Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council.

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning, and welcome to the Health and Safety Committee.

My name is Darrell Watson.

I'm honored to serve as the chair of this committee and also as the representative representing Define District 9 on Denver City Council.

We have one briefing today from our uh from Director Colette Vett uh from the chief uh municipal public uh defender's office.

And before we go into the briefing, uh why don't we have introductions around the table?

And actually, let me check first.

Is there, do we have council members online?

So, Councilmember Sawyer, are you online?

We'll start.

We'll start with you.

Hey, everyone.

Excuse me.

Hey everyone.

Thanks, Chair Watson, Amanda Sawyer, Denver City Council District 5.

To see you.

Um, why don't we start on my right and we just go around the table for council member introductions?

Uh Kevin Flynn, Southwest Members District 2.

Hi, everyone.

Serena Gonzalez Cutietes, one of your council members at large.

Uh, good morning, Paul Cash from South Denver District 6.

Sarah Purdy, the other council member at large.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Well, with that, I'll turn it over, Colette, to you and your team to introduce yourself and introduce your team, and thank you all so much for being here.

Great, thank you so much.

Um thank you, Councilman Watson.

It's a it's a pleasure to be here and tell you all a little bit more about our office and the work that we do.

Um, to my left is Ari Kritchover, who's our deputy public defender, Colin March, who is our lead new youth attorney.

Rachel Mercer, who is our appellate and legislative aide, an update attorney, senior attorney, and Ty Cope, who's our supervisor for our client support team.

You'll hear about all of these things during the course of our uh presentation today.

So I think we're ready to go.

I don't know how to connect this.

It's in front of me.

It'll come up in a minute.

Okay.

Is it coming up?

Oh, yeah, there we go.

Thank you.

And I'm I'm really you have to be seeing people from our office that are going to be floating in, and I'm just really so proud of the work that everyone is doing here, and hopefully you'll hear more about why we are so proud of the work that we're doing with the office of the municipal public defender.

And and Colette, I'll say, since you have such a great um group of folks from the office, would you mind um introducing them, even though they're sitting in the audience?

So I would be delighted to introduce them.

Um Jacob, who is our um bilingual case manager that's with the client support team, Lulu, who is with our uh legal secretary and aide with our youth department.

We have Tyler, who is an attorney in courtroom 4B.

We have Rainbow, who is another peer navigator, peer specialist with our office, Hannah, who's our behavior health navigator with our client support team, Eleanor, who is an attorney in courtroom 4C, Eric Goltz, who's in for attorney and 4B, and we've got Candace, who is another veteran, and with our client support team as a peer specialist.

All right.

Well, thanks for stacking the room.

One of the things that we really are proud of is that we are a holistic public defender's office that works to work collaboratively together.

Um, we are unique into in the terms that we we have phenomenal lawyers that you'll hear about, but with our lawyers and our client support team and are every single day working with our clients.

We seek to get them connected to services, to have them represented by some of the finest lawyers, to hear their stories, to tell our clients stories, and to restore respect and dignity for our clients.

And so that's really one of our proudest missions that we do at OMP Day.

In order to qualify for OMP Day, our clients live below the federal poverty line.

Many of them are dealing with uh substance misuse, behavioral health issues, um, mental health issues, uh brain injury.

It was when I first came here to real when I was working with the Brain Injury Alliance, understanding that upwards of 80 to 90 percent of our clients have traumatic brain injury.

And so we have clients that are really one of the most vulnerable citizens or residents of Denver, I should say.

The majority of our clients are on house or experiencing housing instability, and many have uh limited access to health care, especially for our black, Hispanic, and people of color.

Um, that has become really more significantly underscored in the recent months with so many of the our of our dear partners being fired and leaving, and many of the organizations closing up.

It has had a very intense, significant impact on our clients.

People experiencing homelessness are 11 times more likely to be arrested than housed individuals.

And in Denver, nearly 40% of our municipal court cases involve people that are experiencing homelessness for low-level offenses, trespass, open container, camping violations, disturbing the peace.

As a holistic model, we have four, we are in four adult courtrooms during the week, four A, B, C, and E, and we are on the fourth floor of the Lindsay Flanagan courthouse.

I always encourage city council if you ever want to watch and see what goes on in municipal court.

Please come by.

And if you want to contact us and say we're, you know, can we be there for a docket or a trial date?

I would love for you to come watch because so much goes on in that courtroom, and you will see who we represent and the quality of our representation.

Our youth court that Colin is now uh leading is on Thursdays at 2 p.m.

in courtroom 2B, or one 1 p.m.

in courtroom 2B.

Our office is open five days a week for people to drop in to apply for our office, and to just have a place that they can sit and talk.

We could I'll share more about that.

We bring court to the people twice a month.

We are an outreach court uh twice a month, and quarterly we do fresh start warrant clearing events.

Uh we have first appearance court, we are in court seven days a week.

So this is our model.

In every courtroom, we have four lawyers, a lead lawyer and three lawyers, a client support team member, a peer specialist, a paralegal, and a legal secretary.

And we started to do this collaboratively about a year and a half ago, and what it's doing is that this office has become so much more uh gelled and we love each other and we're friendly and we work together because what's going on with the client support team is shared with the lawyers.

What the lawyers are doing is shared with the legal secretaries of paralegals, and everyone knows about every client, which makes it very unique.

Twenty-one lawyers, and you know sometimes you hear the expression, um, you know, hey, you know, you start out at the public defender's office and then you become a real lawyer and you go into private practice.

That is not what public defenders do.

The lawyers that work in our office are some of the finest lawyers that I've ever worked with in the country, many of them from private practice, many of them from the state public defender's office, where they did high-level appeals like Rachel, uh, robberies, murders, um, and very high-level cases.

They take those skills and they bring them into municipal court.

And the beauty of municipal court is that the judges allow them to try the cases as if they were trying serious felonies.

From jury selection to closing argument, you you come in and you watch a trial, you will be blown away.

And it's for cases like disturbing the peace, trespass, park violations, shoplifting, low-level domestic violence, assault cases, um, off-leash, dog bite, dog cases.

We got we have many of those.

By the way, those should not be criminal.

We were hoping that maybe we could talk to city council about making those civil infractions because it's kind of crazy about how the ordinance is written to be continued.

And we represent thousands of people in on traffic cases.

And um, Councilman Cashman, we do think there may be some profiling happening now that you were interested in a couple years ago.

So I will hook you up with Lindsay Vitalis, who runs our trafficking department.

We are in court seven days a week, so every Saturday, every Sunday, and a holiday dockets, we are in court.

As I said, we are holistic, client-centered, community-oriented approach to criminal defense.

We are in the community every single day.

People know who we are.

Um, our client support team, our lawyers, we meet with people, we go to organizations to explain what our processes are.

If people have, you know, warrants, how do we clear them?

We want to make it as accessible as possible.

Our client support team, and Tai is our supervisor, Leanne Fikas, who is the social worker that runs client support team, is currently uh in Europe's right now traveling.

