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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes 03-27-2008 PUBLIC SAFETY COORDINATING COUNCIL Minutes of Meeting March 27, 2008 Convened: 3:35 p.m. Adjourned: 4:45 p.m. CALL TO ORDER Commissioner Craft called the meeting to order at 3:35 p.m. in Conference Room # 3, 2300 Virginia Avenue, Fort Pierce, Florida. ROLL CALL Roll call was taken. Members Present: Commissioner Chris Craft th Tom Genung for Chief Judge Roby, 19 Circuit Ken Mascara, Sheriff of SLC Major Pat Tighe, SLC Sheriff’s Office Suzanne Caudell for Peggy Cioffi, CORE Program Mitch Hilburn for Janet Collins, SLC Bail Bond Association th Judge Philip J. Yacucci, 19 Circuit Bruce Colton, State Attorney Members Absent: Diamond Litty, Public Defender Thomas Mark, Department of Corrections John Romano, New Horizons of the Treasure Coast Others Present: Mark Godwin, SLC Criminal Justice Coordinator Broderick Underwood, SLC Information Technology Department Lisa Savage, SLC Pretrial Program Manager Ed Fry, SLC Clerk of Circuit Courts Gary Wilson, SLC Sheriff’s Office Kevin Housel, DJJ – Detention Dan Rodgers, DJJ – CPO Candice Coghin, HSA – St. Lucie JAC Jim Reeder, Palm Beach Post Ethel Rowland, Taxpayer Eva O’Donnell, Aide to Commissioner Craft Eva Bryant, SLC Drug Lab Sara Agrait, Ft. Pierce Police Department Public Safety Coordinating Council March 27, 2008 Page 2 APPROVAL OF MINUTES: The minutes from the February 28, 2008 meeting were unanimously approved. OLD BUSINESS: th Correction was made to the incorrect dollar amount stated in the February 28 minutes. Amount stated in the minutes was $15,000,000 and the correct amount is $50,000,000. Minutes were changed to the correct amount and the minutes were accepted as amended. UPDATE by CRIMINAL JUSTICE COORDINATOR-MARK GODWIN: Mr. Godwin said next month we will use the smartboard for the jail statistics. Copies will be provided for those who wish to have a copy. Mark went over the graphs that Mr. Underwood created. Commissioner Craft would like Mr. Underwood with the help of Major Tighe to find out the categories for the employment rate that is down in the summer. The specific categories and we may be able to find a way to implement some sort of a program on a county level where we could find some work in the summer for those three months down time. Mr. Godwin said Mr. Underwood added a new item which we call the Clearance Rate. Where we see the number of cases coming into the system and we see the number of cases leaving the system and you can see the rate that it takes place. February was 77%. 77% of the cases coming in were leaving at the same time. More cases are closing within the 180 days. Lisa Savage, SLC Pretrial Program Manager, gave update on the Pretrial Program. About 50 on GPS, about 20-25 that have not been released, 2 cases from Mental Health Court, am concerned a bit concerned about that, they are pending evaluation. Judge Yacucci said he spoke with Lisa earlier stating he has concerns about her program getting stretched beyond what the purpose of the program was with the pretrial. I’m not saying that you can’t handle it but I’m saying the more you are obligated to handle the more you are stretched the more your people are going to be stretched really beyond what the purpose initially the program was. You are going lose people and you will be involved in a situation. It wasn’t the purpose of why the program was set up so I just think you ought to be aware at this time when these judges are calling you can say “no”. You don’t have to accept everybody in the program if it is not a traditional pretrial situation. Ms. Savage stated there is a particular judge right now that I did send back a progress report and I copied all parties indicating concerns of us taking cases outside of our jurisdiction and different things like that. For instance in this situation the judge said I don’t want to talk to you do not bring your report. Public Safety Coordinating Council March 27, 2008 Page 3 Judge Yacucci said it came up this week when I was doing First Appearances. We had someone who violated a community control on a felony. There was that situation and then Kevin from your office was there saying well he also violated an order we have and I didn’t understand how he could possible have an order on somebody who had been sentenced. You should have been out of it. That is the kind of situation I don’t think you all should be devoting your resources to. I think it should be more traditional pretrial. That is what we wanted to set it up for and I think that is where we ought to keep it. Mr. Genung said if I may comment as well, I’m not sure if this group feels the Administrative Order that was written not for Mark’s group but the prior pretrial program, if that order needs to be updated. I know at one time we talked about that. I know there was a brief update basically substituting Mark’s program with the prior program. It maybe important for this committee to take a look at the Administrative Order again. Mr. Godwin said he would like to write the judges currently on the