[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:27] Good evening, I'm part of the Chairman of the Coral and County Legislature. I'd like to welcome the community and our legislature to tonight's special meeting of the Coral and County Legislature.
[0:41] Anybody that is able to please stand so we can salute the flag.
[0:46] I
[0:49] pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
[0:57] one nation, under God, and he does all the liberty and injustice for all.
[1:08] The reason for tonight's special meeting is we have invited the sheriff's office
[1:14] to do a presentation to our community of some of the duties and responsibilities
[1:20] And services they offer our community, some of which you may be aware of, and some of which you may not.
[1:28] So I'd like to welcome Sheriff Mark Homes,
[1:31] Under Sheriff Budrig, Captain Robert Dirkson, and Captain Nicholas Lynch.
[1:39] I will turn over to Eric Malbehill for the procedures for tonight's meeting.
[1:48] As the Chairman indicated, and as you are aware, these proceedings are being streamed via the WebEx platform.
[1:55] In addition, we are also streaming this via our encoder platform with our minutes and agenda program.
[2:03] That will allow anybody that wants to watch this video after the fact to tune in.
[2:08] It will be on the county's website also on the sheriff's website, and that will be available for the public.
[2:16] If anybody has any written comments that they'd like to send in, they can do so by emailing
[2:21] s-hemstead at courtland-co.org, we'll be putting that email up on the screen or also
[2:27] under share of bud rig, b-rig, add courtland-co.org.
[2:32] We will continue to accept any input and comments beyond the seedlings presentation.
[2:38] We will be opening up for questions following the presentation, so we would just ask that if
[2:43] We have any questions, we'll hold all questions to the end of the presentation, and then
[2:48] we will take questions, and I believe the sheriff is prepared to answer as many, and we'll
[2:54] stay until everybody feels that they've got their questions in.
[2:57] But again, if you're not comfortable asking your question publicly when rather put it in writing,
[3:01] you can do so either on the chat feature here on the WebEx platform or again you can email
[3:05] those, and we will put that web address up momentarily.
[3:09] With that, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Cortland County Sheriff Mark Helms.
[3:24] Thank you.
[3:24] I'd like to just start my interest and introduce myself to the people who don't know who I am.
[3:30] I'm proud to say I'm the Sheriff of the Cortland County.
[3:33] My name is Mark Helms.
[3:35] I'm here with some of my administrative staff.
[3:40] We're looking forward to going through and giving a presentation.
[3:43] And when it comes to law enforcement, I think a lot of people know a little of what most of
[3:49] us do, but I don't think many people unless you're really involved in the system itself,
[3:55] really know what it is that we do in the whole.
[3:59] And especially as a sheriff's office, we're quite a bit different from, you know, your local police
[4:04] agency, state police, that sort of thing and what our duties are.
[4:07] So we're going to go into that and as far as myself, I started with a sheriff's office in October
[4:14] of 1987. I've been around for in a different capacity with the office for a long time.
[4:21] I'm currently in first year and my second term as a sheriff which the elections go every four years.
[4:27] As far as questions, just to make sure I can do this right. For anybody that's got questions tonight,
[4:35] what we'd like to do is if you could send them to the address on the screen there, one is
[4:41] going to be Deputy Clerk, Savannah.
[4:43] Hemstead is going to help us along with the undershare of blood rig.
[4:46] Obviously, the undershare of swimming here tonight, so he's not going to be getting them right
[4:50] away, so if you could for tonight's presentation, if you could send them to Savannah, that
[4:55] would be appreciated.
[4:56] We will try and answer as many questions as we can tonight.
[5:00] If by chance we get to the point where we cannot get to all of them, I will
[5:05] make sure that we do get back to everybody regardless, it just might not be on screen.
[5:13] And as far as, if you have something that comes up after we've talked, that you didn't feel
[5:18] comfortable bringing up or you just wanted to do later, obviously, these are the addresses
[5:21] you can send to us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
[5:25] I'd like to start by first thanking all the people involved, I mean, you know, with all
[5:31] jobs that we do every day, adding something else is not always an easy task, so I appreciate
[5:37] my two captains, which I'm going to introduce you pretty quick, both got quite a bit of time
[5:42] into putting this power point together and the different things so that we make sure that we're
[5:47] we're not going to be able to go over everything and great in depth, but I want to make sure
[5:50] that everybody's aware of as much as what we do as we possibly can. I also want to thank Eric
[5:57] of a hill in Savannah for helping us out and setting us up with the equipment so that we could
[6:01] do this for everybody tonight. On top of that, I appreciate Chairman Heiter was a great help
[6:08] with helping to get this together for us, not to mention Susan Wilson and of course the rest
[6:14] of the legislature, but most of all the public that's joined us tonight that was interested
[6:21] to see what it is that we have to say, I appreciate all that.
[6:28] As far as the Sheriff's Office of Administration, basically here is our core group.
[6:34] Obviously, you got my self, you got under Sheriff Bloodrig.
[6:37] The captain of the rope troll is Rob Durkson.
[6:40] The captain of the Corrections Division is Nick Lynch.
[6:44] The rope troll, Lieutenant, is Gary Williams.
[6:46] The criminal division, Lieutenant, is Chad Burhans and the corrections, Lieutenant, is Chris Keeler.
[6:54] These are the core administration of the sheriff's office.
[7:02] I like to start out a lot when it comes to this map.
[7:06] I don't think that people understand the amount of ground that the sheriff's office has to cover in any given day or shift.
[7:13] Normally, we will have three officers on a good day, maybe as many as five, to patrol
[7:20] 500 or two square miles.
[7:23] With that said, I mean, we're lucky we're one of the counties in the state that's fairly
[7:27] square, so as far as a set up, we have a great benefit that way, but with the rural area
[7:34] in the amount of county miles that we patrol, I don't think people understand to the extent
[7:43] of how we truly do our jobs.
[7:46] I mean there's 15 towns, three villages,
[7:48] and one city in the county of Portland.
[7:52] With those, every town has a court,
[7:56] so we've got different municipalities
[7:58] that we have to be paying attention to
[7:59] for different local laws, that sort of thing.
[8:03] And it's, although it makes it very interesting for us,
[8:07] it is quite a vast area to cover
[8:09] when you've only got three people on most of the time.
[8:14] We're surrounded by seven other counties, obviously most people know those, but I'll
[8:20] list them out.
[8:21] We surrounded by Anadaga, Madison, Shinango, Brume, Tayoga, Tompkins, and Kiyuga.
[8:31] I think I got them all there.
[8:35] But probably a lot of our traffic is coming from the bigger cities coming from Anadaga,
[8:40] and Syracuse and broom down in Binghamton, but I just like people to see that map just because
[8:45] it's quite a bit an area to cover with a short amount of people.
[8:52] I'm not real good with this
[8:53] clicker, so this is going to be interesting. I wanted to go over the demographics of the county,
[8:59] like I said before, there's 500-2 square miles within the county, our population, and I'm getting
[9:04] this off of 2019 census estimates that were listed, feel free to look them up so that you can verify
[9:11] what I'm saying, but our population currently around the 47,000 mark breaks down to how
[9:21] our background is and what our poverty levels are. I also listed the city because obviously
[9:27] the city is the biggest municipality within our county and we do a lot of work with the city.
[9:33] Although our primary function is to patrol the outlying towns, we also assist all the other police
[9:40] agencies. We're fortunate to have a county that none of the police agencies have more
[9:47] officers that we can use. And most of the time, if you've paid attention to the
[9:52] patch, you'll see that we are very often working together so that we can get the job done
[9:57] between the shortage of manpower that we tend to run into.
[10:06] As far as the sheriff's overview,
[10:09] The Sheriff's Office started in 1808.
[10:12] Obviously, that picture was just kind of a nice showing that just the changes that we're going over.
[10:18] And the times that we're living in right now is just, you know, no different.
[10:22] Law enforcement has changed over the years and will continue to change with the public and what our needs are.
[10:28] And that's really why we're here today.
[10:30] The Sheriff's Office comprises basically three different divisions.
[10:34] the corrections division, the rope troll division and the civil division.
[10:39] Basically what we're going to go down through today is what those all mean.
[10:42] I think a lot of people know what it is in the oversight,
[10:45] but I'm not sure that they know exactly when it comes to the specifics of what those divisions do.
[10:53] I'm going to start with the Sheriff's Office Mission Statement.
[10:57] I think it's very important for the people to know that this is basically what we work by as a Sheriff's Office.
[11:04] The Quarton County Sheriff's Office recognizes and braces our noble duty to serve as the
[11:10] entrusted guardians of peace, justice and democracy in our community.
[11:15] We pledged up, hold our core values of honor and integrity, courage and respect as we provide
[11:20] effective police services in a professional, courteous and equitable manner.
[11:26] We will work as a team and collaborate within our resident with our residents to earn and
[11:33] establish mutual respect, trust and understanding. Lastly, we will be dedicated to our mission,
[11:42] loyal to each other, and disciplined, in our endeavors to create and sustain a safe and welcoming
[11:49] environment for our citizens and guests of our community. I think that's important to know
[11:57] that basically, that's what we stand for, and that's what we strive for, and we try to live up
[12:02] that every day.
[12:06] I'm going to start basically how the system works here at the Sheriff's Office
[12:10] with just how things have changed and what we're doing to try and recruit officers.
[12:15] When I started back in the late 80s, when it came to take civil service tests, I mean,
[12:24] we used to have, seem like there was 100 names on there. If there wasn't, there was close
[12:29] to it. Now when we take a test, depending on what division, we're really fine in that
[12:34] not getting the candidates we'd like to see. The numbers aren't there and we're trying to
[12:41] do what we can to get that back. So we can get qualified, good candidates to choose from for
[12:49] my agencies and I'm sure the other law enforcement here in Portland.
[12:54] As far as this year
[12:55] I'm just showing that when I started we didn't use any of these things. Now when it comes to law enforcement
[13:03] of any kind. You're seeing it. People are using TV, social media, job fairs, advertisements,
[13:12] really anything you can get out so that people know that we're interested in recruiting people.
[13:17] We want good people to come in and help our departments thrive. This is what one of the recruitment
[13:25] packets we made up for the road patrol. I did this with the help of my staff so that we could start
[13:34] going to different job fairs, the area community colleges, the colleges around us, surrounding
[13:40] counties even, trying to get the word out that this is what we're about and this is what we're
[13:45] looking to do. This slide is just basically a similar one. The same thing goes for corrections.
[13:52] The corrections field is a very professional field that I don't think back when I started,
[13:59] I don't think it was looked at the same way as it is today and it's really important
[14:03] career field that's a little more than the two-week training when I started, but we're
[14:09] looking to get the word out and trying to get more people to come looking to this type
[14:17] of career so that we can make the best choices we can with what we have out there.
[14:26] This is just a quick photo of some of the job fairs we try and get as much information as we can out there.
[14:33] A lot of times now that used to be that we really didn't get the correction staff out there that often.
[14:39] I like to promote that how big a job field it is so I like to get, like to get my people out there so people see them more so they're thinking that way.
[14:52] As far as the selection process, once we get somebody that is interested, they have to go and take a civil service exam.
[15:00] That, in itself, is not really a hard task. It's the biggest thing with that is for a law enforcement, with me and when we're looking at our candidates, the scores, it's all done by civil service law. I don't have a lot of saying that, actually I got none. So we have to follow the rules that they have for us. The scores are broke up in the chunks, you know, typically you'll have $19590, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I don't get to look at the whole list and then just kind of pick and choose who we think might be the best.
[15:30] we were given the top three scores.
[15:32] And then we go from there from that top three scores.
[15:36] We'll go to the next stages.
[15:39] They had the physical agility test,
[15:42] which is it's not a hard test, but I'll be honest.
[15:47] We're seeing a lot of people that aren't making it through that.