But we're really proud of this team because we have we have Ty as the supervisor, Hannah's our behavior health navigator, Jacob is our bilingual case manager, and our peer specialists and Rainbows here, Candace is here.

We have Dan and who am I missing?

And Kirsten.

And Kirsten is our youth uh peer specialist.

So we every time when we go into court for youth, we have the same teams that are going together there.

Our client support team, we give wraparound in-demand peer support, case management, behavior health navigation.

We help connect our clients to community resources, services, behavioral health treatments.

We support all of the courtrooms, and we work with the community and the city partners to have see how we are working.

It's getting cold.

So Leanne and our office have been coordinating for how do we get housing and what are what are options are available.

So we call all of the people together that are involved in the coalition and other organizations to sit down and try to brainstorm DHS.

We have, I'm trying to think there's so many that come together and our office.

What can we do as it gets cold?

Um, and so we really want to do this working together.

I put this up here, I'm not gonna go through this, but since January of 2025 through September 31st, these are the services that we have we have worked with with our clients, jail and reentry services, homeless and basic needs for our daily living, employment, vocational, behavioral health, case management, and youth and emerging youth adults.

We meet with these organizations on a very regular basis.

We have we've really become community partners.

People call our offices if they say, you know, can you help us?

We have we met with the coalition last week and they have clients that have open warrants.

Please contact our office and we will walk them through the system.

We have we work in, we have a grant with Stride, which has been working really beautifully to have some of our clients get housing.

We work very closely with the jail and the sheriff's office to see if we can work and take advantage of some of the programming that is available for our clients that are coming out of custody.

Really proud of the work that we're doing.

And as a result of this work and keeping people out of custody, we save money and it's a price savings.

So jail beds, approximately 164 a night.

That's the we don't have the exact number, but approximately probably closer to 200.

Um, we know from there's so much research about that low-level offenders who spend time in jail 24, 48 hours, are more likely to recidivate.

So when you hear this kind of, I would call it almost a false narrative of people saying, wouldn't it be better, Colette, if your clients who are repeat shoplifters or trespassing, got sentences like 90 days, because then they could take advantage of all the great programs at the jail, and that is just not available.

The staffing at the jail is so limited.

The programming at the jail has been cut so dramatically.

They are working desperately to help the clients that are there, but it's impossible.

So that you know, for us, it is a better cost saving.

It's very safe for the community for them to be out.

We connect them with services.

Our client support team goes into the jail and they help on re-entry programs so that when you get out, there's a plan for where you can go.

Um there's been some little road stops in the way, which I'll talk about, but you know, right now we know that there's limited addiction and mental health programming at DDC and at the other, you know, but we can, if they're out, connect them with those services.

We work with housing, we work with transportation.

We were fortunate enough to get a grant for bus vouchers, which is like, I can't.

How do we describe it?

It's like a such a great gift.

I mean, people come to our office and they just, we are able to give them bus vouchers so they can get to court, they can get to shelters, they can get around the city.

It's been very, very helpful.

We do help with all of those things, including clothing and food.

Our office, we collect money on a monthly basis, and someone will go to Costco and fill up our refrigerator and our freezer with food so that when clients come to our office and if they haven't eaten for 24 48 hours, which is something we see every day they have food.

They have a glass of water they've got soda, whatever it is we have clothing, we have lots of clothing for our our clients.

We've got mittens, we've got warm heaters, we've got cloak jackets so we really try to make it so that when you come to our office can we get something they oftentimes leave with a bag and they have their food and they're they're they're sated our lawyers work so closely with trying to get great results cases are being dismissed because of either great mitigation and negotiation or discovery violations.

Cases are being won not guilties because of the quality of the investigation and knowing what the cases are about we go into the courtroom we walk in and we are the people that the jury is looking at for who is going to be the soothsayer in that courtroom.

We are resolving our cases expediently and we're working to get the best results for our clients I'm very proud of the work that we're doing in youth court you met Colin Lulu and Kirsten is our peer support specialist.

They're in court every Thursday and they're working really to stop or the school to prison pipeline.

I want to thank again Councilman Cashman and councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez for working with us to get our ordinance changed in 2024 and it was such a wonderful series of stakeholder meetings to everyone thought it would be great for OMPD to be in court and they said can you could you be there yesterday and so we we are there we are representing hundreds of kids um we know some we're keeping intense data so I want to thank Colin and Lulu especially for giving us the the keeping track of the data um who is being who's being ticketed and so we know that black youth adults are 11 times more likely to be arrested by the age of 20 and we know that if they have any initial encounter young teens that they're more likely to be more involved in the criminal legal system.

We represent children who are 10 years old we represent children who can't even see over the podium and so we want to make sure that that children who are acting like children and making a mistake like children are treated with dignity and respect.

So we support these children we are connecting our kids and their families with you know anything that they need treatment providers or a daily living help we want to ensure that the kids know that we are working for them Colin meets with the client and their families I hate to say the word client but their kids and their families and so they're investigating more cases.

We see a lot of bullying cases and that's something that you know what happens oftentimes is DPS might just throw the net out and we'll take everyone in and give everyone gets in a a ticket including our client who may be the kid that's getting bullied so it's up to us if they didn't have lawyers there then we wouldn't have the right to to challenge some of these things.

I'm going to talk about last year briefly but we we got around from July of 24 till December 31st that's when when we started representing we had about 320 cases 40 cases were brought against black youth 20% against black girls 20% against black boys roughly 32% of the of the charges against Hispanic youth and 43% of the cases were coming through that came through and now it's even higher that are getting diversion and many of the majority of the cases are assaults and public fighting that come out of the schools um the they we keep the we keep the data from every school, and we've shared this.

I know with the councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez and Cashman, Councilman Cashman.

You know, we know that's which schools are giving more tickets.

We know that they could have the alternatives to citation, which we're really trying to meet with stakeholders.

We've they've kind of revised diversion.

So we're really trying to work together with all of the parties to say get these children as the littlest touch with the system that we can do.

In 2025, we've represented about 395 kids, so it's higher than last year at this time of the year.

And the stats about who the black youth that were representing and black young girls are more ticketed than anyone, and it's disproportionately um ticketing young black girls.

And we know about the adultification of black girls.

So when they come into the system, we treat them as with respect, and as the children and work with this both the girls and the boys that are being coming through.

We're working with DPS.

We are working with other youth organizations, transform transformative youth justice project.

We're working fully liberated youth.

Colin has met with a lot of other alternate um programs such as Mira Image Arts.

I always forget the other ones, it's arts, ashes.

Yeah, arts to ashes.

Spoken word is soul stories.

Soul stories.

So they these are like if kids are interested in art or music or writing, or they want to box and you know, get out there.

We are trying to connect.

And and Colin and Lulu and Kirsten meet with the children and say, what are you interested in?

So even then we could talk to Diversion and say this would they would be a perfect fit for mirror image arts or soul story uh can't remember it's soul stories?

Soul stories.

Um, and so we've been really that's been a real joy to see our kids flourish and to be successful.

Um the collaboration and you know, when when diversion really took a hit um in August with losing people, they regrouped and they had a beautiful open house about how many weeks ago is that just a couple weeks ago.

