Calling the public safety committee to order.

Roll call, please.

Vice Chair Coleman.

Here.

Johnson.

Jost.

Here.

Kim.

Yang.

Here.

Chair Bowie.

Here.

Five present to absent.

Johnson and Kim arriving later.

Wonderful.

Congratulations, Pierre.

Can we give it up to our LA?

Thank you so much.

Uh, so welcome everyone.

Um, as we have our public safety committee here, I just wanted to share that our theme for today is centered around community safety and innovative approaches to community violence prevention.

We have on the agenda, you see this through three items, but we're gonna actually withdraw the non-fatal shooting units and reschedule that for our next public safety uh committee meetings, just so we can have more time.

As you understand, this is a very unique uh meeting.

Um, as we're starting at one PM and have a shorter time frame.

Um, and you know, even after the the policy committee retreat, just want to say thank you to all of the council members and department heads and our citizen mayors who really have been very collaborative, um, but getting some topics on the agenda.

We actually have more agenda items than we actually have time slots, uh, which is a good problem to have.

So um, and uh, so we will have the two items on the agenda today, so we get a chance to dive a little deeper.

Um, this is also a really good segue into or from our budget committee meeting where we talked about the special funds and um some of our programs that are solely reliant on grant funding and um special revenue, or excuse me, um, opioid settlement funds and how we are best using those one time funds effectively to stabilize our community.

So moving on into the agenda, let's get straight into it.

So I'm gonna just have Pierre read the first agenda item.

Item number one, SR 2681.

National Network for Safe Communities, community safety innovations, gun violence intervention, and a public health approach.

Welcome.

I would like to invite Sasha Cotton to come forward.

Um I don't want to take the thunder from her introduction, uh, but Sasha Cotton is a nationally recognized expert in public safety and community violence prevention, um, and has been a thought leader and consultant with the the city of St.

Paul and also have led you know some violence prevention efforts or was the leader of the violence prevention efforts in the city of Minneapolis.

So we're just so happy to have you here.

And also Sasha is a St.

Paul light in the Central Grad.

Whoop, whoops.

You're in good company, um, Sasha.

Um, I know uh myself and counsel, President Naker and Councilmember Coleman had a primer um presentation last year at the Rondo Community Library.

So I just really is excited to bring you back before us as we're looking into how we're gonna utilize some of our opioid response funds and our special funds as well.

Well, thank you for the invitation, Councilmember Bowie, Council Chair Bowie, and to the council.

We appreciate we, as in the national network, appreciate the opportunity to be here and the ongoing partnership that we've been able to have with the Office of Neighborhood Safety and the City at Large during the previous administration and continued thought partnership here with the new administration.

So thank you for the time.

As stated before, I'm Sasha Cotton, the executive director at the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College, which is in New York City.

We are a national think tank and technical assistance provider focused on the intersections of community violence and partnerships between law enforcement, community government at large, and community violence interventionist.

And what that all really boils down to mean is how do we innovate public safety to meet the needs of communities today?

We work in about 35 US cities as well as about 10 cities abroad at any given time, and we are most known for our strategy referred to as the group violence intervention, our focus deterrence.

But today I've been asked to talk a little bit more broadly about what we think when we mean a public health approach to violence prevention.

And oftentimes when people hear public health, they think that means to the detriment of general public safety, and really what it is intended to be is a bigger umbrella that includes all of the things we think about when we hear public safety as well as some of the things that we don't, like health care, schools, parks, recs, community centers, et cetera.

So I'm gonna jump in, happy to take questions as they come up or at the end.

And again, thank you for the time.

So public health approach and a formal definition.

Again, what does it mean when we say public health?

And really what that draws down to is one, how do we define the problem?

Um, what are is it that we're addressing in you know, our instance, it's usually violence, identifying the risk and protective factors.

I'll get into a little bit more of a specific discussion about what we mean when we say risk and protective factors, but this is an essential part of a public health approach.

Developing and testing prevention strategies, so identifying what works, testing them to see if they're effective, and then assuring widespread adoption.

All of us have really become experts on the public health approach through the COVID uh experience that we had just a few years ago.