Good

evening, everyone.

I want to call to order the public work session for Monday, August 24th.

Want to acknowledge our city staff that is here, our invited guest citizens of the city of Bordsman.

Thank you all for participating.

And I'll ask Deborah to call the role, and then we can turn it over to you, sir, so that uh everyone on the commission can introduce themselves as well.

Yes, sir.

Now I'll turn it over to Chair Cullen if you would call the roar and house everyone who

thank you very much, Mr.

Mayor, and uh good evening and and uh thank you to the uh members of the city council for meeting with us.

It's been a year um since we've had an opportunity to have a joint session, so there have been some changes to the crime and gun violence uh prevention commission, and I'm just gonna round us with introductions because we do have some new people who are on board, and I will start with uh Commissioner Ray.

Sarah Ray.

And just a little bit pleased about your background because there may be some people who don't know your background and what it is that you do.

We bring it to this commission.

I have about 20 years of experience working in the juvenile justice arena um and working with foster care youth in multiple states.

Thank you, Dr.

McDonald.

Hi, I'm Dr.

McDonnell.

My background is corrections, criminal justice, and I also work with veterans, and I do outpatient therapy with tiny to up to older people.

Eugene Swanson, uh co-founder, big homies in the city of Portsmouth.

Tell us what they do, uh violence intervention and prevention, uh job programs, out of school programs, and we pretty much target those neighborhoods as what high crime

or

high gang influence

per second.

Thank you.

And uh not with this yet, but hopefully we'll be with this is uh Commissioner Hartjee, who is a uh retired uh 20-year paramedic and uh emergency services uh lieutenant um and we'll go to Commissioner Sesams.

Hello, everyone, my name is Latisius.

I am well, my focus is on mental health.

I'm a life professional counselor.

Um I am all things wellness and all things community.

Thank you.

And Commissioner Cullen, if I may ask, and everyone as we speak, if we could turn up the volume in our voices a little bit.

Gotcha.

Um Madam Clerk uh uh made that request so that everyone can be heard as we videotape uh will be able to hear what everyone is saying.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh so my name is James Cullen.

I'm the chair of the uh crime and gun violence commission.

I am a uh retired 30-year uh police administrator from New Jersey.

I'm a retired 27-year uh Coast Guard law enforcement officer and federal police chief, and I served for many years uh as an advisor to police departments throughout the Northeast, Chicago and uh Philadelphia on their operations and on uh municipal operations uh as a uh uh contracted counselor.

Uh I'm on several other boards and commissions here in the city, and I'm now happily retired, and this is what I do.

Um so thank you again for having us here.

I appreciate it.

And um, we have had some changes as I discussed, and starting in uh December of last year, we elected a new chair and a new uh vice chair.

And the first thing that we did was uh do some expectation resetting and and say who are we and what are we here to do?

And the first thing uh that we did in our first meeting was to crush the term uh gun violence task force, because in a city like Portsmouth, a military city task force has certain connotations, and that was never our official name, but it had gotten out there.

Task force usually means that you're going to go charging into a situation and and you are the ones that are going to be doing the actions, uh and we reset to to what we are, which is the crime and gun violence prevention commission, and what we are here to do is to make recommendations to city council.

That is our our function, that's what we're statutorily aligned to do under uh city code two section pardon my glasses 848 of the of the city code.

So we decided amongst the group um that the first thing we were going to do going into the new year was make a recommendation, and the first recommendation that we came up

with

was realignment of the parking authority enforcement efforts into

the

police department, and that may seem like a strange thing for a crime and gun violence commission to be doing.

Why would you be making recommendations about the parking authority?

But the importance of having a uniformed law enforcement presence on the streets.

Um can't be understated, can't be overstated, I should

say.

And currently what we have is parking enforcement officials who are civilians are confining their efforts only to or what we've had prior to now, confining their efforts entirely to uh the old town parking district and not expanding into other sections of the city.

So we uh made the decision to make the recommendation that this function be turned over to the police department, that the police department activate these civilians and instead turn them into at least special conservators of the peace, which puts them in uniforms, puts badges on their chests, puts them in marked cars, and lets them expand into the South Side Parking District where there's currently nothing going on.