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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes 04-24-2008 PUBLIC SAFETY COORDINATING COUNCIL Minutes of Meeting April 24, 2008 Convened: 3:35 p.m. Adjourned: 4:50 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 Becky Bleyman for Suzanne Caudell, CORE Program Janet Collins, SLC Bail Bond Association th Judge Philip J. Yacucci, 19 Circuit Bruce Colton, State Attorney Thomas Mark, Department of Corrections John Romano, New Horizons of the Treasure Coast Members Absent: Diamond Litty, Public Defender Others Present: Mark Godwin, SLC Criminal Justice Coordinator Commissioner Grande, SLC District 4 Broderick Underwood, SLC Information Technology Department Lisa Savage, SLC Pretrial Program Manager Ed Fry, SLC Clerk of Circuit Courts Dan Rodgers, DJJ – CPO Ethel Rowland, Taxpayer Eva Bryant, SLC Drug Lab Marc Traum – Court Administration Phil Brodeur, State Attorney’s Office Michael Monahan, SLC Sheriff’s Office Chris Harris, Magellan Health Services of Florida Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 2 APPROVAL OF MINUTES: The minutes from the March 27, 2008 meeting were unanimously approved. UPDATE by CRIMINAL JUSTICE COORDINATOR-MARK GODWIN: Mr. Godwin spoke on the events that have taken place with the Pretrial/GPS Program that the County now has since it has been running now for 9 months. We’ve calculated the bed days that have been saved in the potential cost share. Just potential cost is what we looked at and we are looking at $1,598,870 in potential cost. If you look at the number of inmates that would have been in your facility and we are looking at $70.00 per day because that averages those individuals that are just general population and including mental health. Ms. Savage said some of the things other than Pretrial that recently we been involved in, again a minimal amount, Mental Health Court. We have gotten more involved in the VOP. We’ve had good relationship with both those offices sharing drug testing information. Just under 50 on GPS. Mr. Godwin said working on finalizing the contract for the drug lab. Mr. Godwin said a press release just hit his inbox. Former Attorney General Bob Butterworth is going to be coming to St. Lucie County to the Mental Health Court celebrating the graduation on th May 13 at 2:00 PM. Mr. Godwin said as far as the Juvenile Assessment Center, Mr. Dan Rodgers who is the Chief Probation Officer is here. As everyone has been reading the papers on what has been going on with the JAC Center and the funding from the state. We all know within SLC the 2 cities and the county, have been funding the operation and the way I look at it, it is a 24 hour operation so the state was funding 12 hours and the county and the cities funded the other 12 hours to keep the operation going for 24/7 for not only your misdemeanor and felonies, runaways and truants so Mr. Rodgers is here to give us a report. Mr. Rodgers said it seems as if the Senate has heard our pleas for funding. Last night around 9:15 PM the Assistant Secretary sent an email to the Chief Probation Officer saying that the Senate had won the battle that no Juvenile Assessment Center will be closing even the low capacity ones will not. They shifted 3.1 million dollars from recurring funds to non-recurring and took a $392,000 overall reduction. JAC used to be funded at 3.5 they are going to be funded at 3.1 with those non-recurring dollars. What that means for us is that our JAC will be able to continue to operate. Our contract with HAS is up on June 30, 2008. They are at the end of their 3 year period of time. We have the option to extend that. We have the option to put an invitation to negotiate out. Secretary Olsen told me that we would go ahead because of the late date go with the th contract extension with HAS to take us through September 30 which would be consistent with that sum of money that the County Commission approved for us to keep the JAC up and running. Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 3 Mr. Godwin talked about data that Mr. Underwood put together. Planning to have information placed on our web site. Right now our web site is an internal web site on our intranet. The last cell is the unemployment data. Last month there has been an increase in the number of people unemployed to 6.6%. Mr. Underwood gets the data from the jail on a daily basis and the data that we have is a 15 page report that identifies every inmate that has been brought in. What we thth did is take a look at April 14. On April 14 this is a snapshot of everybody in the jail as to whether they are working or not working. On that day they had 1586 inmates in custody. We didn’t have time to break down how many in the construction field, the service industry, retail, agriculture. We did take a quick look and just to let you know out of your population of 1586, 791 at the time they were arrested were unemployed and that’s why tomorrow we are having a meeting on re-entry. The president did sign the Second Chance Act. I believe is nationwide. $300,000,000 that will help re-establish individuals that are being released from not only county jails but also state prison. Mr. Godwin talked about the data sheet he handed out. The County pays for the data lines and a lot of software was purchased in order to get all the data bases talking together. Major Tighe needs to get information back to the jail. Back through the Sheriff’s import module which this is designed to do. Now we want to talk about how it’s going to be exported back to the Sheriff’s Department. Mr. Godwin asked Phil Brodeur how are things going with this. Mr. Brodeur said we had to postpone the meeting twice because operational staff couldn’t be th there. We have a meeting scheduled at our facility May 7. The clerks operational staff, the SO’s operational staff and our operational staff to talk about how we are functionally going to be able to