[15:51] Like, and I'm sure it's probably always been that way,
[15:53] because it's not a cakewalk.
[15:54] It's not a real hard thing, but on the same token,
[15:56] you've got to be physically fit and ready for it.
[15:58] So it's not just adding body.
[16:01] Once you make it through the agility test and we get your name on the list and you're in
[16:06] the top three, then we can call you in for an interview.
[16:10] We'll have a panel view, a panel interview with, usually it's three in my administrative
[16:16] staff.
[16:17] We will meet the interviews, we will interview them, see what their thoughts are, what their
[16:24] background is.
[16:25] And then if they meet, what we think is right for our office, we will do an event background
[16:32] investigation.
[16:33] We'll be looking at them to possibly hire them.
[16:35] The background, the investigation is not an easy thing to pass.
[16:39] It is if you've never had any type of trouble with law enforcement or anything like that.
[16:48] But a lot of times, and I'm not talking about little interaction with a speed and stop
[16:54] talk to or anything like that, but it's, you know, we're basically looking for people that
[16:58] they really haven't had a criminal type of background or anything like that and sometimes
[17:04] it's, you would think it'd be easy but it's not as easy as sometimes we'd think to find good
[17:09] candidates with that. Once we find a candidate that we think is a good fit for our office,
[17:18] We then go to the next stage, we offer a potential position, they have to go through a
[17:27] drug screen, the psychological exam, a medical exam, and then a fingerprint in check
[17:33] to make sure there is nothing that we missed in the potential for the background.
[17:38] As far as the background, they're pretty intensive.
[17:42] I mean, if you lived in different states before you come here, it's not a problem, but we
[17:46] go back and check all those places. As you can imagine, we want to make sure that when we're
[17:52] talking for people to go into the positions we're going in, we want to make sure we didn't miss
[17:55] anything.
[18:06] I think as far as the selection process that kind of puts it pretty much in a nutshell,
[18:11] a lot of that, again, I don't have a say in how it works. It's under civil service law.
[18:18] So moving along to the next stage of this, I'm going to have Captain Nick Lynch and my corrections
[18:24] division come up so he can tell you a little bit about our corrections program.
[18:32] Sheriff, well, Captain Lynch is coming up. We're going to attempt to share this screen so
[18:37] that folks at home have a better
[18:41] ability to see this.
[18:55] Thank
[18:58] you,
[19:29] Captain Lynch. Thank you. Thank you, Sheriff. As a sheriff stated, I am Captain Nick Lynch.
[19:39] I am a lifelong resident of Cortland County.
[19:43] I started my career in corrections in 2003.
[19:48] And eventually in 2017 I was promoted to the rank of captain, which is responsible
[19:55] for jail administration and oversight of the corrections division.
[20:01] The correction division of Cortland County Sheriff's Office is responsible for the operation
[20:05] of the Cortland County jail, the purpose of the correction division is to provide for the care,
[20:12] custody, treatment, supervision, discipline, and correctional programs for all persons committed
[20:18] to the custody of the Cortland County Sheriff.
[20:25] So, correctional facilities in New York State, they operate pursuant to constitutional and legislative
[20:32] statutes and regulations. They define the responsibilities for the administration and maintenance
[20:40] of correctional facilities. The most prinoted regulation is what's known as the minimum
[20:47] standards and regulations for management of county jails and penitentiaries. That is set by the
[20:55] New York State Commission of Corrections, who has oversight of correctional facilities in New York
[21:00] state.
[21:01] The New York State Commission of Corrections annually, if not, more frequently, come
[21:06] into correctional facilities and conduct various inspections for compliance with policies
[21:12] and procedures and standards that they have set forth.
[21:16] Our facility, the Coral County Jail, is an 89-bed facility that was built in 1990.
[21:22] We house both male and female inmates, unscentenced inmates,
[21:29] sentenced inmates, they're sentenced to a local term of incarceration.
[21:33] Sivly confined inmates, and we also participate in the centralized agreement part.
[21:38] So what that means is we have recently in 2020.
[21:43] We partnered and worked with various courts in our area and came up with a centralized
[21:48] a Raymond Court. This allowed, you know, kind of a two-part function, various different
[21:54] police agencies in the area. We will take a pre-arrayment or SD from their custody, and
[21:58] we will supervise them, allow them to get back out into the communities that they serve.
[22:04] Additionally, this also expedited the arayment process. It allowed quicker access to judges
[22:11] and quicker access to councils for defundance, waiting for their arayment.
[22:21] So the correction
[22:22] division staff. So the staff totals for our facility is 51. The staff in totals in our facility
[22:28] are determined by the New York State Commission of Corrections. They have some various rules
[22:33] and regulations that they utilize when they come to those determinations. You know, one in particular
[22:38] is, you know, if we do have female inmates in custody, we are required to have a female
[22:43] in the facility. On top of determining the total number of staff required to supervise the facility.
[22:50] So, as a captain, we have one captain, one lieutenant, six sergeants and 43 officers.
[22:57] Currently, we have 11 vacancies open positions.
[23:02] So, as a sheriff, you know, mentioned earlier with civil service requirements, you know,
[23:09] the intel, you know, it is difficult, you know, with the pool of candidates that we have to be able to fill those positions in those vacancies.
[23:15] So, as the captain, some of my responsibilities are maintaining the safety, security of staff and
[23:22] property, as well as overseeing the care custody and well-being of inmates confined in the
[23:26] correctional facility.
[23:28] This is achieved through making sure we're in compliance not only with our own policies
[23:33] and procedures, but also the minimum standard regulations and various laws that are applicable.
[23:38] The lieutenant is responsible for coordinating and directing staff and operations and activities
[23:45] in correctional facility on a daily basis.
[23:48] The sergeants are the first line supervisors who work with correction officers ensuring the
[23:52] enforcement of rules, regulations, governing security, conduct, discipline, safety, and
[23:58] general well-being of inmates confined in the county jail.
[24:02] The officer work involves a responsibility for the enforcement of rules, regulations covering
[24:07] the cost of the security conduct discipline, safety, and general well-being of the inmates confined
[24:13] at the Cortland County jail.
[24:28] Hold on one second, we'll have a little technical difficulty here.
[25:11] So the training that goes into peace officer certification for correction officers,
[25:27] as a
[25:28] sheriff had mentioned before when it comes to training, he had stated that he had approximately
[25:35] two weeks of training and I can honestly say in the training field even in my short time
[25:40] working in the correction division. It has come a long, long way. And I remember it
[25:48] very times when I was, you know, in the facility, you know, on top of the sheriff's story
[25:52] that he shared talking about two weeks training, you know, somebody older, more senior staff
[25:57] that we work with, also shared their experiences in the training that they received, compared to
[26:02] the training that they were receiving now. And I think that's really indicative of the
[26:06] direction that we're heading in corrections and recognizing corrections as a career and the
[26:12] professionals and that's displayed on a daily basis by those that staff the facility.
[26:19] So currently for peace officer certification the requirement is a ten-week long academy.
[26:26] So that academy follows the state guidance on an approved curriculum that covers a variety
[26:32] of topics that we're going to touch based on here shortly.
[26:36] Additionally, in the facility, we have a six-week on the job training that's supervised
[26:42] by field training officer.
[26:44] So not just anybody in the facility, do we allow to be a field training officer?
[26:49] In fact, there's additional training requirements of, you know, an excess of 32 hours that
[26:54] we send individuals to where they learned, you know, special instructions and how to deal
[26:59] shape and mold new recruits as they come through the door.
[27:02] that's been instrumental in our facility
[27:04] and building the staff to where it is now.
[27:09] So during that period, that six weeks,
[27:13] you know, new harders will spend two weeks on each shift
[27:16] where they're repeatedly covered policies
[27:18] and procedures of the facility.
[27:20] They cover the shift operations for each shift.
[27:24] You know, we do have three shifts in the facility.
[27:26] They run seven to three, three p.m. to 11 p.m.
[27:30] and then 11 p.m. to 7 in the morning, and each shift has its own certain functions that they're
[27:35] responsible for that keeps them pretty busy throughout the day. And also they cover extensively,
[27:42] minimum standards for correctional facilities.
[27:48] So some of the trauma topics that are covered
[27:50] during the academy are the use of force. And again, the use of force has come a long way
[27:58] And it's time.
[28:00] Currently right now, you know,
[28:02] staff that go through this training,
[28:04] they do an access of 160 hours of training
[28:06] and use the force.
[28:08] That training is continuously
[28:11] reviewed and updated by New York State.
[28:14] Even since I began employment again in 2003,
[28:19] I can't even count the number of changes in use of force updates
[28:21] and refreshers that I've had
[28:23] and my career is new things are developed on the state level.
[28:29] One, they do have this training for the updates and review of the use of force.
[28:34] We do send staff that are certified to instruct and train.
[28:38] Additionally, those staff will come back to the facility, and they will, you know,
[28:42] annually train staff and the facility to make sure we're in compliance with the most recent
[28:46] updates and techniques.
[28:50] De-escalation is another huge one, especially when it comes to a correctional facility.
[28:55] You know, the population that we deal with oftentimes there can be a difficult population in there, and the escalation has been instrumental in diffusing some situations.
[29:09] What we call the escalation in our facility is what we refer to as interpersonal communication skills.
[29:14] And basically what they have breaks down through is the stability to communicate with an individual and resolve conflicts.
[29:24] Additionally, they cover training in ethics, personal awareness, special needs in mates,
[29:31] inmates transports, and suicide prevention.
[29:35] And although this training that they receiving the academy, it doesn't stop there.
[29:41] You know, our department is dedicated to continuing training, you know, for all staff.
[29:47] And we strive to make sure that they go to as many training opportunities as we can find
[29:51] available for, you know, although we're not accredited, we do follow the accreditation guidelines,
[29:58] so I'm not only meeting but often exceeding.
[30:00] The training requirements set forth. Few examples of the training that staff, you know, attend separately from the academy. We do first aid CPR, AED and NARC and training.
[30:12] Thus we actually do in-house. We are actually certified training in the health center, and we have three instructors in our facility who are certified to teach those programs.
[30:22] We send individuals out for special, it's a mental health first aid course.
[30:28] We do participate with a court and city police and they're emotionally disturbed person
[30:32] response team training that they host annually.
[30:36] We also have staff participate in trauma-informed care field intelligence, as I mentioned briefly
[30:43] the field training officers, supervisor schools for those who are achieving rank, instructor
[30:50] development courses, which we send our instructors to, which teach them the skills and tools necessary
[30:55] to provide that important information to the staff on the various training topics that they
[31:00] are assigned to teach. We have individuals at a time buying coordinator training and that's an
[31:08] important tool to the community. You know, the buying program is a victim notification program that
[31:14] allows victims to have access to immediate notifications if individuals are released from custody
[31:22] or otherwise transferred from our facility.
[31:25] We have leadership training, and we also send individuals for training that specializes
[31:29] in fire and security and correctional facilities.
[31:37] So a lot of the functions we talked about throughout the day, you know, in the various shifts
[31:41] or facility operations, and we're just going to go over a few of them right now emissions.
[31:47] So admissions to the facility, so only a judge can commit an individual into the jail, you know, so one of those individuals come in there's a process that takes place called we refer to it as a booking process
[31:59] But I think what's important to highlight during this booking process is that the staff complete a number of risk assessments and suicide screenings during that process
[32:09] of which there's probably total of over 35 questions just in those screenings alone, which
[32:15] they often touch base on a lot of various topics around substance use disorders or mental
[32:21] health issues. And the good part about these risk assessments, they're done in conjunction, but
[32:27] they're available to all their staff. We have an facility that will cover here shortly. And oftentimes,
[32:33] you know, when the staff are doing the booking, it almost always results in a referral to appropriate
[32:38] care coordination in our facility. This challenges just that individuals get released from
[32:44] custody. This could be for a variety of reasons. It could be by an order of court releasing
[32:49] the individual. It could have been a bail or a bond or an expiration of sentence. That's a
[32:56] problem to understand that when we do this charge individuals from custody. In those cases where
[33:01] we do have noticed a sentence to individual that we have a lot of time to work with, we do a
[33:06] participating in this large planning and coordination, you know, and that's in conjunction
[33:11] with a lot of community service providers that we have in the area, you know, that coordination
[33:16] can involve housing, education, employment, or, you know, healthcare,
[33:24] classification.