And the people that are they have the their staffing at uh diversion is really people that have been working with big brothers, have been school teachers, middle school teachers, principals, working within this probation and in other youth, other youth spaces.

They know how to work with youth, so we're excited about that, and we are excited that children know that there is a constitution and they have the right to exercise their right to trial.

So we are standing next to them.

So I'm really proud of the work that youth is doing.

We are out in the communities all the time.

Um these are some pictures from FutureFest.

We were at the Pride Parade.

As I said before, we are an outreach court twice a month.

We're at the Denver Public Library on the second Wednesday, and uh Denver Hu uh Human Services on the East Campus.

Bari is the person that runs uh outreach court for our office.

Um can you give us a brief description to like what that's like?

Yeah, I mean, the point of outreach court is to bring court to folks um that struggle with transportation with housing who may not be able to access the court through the sort of traditional system.

So we're taking court out into the community and we're combining it with um connections to resources.

So when someone comes to outreach court, um and we're really catering to sort of the most low-level offenses, the park violations, the trespass, the shoplifting.

Um, when you come into outreach court, you are in a room full of service providers, folks from Wellpower from DHS, from Brain Injury Alliance of Colorado, and uh you come and you make a service connection, obtain some resources that are going to benefit you in your life, and in exchange, um you're looking at a much more favorable resolution of your case, hopefully, dismissal of your case in an effort to get people out of the system and get moving in a good direction in their life.

It's been really wonderful.

It's a it's very uplifting when you go to outreach court, even if you don't.

Sometimes we have people that don't qualify, they have cases that are not municipal, but they connect with services, they connect with our lawyers, and they leave feeling better than when they walked in.

And I would say if you're ever interested in attending, I call that set second and fourth Wednesday of every month.

Um we're at one of those locations, and we're always happy to have people come and check it out.

The public library space is spectacular.

We were there yesterday again, it's just so beautiful.

So just shout out.

Um Fresh Start is uh it's twice a year, so it's a warrant clearing event, and it's very, very well attended.

Um, and we we had about 100, and I can't remember 30 people that came through from with municipal court cases, you'd get cases dismissed, you'd get good resolutions.

It's just a really lovely event.

They were processed through the aid center, um, and we used to hold uh outreach there, but that's another discussion, which I will bring up shortly.

Wellness in the park, you know, DPD sponsors wellness in the park.

This is our, you know, you could see our this is our office right here.

And this is uh Alex is one of our senior lawyers, that was his office.

And so we have the judge that you know that's there, and we try to negotiate our pleas, and they do wellness in the park.

It's pretty awesome.

Um, one of we our office, we proactively sought out OSEI, and we wanted to do some more work internally about ensuring that we call ourselves the Jedi, justice, equity, divert uh diversity, and inclusion.

And can we be better serving ourselves internally as we're doing this work externally?

We contacted OSEI, and we became one of three that are in a pilot project for doing racial equity action plan.

95% of our staff participated in the uh the action plan.

We have gotten, we have a roadmap that has been created by OSEI.

We just did a needs assessment by OSEI.

They're coming, they they met with leadership, they're coming to meet with our entire office on October 27th, and then we're gonna continue on a monthly basis doing presentations, workshops, so that we are doing the racial equity work that's really powerful and it's supported by the city.

Now I talk about some of the challenges that we have been facing at OMPD.

As many of you probably realize when we were when we opened our borders and we had many of Venezuelans coming in looking for temporary status and work permits, um, we have seen in the last year a 300% increase in immigration advisements.

Um it's a it's been probably one of the most difficult areas that we have been dealing with.

Eleanor's came to our office um after doing immigration work.

Um, what did you say yesterday?

It was that to me about the advice.

Wait, what what are the complexity of this?

She said, Come back.

And Eleanor, if you would like to come to the mind, just right there.

And if you don't mind.

If you don't want this, yeah, and introduce yourself as well.

Hi, my name's Eleanor Hardy.

I'm a lawyer at the office of the municipal public defender.

Uh, before I came to OMPD, I used to work for the Meyer Law Office, and then before that I was a fellow with the an immigration fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Um, and so part of what we do is that there are certain pleas that carry immigration consequences.

So if a certain person, if I were to plead guilty to municipal assault, that has no consequences for me.

But for example, that used to two or three years ago, that was an immigration safe plea.

There now has been a change in the immigration law that says that that is now a crime involving moral turpitude, which means that you are automatically ineligible for certain immigration benefits.

I have been out of immigration for a long time.

It is a fast-moving administrative law-based area of the law.

And so what we do with immigration advisements is that we pay an outside lawyer and immigration specialist when these issues are changing to say, hey, I have a new client.

The offer is to plead guilty to assault.

Is that safe for this person who is, you know, 25 years old and from Venezuela and has a three-year-old citizen child, all of these sort of fact-based nuances, and that's the reason that we have to do the immigration advisements.

I hope that's the answer to that.

And thanks, Eleanor.

Thank you, Eleanor.

And the difficulty that we're all facing every day is that the law is ever changing.

Is there any advice that we can give our clients that will protect them?

Uh the Lake and Riley ED executive order came down last year that now shoplifting, five dollars, can make you can get you deported.

You know, it's we've seen what's been going on in other jurisdictions with, you know, law enforcement, the ICE, everyone coming in, Portland, Washington State, Chicago.

It's devastating, and we're so scared that it's gonna happen in Denver.

And the grief that we have suffered in the last few months, losing clients to ICE and not knowing what's gonna happen, where are they?

The grief when someone was going to show up in court and they failed to appear, and we can't get in touch with them, we don't know where they are.

It's been a real thing for our office.

The loss of the Aid Center was really uh very very difficult for our our office.

Um our clients use the aid center every day for treatment providers to help get the their ID to speak with the coalition to speak with tribe.

There was a counselor that was on staff that was there that could talk to the clients that come out of jail and were itching to use again, and they would get them, speak with them and try to get them hooked up with services.

They when I was there two days before it closed the first time there was a dentist there that was doing medical work, you know, I was treating our clients.

Um there was hygiene products there.

Every time before they go to court, if they were unhoused, there was lockers there, they can put their clothing there, their their livelihood, their their family, which is their pets, there was kennels there.

So they would put everything at the aid center, then walk over to the courthouse for their court case.

And my fear, as I shared with the mayor is that the clients will FTA because there's no place to put this stuff, and that's what's happening.

So that's been a real challenge.

The location was great, people coming out of jail could just walk over there.

The community support and trust that um Perlone and Celeste made it was just a really wonderful supportive place.

Since the aid center closed, our office, I don't want to get emotional, really became like a second, like the bridge.

And it became so overwhelming that we had people in our office clogging the lobby every day, looking for food, looking for shelter, looking for help, looking for vouchers.

Um I walked in a couple weeks ago when they had that terrible rainstorm, and it was like people sleeping, and you know, some person was just like covered in food, and someone was having you know, a crisis, and it was it got to the point where our staff had to spend so much time in the front lobby trying to care for people that we don't have the capacity for, and nor do we have the capabilities for doing it.