bench. Attach the Administrative Order and remind them of the purpose of the pretrial program. Mr. Godwin said this past Tuesday board approved the startup of our SLC Drug Screen Lab which will be located downtown at the Courthouse. It will be opened to the outside. We will be testing all county employees. Testing parameters is certified by the national standard and we will be running 9 panel tests. We will reach out to the school system we will have the capability of testing for steroids. Mark introduced Eva Bryant who will be in charge of the drug lab. Eva thanked everyone for supporting the drug lab. Mark said the drug lab will not cost any tax dollars, it will be self supporting. Mr. Godwin is going to Orlando on Monday regarding the shared cost for the DJJ and how those costs are sent back to the county. Mr. Godwin received an email indicating that there has been some tragic events yesterday afternoon from Candance and I received a phone call from Dan this afternoon. The state dollars that contribute to help this program is going away. Commissioner Craft asked Mark if he could ask someone from the council to make a recommendation we have a resolution passed by the BOCC asking State to reconsider that and the resolution include the data that supports having officers out of the field as oppose to sitting there waiting for paperwork to be booked. Mr. Godwin said certainly. Commissioner Craft asked if someone would like to make a motion as such to the board. Motion forwarded by Sheriff Ken Mascara. Motion seconded by Judge Yacucci. All was in favor. Dan Rodgers spoke on the current fiscal year shortfall for Detention Screening Contract and JAC Administration Fund that comes from the DJJ. HSA there is about a 5.1% reduction in JAC funding that needs to take place from 4/1/08 to 6/30/08 and then there is a corresponding reduction that Public Safety Coordinating Council March 27, 2008 Page 4 goes into the new fiscal year. Effective April 1, 2008 HSA is bailing on Detention Screen Contract and the JAC Administration Contract. The issues for detention screening will fall back on my staff. Yesterday afternoon there were ten juvenile assessment centers that the Senate Criminal and Justice Committee had determined were going to close completely beginning July 1, 2008. Again, St. Lucie was on that list. By 9:30 last night they had reconsidered what they had done and decided to fund some of those JAC’s with non-recurring dollars and then some other significant small reduction. HSA has a mandate to save some money because the money from the department is clearly not going to come and so their decision this morning in consultations with the assistant secretary for probation and community intervention was they would completely close the St. Lucie Juvenile Assessment Center and then they are going to cancel the JAC Administration Contract down at West Palm Beach. Mr. Godwin said he would like to point out because the County along with the cities of Ft. Pierce and Port St. Lucie contribute to the JAC funding which is about $76,000 each entity along with the filing fees. I know that we are wondering how the budget is going to fall for next year. Are the cities going to be able to fund that. Gary Wilson said you have to understand the magnitude what this is going to mean. The County has some extra money that we rolled into this 2 or 3 years ago so we could cut down on the amount of time that is wasted by law enforcement having to sit and baby sit these individuals and JAC completely relieved us of that responsibility. Commissioner Craft – that is from all 3 agencies? st Gary Wilson said “no”. The County did it the 1 year with the understanding that if it worked the cities would pony up. Commissioner Craft – what I am saying all 3 agencies benefit from JAC. Gary Wilson – absolutely. This is going to have a huge impact on our ability and for Major Tighe having to run juveniles back thru the booking process the SLC jail literally shuts down our operation while that has to happen and with our rising numbers it is going to jam everything up. Commissioner Craft said we need to find a way to have our delegation Senator Pruitt (inaudible) everybody from the Senate and the House have them all sit thru a meeting. They are our Representatives. They represent us they are suppose to be hearing our concerns so we should send them an invitation for next month and if we need to schedule for a Saturday I for one am happy to come in on a Saturday if that would help them attend. Major Tighe said the Sheriff is a Chief Correctional Officer and I operate the jail. We operate a pretrial adult jail and (indiscernible – voice low) sometimes too prior 2004 they were processing the 2 juveniles at the jail. There is a question of legality of bringing juveniles to (2 people talking). We do have 24 juveniles plus at the jail but they are not classified as juveniles they have been adjudicated as adults. That causes a problem you see the booking numbers for a month 1300, 1350. If an officer does come thru with a juvenile we have to actually shut booking down move the Public Safety Coordinating