[33:25] So classification is kind of a system we use and determining how we house individuals in
[33:34] facility. And this is an integral important piece that allows us to keep our facility safe.
[33:45] Tradition on, there's a 12 category system. So what that means when there's a 12 category
[33:50] system that you use, we wouldn't be allowed to put certain individuals next to each other.
[33:56] So if I had a sentence to individual, I wouldn't be able to put them next to an unsatained
[34:00] individual. If I had somebody who was civily confined, I would be able to put them next
[34:03] to anybody.
[34:06] You know, and then because our county and our probation department operates
[34:11] the Alternative Student Conservation Program, that enables us to use a 4.0 point system,
[34:17] which basically breaks it down into minor.mail, female, for consideration, so we can
[34:22] combing a little sense in on-sand. But additionally, on top of that, we have an actual
[34:28] classification form we use, which when you go through this form and it's done by our
[34:34] sergeants and reviewed by our latinants and myself, and it's reviewed in our 30 days
[34:39] and at 90 day intervals to make sure we appropriately house people on the facility, it's
[34:43] an actual point system and we use general or closed custody to determine the level of supervision
[34:49] that's needed in the facility.
[34:51] The topics that are covered in those range from anything from the criminal history, substance
[34:58] use mental health, prior victimization, their prior behavior list issues inside the facility,
[35:04] but also, you know, we focus on, you know, good adjustment periods, what they've done,
[35:09] good to try to reduce those levels, make sure we got them appropriately housed in our facility.
[35:16] Housing and supervision, you know, those are the areas in our facility where we supervise
[35:21] the inmates, you know, generally on a general active or constant supervision.
[35:26] So those supervision levels that I talked about, there's certain requirements they go with those supervision levels and they really depends on the classification and where those individuals are housed in our facilities, the level of supervision.
[35:40] Just to give a brief example, if I've got a constant supervision, that's what would be a one on one suicide watch. We would have one staff member assigned to watch one individual who's in that capacity.
[35:54] Also, there's various programs that are run throughout the day in the facility.
[35:59] Staff supervises programs that range from exercise, visitation, education, and also a lot
[36:06] of local service providers, which we'll touch based on here in a little bit, that provide
[36:10] services in our facility.
[36:12] Transportation, instructional staff's do-transportations, and the community, those range
[36:18] from court transport, medical transports, they could be a rehab transport, taking an individual
[36:23] and dropping them off to an patient, rehab for treatment, and additionally a prison transport.
[36:30] We also have a grievance and complaint process. So what that entails is inmates and
[36:36] a professional facility if they have any issue that they wish to file a complaint on, that process
[36:43] starts with us. So what we have in that situation is I have
[36:48] staff that are assigned to a role of grievance coordinator or
[36:51] investigators, both of which have had training to operate in
[36:58] those roles. So, you know, the grievance process in the
[37:02] facility is our opportunity to resolve or look at these
[37:04] complaints. They start out on a local level. So they start out
[37:08] with just us, the grievance coordinator will get the grievance.
[37:10] He'll go talk with the individual, he may sign an investigator,
[37:14] he had their more information, he'll make a determination,
[37:18] you know, whether he agrees and finds merit in that complaint
[37:22] or that he perhaps doesn't agree and there's no merit contained
[37:26] in that complaint.
[37:27] There's a, some back and forth after that,
[37:30] to go back to the inmate, he can either accept or, you know,
[37:34] appeal it to the next level.
[37:36] And the next level, it comes up to me for my review.
[37:38] I'm genuinely good. It makes it to my desk. I don't really have a whole lot of work or investigative duties to do because it's all done when it hits my desk.
[37:46] I get the whole packet, the whole material and everything to look at to render my decision.
[37:52] If it does not agree with the decision afterwards, it doesn't end there. They have an opportunity to send the grievance to Albany.
[38:00] They have a citizen policy complaint and review counsel that is responsible to review those complaints.
[38:07] That council, and Albany, is made up of lawyers, ex-offenders, retired law, and forced
[38:14] missiles.
[38:15] It's really a wide range of professionals that take an opportunity to look and review
[38:20] those.
[38:23] And kind of touch-based, we're going to talk in one of these grievances in the mid-90s,
[38:29] and I went back and looked, and I talked with the undershare about it, because it was when
[38:34] he was working over in the facility and coming through and assigned in some of these
[38:36] rules as grievance coordinators, you know, in the mid-90s, you know, we were 800 plus grievances
[38:44] a year, you know, and so we talked about the training and the training that staff were receiving
[38:50] now on the level of professionalism that has come into play, you know, interactions, you
[38:57] know, today, we've only our facilities only have 53 grievances this year.
[39:02] And I think it started with the undershared off, you know, working diligently and, you know,
[39:10] reducing those grievances and using our IPC skills and we've only continued to grow on that.
[39:17] And I think it's indicative of our training that we received.
[39:20] And I mean that number speaks for itself when it going from 800 plus complaints and grievances a year
[39:25] down to 53, you know, your staff's definitely doing something right.
[39:32] So we also have a food service in the jail, so we have one full-time shop, one part-time
[39:38] cook, and currently we have one open-part-time cook position.
[39:43] So while we have the viewing audience, I'm going to shamelessly plug that open cook position
[39:49] that we have, and if anybody has the qualifications necessary, they can reach out to the
[39:53] Court and Accounting Personnel Civil Service and Seek the Requirements and Job description
[39:59] and possibly apply for that position.
[40:03] So, our menones are submitted annually to a nutritionist certified by the state education department.
[40:09] So, over year, we have cycle menus, seven weeks cycle menu in the facility, every year.
[40:14] We sent it to a nutritionist who looks and makes sure that we're meeting the adequate guidelines.
[40:19] We also have to meet all religious dietary requirements on top of medical diets.
[40:26] So if somebody has a heart healthy or a diabetic diet,
[40:29] we make sure we provide that in the facility.
[40:35] So our support services, we contract with a medical doctor,
[40:39] a family nurse practitioner, and one registered nurse.
[40:43] You know, I think it's important to understand
[40:45] that the medical care that somebody receives in custody
[40:49] is no different than anybody walking
[40:52] into the doctor on the street.
[40:54] The same exact medical care is provided in this facility.
[40:57] If we're unable to provide the medical care and the facility, you know, due to maybe
[41:02] or facility requirements, tools, equipment, or maybe it's something that we're just not
[41:07] able to do, we will go out into the community, we'll transport an individual to another service
[41:13] provider to make sure that they receive the appropriate medical care that is needed.
[41:18] We provide dental services, they are off-site, so we do transport for dental services,
[41:27] and
[41:27] site as well. We'll transport individuals, you know, and they can get eye exams and
[41:32] if they need glasses, we make sure we provide them on glasses.
[41:40] So this is one of the
[41:41] pieces that we are very, very, very fortunate to have in our facility. We're one of the few
[41:47] counties that has a mental health counselor provided by the Court on the County Health Department
[41:52] on site. She also functions as a transitional coordinator and the facility.
[41:58] And this is really important because a lot of times when an individual comes into custody,
[42:04] this might be their first time with a mental health professional.
[42:07] It may be their first contact ever at trying to address some of the issues that maybe they
[42:11] don't realize, you know, our issues.
[42:14] But having that mindset, we provide continuity, care, treatment, and coordination for those individuals.
[42:20] And
[42:28] most of this last piece is a big piece and, you know, really it could probably, you
[42:34] know, talk for, you know, an hour or two hours alone, and all these, you know, programs
[42:40] and service and providers.
[42:43] The Quorum County Sheriff's Office is dedicated to providing the rehabilitation that supports
[42:54] the growth and rehabilitation of incarcerated population and effort to reduce recedivism.
[43:02] A lot of times, it was said to me, you know, really young in my career, you know, a mentor
[43:10] of mine made a combat, you know, working in the correctional facility and says, look, you
[43:13] got to understand these are sons, these are daughters, these are fathers, parents, family,
[43:20] these are members of the community.
[43:22] You know, and that's been one thing that's really kind of stuck with me throughout my career
[43:26] and really helped me coming up where I have, is always keeping that in the back of my mind.
[43:32] These are members of the community, you know, and ultimately, what can we do?
[43:37] Well, services can we offer, you know, to try to help these members of the community,
[43:40] to try to reduce the recidivism, to try to get them to attract, to try to help them out.
[43:46] You know, so one thing I participate in drug treatment court,
[43:51] You know, I'm a team member there, it's, you know, there's a, it's through Cortland City Court.
[43:57] There is a whole variety of team members that range from the Public Defenders Office, a district attorney's office.
[44:05] There's also several service providers that assist in the community, whether it's family counseling, beacon center,
[44:11] or the trial street residents, or halfway house, the probation department.
[44:15] We're all on the treatment court team.
[44:18] What treatment court is is this alternative to incarceration that allows approved members to complete
[44:25] appropriate recommended treatment for substance use disorder.
[44:29] What that does and what that program does is it really tries and strives to keep individuals
[44:33] out of jail and it tries to work with providers in the community or outside the community to get
[44:40] to help and services the individuals who are suffering from substance use disorder needs.
[44:45] You know, on the ultimate goal of drug treatment court is, you know, the ultimate goal of sobriety
[44:50] and getting the individual to become a productive member of society.
[44:54] Another thing is the director in 2017, the director of community resources through the Department of Mental Health.
[45:00] Tainted grant, noted as a sequential intercept mapping. You know, and that was a collaborative effort, a lot of parts, and what that did is it brought a tremendous amount of community service providers that all really deal with justice involved individuals in some capacity.
[45:18] It brought them to the table, it gave an opportunity for great dialogue to learn about services
[45:24] that were being provided, you know, and I learned things that I didn't even know were being provided
[45:28] in the community.
[45:31] You know, so we took the opportunity to learn from all these different individuals who came
[45:34] to talk about programs and services that they offer, gave us an opportunity to identify gaps
[45:40] and services, what are we missing.
[45:43] But more importantly, it gave us the ability to formulate those relationships with the individuals
[45:47] in the community, and bridge those gaps, you know, and try to mend some of those things
[45:51] that we have in trouble and difficulties trying to achieve in our facility, you know, when
[45:55] it came to coordination, to care, discharge, planning, and how to obtain, you know, even
[46:00] something as simple as health insurance, you know, things along those lines, we were very lucky
[46:03] that we're one of the facilities in the state, the first one of the state, they started
[46:07] the process of activating health insurance for inmates prior to release and discharge.
[46:13] From the sequential intercept mapping came the re-entry and transition council, that is a smaller
[46:19] group that means regularly to discuss, you know, maybe they kind of stay more on topic with, you
[46:25] know, individuals from incarceration, you know, whether they're leaving prison or leaving
[46:30] our local jails and the services that we can provide and what we can do to help and assist them.
[46:35] And again, identify the gaps and bridges gaps and services and to help.
[46:39] So, what we have, what generated from all this was a bi-monthly service provider schedule.
[46:47] So, what that is is that the limitations of our facility in our design, you know, in space and all the programs and recordings we have to do.
[46:55] We really had to strive because the last thing we wanted to do is we had all these people that want to help our population.
[47:00] They want to come in and talk about what they can do, the services they can provide and how to coordinate those services.
[47:06] is how we can link them up to the outside when individuals are released from custody.