So we had to make the very difficult decision to you know put our hours of office hours down from 8 30 to 12 30, and so that we can have some semblance of having you know going back to doing the work that public defenders are are supposed to do.

So that's been a real challenge for us.

Um, on a brighter note, I could say that um Rachel, who was from the state public defenders appellate unit, um, has come to, was as senior, is a senior lawyer at our at our office, is now being is gonna concentrate on doing appellate work, but also working with ordinance changes and legislation was very active in the 1147 parity legislation last year.

So we really want to be as active as we possibly can to work with city council to help make the ordinance and how we proceed during our daily life in a very thoughtful, powerful way.

So thank you for the work that you've been doing too, Rachel.

Um, some challenges, more so challenges.

Um I thought I had it up here, but um August 11th, we started getting hit with um motions from the city attorney's office, questioning our applications, um questioning the veracity of poverty of indigency.

We have a form that we fill out, which is from the Supreme Court directive.

We have to calculate what um whether or not they can qualify for the public defender's office, um, whether they meet the federal poverty guidelines, they have to do this calculation.

But what many of our clients are what we call zeros, they have no income.

They've got no assets and they have no expenses because they're unhoused, or they they get the money from a couple of family members to grab a sandwich, or they're couch surfing, but they don't have any assets.

So we have been in the courts in the last two months litigating poverty, and it has taken hours and hours and hours away from the work that we did.

I want to share with you all poverty exists in Denver.

And as I offered for you to come to our courthouse, come to our office.

I think the first picture that started this out, I went to take a picture of the outside of our office, which is beautiful, by the way, the inside.

But there was a gentleman that was sleeping on the bench in front of our office.

That happens every day.

There are people that will scrounge through the garbage can if the office is not open yet, and they will come in.

So poverty exists, and that's been a real challenge for us to have to really go into court and to defend our clients and to talk about their circumstances in an open courtroom, which seems really like a colossal um waste of really good resources and the time of our lawyers.

We when I when I meet with community organizations, I always say we are we are a public safety organization.

We want to serve our community.

We when we see clients, if they get a not guilty or they get a great result, we oftentimes shake their hands and say, no offense, but I hope we never see you again.

And we hope we never see them again because now they've been connected to services.

I could tell you a thousand really wonderful stories about how people have really changed their lives, even folks with 30 plus trespasses or more.

We strive to connect our clients with services, we deliver clients' uh center justice, and our goal is and always will be the least touch on the criminal legal system, because even though this is a municipal court with low-level offenses, it could be the birthplace of mass incarceration because once you touch the system as a young adult or as a youth, and that's usually where they first touch the system, that becomes part of their record, and it starts to amass.

So we want to change that and reverse that and make our clients feel fully um served and restoring their dignity and respect.

So I'm thankful for allowing you all to hear us today, and I'm really grateful to everyone at the municipal public defenders office for the work that they would do every day.

So thank you, Paul.

Uh thank you so much, Colette.

Uh, I should have started off with uh dung dong um Law and Order Public Defender.

Sorry.

Um I so appreciate the intensity and the joy that you bring to this role.

I think every meeting I uh briefing or discussion I have with you, we begin with a dialogue, and I am literally standing in where it's it's it's because of um the love you have for this work and the passion you demonstrate it.

I think is obvious with uh the folks that I have uh engaged with with your office.

So thank you so much uh for what you bring and uh providing this information to the public so folks know uh the good work that you do and the challenges um that you're facing, and some of those challenges uh I think support from Denver City Council can provide some relief, and would love to engage a little deeper with you, uh Claude on what you're facing with the city attorney's office.

We'll have to have a sit down and kind of talk through um theater how that process is begun and then see what support our teams can provide.

Uh I know Councilmember Sawyer, you're you stated that you you were out of the queue.

Are you still out of the queue?

And then I can go around the table for the existing queue.

Uh thank you, council member.

And so our cue is uh council members Gonzalez Gutierrez, um, Councilmember Flynn, and then council member parody.

Great.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, first of all, nobody got the Star Wars reference earlier.

I got the Star Wars reference.

Everybody's like this straight.

So I'll react.

I think we got it in general.

I love that.

Um, secondly, you're not amused, I can see.

Um, so much judgment coming from the question.

Yes.

Um, I might need your services.

But uh thank you so much um, though, for acknowledging when you're talking about our young people and referring to them as children.

Um I really appreciate that fact and and bringing light to the fact that kids as young as 10 years old um can be charged, and and you know, they can be arrested, all of the things, and it's not just in the municipal level, but it's at the delinquency state level as well.

Um, I have a 10-year old son, um so I I get it.

Um I wanted to ask if you all have heard about this program that we had a bunch of young people come um to council a couple weeks ago, um, and uh they were concerned about it.

It's called Gain, it's the gun violence awareness intervention network.

I was just curious if you all are familiar with this um program that's out of being uh housed under the Office of Neighborhood Safety.

We're not um and we met last week to talk about it.

Um there was something that happened in Aurora very similarly, which was incredibly disturbing.

It was called the SAFE program in Aurora, um, and the letter that went out to the children that they were trying to target was really scary, um, and not anything that would make you want to cooperate.

Um, and then you know, we were trying to find out more information.

We've met with some community organizations that were present or have heard about it, but on one of the slides that they showed, they said, Well, OMPD is involved in this, and we were like, Colin.

Did you know anything?

We are not aware, we have not been invited to the table.

I do not know what the letter is.

I do not know what the program is.

I do not know who it's targeting.

I don't know if they're trying to like draw like a you know, the you know, a letter on someone's back that is uh put like a G or something for a gang.

I don't know anything.

We want to know anything.

If uh if city council finds out, please share, but know that we are not at the table and we don't know about the program.

Okay, thank you for that.

I I know a few of us have reached out to um Dr.

Sanders to try to get access more information.

I think Mr.

Chair is aware that many of us are asking a lot of questions about what this program is, but yes, um, that was the same information I received as well, and actually saw um where it was on a whiteboard of a meeting that folks uh community member community organizations attended where it said that OMP was part of this process, and so that's very concerning to find out that that you are all in the dark um about that particular program um and especially what it involves.

It could impact trust in us, right?

And to have our name on that blackboard without knowing anything about the program was really concerning.

Yeah.

Um, and I'll I'll just ask one more question, and I I know some of my colleagues are in the queue.

Um, can you talk to us a little bit about how diversion for youth has been revised?

Um, because we've had presentations from Denver Public Safety Youth Programs, who actually um, you know, does that work, has the diversion officers.

Um, and with that, you know, what has been the coordination and collaboration with the city attorney's office, specifically in the in the youth court um realm of things, so diversion diversion, how has it changed?

Because you meant kind of mentioned it's been revised.

I'm curious to hear that from y'all.

So when diversion presented to us maybe a couple weeks ago, um they came up with a bunch of different statistics to talk about how they are now making it more individualized to the youth.

So they meet with the youth, maybe with the parent, and they kind of do a conference between the diversion officer and the parent and the youth.

So they all like all three.