disseminate this information back to the jail in a way that it is both legally correct and technically correct. We are meeting this week between Sheriff’s Office, IT staff and our staff about some technical issues we are running into and the way the statutes for which the charges are sent back as either being dropped or not matched. Technically everything is in place to make things happen as far as pushing data back. We are already receiving data into the booking into our system now from the booking I would probably say the one change I would say for sure is that we are not getting the OBTS data from the Sheriff’s. We’re getting the jail booking data which is strictly demographic information about the arrestee. Is that ready to go on our end? We’re just waiting for everybody to understand what we have to do and what they have to do and we need guidance from out IT people on what the operation people decide. I say that we could probably start after that meeting. The data will be in there from us as soon as we get the green light to start pushing it out. Commissioner Craft asked if we are inventing something new or has this been done somewhere else. Mr. Brodeur said we are doing something that has been done other places but not in the same way. The other agencies we know that integrate and work together have bought multimillion dollar systems. We’ve done this at no cost to any taxpayers. We are using our staff, our servers, our equipment. I believe there was some investment at the Sheriff’s office to make some modification to their jail booking system, board approved, couple years ago. It was around $8,000 or Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 4 something like that. Our system was paid for out of the $2.00 fee. The only recurring cost for this system will be the maintenance of this equipment and the cable lines. Literally, I think we’ve save the County millions of dollars based on they type of technology we are implementing. Mr. Godwin said he would like to have Mr. Underwood involved in that. It would be nice to have him have access to this data because then we could track bed days, drug court, mental health court. It would give us a lot of good data. Mr. Brodeur said he can’t speak for anyone else. This data warehouse we were trying very hard for this to be a repository for raw data that can be imported into each agencies system. The data base is managed by the Clerk of Courts. That is who I would recommend Broderick talk to. Ms. Bleyman asked a request on the communication to the jail. If anyway possible our office could have access to the jail records. Reason is when a probation has jail time that they have served before sentencing we have to determine those days and calculate so we take it off the back end of their probation. The only access we have right now is by picking up the phone and calling classification and having them research this data. View only would be all we need. We have 1,800 clients just in our Fort Pierce office. Mr. Godwin said sheriff just to let you know in March we ran data and we could certainly do that on a regular basis but for misdemeanor VOP population at the jail on average these are monthly averages averaged 145 for new charges and 62 for technical on average. Mr. Mark said one thing I have been looking at is I know that March or February we had 225 pending VOP’s and I think that as of yesterday we had 318. One of the things I have been doing is looking to see if there has been a change in pattern of us doing VOP’s and what I am finding is that’s been consistent. Meaning that it doesn’t seem like there is actually more violations occurring in the last couple months. One thing I’m wondering is there something going on with the court process. Mr. Godwin said when Lisa was not running the GPS/Pretrial Program she was doing case management and saw this need and saw that there would be a way to go about it. Ms. Savage said it was going back to back on the same afternoons with Fast Track. Judge Nelson had volunteered her time and courtroom. We were looking at it as just a quick fix to take whoever the felony clerk was she could continue right from Fast Track right into VOP court. Thomas has started to send copies over to our office (inaudible) docket. If we got to that point we had Bruce here who pretty much said we could run with this. Gail over felony, Mark Harleey with the Public Defenders office. Thomas was working with us as far as sending copies. What we were doing was trying to stack them into 3 groups of VOP. You have the technicals only, misdemeanor new arrest, felony new arrest. What we were gonna do initially is start off just to see how it works Technicals only. We had the agreement, we talked to Judge Conner, I don’t know if we got to all of the Felony Judges at that point, but it would be taking their cases and working the technicals both felony court and county court and Judge Nelson would have been running them through. What we were even gonna try to do for efficiency is say lets take a Probation Officer you know Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 5 Thomas Mark and we were gonna try to take all his pending VOP’s on that afternoon and maybe next Thursday takes somebody else’s so you have the same Probation Officer testifying one case after another. If it worked out it was then going to go into taking misdemeanor, new misdemeanor charges which Judge Nelson would have been dealing with in two courts. She would have been dealing with the new misdemeanors in county court and she would have been dealing with the VOP’s possibly later on anyways so she was just going to consolidate it and have it all on one day. You also have the tendency and again I know I haven’t been in Probation Office for a long time but some things don’t change a lot. You have the tendency if you can go ahead and the testimony of a Probation Officer you have what basically (inaudible) may be drug test