[47:10] So we really had to work together to come up with times and scheduling and that they would
[47:16] meet both the facility needs, but also the provider needs on the outside to make sure they
[47:20] are available.
[47:22] So no matter one through a few of the service providers are not briefly touch base and some
[47:26] of the services they provide, they are not by any means all of the services they provide.
[47:32] Like I said, I'd be able to go on for quite some time if we went on talking about them.
[47:38] So we have peer services that comes to our facility.
[47:42] You know, peer services are individuals that have either been trained or have life experience similar
[47:47] to individuals incarcerated in our facility.
[47:50] That's an invaluable asset to have.
[47:53] They come, they talk about the services they can offer, but we also allow the peer and opportunity
[47:58] to meet with an end cost of the, to establish that connection prior to this charge.
[48:05] It's, it's, it's creates a warm hand off off the door.
[48:08] It's another person at the individual can go to, who's kind of bent through,
[48:12] bent successful, you know, maybe learn things the hard way,
[48:15] but that individual can relate to and that individual can,
[48:18] the pure can guide them and help them.
[48:21] Employment connections is another one that comes in and participates.
[48:24] They got a primary focus on, you know, individuals with, you know, your physical disabilities
[48:31] or maybe cognitive or developmental disabilities.
[48:36] And they focus on engaging those individuals and working towards community employment.
[48:41] Cortland works as another agency in the community.
[48:43] We work with it, comes in participates in the jail.
[48:47] Cortland works again.
[48:49] They have various funding streams.
[48:52] They help individuals with employment opportunities in the community or continue to education.
[48:58] If we have an individual and our facility that starts educational services and there, and maybe doesn't quite finish,
[49:04] that that was the link.
[49:06] You know, the gap was what do we do when they get out.
[49:09] You know, the link in the bridge was court and the works can pick them up and where we left off.
[49:15] We work with the court and kind of health department, so they come into our facility.
[49:19] do education on a appetite to see also another important one that they come in and do.
[49:24] They do narcan training. With the opiate crisis, they were currently facing, they train
[49:31] our MA population on the use of narcan, how to use it and what they do after it's used. But
[49:39] more importantly, the county provides the narcan kits to the inmates. So we take the kits, we play
[49:46] in their property. And when they're discharged from custody, when they leave our facility,
[49:50] they have those kids right on them when they walk out the door. And that's huge. And I think
[49:55] they was a pretty big, you know, hurdle to get that. And a lot of times it was the individuals
[50:00] coming in the facility. And I can't tell you how many names that we've read were released or
[50:06] discharged somebody from custody only to read or hear about an overdose a few days later.
[50:11] And then that's, you know, the old pre-its and the tolerance levels and going back to what
[50:15] are doing prior to them coming in jail, and I firmly believe that the Narcan that we've
[50:21] been providing upon release is definitely save some lives.
[50:26] We participate with a Beacon Center.
[50:28] They come in and provide the educate the population about the services that they provide
[50:34] relative to substance use disorders.
[50:37] Family counseling, again, is another agency we partner well with that provides education
[50:41] substance use disorders, also the Cody program comes in which is a Center of Treatment Initiative,
[50:48] which is a, you know, it's a mobile treatment for substance use disorders.
[50:53] We partner with DSS, DSS comes into our facility talks about the services they provide.
[50:58] Syracuse recovery comes in, they talk about, you know, the services that their agency can provide
[51:04] to our, and make population. We also have the child development council come in
[51:11] and talk to the population, they promote healthy development with children and families in our community.
[51:18] Also, they have a healthy family programs, which is offered to pregnant inmates or those that have a newborn
[51:24] three months or less.
[51:25] There's a lot of services and programs that they can guide and help and mentor those individuals too.
[51:31] I think it's important to mention, you know, while we hear some of those programs in some of their
[51:34] offered, and they may be tailored to a certain population, whether it's, you know, like I just talked about the
[51:39] I'm going to see the females.
[51:41] This information is made available to our entire inmate population, and I have talked to
[51:48] other inmates in the facility when I made various rounds and communicated with them about
[51:53] the services and getting some feedback on it, and general census is a lot of them didn't
[51:58] know.
[51:59] This stuff was being offered, but more importantly, some of them may have family on the outside
[52:04] that could benefit from some of these services and programs that we are offering.
[52:09] You know, and I think that was pretty huge, you know, and recognize it not only are we impacting, you know, the population and the facility and we're educating them about, you know, all the service providers that we collaborate with in the community, you know, not only we provide them with that information at their fingertips, but they're sharing that information with their family, they're sharing that information with their friends too. That's huge.
[52:31] We also have religious services, two nights a week, alcohol and anonymous, comes to the facility once a week.
[52:39] We have a Vivatral Program.
[52:41] So the Vivatral Program and the facilities of Vivatral is a medication used for opioid addiction or alcohol addiction.
[52:50] There's a selection process.
[52:51] There are some strict medical criteria that must be met prior to approval.
[52:56] There's a panel that reviews, inmates that are interested in the Vivital Program, we have a panel that reviews it and will approve or deny that request based on medical recommendations or recommendations from that panel.
[53:09] But the good thing that happens with this, if in May and custody decides they want to have Vivital, we give them their first dose of medication prior to discharge from the facility.
[53:16] But not only that, it doesn't just here's your medication and go, we allow them to choose
[53:22] from some of the service providers in a community that specializes in substance use to
[53:26] sort of that also have a vitroal, the ability to supervise a vitroal medication.
[53:33] And we link that.
[53:34] They have those appointments made, those follow-up appointments and treatments made prior
[53:38] to them getting out of the facility.
[53:39] So, they receive the medication while they're in the facility, and then as they walk
[53:42] out the door, they already have their appointments made with a service provider for a follow-up
[53:46] I don't know what you have care.
[53:50] Very touch based on the Narcan training and education, so both of these are educational provider
[53:55] and facility to do a phenomenal job.
[53:57] It's been, it will be on us a little challenging to help with COVID, but we do have staff
[54:03] assigned that work in a role closely with them to go back and forth to make sure that individuals
[54:08] in custody who don't have high school diplomas have the ability to work towards that and
[54:13] eventually achieve that.
[54:14] They also have a specialized vocational training program in our facility for custodial certification
[54:22] so that, you know, inmates that choose to attend that program that leave with a certification for, you know, custodial maintenance.
[54:29] They also come to our bi-monthly presentations and talk to the population. They talk about, you know, funding opportunities for, you know, low-income individuals.
[54:37] They talk about the vocational education that they can provide and they'll assist individuals in custody if they want to go
[54:45] You know, they'll assist them in the process. So if they want to go say our court on one, you know
[54:50] Court on both seas has in the mechanics will if they want a system and see how help try to find maybe some revenue sources
[54:55] But we can definitely work towards getting you in a world and that or our HVAC or you know
[55:00] Welding up in Syracuse, you know, they work with these individuals to try to get them engaged in the vocational training and let them know that that's available
[55:07] We also have immediate workers in the facility, these would be locally sentenced individuals who are generally well behaved, and they provide a series of functions to the facility, whether it's in the seat pictured here.
[55:23] We have laundry service, the M.A. population, so a worker would be assigned to laundry, and his responsibility is laundry for the entire facility.
[55:31] We have, they made workers that will be assigned to the kitchen detail.
[55:37] That one is just as important.
[55:38] Some of these go into the kitchen.
[55:40] They've never really learned how to prepare,
[55:43] inadequate, nutritious, healthy meal.
[55:46] And our cook often takes time to teach them
[55:49] while they're down there.
[55:51] Some skills associated with the cooking,
[55:54] and that's a kitchen.
[55:58] We do have a tablet program in our facility, so the tablet program, what that is is it allows
[56:09] inmates in the facility one access, it has a messaging system so they can go back and forth
[56:14] with their friends although it's not directly like, you know, a text messaging and there's
[56:18] quite a delay to it, but it gives them the ability to communicate quicker than it does
[56:22] sending a letter out through the mail, they act as a phone so they can make additional phone
[56:27] calls.
[56:28] Prior to that on a block, they may have one phone for an inmate, you know, now with tablets,
[56:33] you know, I've increased that one to possibly, you know, depending on the location of
[56:36] silly, four phones available now for them to communicate and talk with their family.
[56:42] You know, on top of that, you know, the great thing about these tablets that I like is
[56:47] We have the ability with these tablets to put information from all of our service providers.
[56:53] So every service provider that I just talked about and various meetings that we've held,
[56:58] if I have opportunities to provide me PDF documents.
[57:02] So I take those PDF documents and I can make those available on those tablets for free
[57:07] to the inmates.
[57:08] So that's been pretty instrumental getting them the information.
[57:12] So not only do they get it in person, but they also have the information at their fingertips.
[57:16] Another program that we do, we have weekly done through wishing wellness peer services.
[57:21] They come in nightly and they work on life skills and aid dimensions of wellness with
[57:26] a focus on personal wellness.
[57:31] Also, catheter charities is another agency we partner with that has a huge variety of resources
[57:39] available for us to utilize often with discharge planning and offenders and custody.
[57:45] Probably, I can't, I don't have time to sit here and list them all, but more importantly,
[57:52] a new one that started up in 2020 was the pathways to re-entry.
[57:57] What that is is it's dedicated to helping people who are currently incarcerated transition
[58:01] into the community by providing the tools, support, and resources leading to employment and
[58:06] healthy lifestyles.
[58:07] So they actually have frame colleges and crystal gennings assigned to that role and they work
[58:13] with our forensic mental health counselor and our transition coordinator and prior to
[58:18] release, again, doing that planning to try to help these individuals, re-enter the community
[58:23] and be productive members of the community.
[58:27] And also, too, on top of the tablets and the PDF documents, another thing that we do have
[58:32] that leaves the information at their fingertips is a dignity bag, prior to release and
[58:37] individual leave in our facility, gets a bag, that bag contains all the information from all
[58:43] the service providers, how to access their services in the community. So they have it at their
[58:48] fingertips again when they walk out the door. So I'd like to thank you for your time. I'd like
[58:53] to thank everybody who took the opportunity virtually to participate in the hearing. At this
[58:59] point time, I'm going to introduce rope-attroll division captain, Rob Durkson.
[59:18] Okay, you can even
[59:19] folks, normally someone might be nervous, I'm just glad that I get to take the mask off,
[59:24] so that was an exciting moment for me. As Captain Lynch said, I am Captain Robinson. I've been
[59:31] at the Sheriff's Office 20 years this August, so I guess I'm in the twilight of my career now
[59:37] at the Sheriff's Office. I've been captain for the last seven. I graduated from Homer High School
[59:44] and a graduate of SUNY Cortland.
[59:47] So although I wasn't born in Cortland County,
[59:49] I'm definitely been cultivated in Cortland County.
[59:55] So what I'm going to discuss tonight
[59:58] is the rope-troll division in the rope.
[1:00:02] So we're going to start with the uniform patrol division. It's currently staffed. And right now, as of this moment, we are fully staffed. We have two recruits in the police academy. They'll be actually graduating in the next couple weeks and starting their field training. We'll get into that specifically here in a couple slides.
[1:00:28] but we have 26 sworn police officers comprised of one lieutenant that oversees the uniform
[1:00:34] division, five sergeants, and then 20 county police officers. Now although that may
[1:00:40] look like a decent number of officers, as the sheriff had mentioned, that just leaves
[1:00:47] us with minimum staff and levels of three officers on at any given time. So when you're
[1:00:54] talking about an area of 502 square miles and a population of just shy of 50,000 people, three
[1:01:02] officers is not a lot. And again, right now, knock on wood, we're fully staffed. In the last
[1:01:10] couple of years, we've experienced staff shortages in the patrol division as many as nine
[1:01:15] officers down. So, basically, missing a whole entire shift. And I could certainly probably
[1:01:21] It's been 90 minutes, just to find why I need more officers.