Um, so the idea is it's supposed to be more individualistic.

Um, so they talk about goals, they talk about things that impact the kid that they're going through that they would like assistance on.

Um, and so the program is supposed to be designed more around them.

Um the diversion time has gone down.

I think prior to diversion re-changing the program.

It used to be around 125, 140 days.

Now it's down to 93 days.

So youth is in diversion for about three months.

Um, that's the average amount of time.

I can tell you all that, you know, the community organizations I'm working with, I refer them a lot to diversion and try to make those connections so that diversion can work directly with those community organizations.

So that's the information that they've provided to me and to us, and kind of how they've redone the program to make it really more focused on the youth, um, instead of just I think prior, it was the community service and a course.

Now it's more individualized to an interest that a kid has.

So I know they're working with a lot of resume building for a lot of the 16, 17 year old clients.

Um they, you know, it's hard because they make it so unique.

So the 10, 11, 12-year-olds will get their own kind of individualized program.

Um, and those are usually very short.

They are not in diversion for more than a month when I speak with the diversion officers themselves.

Because that's a big thing for me.

Um, and then, you know, job building, career building for 16, 17-year-olds um working to try to get them into college or some other kind of work program.

So they're I think it's making progress.

They've just changed it about two months ago, so we're still kind of seeing the impact of those changes, um, so and just continue to monitor all of that, all of that that's going on.

That's great news.

And I know that at some point here, you know, when we did make that ordinance change, there was um a lot of collaboration with the city attorney's office.

Are you guys still seeing that level of collaboration?

Is there any issues or bumps in the road, I guess.

So there are, I would say, trying to think of the best way to say this.

There are regular conversations with the city attorney's office.

I meet with them regularly in one of our normal topics is sort of what's happening in the youth court.

Um, in terms of what we've been able to do with diversion, um, just being honest, the city attorneys have not really been a part of that conversation.

Um, we with sort of Collins' leadership have connected with a lot of community organizations and have connected those places directly with diversion, so the diversion sort of has this, you know, broad sort of variety of options to connect the youth with.

Great.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Chair.

Oh, sorry.

I'm sorry, thank you.

Um, Councilwoman Gonzalez, one of the issues that we have though is that they don't, they every week it's a different city attorney in the courtroom.

So that's been a real difficult because um you know we hired Colin because he he was an expert in youth representation.

Now we're just having uh a cycling through of city attorneys who do not have youth experience every other every week it's someone different.

So the ability to negotiate, the ability to mitigate, the ability to have discussions regarding competency restitution, dismissals is significantly impacted.

And I will say that the large percentage of city attorneys who are rotating through have no experience in youth court, they've never worked either at the state level in delinquency court or in the municipal level in youth court.

So they are true, it just depends.

Like one week, you know, the city attorneys are treating it like adult court.

The next week, maybe it's in between.

The following week, it's maybe more youth youth focused.

So I always bring this up because I know the judge and diversion and myself are all engaged together and we all work together, and the missing piece really is the city attorney, and it it's frustrating that they don't take it as seriously as the other players in the court in the courtroom.

Maybe they could follow the lead of our um DA's office, which did institute a natural juvenile division years ago.

Um that was actually headed up by Courtney Johnston.

I worked very closely with her on that.

And so that was um just made such a huge change because instead of having new DAs cycling through juvenile court um to get their feet wet, uh, it became a dedicated division that people who wanted to work with youth and work in that court were actually assigned to work there and work there as um like long-term, not just a pass-through.

So I think that it's great that um we're bringing that to light, and maybe there's some opportunity um to make some changes there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez, Councilmember Flynn, Parody, and Cashman.

Um, chair.

Um thank you for the presentation, Colin.

Um, after we heard from the uh youth speakers at general public comment, I arranged for a deep dive on on gain, and I hope that we bring them in here because I got a completely different picture.

Well, you already got it.

It's based on proactively went out and got it.

It's based on a very successful operation ceasefire that was developed in Boston in 1995.

It's been nationally recognized.

They're retooling the Denver program now because the results were not what they wanted.

They had very few participants, but they don't go out and and do a dragnet on on kids.

They they invite individuals who have already been involved in gun crime.

Either someone who has used a gun or someone who's been injured with a gun, someone who's been involved in a shooting, because statistics show that uh if you are a victim of gun violence, you are more likely to then use a gun later, and they're invited to participate.

So they had 200 or so individuals that they reached out to, and they had only like nine or 10 who actually went through the program.

The program involves identifying what are the causes.

Can we see that you can get food, healthy food?

Can we find housing?

Can we find mental health resources?

So it's a very positive intent.

They only had, like I said, out of a pool of 200 who were invited or reached out to.

But it had great results in Boston, and it's been modeled in several dozen cities since in the last 30 years.

So I hope, Mr.

Chair, we can have them come in and present here and get a view on what this is actually all about.

Uh it's significantly reduced gun violence in Boston in the 90s.

Um question and very quick, and and it's personal perhaps uh because of uh the closeness of people in my life, but on slide five, when you when you listed uh uh the various uh uh ordinance violations, uh, for domestic violence, you said low-level domestic violence.

That kind of made me cringe just a little bit.

So I'm wondering what is when is domestic violence stopped being low level that tell me what you meant by that.

And I apologize, um, Councilman Flynn.

I never mean to uh, I understand that.

Um what I meant by that is that when someone is arrested or the police, Denver Police Department is called to a scene, it could either be charged in municipal court or state court.

If there is if there is injury or bodily injury, that would be a case that would go up to the county court to district court, right?

But if it's a domestic violence, and I I that good to know.

I will not use that offensive before, but if there's been no uh injury, um it could be threats or just yelling at each other, or you someone threw something and it didn't hit the person.

Um, so it's uh I would um I'd have to think of a better word, but what the ordinance changed um a year ago.

We have very strong protections.

We have the Brady bill for you know, they you have to give up all your firearms.

There's a mandatory protection order that's put into place.

Um the victim witness advocates are very much involved with um the the victims that are taking out the charges.

They're a prize of every step along the way.

So we take these cases extraordinarily seriously.

But when I say lower level, it just means that there's um there's not the the injury factor.

I would say is probably the best, would that be the best way of saying?

Yeah, I would say we have a lot of cases that don't involve any kind of physical injury, and could involve like very low level, small, small amounts of property damage, or um a person could be charged with domestic violence, but the crime itself is just disturbing the peace because it's just like a loud argument, and the officer wasn't sure what else to charge.

So they charged disturbing the peace, and it's not any property damage or assault.

So we do see relatively lower level domestic violence incidents.

It's just that they are involving romantic partners.

Okay, thank you.

Claire, I understood that you weren't minimizing it at all.

You were just trying to draw a distinction, but language is at least.

Yeah, thank you.

And if you could connect me with someone from Gain, that would be greatly appreciated.

I'd love to learn more about it.

So thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilmore Flynn.

And since we we've spoken about gain a few times, um, I reached out to Dr.

Sanders, and um he will be providing uh briefings to council members.

We expect for them to come in November for presentation before this committee.

Um we're also having Dr.