results people are there. You testify you deal with your technical only violation if you end up with a violation and you have accurate and you found guilty violation then at that point you work out your sentence and so forth. If you have a pending new charge to side again this would require cooperation with the State and so forth but you might end up with alright your looking at 2 years DOC time fine, we can go ahead and work a plea that’s current sentence with the new charges when you take that and everything just works right out. Mr. Genung asked Lisa do you have that written up the first chunk of that. Ms. Savage said I have rough notes. Mr. Genung said what would be really helpful if you could send that proposal over we could get it out to the Judges, Mr. Colton, Diamond, and get everyone’s agreement on it then we can move forward providing we got the judicial resources to do that and if Judge Nelson continues to be available to do that and everybody else has the resource to do it then it sounds like a great thing. If we can put it into print and move it that way. Ms. Savage said if we could have someone coordinate the docket with the clerk’s office and with Thomas’s office that would save a lot of time of putting all of one Probation Officer if they are going to be the main witness all their cases on one Thursday afternoon. I know I used to sit in court waiting for my case to be called. If you get half a dozen Probation Officers sitting there and everybody has 1 case, when you come back next week everybody has 1 case. So you could look at trying to consolidate and run more efficiency with their case. Judge Yacucci said I don’t think you are going to move VOP a whole lot faster than they are moving. We’ve already tried a bunch of thing. First of all misdemeanor moves pretty quickly and the misdemeanors that we don’t move we are not moving them on purpose because they’ve got new felony subsequent charges. We are trying to give people a chance to resolve it upstairs. We give them a couple of months to see what they can do up there. The ones that want to move down we can take them at anytime. We’ve talked about this. Some we can expedite but I don’t think setting up an elaborate process you’re going to move a whole lot more. The ones that are not moving is for a reason and they have every reason to want to move because it’s a serious VOP. Their in jail, they want to get a case resolved if they can but a lot of times it’s a violation on a felony that they are looking at significant DOC time and they don’t want to do something fast if it’s not in their best interest. Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 6 Commissioner Craft said Judge what I heard may be it doesn’t help us move a lot more cases but it sounds lie it may be more efficient at least on the side of man hours that our invested in it. Judge Yacucci said I disagree. I think every Judge that puts somebody on probation should be the Judge that handles the case. VOP specifically, you have the best information because you already dealt with the case and you’re the one that is putting them on probation. I don’t care if somebody is handling certain cases but on serious VOP’s I think the individual Judge that handles the subsitive charge should be the Judge that handles the VOP. Ms. Savage said and that could be the same thing with the prosecution and district attorney’s. Judges upstairs would have to say yes he can take this VOP and run with it and that is something we had talked about before with Judge Nelson. The circuit Judges would have to say yes their cases could go to Judge Nelson. Mr. Mark said I’m sort of in agreement as far as the process of involving all the Judges and everyone involved in the process is doing the best they can. Part of my population one thing I want to extend to Tom and the others if we can figure out a way to expedite the process the department really wants to be part of the solution here and assist as much as possible so if there are ways that we could expedite it we stand ready as far as in court officers, the processing of paperwork, to do whatever we can to assist in that process. As an option to some violations the courts do have an option to technical violation notification letter which as you are very much aware has been mixed feelings regarding the use of that but in some instances that may be appropriate in other instances perhaps the Notice to Appear. I want to be good neighbors to SLC and do what we can to help. Sheriff Mascara asked Tom if we ever used those notice letters before in the past in SLC. Mr. Mark said this goes back many many years ago. As far as Notice to Appear we used it quite a bit when Lisa and I were probation officers. Judge Yacucci said what are you talking about, Notice to Appear on violation of probation. The affidavit goes to the Judge to put the person on probation. The Judge makes the call whether to set a bond, ROR or no bond, so where would anybody come off with a letter. That’s a Judges decision. Mr. Mark said absolutely, I’m in full agreement. Part of the decision order the consideration may be Notice to Appear. When we do that the Judges that we do that all the Judges we give them the option, the warrant and Notice to Appear and then they make the final decision. Same with the technical violation notices. We let them know what the technical violation is and then let them make the decision. Judge Yacucci said absolutely, I’m just saying that nothing will change it is still going to be the Judges call. Right now if the Judge is going to ROR or set a new bond you are saying why are you violating someone if it is just for $50.00 that’s usually not going to happen so I’m not sure unless if what you are saying you want to include the letter as a part of the package on the VOP and Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 7 then if the Judge rather than ROR (inaudible) send that letter (multiple people