[1:01:26] So any legislators listening, just put it on my Christmas list.
[1:01:29] If you want to give me some more officers,
[1:01:31] I'd be appreciative of that under the tree this year.
[1:01:34] However, I'm a realist, and I know that that's probably not going to happen.
[1:01:40] We are working towards bumping up the minimum staff into four,
[1:01:43] because like I said, we're finally full.
[1:01:46] Again, I'm going to knock on wood here.
[1:01:47] But it's it's important to have that when I started it I don't mean to tell dinosaurs stories
[1:01:55] You know 20 years ago the minimum staffing was two
[1:01:58] Okay, so you would be on a call up in Kyler. I would be need in the assistance and my backup would be in court lenders
[1:02:05] Sometimes even marathon, so it was definitely you know a learning experience. Let's say
[1:02:12] One of the things here of Helms is also strive for now
[1:02:15] And we just instituted that within the last few months is constantly having a sergeant on duty.
[1:02:21] We now have a sergeant on 24-7.
[1:02:25] And statistics have shown us that the use of force when a sergeant is on duty or when a first-line
[1:02:32] supervisor is on duty is dramatically decreased, I mean dramatically.
[1:02:38] So like I said, these are all strives and changes that we've made, not because we were
[1:02:45] had to, not because we were being dictated to, because we knew it was where we wanted
[1:02:50] to be.
[1:02:51] It just sometimes takes us time again because of those staff and shortages that we had in the
[1:02:55] last couple of years that it took time to get to this point to where we are now.
[1:03:04] So troll functions, obviously first and foremost is patrol the county roadways.
[1:03:11] Again, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, holidays, you name it, we're out there.
[1:03:18] We promote safety by enforcing vehicle and traffic laws.
[1:03:21] I know people might say cops are out there trying to get quotas and tickets.
[1:03:27] Well, that's not why we were at right tickets.
[1:03:30] We were right tickets to encourage safe behavior.
[1:03:33] We participate in the New York State Governor's Traffic Safety Committee.
[1:03:39] We receive grants from that committee, a lot of times the grants emphasize certain safety
[1:03:46] corridors where a Portland County where they have identified that we've had more fatalities
[1:03:51] or more personal injury accidents than we should in those regions.
[1:03:55] So they want us to focus on things that contributed to those accidents such as speed or cell phone
[1:04:01] use.
[1:04:03] Like I said, they're basically directed enforcement.
[1:04:07] proactive patrol, we check businesses and residents.
[1:04:10] We respond to 911 calls as well as any calls that citizens may make directly to the Sheriff's Office.
[1:04:19] Criminal investigation, accident investigation.
[1:04:23] Obviously, we assist other first responders, whether it be ambulance, if they've got a combat of patient,
[1:04:29] fire departments, if they need assistance, force and entry into a residence.
[1:04:33] Obviously, fire departments have the capability, but they like to have law enforcement present if they have to break into someone's house.
[1:04:41] And then probably the most important thing, especially at Sheriff's Office, is community policing.
[1:04:48] And I would make this statement unequivocally that every single one of my officers is a community police officer.
[1:04:56] Every single one of them does community police and functions constantly.
[1:05:02] In every single shift, they're constantly being part of the community and outreach into the community.
[1:05:11] So, when you start your career in law enforcement, the first step is your basic training, your police academy training.
[1:05:18] And the initial academy, it can range anywhere from 20 to 29 weeks and why that disparity is, is we actually use four police academies.
[1:05:26] We use the Brum County Sheriff's Office, Police Academy, the Syracuse City Police Academy, the
[1:05:32] Ana Doggash Sheriff's Office, Police Academy, and then the Southern Tear Police Academy.
[1:05:38] And each academy varies in length, dependent on some of the basic schools may include certain
[1:05:47] training that if we send them, say, for example, Southern Tear only is they've got the
[1:05:54] 20-week class. There might be a train in such a standard field sobriety test in or radar
[1:06:00] where we would have to send a recruit back later or send them to an individual course.
[1:06:07] So again, broom county is probably the most inclusive as far as they're usually the one that runs
[1:06:12] 29 weeks, but from start to finish the recruit finishes with with every certification that they
[1:06:24] me, it's 16 weeks of field training. So four months where they're riding with a senior officer,
[1:06:30] they're being evaluated on a daily basis, they're training, they're learning. Again,
[1:06:37] and then an additional potential 36 weeks. So it's a total where they're on probation
[1:06:42] for 18 months. It's during that time where it's determined whether or not they're going
[1:06:48] be a good police officer. And then the last handful of years, we've actually lost a few officers
[1:06:57] during this period, where it was decided by the administration that this just wasn't
[1:07:03] the line of work for them. And again, the other thing is that I want to emphasize is that
[1:07:12] when an officer leaves, we can't just flip a switch and replace them. It's a process and it could
[1:07:18] potentially up to 18 months before we're able to replace them. And that's assuming that a
[1:07:23] academy is starting right when we have the vacancy. A lot of times we were choosing a academy,
[1:07:29] it's just based on timing. If we have a vacancy today, and there's an academy starting in January,
[1:07:35] it just makes the most logical sense to send it to that academy.
[1:07:42] So please train in. This slide in
[1:07:47] particular is kind of in-service training. This is what officers will receive. Obviously there's specialty training that we'll get into in a little bit.
[1:07:55] One of the pictures a couple years ago through a grant I was able to purchase a firearm simulator.
[1:08:02] What this allows us more time where officers are making like shoot no shoot scenario based training and simulations. Again, more training is always better.
[1:08:13] It always gets a better and product, so it allows the officer and the trainers to get more
[1:08:21] training time with firearms and, again, different scenarios.
[1:08:25] There's just hundreds of ranges and different simulations in that simulator.
[1:08:32] One of the ones, hopefully, you can see it there in the upper right hand corner, is that's
[1:08:38] a photo that every year we do annual training with all the law enforcement agencies in
[1:08:44] Cortland County for active shooter training.
[1:08:49] We do that with, like I said, the Cortland City Police, the State Police, Palmer Police,
[1:08:54] SUNY Police, NCONs even come and as well as we've instituted local fire departments
[1:09:01] and EMS services.
[1:09:03] Not only are we training for God forbid and active shooter situation, but we're also training for medical and rescue operations that would take place in any of those events.
[1:09:17] Also, at least once a year, sometimes ideally twice a year, the whole entire road patrol gets together for an annual training where we pick various topics.
[1:09:30] And we focus in on those that the sheriff deems that are imperative to train that year.
[1:09:43] And then, obviously, we have policies as well as continued training.
[1:09:49] Now, the use of force, that's obviously a big topic of why we're here.
[1:09:54] Every police officer in the sheriff's office trains every year
[1:09:59] has an update in what the New York State article 35 it's in the penal law it is New York State's
[1:10:07] justification for the use of force. On top of that we've got this year we're scheduled in some
[1:10:16] de-escalization and implicit bias training that's going to be our department wide training this year.
[1:10:23] However, again, I would make the argument that, as a sheriff's office, our officers,
[1:10:34] excuse me, a little tongue twister there, are constantly doing de-escalization.
[1:10:40] Again, when you're back up as 15, 20 minutes away, you have no choice.
[1:10:45] I've spent a whole entire career on talking people out of why it's not a good idea to
[1:10:51] my butt out there, all right. You know when I started 20 years ago I was 160 pounds. I mean
[1:10:58] there wasn't a lot to me and I've honed that skill very well and it's just through practice
[1:11:05] and experience, we're constantly doing de-escalization.
[1:11:12] First responder, we receive medical
[1:11:14] training. Obviously, basic first aid. There's an AD in every car. We carry Narcan for overdoses.
[1:11:24] Every individual officer now is equipped with quick plot bandages to stop severe bleeding,
[1:11:31] as well as turnic kits. Again, they have those personal medical kits on them at all times.
[1:11:39] As well as some of the other training we do participate with the emotionally disturbed person's response team.
[1:11:49] We have several officers that are part of that.
[1:11:53] But again, my officers are dealing with emotionally disturbed people on a nightly basis,
[1:11:58] or daily basis, depending on I guess your shift.
[1:12:02] It's constant.
[1:12:03] They're receiving on the job training through experience.
[1:12:08] As far as, as captain, one of my functions is internal affairs at the Sheriff's Office.
[1:12:16] If there's any complaints or comments that people would like to make regarding the
[1:12:20] officers, there are several avenues that they can do it.
[1:12:23] We've had people use social media messaging through either a Twitter or a Facebook account.
[1:12:30] They can come in, they can meet with a supervisor, they can send emails, obviously our emails
[1:12:36] are all on the county website, they can make a phone call, or we've actually had them come
[1:12:43] in through the Sheriff's App with the under Sheriff, it's going to cover what that is a
[1:12:46] little bit later, but there's a submitted tip. Again, we have all these different mechanisms
[1:12:51] for someone to file if they have a complaint, or if they just want to make a positive
[1:12:55] comment even, we obviously receive an overwhelmingly majority of our comments are positive
[1:13:02] and not in the form of complaints.
[1:13:07] So our use of force policy, and I'm definitely not going to read everything on that screen,
[1:13:12] but just to cover a couple of things, our use of force policy is dictated and mandated
[1:13:18] by the Department of Criminal Justice Services for New York State.
[1:13:23] It was in 2019, actually, last year, that DCGS mandated that every police agency adopt
[1:13:31] their model policy.
[1:13:33] So, we're already operating, our policy and our use of force is already basically under state mandate.
[1:13:43] In those mandates that they did last year, they also did use of force training.
[1:13:46] I do all the use of force training.
[1:13:48] So anytime an officer uses force, we have to report to the state.
[1:13:53] Not only the type of force that was used, but we have to give information, pedigree information,
[1:14:01] regarding the officer, their age, their race, their sex, as well as the suspects age,
[1:14:07] race, and sex.
[1:14:08] And New York State, at some point, is going to start publishing that data, apparently,
[1:14:14] on there, on one of their public websites there.
[1:14:18] Again, not only does New York State dictate our use of force, but also through case law,
[1:14:25] through Supreme Court cases, New York State Court of Appeals cases.
[1:14:29] You see up there, Grandverse Conner, that was one of the big Supreme Court cases that just established objective reasonableness.
[1:14:38] Is it reasonable for the officer to use force and are the circumstances where the officer experience warranted that force was used in those circumstances?
[1:14:51] Prohibited use of force. Again, all these prohibited use of force were all part of, well they've been a part of our policy.
[1:15:00] For years now, but they were again emphasizing last year's changes.
[1:15:09] So the prohibitive use of force, you can't use force as a punishment to extract any item from someone's internal body parts without a warrant, to coerce a confession. So it's not like you see on TV where, you know, the officer closes the blinds and gets the phone book out or anything like that.
[1:15:29] Also keep in mind is all felony interrogations and all DWI arrests are filmed at the Sheriff's Office.
[1:15:39] So if there's a felony interrogation, it's on video and if we're processing the DWI arrests inside the Sheriff's Office, it's also a video recorded.
[1:15:50] It's also prohibited to use force to obtain blood, saliva, urine or bodily fluids from an
[1:15:56] individual for a test in without a cord order.
[1:16:02] Again, force cannot be used against a person who is handcuffed to restrain unless it is used
[1:16:07] to prevent injury, escape, or otherwise overcome active or passive resistance posed by the
[1:16:12] subject. And then the biggest one is chokehold, strangleholds, any neck restraints.
[1:16:20] Those are strictly prohibited.
[1:16:26] We have a duty to intervene. Again, we've always had a duty
[1:16:29] to intervene. This is nothing new. Obviously, last year, the state also emphasized that in
[1:16:35] their policy revisions. Basically, it says that if an officer witnesses another officer
[1:16:40] use and force that they deem and appropriate, it is their responsibility to intervene in that
[1:16:45] action, regardless of rank, and then that officer who witnessed that incident is also required
[1:16:53] to report that to a supervisor, even if they have to claim the chain of command if, say, for
[1:16:59] example, the supervisor was the person using that inappropriate force.