Council March 27, 2008 Page 5 adults out process the juveniles get him or her out and then move the adults back. If you can imagine the releases stop the booking stop it’s just a mess. Commissioner Craft said we’ll get thru the next couple months. We got to put together a long term plan. I agree, you have my support on that. Mr. Godwin introduced Sara Agrait who started 6 months ago as the new grant representative from the Ft. Pierce Police Department. JUDICIAL UPDATE: Mr. Genung said court leadership has been working very hard in Tallahassee trying to keep the court from suffering a 10% cut on top of the 6% we were hit with this year. Looks like they were successful. Sheriff Mascara asked what will be the status of the Magistrates. Mr. Genung answered we won’t know what’s really going to be affected until some of the dust settles (inaudible) something called a Trial Court Budget Commission that basically says these are the area that we are going to have to pull all the money from. NEW BUSINESS: Commissioner Craft asked for a recommendation from the board on this issue. I spent most of yesterday with the Chief of Staff from Congressman Hastings office and Congressman Hastings is sponsoring a bill on a federal level where it would require that Medicaid and Medicare stay in place when people go into jail so we are not getting hit those cost on a county level. I’d like to ask for a recommendation from this board for a resolution from the county supporting the item. Major Tighe said there is a bill going through the state for the same thing. Motion was forwarded, motion was second, all was in favor. CRIMINAL TAFFIC: Mark said the capability of the data we presented earlier the circuit criminal can read down and break down case type by each judge and the circuit criminal level we can have a circuit judge look at their case list on the computer everyday and see and prioritize who’s in our county jail, how long they been in jail, when the next court event is going to be and identify the (inaudible). It also gives us the capability of identifying individuals that circuit court judge ROR’s somebody it can cross reference to the jails database and make sure they are not still there. We are also working on the capability to give Major Tighe a notification instead of having staff go through the court dockets and classification on a daily basis. We have been working on getting the data at the county criminal misdemeanor criminal traffic level. In the near future judge you will be able to Public Safety Coordinating Council March 27, 2008 Page 6 click in your case list and identify who’s in jail on your case list, how many cases you have, what the next court event is going to be. The most important thing if somebody is ROR in the court it will cross reference to make sure that has actually occurred at the jail. The misdemeanor data will provide the same thing and the same tracking. We’d like to expand it out even the next level. If Judge Yacucci wants to take a look at the misdemeanor cases that he’s ordered, to do community service work for say in the last month we can do a query and find out how many hours were ordered by judge over the last year. Major Tighe said the data lines have been in place for 1 to 1½ years. We’ve had many meetings with our IT staff. The jail has been downloading information and putting it on the server for about 18 months. The Clerks Office has been receiving this. The State Attorney has been receiving it. The jail has never been able to date to get uploads. We still deal with paper. Commissioner Craft asked how do we fix that? Mr. Godwin said Mr. Fry that would be an IT Staff. Commissioner Craft said he is not getting the information he needs and I want him to get the information he needs. Who do we have to put in the room to make it happen? Mark add this to the Agenda next month. Sheriff Mascara explained the 2 carnival workers arrest at the fairgrounds. He also stated going back through last month’s minutes Bob Bozzone gave an eloquent presentation concerning the CARP. I noticed in last week’s newspaper his application he withdrew it. I think this council is missing maybe an opportunity that places like this should maybe be encouraged to go toward the Rock Road area and the reason being is that campus there we do have industrial land there as well as the county has property and my feeling was that if in fact this CARP is successful and needs to expand there is room there plus God forbid if anything happens on their campus we would have the manpower to respond accordingly. So just a thought I wanted to share with the Council here. Commissioner Craft said thank you sir I appreciate that. That’s definitely a need (inaudible 2 people talking). Sheriff Mascara said there’s no doubt we need it. Commissioner Craft said the funny thing was that was on the same night that went to the Planning and Zoning they approved the bar and denied CARP. Public Safety Coordinating Council March 27, 2008 Page 7 ADJOURNMENT: Commissioner Craft adjourned the meeting at 4:45 p.m. Submitted by, Carol Strobert THE NEXT MEETING WILL BE HELD April 24, 2008