Sanders come to the committee next week to discuss the changes with the Office of Children's Affairs and his as we are preparing um for the conclusion of our budget for 2026.

So uh next week's discussion will be one specific on gain because of timing.

Um, but the discussion in November will be a comprehensive discussion, including that, and so before that occurs, Colette, I will make sure that you are have a connection with Dr.

Sanders.

And I do think it if if your name or the name of your organization was used without um uh collaboration, that is not appropriate.

And so we'll have all of those discussions, but know that um we've been um I've been um leaning in from the moment of the public comment, and uh we'll provide uh opportunity publicly for council members to ask questions and then also have requested um briefings for all council members prior to that November meeting on that program and all the other questions council members may have about OSCI.

Councilmember Parity and then Council Member Cashman.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Chair, and thank you for having OMPD.

And it's I think it was belated, and so I'm just really grateful for the presentation because these guys do really good work.

Yes.

Um I will say super briefly that some of these attorneys I've known for a really long time, and they are really exceptional.

So I will double up on Collette's breaking.

Um in fact, there was a known phenomenon in the legal community where suddenly all these really amazing attorneys were going to OMPD.

We were all like, what happened?

And it was Colette that happened.

And she started just drawing in a lot of talent, and it was like noticed on the outside.

Um so my questions though are first of all, I just um that statistic that I think you guys had on a slide.

40% of municipal cases involve people experiencing homelessness.

It's just tragic.

Like that's a sign of systems failure across the board.

Um I don't think that's what any of us want, you know.

And so I just um I just hate that this is where we are.

Um, and I would be really curious to see that number broken out a little bit um by type of offense, because some offenses that people get convicted for are more or less a side effect of being homeless.

You know, it's hard to avoid trespass, it's hard to avoid, maybe not unavoidable, but you know, pretty much that's a crime of existing in public.

Um, we need to have open container laws, there's a good reason for those.

But of course, if you're existing in public and you don't have a private place to go and drink beverage, you're a lot more likely to be convicted of that and so on.

And then there's of course someone experiencing homelessness who's convicted of assault, and like we would probably want that to be prosecuted regardless, right?

Um so I think I would love to see that broken out a little bit more because I know they are really high levels of um things that we could properly call crimes of poverty, if you're able to do that.

Um then um, and if you know anything off the top of your head, please let me know.

But I think that's probably more of an ask for follow-up.

Um, and then I wanted to ask a little bit more about some of the statistics about who's being prosecuted for retail theft.

Um, we finally got the district aid in at large offices, finally got some statistics back from kind of an enforcement push along Quebec Street.

Um, and looking at that, um, if you look at Northfield arrest data, it's a large majority for shoplifting, a large majority female, 24% black, 38% Hispanic, 62% overall people of color, and then on Quebec Street, 25% black, 55% people of color, and on Quebec, almost half of the shoplifting arrests from 2025 are from Walmart alone.

Um, and so I'm wondering um if you all have seen like a how that shift in shoplifting enforcement has shown up in your offices, I guess.

Like what the if you're seeing a lot more retail theft prosecutions, um, and who it is that gets prosecuted for that kind of thing and what kinds of things they're stealing.

You spoke to that a little bit, but I'm just curious about it given that I just got these stats.

Someone once told me don't answer a question you don't know the answer to.

Um I'd have to look into it, quite frankly.

I mean, we have seen a lot of shoplifting cases, obviously.

The first part of the question, I think if you went around the room and said, like what's the most ridiculous shoplifting case, like a pickle, uh bag of marshmallows, you know, a muffin uh sweaters.

We get a lot of those, but the retail theft that you're talking about, I would have to look into the numbers I don't have.

Yeah, thanks for being specific and careful about that.

Um, but I am interested in the like some sort of like if you've seen a shift in the um value of what's being stolen that people are being prosecuted for or anything like that, um, with this kind of enforcement push.

Um so I think those are both follow-up questions.

I will keep it to two, even though the things that I'm just asking for, I'll get back in the queue if I can.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And then uh Council Member Cashman.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh Mr.

Chair, thank you, uh Colette, for your presentation.

Um Colette, as uh my colleague just said, is noticeable uh respect as an attorney, but the fact most people don't know that she's a jersey girl.

It brings it all to a high.

I know.

Thank you.

I didn't want that too though, and I appreciate it.

Um, I am I am so tired of Denver and Colorado talking about how important our children are, and doing nothing to back that up up until was it is it two years ago now?

Uh about July 2014.

Yeah.

Council finally passed a law uh before which kids with no dough would go into court by themselves.

Their parents couldn't go with them.

The uh uh OMPD was not uh tasked with defending them.

So we would send our kids, children, uh, before uh a prosecutor who would offer them a deal and smile at them and tell them it was a great idea for them and and they would sign.

So um it is great, obviously, that uh we've made that leap.

Uh I am a little concerned when I hear of just the lack of collaboration between CAO and OMPD, and uh I'm not quite sure how diversion at this point fits into the mix, but when uh the councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez and I were working with OMPD and all of the partners, it really became a kumbaya moment where everybody realized the importance of of what they're trying to get done, and I think it's really critical that especially the CAO takes a more focused um uh view on uh uh the importance of consistency and and and partnership in this.

And I I just couldn't be more, and there may be a question coming that maybe just be a comment.

Uh uh the question I was going to ask that actually came one of my aides texted me with was the did the uh closure of the aid center affect you and 100%.

You know, I hear from the administration these reasons why it's not gonna be a big deal, and every advocate for the for the for the unhoused community for people uh coming out of the justice system feel the exact opposite.

Couldn't be a better location on planet earth to serve that purpose for the Denver community.

So um, we need to we need to get serious about this as a community.

You know, we're in the midst of our budget discussions, and closing the aid center was part of the budget discussions, and uh uh it is a challenging time.

I'd like to make your work easier.

I'd like to make uh work of our police department easier.

Yeah, and we just don't seem to get uh how to do that.

So uh I I will just uh double everyone's compliments for the work you all do.

You've got an amazing team, keep up the good work.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Cashman, and thank you and Councilmember Gonzalez Guterres on that good work.

I think that was important.

Um, I had no idea, no clue that kids would walk into court without um representation.

Um I mean, it's scary itself walking into court, walking to this building is the accountability with our clear courtrooms, but to have uh a child walking in and not have representation.

So at the basis that Councilmember Cashman of caring for our children, um the idea that it took so long for that to actually even happen.

Um it's really your due diligence and that of Councilwoman Gonzalez Guterres, so thank you both and his counsel for um passing this.

And so um uh greatly appreciated, greatly needed.

Uh I and I'll say collat and team, um, I I visited the aid center as frequently as I can, even prior to um well since I've been a city council member and the uh the ways in which the aid center provided support for communities um is unique.

Um it is a great concern that that's no longer there.

I remember my first year, um, I think 12 um um judges sent uh me a letter um stating the importance of keeping uh the aid center, and I've kept those letters um from them and why um they so desperately wanted um for the aid center to continue to be funded.

And so um we're in a budget discussions, and so we're gonna continue looking at where our priorities are at and um what can um be done?