[1:17:08] So these are just some,
[1:17:09] One of the statements that we've heard made recently is, you know, police use
[1:17:18] resist and arrest and obstruction.
[1:17:20] They're made up charges that we use all the time.
[1:17:23] So I wanted to touch on some statistics, all right.
[1:17:29] So if you take away our traffic stops, we answer almost 22,000 calls a year.
[1:17:36] And out of those 22,000 calls, we've made 997 arrests.
[1:17:43] Now that's not individuals, that's a rest, so you may have an individual that has several charges.
[1:17:48] But if you do this statistics on that, that's less than, well, it's right around 4.5% of the calls that we respond to actually result in an arrest.
[1:18:02] Again, just more stats about a little over 1,000 motor vehicle accidents.
[1:18:08] Traffic stops.
[1:18:09] We have about a little over 6,000 traffic stops and out of that almost 4,000 tickets are
[1:18:17] issued.
[1:18:18] Again, if you're looking at the stats there or whatever, that's tickets issued.
[1:18:25] When you have say we have 81 DWI arrests, there's several tickets issued to one
[1:18:31] individual in a DWI arrest. It could be the vehicle and traffic violation and then you have the DWI
[1:18:37] citations that go along with it. But even that if you're looking at the number of stops,
[1:18:44] and the number of tickets issued, you know there's only a 63% chance you're going to get a
[1:18:50] ticket issued and again I would argue that that's actually lower in the individual's favor
[1:18:58] Because a lot of the tickets, you get people that get a lot of tickets from one stop.
[1:19:05] They just have a vehicle, or they are suspended, the vehicles suspended, they have no insurance.
[1:19:11] Again, and again, the tickets themselves, a good majority of those tickets come from that directive enforcement,
[1:19:19] that the state enforces or through grant, zero tolerance in specific areas.
[1:19:25] again, the goal is safety, it's to reduce those accidents, reduce the seriousness of those
[1:19:31] accidents, and take away the contributing factors of those accidents.
[1:19:37] But last year, out of all that 997 arrests, only 19 obstruction of obstructing government
[1:19:46] administrations, so basically it's interfering with a police officer trying to do their job,
[1:19:50] And only 12 resistant arrest. Again, if you're a stats person, that's roughly 1.2% of every arrest resulted in a resistant charge.
[1:20:03] Okay. To me, that's pretty profound that at a 997 arrest, we only had people resist us 1.2% of the time.
[1:20:14] It's a extremely profound illustration, again, that our officers are good at talking to people.
[1:20:20] We're good at that de-escalization.
[1:20:23] We're good at selling a product and a rest that no one wants to buy, but we still sell it.
[1:20:32] So one of the most important things, obviously, is officer wellness and health.
[1:20:37] These are just some pictures of some of the events that we've participated in over the years.
[1:20:45] If the middle one there is a softball tournament that we do every year, obviously this year
[1:20:50] because of COVID, they were unable to do it.
[1:20:53] The torch run.
[1:20:55] We also do an annual award ceremony.
[1:20:58] Again, it's important for officers to receive that positive reinforcement that they're doing
[1:21:02] a good job and that the good things that they do that are above and beyond are recognized.
[1:21:10] Also, because of the nature of the jobs that we do, we participate in critical incident
[1:21:16] debriefing.
[1:21:17] We as police officers see things that people shouldn't see, and unfortunately, we tend
[1:21:22] to see it on every day basis.
[1:21:24] So sometimes it's important for officers to be able to talk to their peers, as well as, you
[1:21:29] know, counselors and things like that, to make sure that they're sort in through the emotions
[1:21:34] and things that they're experiencing.
[1:21:36] One of the other biggest pieces of officer wellness and health is officer safety and officer
[1:21:43] equipment.
[1:21:44] We make sure that our officers have the best equipment that we can provide to them within
[1:21:50] the resources that we have available.
[1:21:52] I mentioned a little bit before as far as the personal medical kits, the quick pot, bandages,
[1:22:00] the turnic kit, all that's important.
[1:22:02] But not only that, we have additional body armor and the trunks for active shooters.
[1:22:06] We have ballistic helmets, we have gobags, all these things encourage so that the officers
[1:22:12] know that we're doing everything we can to keep them safe.
[1:22:19] In 2018, we had our first school resource officer at the Portland County Sheriff's Department.
[1:22:25] We're contracted with O.C. embossies.
[1:22:29] Officer Barbara, her responsibility is not only the main campus, the McAvoy campus, which
[1:22:35] group 13 in Portlandville, but we also have the two campuses, the Portland Alternative School,
[1:22:41] and the Seven Valley's New Tech Academy, which are within the city of Portland.
[1:22:47] One of the things to emphasize is that Officer Barbara's role is not to be the authoritarian
[1:22:52] figure. She does not make a rest at the school. If she had a case where it was looking to be
[1:23:04] to sign another officer to that. Her role is the mentor to be there not only for the safety
[1:23:10] of the kids, but also that the kids feel safe going to her. And if she was the one that was viewed
[1:23:16] as the Punisher or the enforcer, kids aren't going to necessarily feel comfortable approaching her.
[1:23:22] So we want to build that again that community trust.
[1:23:29] Our K9 program currently we have two K9s.
[1:23:32] We have Frankie who is assigned to Sergeant Kim the Tolai and Freddy who is assigned to Officer
[1:23:38] Dean Strickland.
[1:23:39] Our canines are trained in tracking.
[1:23:43] This means it's tracking.
[1:23:48] It can be not only a suspect but also a lost individual.
[1:23:51] We don't release the dog and the dog chases someone down in this case.
[1:23:56] This is the dogs are trained by ground disturbance and they can track human set.
[1:24:01] So if we have a point of last contact, see if we're a lost child or a lost person in the woods,
[1:24:07] the dog can actually track that individual through that area.
[1:24:11] Our dogs are also trained in article search.
[1:24:14] Again, if I were to take my cell phone and throw it out in a field,
[1:24:20] the dogs are going to be able to find that cell phone
[1:24:22] because it's human-fresh scent that doesn't belong in that field.
[1:24:26] Okay, so that helps with evidence collection if we had someone say toss something from a motor vehicle or whatever
[1:24:33] If we have the general area, and it hasn't been disturbed by other people, the dog will be able to find items
[1:24:41] Like I said, they do demonstrations all the time and it's it's pretty impressive of how they're quickly they're able to find these articles
[1:24:49] The dogs are also trained in narcotics searches
[1:24:52] obviously
[1:24:53] the are trained in a wide variety of narcotics, just a kind of a sidebar. If New York State
[1:25:04] at some point legalizes marijuana because the dogs are trained to seek marijuana, it
[1:25:11] will render both those dogs narcotics searches useless. Okay? Because now the dog is
[1:25:16] going to hit on a substance that is now legal, okay. So if we get to that point, and again,
[1:25:25] if the taxpayers are governing officials choose to get to that point, one impact it will
[1:25:30] have on law enforcement is every narcotics dog in New York State that is currently marijuana
[1:25:36] trained is now going to be useless in that area. And you're going to have to reintroduce new
[1:25:40] that aren't trained in marijuana detection.
[1:25:47] And then both dogs are trained in what they call handler protection.
[1:25:52] So if the officer got forbid needed the dog to protect the officer,
[1:25:59] they have means to let the dog out of the car
[1:26:02] if they were being attacked by a suspect,
[1:26:05] and the dog will defend the officer.
[1:26:07] We
[1:26:11] also have a navigation patrol at the sheriff's office.
[1:26:16] Not only do we do patrol with navigation, we teach the border safety course.
[1:26:24] We teach other courses as far as just an educational course every year.
[1:26:30] We go teach to all the local schools.
[1:26:33] They have a little event set up where they go through different stations.
[1:26:40] one of which is always voter safety and whatnot.
[1:26:45] Our two main bodies of water that we patrol is
[1:26:48] Dwyer Park, Leather York Lake,
[1:26:51] and then because part of Skinny Atlas is in
[1:26:55] Courtland County, part of Skinny Atlas Lake,
[1:26:56] it actually gives us through an navigation
[1:26:59] law jurisdiction over the entire lake.
[1:27:02] So we have overlapped jurisdiction
[1:27:03] with the other counties as well.
[1:27:08] Again, the navigation patrol,
[1:27:10] they not only do patrol but they do rescue operations and a system other agencies as necessary.
[1:27:20] Stone will be able patrol. We actually have four stone wheels, two of which have been there longer
[1:27:27] at the sheriff's office I think than I have but they're still running.
[1:27:33] That map that looks very confusing and looks just like a lot of lines. That is actually
[1:27:41] through New York State. That was actually from the New York State website. So it just shows
[1:27:48] you that we have a lot of arteries of Somalbeal Trail of State trails that go through our
[1:27:54] county that it's important that we patrol. Obviously one of the other things is just like
[1:28:02] automobiles, there's Somalbeal accents and the only way to get to those accents sometimes is
[1:28:08] I know it will be because they're well off into the state land.
[1:28:15] We have security functions at the Portland County office building as well as several of
[1:28:21] the local courts, Portlandville, Marathon, Virgil, and sometimes some of the other courts
[1:28:29] if they've got trials going on will contract with us.
[1:28:32] We cover that security and those courts security with 13 part-time officers who are retired
[1:28:39] officers from the Sheriff's office, so we're able to provide that service to the local
[1:28:44] courts and as well as the county office building here.
[1:28:52] We do have a shared tactical response team with the Courtland City Police.
[1:29:00] We had entered into a joint venture a few years back just because the City Police was
[1:29:08] have in some trouble staff and enough tactical response officers. Now just to emphasize
[1:29:15] although our tactical response team trains often they're not actually used very often.
[1:29:21] One of the most common use of them is you know doing an entry on what is deemed a
[1:29:29] high-risk narcotics warrant okay and again that happens rarely. Most of the time it is
[1:29:38] Again, for that officer safety response, some of the more recent instances when we had one
[1:29:45] of the Portland City Police officers was shot, just down the block here, obviously tactical
[1:29:52] teams from several agencies responded to that incident.
[1:29:56] Not only to secure the scene, but also...
[1:30:00] Participated in rescue operations because there were people still in the apartment below, with a suspect was, and the person that was in that residence, at least one of them was wheelchair bound, and I believe the other was on oxygen, so it was an important rescue operation to get them out of there.
[1:30:22] We have an accident investigation team. I'm actually the head of that. We have eight members. What we do is we investigate any fatal motor vehicle accidents.
[1:30:32] as well as any serious physical injury accidents.
[1:30:37] The accident investigation team, what we're able to do, we have, we have all the equipment to
[1:30:44] digitally measure the scene.
[1:30:47] We do a series of photographs, we collect evidence to determine cause
[1:30:51] and in some cases fault and in some cases even criminal liability,
[1:30:56] whether or not the person that fault actually committed a crime.
[1:31:01] Fortunately, we've been lucky where we only have a couple of those a year again, knock
[1:31:09] on wood. One of the benefits of COVID and everyone staying inside is that it seems like
[1:31:15] our accidents have reduced because there's less people on the road.
[1:31:23] We have our criminal
[1:31:23] investigation division.
[1:31:27] So one of the things that this is just some photos and I'm going
[1:31:31] get into some specifics, what the criminal investigation division actually does.
[1:31:38] But that middle photo and I can touch briefly just because it was obviously in the press.
[1:31:48] That was off the traffic stop.
[1:31:49] That's four pounds of methane and feta means.
[1:31:53] I'm just a simple traffic stop.
[1:31:55] Again, people say, well, why do you do traffic stops?
