, and I bring this up a lot because I want people to remember how she passed.

You know, she passed stark butt naked.

Twenty-two degrees cold on coal concrete.

And then she began reciting the Lord's prayer, asking God to extend some grace and mercy towards the officers who were holding her down.

So I'm here to ask City, the City Hall, and the lawmakers here to extend some mercy and grace towards her.

Because until then, in my mind and in my heart, she is still laying there where she died at so um yeah, I just like to leave everyone with that pretty much.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much.

And we we sympathize with your loss, and um we hear your uh your distress and your voice.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'm gonna quote a dear old friend of mine.

Um who said it so often at this table.

The train is leaving the station.

That was George Forbes said it many a times.

I'm saying to the administration, the train is leaving the station.

We're gonna we're gonna take action.

But what you need to do, because I believe in I've learned here in my role and being here as long as I have, we can pass whatever we want.

But it but we don't administer.

You do.

So I've seen times when we've passed legislation and it wasn't administered.

It wasn't implemented under the terms that we would have liked to have seen it implemented.

So I'm very mindful of the process here.

I understand the mayor has said um that he does not believe it should be a standalone department.

I've I've heard that, okay.

Um you have indicated that you have um suggested amendments that you did not officially I'm gonna ask you to submit those suggestions to the three sponsors to look at uh and to see if they would be uh amenable to um to any of your suggestions.

Um we heard at the table that you you've recognized director, you've indicated the um that you believe this should be uh a part of EMS, correct?

To the chair.

Um not necessarily a part, but something through our evaluation when I mentioned that they have a program.

What I mentioned was the uh um the um dispatch dispatch to uh administer it through EMS.

You know, again, we're gonna look to your um to your suggestions, but again, I want to say this, the trains leave in the station, we're gonna take action.

So you can either get on board or you get run over.

That's how it works around here.

And I know how to do that.

So you get on board, you work with us, you figure out how we can we can make a system work.

We're gonna ask for whatever documentation you have as it retains to the number of calls that you've had a respond to, and I hope our research staff is listening.

Um how many calls you your teams have had to respond to, and if you can have it broken down by district, would be more whatever data you can supply us would be most helpful.

Because we're we we had our last meeting on December 1st, but I can assure you we're not gonna go through the first quarter of next year, nowhere near the first quarter of next year without having a law in place, without having to take an action.

We're gonna take action.

So you can be you can get on board, you can get on board a train, um, or you can be looking at the caboose as it goes over you.

So um that's where I supply us the information.

Um the assistant safety director is very knowledgeable about a whole lot of things.

Um I would ask you again to sit down with the three sponsors, and I hope the three sponsors would make me aware of that, because I don't know if I can attend all those um meetings or whatever meetings will be, because I've got a lot of the responsibilities now.

Um let's get it done.

Let's get it done.

Let's get something we can all point to and say, look what we did.

We heard the public, we heard the concerns, we heard the concerns of like Mr.

Anderson and others, and we're gonna do whatever we can.

And the other internal question is I think you have to think internally.

Do we do we need to beef up training, additional training?

Because I've heard different things are I've heard the hours, but I'm in my own mind, I don't know if that's sufficient.

Uh but then I've also heard that we've made progress, and I I uh and I'm gonna point to Dr.

Anderson.

I don't know if she's still here or not.

She was here.

Um she keeps her price because she is um telling me we've made great strides in many areas within the division of police.

And we we all need to be aware of that.

We need to be aware of the improvements uh and the um uh that we've made so again you've heard my request uh I'm gonna ask for those officially again you've heard the whole issue with budget pay bans job descriptions um whatever information you can supply us the financial details um a standalone apartment I'm told would uh be estimated somewhere around three million dollars so I and again so we we uh to on our side of the table we have to be responsible as well as it pertains to financial realities that we're confronted with so it's a balancing act here we're gonna do what we need to do we want you to be partners with us we want you to have input into the process but this is um two years two years in the making two years and again to the viewing public we just got this back just before Thanksgiving you guys had a lot of time to work on this you had a lot of time to come up with some I think reasonable recommendations and some solutions here so we're in the home stretch we're in the fourth quarter we're gonna get it done so you heard the caress and work with my colleagues and um and if I have to have a sp hold a special meeting again I will do that there's that's not an issue with me.

That's what we're here for.

We're here to work on behalf of the public so without further ado any of the sponsors have any further comment any further comment?

Just thanks everybody uh for your time um and commitment and uh looking forward to the great things that we'll do to change and transform how we're serving people in Cleveland come 2026 and be up to thank you.

And thanks to the chairman for hosting this at in December thank you.

Thank you to my colleague my three uh colleagues the sponsors I'm sure there'll be other additional sponsors who will wish to go on there including myself to the clerk you'll hold this until further notice but it's not going to be to the administration it's not going to be held long okay so you understand where I'm coming from get on board get on board let's get it done.

To the uh public that is here thank you for your attendance thank you for your comments your engagement those who are at home watching this sometimes um is the comments made you don't want to see legislation and hot dogs made okay so um we're not making hot dogs today we're making legislation we're creating um uh something that we believe is gonna have a meaningful meaningful impact in in the days and um and months and years to come so on that note uh without further ado I want to thank everybody who is here I wish you we don't if we're not meeting gonna be toward the end of the year I want to thank you all wish you a happy um a merry Christmas um um uh uh joyous um Hanukkah and um joyous um uh Kwanzaa committees adjourned thank you first I said Chris with good nice