Um and so I have let me do you I had two questions and I just got lost in that.

Um the first um uh question uh my my ask would be for your office as we're looking at uh the work that you do and the supports that you provide to communities, especially uh communities that are unhoused.

What's the coordinated process even beyond Denver?

Now you're stretched.

I know you barely got time to deal with the stuff you're dealing with, but I'm curious is there a space in place where uh public defenders um uh gather, meet, speak on regional solutions for what we're seeing, because obviously the folks who are on unhoused aren't simply they they could care less what the boundary of Denver is and Adams and Jeff Cole, et cetera.

Is there a forum of a space or place in which the absolutely clear amazing work that you're doing is communicated broadly, maybe with a regional lens.

We have tried now in the last year to have more coordination with municipal defenders statewide, um, which means we there's only two municipal public defenders in the state of Colorado, us and Aurora.

Oh, okay.

Um we have a uh training coming up November 3rd, which is open to all uh lawyers that represent people in municipal courts.

So at these conferences, we share with our colleagues some of the work that we're doing, some of the issues that we're facing in Denver, but we are always able to if my greatest goal in life would be that this model would go flourish in the state of Colorado and go elsewhere.

I think it's we are one of the I don't know of another municipal public defender's office that has run like this, like holistically.

So I would share it with anyone that we could, but that's we are trying to be more coordinated.

And my second question, and I know Councilmember Torres uh uh put you in the queue, and then I believe uh Councilmember Perry was back into queue.

Um, we've had some changes with service providers for our um uh shelter uh programs.

Uh I think um public alchemy, I think is let me see if I sing the name correctly.

Urban Alchemy um is a new organization.

Um obviously Bayod is providing support as well.

I'm curious, um, have you had an introduction with those um organizations?

And if not, we maybe could try to facilitate that, obviously, as they're providing support on the 48th Um Street Corridor, and as well as uh some of the other former Salvation Army sites, um, it may be of support to your team.

So curious if you've had an introduction to them, and if not, um we have we have not.

Okay, so our team will make sure that those introductions occur.

Um, we're providing that support so that um any impacts on at those sites aren't just directly um, there aren't alternatives or options provided um uh that that because those those those uh service providers have no idea what your office does.

So we'll we'll make sure we do that connection and without trying to burden you with extra work.

Thank you.

All right, uh Councilmember Torres and then Councilmember Perry.

Uh thank you so much.

Um just thinking on the Aid Center conversation, it's only a few years old.

Um, and so what was utilized before 2022 when that was established, and was it established for the purpose that you benefited from, um, you know, at towards before its closure.

Ari because he um, Councilman Thomas, um, because he was working with lead and at the very beginning, so um, yeah, thank you for that question.

I think um prior to the aid center, you know, all of the resources that the aid center was providing existed before the aid center existed.

What the aid center did is they brought them all into one location, sort of a one-stop shop.

And so we have these programs, outreach court, the lead program, the wellness program that could access those resources, but they had to go and find them.

Um what the aid center did is it brought all those resources into one place, and then it started being able to pull in other resources that weren't so readily available.

You know, the DMV would come to the aid center periodically to help people get their ID or driver's license, things like that.

Um, and so really became sort of one-stop shop where people didn't have to just it made those resources so much more accessible because they were right there, and then on top of that, it added the things that Colette talked about.

Um, the lockers for people to store their belongings, kennels for them to keep their animals while they went to their court dates.

Things like that.

What's that?

Or social security and SSDI uh checks were sent to the aid center for instance.

People could receive their mail there.

If you don't, if you miss two, you lose your benefits.

Yeah, that was a huge thing for our clients too.

Yeah.

Okay, super helpful in understanding that.

Um the other thing that I'm curious about, because I was in on the city side in human rights and community partnerships 2017 when we changed the municipal sentencing structure back then.

Um it's it definitely sounds like it's due for that kind of um whole cloth review.

Um, and uh just with uh new city attorney on board, hopefully she she can see the value in doing that.

It was done relatively quickly in 2017, um, and we were really only responding to the 365 kind of pressure date, right?

Um, and so other things I think coming to light, particularly um the example you gave of um a dog bite um being criminal and should be civil.

Um, I that probably feels like um like an overall process that needs to be uh done by almost like a task force or a team to review our current municipal sentencing structure.

Um we've done it before we can do it again.

So just hopeful that uh that might be something that could be teed up.

Thank you very much, uh councilwoman, and we are very excited to say that we would jump on that.

Rachel's been looking at the ordinance.

If you read the ordinance, sometimes you'd be shocked at some of the totally.

Some of these things have been written like in a different era almost, right?

You tear a page out of a public library book.

Um, but but the the cases that we see on a regular basis, we really need to look at the sentencing structure.

So we are ready to go.

Yeah, I think we I know I do.

Um we'll see their commentary on our social media posts when we talk about criminal justice reform or in-person from constituents who really still feel that um penalty or um threat of penalty is the change that's needed to change behavior um or uh culture patterns or whatever they might see.

And I think it is that like top-down, um, just put them in jail for 90 days and that'll solve their substance use or right, all of these things, and especially with the cost that you brought there of what was it, 1970-day jail bed?

It's probably more now.

That was a couple years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised.

It's double what it costs to house someone in a microcommunity, yes, right?

Like there, there are things like that where um we talk about it in really theoretical terms about what changes individual patterns of behavior and what are the um better options, but it's why we as a city many years ago did like the social impact bond philosophy that investing early actually saves money at the end.

And I think we've just it it's just kind of um branched off quite a bit from why did we consider that as a core philosophy in the city in the first place um because it actually is better um but you know I just thank you for continuing to bring these things to light and um just hope I can be helpful and council continue to be helpful in some of the solutions.

I would thank you so much.

I really I've said this so many times in so many meetings I'd like a seat that we'd like a seat at the table we intimately know what goes on in municipal court.

I didn't know about a lot of these things that happened and it was a shock to hear about you know budget aid center um cuts to you know programs and stuff and I wish that someone had picked up the phone or asked me to come to the table or someone because we really have a lot of institutional knowledge about what's going on on the ground.

So any time we can help we would love to be there.

Okay thank you.

Thanks Mr.

Chairman thank you Councilmember Torres and uh councilmember Perry.

Yeah so I wanted to take a step back actually to the Quebec task first because I realized when I was asking about the statistics um I know there's been a task force convened to um address an uptick in choplifting on the Quebec corridor um and there were conversations about adding the public defender's office to that have you all been added to that task force no okay have you been engaged about it or asked about it or given information brief conversations I know that Mr.