[1:31:57] why is it you're just going out there and harassing me because I'm a speed and no traffic
[1:32:03] stops lead to other things okay not only did you have that large narcotics arrest but that
[1:32:12] led to an arrest in a homicide in California again all by a simple traffic violation and the
[1:32:21] officers doing a hell of a job, not only making the stop, but from there getting to that point.
[1:32:30] And that's a lot of drugs to get off the street and that's important that obviously the most
[1:32:36] important thing is that there's a murder and now off the street.
[1:32:40] So, like I said, traffic stops are vital to law enforcement.
[1:32:44] Our criminal investigation division, again, it's staffed by the Lieutenant Six Investigators.
[1:32:53] Some of the specialty assignments,
[1:32:57] we have one investigator that's assigned to, actually,
[1:33:03] we have two that's assigned to evidence, one assigned to just general investigations.
[1:33:08] We have a juvenile investigator, an narcotics investigator, and a welfare fraud investigator.
[1:33:13] The juvenile investigator, obviously their case load, since New York State, with raised the
[1:33:22] age, increase in the criminal liability age now up to 18,
[1:33:28] it has, it has, you know, risen
[1:33:30] their case load exponentially.
[1:33:33] So now for the purposes of crimes, you know, 17 and 18 year olds are now juveniles
[1:33:41] on the law. So obviously, there's a lot more case load now for the juvenile investigator.
[1:33:49] juvenile investigators, they're also especially trained. Now just because we have individual
[1:33:57] assignments, most of our investigators are cross-trained. So we have backups, we have numerous
[1:34:03] people that are trained in evidence, we have numerous people that are trained in juvenile investigations,
[1:34:09] even if they're not assigned to that necessary role.
[1:34:15] One of their primary functions is interviews, not only interview and of suspects, again,
[1:34:20] felony investigations, they're recorded interviews, but they're also trained in forensic
[1:34:26] interviews.
[1:34:27] So if you have child victims, we obviously partnership with the CAC, where we do interviews,
[1:34:34] child friends, again, interviews for any crimes that may have been committed against a child.
[1:34:42] Our investigators do crime scene processing, evidence collection, search warrant preparation,
[1:34:48] and, again, all felony investigations, and addition to felony investigations, any complicated
[1:34:54] investigation that is just time-consuming that the patrol officer who, again, is going from
[1:34:59] all the call doesn't have the time and the expertise to track down in this
[1:35:04] very follow-up information. One of the things with now we live in in the age
[1:35:10] of computers in the social media world we have in more and more investigations
[1:35:15] involve in social media that involves church warrants preservation orders and
[1:35:20] a lot of these social media companies are outside New York State and they're
[1:35:25] not necessarily cooperative with law enforcement. They really make you go through the
[1:35:30] rigors and our investigators have to be trained on what needs to be done in order to
[1:35:35] solicit that information. So that is my portion. I'm going to turn it over to
[1:35:44] Thank you for your time.
[1:35:46] Good night.
[1:35:52] Hi, I'm Bud Rig.
[1:35:53] I'm your under sheriff.
[1:35:55] I've been with the department.
[1:35:57] I'm just over 25 years.
[1:35:59] It was raised in Homer.
[1:36:01] I'll keep it real short.
[1:36:02] It's simple in the interest of time.
[1:36:04] Hopefully we can get some questions.
[1:36:07] I'm going to be going over the last division
[1:36:09] and the smallest division of the sheriff's office.
[1:36:12] The civil division.
[1:36:13] It's made up of three sworn police officers.
[1:36:16] One of them being a sergeant who oversees the civil, the records, and also fills in the rope
[1:36:21] patrol as a supervisor.
[1:36:24] We have two county police officers that work in the civil department that are not only trained
[1:36:29] as police officers, but they're also trained in civil school as well.
[1:36:35] We have one civil clerk and one records clerk in there as well.
[1:36:44] The civil functions are serving civil papers, evictions, income executions, family court,
[1:36:52] mail proceeding, subpoena, process and service for instance summons.
[1:36:56] They serve an average over 2,000 papers a year.
[1:37:01] The handle between 1.21.5 million dollars a year goes through our office.
[1:37:07] It's the only division that decually generates revenues, so we have a fees for serving papers,
[1:37:14] and we collect poundage income executions and property executions.
[1:37:20] We generate roughly about $100,000 right now in revenues for the counties that are turned back
[1:37:28] forward to the county.
[1:37:32] Some of the records functions for records management, they do pistol permits, year to date
[1:37:38] we've done 170 pistol permits,
[1:37:44] seal orders, I'll take one minute just to talk about seal
[1:37:47] orders, seal orders, as almost become a full-time job, as the laws and the thought process
[1:37:56] This comes, I mean most of the traffic tickets are sealed now, a lot of felony charges,
[1:38:02] misdemeanor charges are sealed, we have over 100 a week coming in now as opposed to
[1:38:09] we wouldn't do that in a couple of months, years ago.
[1:38:13] We also process the free-to-virtration requests because most of those requests have to deal
[1:38:18] with our records.
[1:38:21] We do, we re-institute a handicap parking permits, this is a great service, especially
[1:38:26] for our seniors, they like to, you know, it's easier for them to come to us to get their parking
[1:38:32] permits, re-nude and their new ones. We also manage the sex offender registry and we offer
[1:38:38] notary services as well. We have monthly reporting that goes into the state. It's the U to find
[1:38:46] crime report, which covers a lot of, you know, most of the arrests and things that we do. So domestic
[1:38:51] violence, adult and juvenile dress, also involved injuries or killings,
[1:38:56] arson's homicide, hate crimes, the use of forest, DWIs, and domestic.
[1:39:03] So, it's a lot of work for small staff, really it's, I get an entry clerk in that
[1:39:09] sergeant that are handle in that record speech.
[1:39:15] So, other net, I'd like to talk a little bit about community programs and events.
[1:39:19] I know I'm rushing through this, but I'll take any emails later to answer any questions.
[1:39:23] So these are a lot of programs that we go to, the sheriff, and I were very committed to being
[1:39:29] engaged with the community.
[1:39:31] So we try and hit as many events that go on and the county is possible.
[1:39:36] Beyond that, we've got a fire installation dinners, we've got a town board meetings.
[1:39:40] We think it's important to stay engaged with the community.
[1:39:45] Just to go over, there's just a few of the things that we do.
[1:39:48] So we'll be ringing the bells.
[1:39:51] We do that one day, a lot of our staff volunteered.
[1:39:55] The ring the bells for badges and bells, coffee
[1:39:57] with the cop.
[1:39:59] Captain Durks mentioned a torch room, cops on top.
[1:40:03] And almost any of that you can see.
[1:40:05] We go into schools, open houses,
[1:40:10] and most of us
[1:40:10] would go on over.
[1:40:11] So I won't take too much time on that.
[1:40:15] Child safety seat program.
[1:40:16] And we have officers that are trained and certified to do proper installation and fitting
[1:40:21] of car seats.
[1:40:23] And we work with the parents, and especially the new parents come in, they can do that
[1:40:26] by appointment.
[1:40:27] And we do that at some of the community events as well.
[1:40:32] It's a great program, people take advantage of it, we work with the county and grant funds
[1:40:37] to supply those to the public.
[1:40:42] Drug take-back was a program that was actually started through one of our partners,
[1:40:51] Cortland area communities, the care, started it.
[1:40:54] It's been a huge success in a real positive thing for our community.
[1:40:59] There's three KTS throughout the community.
[1:41:02] You can see the picture in the center.
[1:41:03] There's a KTS that's actually in the lobby of the Sheriff's Department.
[1:41:06] So, if anybody needs to get rid of medications that are no longer a news that they don't need,
[1:41:12] if something happened to a loved one, and you just need to get rid of these medications,
[1:41:15] you can bring them there, drop them off.
[1:41:17] We also, throughout the year, will stage events where you can do a drive-in event.
[1:41:23] And we've taken thousands of thousands of pounds of drugs that could have hit the streets
[1:41:29] and dispose of them properly.
[1:41:30] So, it's a great event.
[1:41:32] and we're thankful to the Courland area communities that care.
[1:41:38] Operation Safe Child is another program that was started.
[1:41:42] It's the New York State program that was started out of the Governor's Office for Child Safety.
[1:41:48] So we do this, it's special events, fairs and big events to County.
[1:41:53] So it's a great thing for parents to have.
[1:41:56] They can bring their children in.
[1:41:57] We do digital fingerprints, high resolution photography.
[1:42:02] We get all the child information, it's all printed on a card that you have within minutes so that you can create it in the event of something that ever happens.
[1:42:15] Big success in the community allows that we have thousands of these cards that we've gone through and done since we've got the equipment.
[1:42:24] Project Life Saver is an international program that we're part of.
[1:42:30] It's for being able to design and be able to track at risk populations.
[1:42:37] People that are likely to be wandering off and may get lost due to a cognitive condition.
[1:42:45] So there's a small tracking device that's given to the individual.
[1:42:51] and it's got a chip inside of it that we can track.
[1:42:56] So we have multiple ways to track that.
[1:42:57] If somebody winds up missing, it sends an impulse every few seconds.
[1:43:03] So we can track it.
[1:43:04] We can send a car out.
[1:43:05] We have equipment to locate the device.
[1:43:08] If it gets to the point where we can't locate it,
[1:43:10] and we have to call it a helicopter.
[1:43:12] We have equipment to put it in a helicopter to do a broad search.
[1:43:16] This just gives pieces of mind to families.
[1:43:18] that's something they can sign up for.
[1:43:21] Right here, we work with off-savaging.
[1:43:25] Plays a big role in this as well.
[1:43:28] But it just gets peace of mind to families when their children
[1:43:32] or loved ones with issues have a problem
[1:43:35] that wander off so they don't get lost.
[1:43:40] Stop DWI.
[1:43:42] We do a lot of education.
[1:43:44] We go into schools and special events.
[1:43:46] We have interactive equipment to engage the kids and adults to try and reduce the number of DWIs.
[1:43:54] So most of our staff are trained.
[1:43:56] We have multitudes staff that can go out.
[1:43:58] We have simulators and games.
[1:44:01] You can see the go card upstairs.
[1:44:02] There are different goggles and the use.
[1:44:04] It shows different levels of intoxication and how it alters your ability to function.
[1:44:11] So it's a great program, we do it at the college, we do it at schools, and throughout community of us.
[1:44:21] Community partners is huge.
[1:44:23] This doesn't even justify the entire list.
[1:44:29] Captain talked about drug treatment court.
[1:44:31] He's actually a member of Captain Lynch.
[1:44:34] It's been very instrumental.
[1:44:36] So the reentry and transition council knew there has been great.
[1:44:41] He now sits at the Winstead Science Chemical Dependency Subcommittee for years.
[1:44:46] I sat on that committee and actually when we talk about the Justice League, it was actually
[1:44:54] team out of chemical dependency committee, we were taking up the...
[1:45:00] Jail Services was taking up so much of that. We did an offshoot, created a new group, and it was called
[1:45:05] the Jail Services Committee, which was a group started off at 5, group of 20, group of 60, and
[1:45:12] we got involved with the cultural intercept, and that's what led to Justice League today.
[1:45:17] Speak up, court-lin area, communities, the care, and suspension, I mentioned, court-lin county,
[1:45:23] court, advisory group from emergency preparedness. We meet with regularly, we have people on that,
[1:45:29] Criminal Justice Advisory Board, we sit on that as well.
[1:45:34] I'm trying to save the board.
[1:45:35] Captain Dirkson talked about, so it's just a lot of things.
[1:45:39] Rotary and the list goes on and it's been the sheriff's push
[1:45:46] that the more the community related that we are,
[1:45:52] the better it's going to be for all of us.
[1:45:58] College internships, we work both with Court and State and TC3 to do internships, we do
[1:46:05] ride along with police officers, they observed 911, they observed in the jail, they get
[1:46:11] credits for that, and potentially that helps us when we're talking about job recruitment.