talking). Mr. Mark said if the Judge happens to do a Notice to Appear then we have a process in place to do the normal processing. Mr. Genung said Tom you had presented in one of our Judges meetings about six months ago I thought you were going to include those letters with your package at that time as a result of that meeting and then it was up to the individual Judge to decide what he or she was going to do with it. Judge Yacucci said he remembered talking about it. Mr. Mark said I know when we meet with the Judges first thing we want to know on the front end whether or not the Judges even consider it. If it is something they would consider in some cases then we do include it in the package. If we have a Judge that says absolutely not then we are not going to do it. Mr. Colton said what would be the difference of issuing a letter or issuing a warrant with an ROR. If the Judge is going to say I’m willing to send this person a summons why wouldn’t he say I’m gonna send a ROR Bond. Ms. Savage said Judge Cox right now is signing a lot of the VOP, DOC warrants. I won’t say they are all ROR some of them are a bond and really I haven’t looked at the numbers but anyways then she is writing right on the warrant Pretrial so she is setting some of them ROR which I would think Major is that something that may be it’s an abbreviated booking process because you’re seeing as it comes through then it’s going to go right out the door basically so that probably does save some time. We are trying to get some idea ahead of time to those who are coming because… Judge Yacucci that’s substantive – new substantive offense on the arrest warrant that’s not VOP. Ms. Savage we got some of those too. Judge Yacucci asked she’s doing that on VOP’s? Mr. Mark said can I mention technical violation for the moment. As you know the department at one time was vigorous enforcing zero tolerance and then over the course of time we pulled away from that. Before I would buy into minor technical violation I really would need to know how we are defining that. Recently we arrested a person, technical violation, sex offender, pedophile. Few weeks ago asked to go to a library. His probation officer said no. Last week he was arrested on a technical violation where he decided okay the probation officer said you can’t go to this library, I’ll go to this library. The librarian saw something odd with this guy and what he was doing was watching the kids while he is sitting there playing on My Space. I consider that a very serious violation but before we buy into minor technicals… Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 8 Judge Yacucci said again I’m going to interrupt. That has nothing to do with you guys. That is the Judges call. You send over the affidavit whether it’s CORE or whether it’s DOC and the Judge who put him on probation that’s judicial discretion and that’s judicial decision. We tell CORE use your discretion on these minor things. I trust these guys and after they give them several warnings and they still do it then they send an affidavit and that’s it. There’s not a policy you can set. It is a Judges call and that’s the only point I’m trying to make. Mr. Genung said you can’t take the individual discretion of that Judge away. Major Tighe said we are talking here today on what we are going to do with Fast Track, VOP once they come in custody. In my mind both examples are trying to close the barn door before the horse has already escaped. I think what we need is more stats from DOC and CORE. For instance, by month how many people are put on probation? How many people did they violate? How many were technical? How many were new charges? How many have successfully completed the program? It’s almost a need assessment. Are we putting the right people, the right risk, on probation to begin with? We got to look at the front end not the back end. Ms. Bleyman said she can tell the number of new cases the number of VOP’s the number of terms. I calculate every single month. I can provide that to you. Ms. Collins asked is the percentage here in SLC equivalent to Martin County, Okeechobee and Vero Beach. Are the VOP numbers higher in jail or are they about the same. Mr. Mark said he does not have the specific numbers. JUDICIAL UPDATE: Mr. Genung said everybody is waiting to see what comes out in print in a couple days from the State. NEW BUSINESS: Mr. Romano said it appears New Horizons is on its way to losing $930,000 of State money for the Family Emergency Treatment Center Program that we run here in St. Lucie County, Indian River County and a little bit in Martin County. This program essentially serves people coming out of jail, hospitals, and crisis units. It is pretty much going away. I tried to do my best to keep the funding. I got each of our sheriffs in the four counties to write letters in support of this program but the news I’m hearing from our delegations is pretty bleak. Commissioner Craft asked do we know what the recidivism rate was prior to that program and what it was after. Public Safety Coordinating Council April 24, 2008 Page 9 Mr. Romano said he could probably come up with some status. Commissioner Craft said that’s the letter we need to be sending. We got to show them cost savings. Mr. Romano said I show them stats, I show them everything. This is a program outside of the normal funding streams. Commissioner Craft asked how many people run through the program. Mr. Romano said anywhere between 800 to 900. We already started shutting it down. Commissioner Craft how much money does it cost to house the mentally ill patient. Major Tighe about 5 to 6 times more than a regular inmate. Commissioner Craft so $300.00 Percentage wise where is SLC. Mr. Romano 60 to 65% Commissioner Craft can we get a breakdown of these numbers? Mr. Romano sure. ADJOURNMENT: Commissioner Craft adjourned the meeting at 4:50 p.m. Submitted by, Carol Strobert THE NEXT MEETING WILL BE HELD May 29, 2008