Hoffman and I we've talked about it but yeah okay so I'm aware of it but okay yeah I I continue to think that it would make a lot of sense for you all to have a seat on that obviously because people get arrested they show up in your offices right so it just seems like if there's a a goal towards some genuine prevention that you would be good partners so I'll I guess continue to advocate for that um to be honest I'm surprised change didn't occur um so so I apologize that I was asking kind of out of context questions then about statistics from that um and then can you return to the um animal offenses topic that you raised at the beginning and tell us a little bit more about like what is in our code what people get prosecuted for and what if any changes you might recommend to that we've talked about a little but it's been a while so um yeah a lot of our um we have a pretty steady flow of clients that are charged with charged criminally for things like um their dog is off a leash particularly if some kind of animal bite occurs their dog um bites another dog their dog bites a person um because they were off a leash um and those are criminal offenses and people are facing potential jail time um for things like that yeah I guess I would just say there are a variety I would say of very regulatory feeling animal offenses that are crimes in the city of Denver punishable by up to 300 days of jail that would include having your dog off leash not getting a rabies violation of vaccination um not spaying or neutering your dog um any amount of neglect of an animal even if it's a grooving service that you can't afford to pay for that's a crime in the city of Denver punished by jail so there's I think a range of things that could be some of them could have lower penalties some of them could be decriminalized.

I know frequently when these cases go to a jury trial the juries are surprised that they're having a criminal jury trial about something like was the dog on or off leash and did you get your rabies vaccination and they're saying it's not that I don't think it's important to enforce these things it just feels like this is more like a regulatory situation of how do we do animal control in the city versus throwing people in jail.

Okay there's also this like weird kind of strict liability so your friend takes your dog two dogs out for a walk you're not anywhere near and the dogs bite someone the owner gets charged so they have no idea of any of this happening didn't he probably not even said take my dog for a walk so the way that the ordinances are written is it really needs to be revised.

Okay.

Yeah, thank you for that.

And I know we have some like material on that from your office that um, I mean, there are, I think, a lot of things about our total code that need to be revised, and I think everybody here has already been briefed on some of the um sentencing changes that um a few council members are working on and co-sponsoring, but that is also high on my personal mental list.

So thanks for bringing it back up.

Um, okay.

I wanted to also go back to the game program and just ask, I would love for the public defender's office to get briefed on this and be able to um kind of dig in on it.

Um, Councilmember Flynn, for what it's worth.

I remember reading um the book that um I David Kennedy, who came up with Operation Ceasefire wrote a long time ago, um, and it was sort of touted at the time as a really promising approach, and it has gone well in some cities.

It has gone really badly in a few places like Baltimore, and I think one of the things that's been a hinge point for success or failure has been community buy-in.

So I'm worried that we're not getting off on the great foot with that, and that's kind of the secret sauce.

So I just would ask council members.

I think we all should be getting briefed.

I'm glad they're coming to committee, and I hope that we will all ask some pretty pointed questions about um the community engagement piece.

I also um what community groups had presented to them was that there were 3,500 youth already on the list, and that those were definitely not all kids who have been convicted of a crime or been a victim of gun crime because there aren't that many kids that are a victim of gun crime in a given time, so there's a disconnect there too, and I just think we need to keep doing what we're doing, which is sort of being investigative and pushing on it because I'm uh I think it's one of those devils in the details kind of things, um, to so we don't end up on the list of cities where it didn't go well, um, ended up on the list of cities where you know something positive happened.

So that is more of a comment, but since we since we brought it up.

Um do you mind if I ask one more question or do you are the people back in queue?

No, I think you're fine.

Okay, I don't want to filibuster, but we have time.

So um, sorry, let me scroll up here and find my notes.

Um, I wanted to ask about um we I think are gonna be seeing a renewal of the axon contract soon.

Um, and I just got wind that there's been a change in Axon access for your office.

Can you talk about that?

Yes.

Um starting in June of 2019, um, we'd be we we had a uh a contract with Axon and we were getting um Axon access.

We got licenses so that when the uh the DPD would send the body warn camera discovery to the city attorney's office, the city attorney's office would send us the link on that case to Axon, and then a separate link to upload the files.

Is that right?

I'm gonna say this correctly.

So yeah, so uh originally when we originally had a contract with Axon, we basically the city attorney would share the case with us, and that what that would do is that would send our office a link.

That link would enable us to full access to the case file in Axon.

Um there's a lot of functionality within Axon that we would then have access to along with the city attorney.

So, for example, let's say you have a case where there's multiple body warrant cameras within Axon that would enable us to sync those videos together.

Watch multiple videos that are synced in time together.

It would give us GPS information for the body cam as the video is playing, showing us the movement of the body cam.

Um, it would provide us a table of contents showing us who had uploaded the body cam, how long the videos were a lot of sort of metadata related to the videos.

Um in July of 2024.

Sorry.

Um so we would get that first link where the case file is shared with us.

That would enable us to go in, select which videos we wanted to download, which is typically all of them.

We would then get a second link from Axon that would initiate the download.

Um in July of 2024, the city attorney's office changed the way they were providing that to us.

They stopped sharing the case file with us.

All we were receiving was a link to download the videos out of Axon.

We no longer have, and since then, we do not have access to the case file in Axon.

So if we were to even log into Axon today and search for a current case file, we would not get any result.

We cannot even see the case in Axon.

So we do not we no longer have access to any of the functionality of Axon, um, despite the fact that we are still have a contract with Axon and are still paying Axon for access to that.

Um we don't have that access anymore.

I would add that this a lot of this came also further to life because we were trying to renegotiate our contract with Axon, and the representative was giving me a gave us a beautiful demonstration about all of the, you know, generation three, four, which now DPD is on generation four, what the capabilities are, what is all you know, even if you press a button, you get the transcription.

We have a lot of Spanish to English.

It would be fantastic.

So I was very excited about it.

But then when I started speaking to the lawyers with Aries, like we would we can't even do that because we don't have Axon access anymore.

I I met with, so I met with Axon.

He was the the rep was very surprised that we didn't have the same axon access.

Um I met with Commander Barnes, he came to our office last week, and he was very surprised that we didn't have the same access.

It's a real it's it's really an issue because we have we're getting the discovery in a different way than DPD has it, and the city attorney's office have it has it.

So for five years we had full access, and then it was just cut off without notice.

So I'm trying, I've sent out an email yesterday to to have a stakeholder meeting with, and you know, Commander Barnes would is willing to participate in Axon.

So I'm I sent out the email to the city attorney's office as well, so we can all sit at the same table and have a meeting about having that access brought back to us.

I think it makes, by the way, it makes it much easier for everyone for the city attorney's office.

They don't have to download all the the body warrants and then upload it into evidence.com, and then we don't have to download it all and keep track of it.

There's a lot of multiple body warrants come keep coming into our office because of the way it's given to us.

I think the city attorney's office would benefit, and we certainly would benefit from the ease of being able to access Axon.

Okay, thank you for that, and for making us aware of it.

Yeah, um, that's all I want to ask about, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Councilmember Parody.

Um, thank you, Colette and your team, uh, for all the work that you that you do.

A lot was brought up today, and know that um whether there was a direct response or not, there'll be uh a follow-up on each of those items um that you and your team has brought forward to this committee.

We're gonna thank each of you in the audience as well for all of the work that you do in the ways that you serve our communities and look forward to on a more robust um cadence, Colette, to have your team come before this committee um to and through um next year.

So thank you all.

And with that, we have four items in consent since they've not been pulled off on this meeting's adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.