[1:46:17] These people get to see firsthand what our agency has to provide, hopefully they see other
[1:46:22] agencies, they're attracted to ours, and it's just a great partnership.
[1:46:27] The community engagement, like I mentioned all of us from the fair, to youth groups, to
[1:46:34] Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, we try and hit as much as we possibly can.
[1:46:39] If asked, we try and speak a different events very solid, we turn people down.
[1:46:44] A lot of the times, as our staff were so limited, they actually volunteered, and I think
[1:46:49] that shows our commitment, not just from the sheriff and myself, but the people that are
[1:46:54] out there doing it for the volunteer they're tying to do these functions.
[1:47:02] How do you contact us and how do you make communication with us?
[1:47:05] First is the Sheriff's app that's relatively new.
[1:47:09] Sheriff felon started this year or two ago.
[1:47:12] It's an interactive tool that you can download on your phone and you keep up to date.
[1:47:17] You can get alerts from us.
[1:47:19] You can make comments in there.
[1:47:21] If you have a loved one in jail, you can look up if they're there.
[1:47:24] It's just a great interactive tool.
[1:47:26] If there's alerts that are going out into the community,
[1:47:29] whether it be weather-related or a road closed,
[1:47:32] things are constantly going out there.
[1:47:34] It's a great interactive tool.
[1:47:37] And if you go to download our app today,
[1:47:40] you look up Portland County Sheriff App on your app store,
[1:47:43] and you'll find it there.
[1:47:44] It's a great tool.
[1:47:45] We've had great success.
[1:47:47] And more and more people are getting on at all the time.
[1:47:50] We also had social media.
[1:47:52] You can contact us through Facebook or Twitter, Captain Dirkson, stays on top of that, so we're very timely in our responses.
[1:48:02] Also, we're reaching out to that younger generation.
[1:48:06] It's no longer the newspaper.
[1:48:09] It's all these interactive tools with cell phones and computers.
[1:48:13] So we're trying to stay up to date and connect it and engage with the community.
[1:48:23] We're missing something.
[1:48:27] Oh, that's our website, is all right.
[1:48:29] So, this is our website, so if you go to Court of Accounting, Public Safety, it's Court of Accounting
[1:48:36] Sheriff's website, and you can also contact us for there, it gives us all of our contact
[1:48:43] information, phone numbers, emails, anything else to need.
[1:48:47] We also put out an annual report every year that's available for you and it's posted on the
[1:48:56] I know I'm going kind of fast, but I'm trying to save a little bit of time here.
[1:49:01] Just a brief touch on the executive order 203, which is a governor issue, the executive order,
[1:49:13] to mandate that local municipalities review how they do business and collaborate with communities to develop a plan to better serve our community.
[1:49:23] It gives a list of not going to go through the entire list.
[1:49:27] This is something that the sheriff and I have been committed to since we've been in office.
[1:49:32] We try and build that collaboration with our community partners.
[1:49:36] We work with over 100 partners at a regular basis.
[1:49:41] So we're excited about this.
[1:49:43] I think it really formalizes what we've been doing for a long time anyway.
[1:49:49] And it's a good thing.
[1:49:51] So we have plans to do this and to meet with other individuals to get more input to see
[1:49:58] how do you think we're doing and what can we do better, to better serve our community.
[1:50:10] So moving forward,
[1:50:15] there's additional training we're going to do, Captain Durkson talked
[1:50:18] about implicit bias and de-esculation training, the entire agency will be going through that
[1:50:23] this month. We'll continue to find, you know, relevant, helpful training that suits the current climate needs for our staff.
[1:50:35] We'll expand our efforts to develop and quality recruits and bring them in, get them the best training they can.
[1:50:46] from all demographics,
[1:50:51] which is like Captain Thurkson said earlier, it's not just on the road
[1:50:55] division side, but in correction side it's becoming a more and more difficult task to do.
[1:51:01] We get less, less applicants, less qualified applicants.
[1:51:05] So we have to kind of change the way we're doing business to try and bring that back around
[1:51:10] to the way it used to be so we can get the people that we need.
[1:51:13] And again, we're going to work very hard to continue to build our relations with our community partners.
[1:51:20] That's probably the most important thing as we continue to move forward and prepare to develop the plans and
[1:51:32] policies that we need to serve the community in the best way we can.
[1:51:39] So again, we have different ways to get a hold of this that we don't answer your questions
[1:51:43] tonight.
[1:51:44] Please feel free not only to contact Savannah or myself by email but you can contact any
[1:51:50] of our administration, everything is listed on the website, you can go to Facebook or Twitter
[1:51:54] and we'll get back to you and I appreciate everybody taking the time.
[1:51:59] I know it's been a long draw-out event.
[1:52:02] I want to leave a little time for questions and I'll share if you have anything more.
[1:52:06] Yeah, so we'll keep that moving, and if you got questions coming in, we'll take those at this time.
[1:53:08] We had one statement coming from Legislator Nual.
[1:53:14] I don't do it here.
[1:53:21] He had stated that there was one individual named in the Portland Standard that was released five to six times due to Bell Reform, how is that helping?
[1:53:34] Well, obviously it's not helping the community, it's helping the individual.
[1:53:41] There was good aspects of Belliform and bad aspects of Belliform and we're going to have to work through
[1:53:47] Belliform brings us, unfortunately our hands are kind of tied with those scenarios and that's one of many that we've actually seen.
[1:53:57] That's the negative side, one of the negative sides of Belliform.
[1:54:12] I'm not seeing any other questions. We'll give everybody a minute to answer.
[1:54:21] What are you guys? You're good.
[1:54:35] Amy Bugs said great job with the presentation of the department is clear that each person is proud and well versed in all of what goes on there.
[1:54:42] Very proud to have you all serve and protect us.
[1:54:47] Danielle W says question for the sheriff. Can you share insights into why the number of traffic stops are about 1.5 times higher than tickets issued.
[1:54:56] Also, thank you for sharing this.
[1:55:02] Yeah, basically what it breaks down to is the officers have discretion on each stop that they make.
[1:55:08] We don't mandate that every car gets stopped to get a ticket.
[1:55:12] I mean, you know, there's a lot of times the whole stop involved goes into it.
[1:55:16] It might be something that's a young driver.
[1:55:18] It's something that looked like it was innocent enough.
[1:55:21] And that the feeling didn't really rise to the occasion.
[1:55:24] You felt you needed a ticket for.
[1:55:28] Or it's one of those where this is real blatant and dangerous.
[1:55:30] and it needs to go to that. The captain Durfson mentioned too that a lot of our tickets
[1:55:36] not that we're not about writing tickets, but our whole philosophy isn't just a rest in
[1:55:43] right tickets. There's times where it needs, there's times where they're not. And it's one of
[1:55:49] those where it's really kind of leave it up the officer to the situation and trying to handle
[1:55:53] what best fits the situation. I know I get a lot of emails and context by a lot of our
[1:56:00] public that are really kind of fed up with the traffic on the roads in that and we're
[1:56:06] doing our best to get out there as much as we can but I think the majority of them
[1:56:10] would even understand that not everybody on that that got stopped that day necessarily
[1:56:16] needed to take it but that's my opinion that's how we do it right now okay thank you
[1:56:22] legislator Richard Stacks said the week 11 vacancy what positions are they for?
[1:56:28] There are all line officers in the correction division.
[1:56:43] Legislator Harbin says what are the next steps to move further with this Governor's
[1:56:47] EO203 Proclamation?
[1:56:50] We plan to keep moving forward with meeting with more community groups and having as much
[1:56:58] discussions as we possibly can to see what different opinions the public has for us and
[1:57:04] what they think we should be doing.
[1:57:21] Sharon says thank you for your partnership with the mental health department. I appreciate the dedication
[1:57:25] That's from Sharon McDougall, our community services director.
[1:57:29] Well, thank you. I know we
[1:57:32] Staying touched with each other regularly. We're all dealing with a lot of the same same type of issues and I appreciate all our support
[1:57:45] From legislators back again pistol permits 170 and parking permits for handicap are these not duplicated with city
[1:57:52] Please
[1:57:55] I guess I don't fully understand what they're asking the pistol permits in parking permits.
[1:58:00] They're the handicap parking permits, possibly.
[1:58:03] They're definitely not duplicate.
[1:58:06] The city actually has been real good to partner with us.
[1:58:10] They do the pistol permits for the city.
[1:58:13] We take care of the county and actually it's worked out real well.
[1:58:17] Obviously it saves me that much more.
[1:58:19] The state police also do pistol permits.
[1:58:22] So we kind of share in that. I'm proud to say I think we take a commanding lead on how many we get, but on the same token I appreciate everybody's help with that.
[1:58:31] But no, that's not a duplicate.
[1:58:33] A duplicate issue.
[1:58:34] Is there a man in the way that's parsed out?
[1:58:37] Is it based on what we have?
[1:58:38] What is your attitude that information?
[1:58:41] Where would you be?
[1:58:41] In the city, it's my understanding that if they live in the city, it would go there.
[1:58:46] As far as all the patients go to the county clerk and then she divides them up to the two agencies
[1:58:53] me and me and the state police, we have been in a position where I've had people where we could stay up as good as
[1:59:01] probably as we ever have. So we've been pushing this hard as we can because we know those get behind
[1:59:05] quickly. So we've been pretty fortunate to stay up.
[1:59:16] Legislator Harvin says the 5.9% of the county population are
[1:59:20] people of color, but they make up 18% of all arrests in the county.
[1:59:24] Can the sheriff provide more information about the implicit bias training?
[1:59:31] I mean, as far as the percentages, I couldn't tell you if that's right or not.
[1:59:34] I have to look at how I'll take his word for that.
[1:59:37] But as far as the implicit bias training,
[1:59:41] it's my whole department, both divisions,
[1:59:43] actually even Secretary of Staff will be going through that at the end of this month.
[1:59:49] so
[2:00:05] The company that we use that have to look up in right
[2:00:10] now.
[2:00:20] We have Danielle W's that's for recruitment. Has there been any thoughts to looking outside of the county to bring qualified diverse individuals in? This is something I learned.
[2:00:30] Sorry.
[2:00:32] That the Tulsa Oklahoma Police Department has started doing and they've had success.
[2:00:36] The individuals are required to relocate to the area.
[2:00:41] We do recruit, like I'll say, the county and that, and we would look at somebody coming in from a different state.
[2:00:47] The problem is they still have to follow the civil service laws and rules.
[2:00:51] So they would start there.
[2:00:53] It's not like some of the other states where they could take the training from here and start here.
[2:00:58] doesn't work that easy, so I'm not sure if that's exactly what she meant, but as far as
[2:01:03] the quick answer, it's not as easy as I'd like to see it.
[2:01:07] We here in the county for years, if we tried to make the people we hire from our community,
[2:01:15] as we grow, we're seeing, at least in my opinion, I can't speak for the legislators, but we
[2:01:19] know that our lists are getting smaller and we are getting more and more outside the county.
[2:01:27] My rules are I have to start with applications from inside the county anyways.
[2:01:33] Once we've exhausted those then I can look at the applicants from outside the county and that's basically how it works for me.
[2:01:44] This is from user mark what can churches do to help connect with inmates as Christmas.
[2:01:49] Cards, gifts, goodies from Reverend Catley, Catley.
[2:01:56] We the only problem with corrections and I let the only share if you can touch bases, but there's very little we can actually bring in.
[2:02:05] So it's kind of a double edged sword. We go out of our way to do special things this time of year as far as like usually we normally have pizza, pizza and stuff on Christmas party type stuff where we can get them but I'll let them touch bases as far as.
[2:02:21] So, could you repeat that for a longer time?
[2:02:24] Absolutely.
[2:02:26] What can churches do to help connect with and meet this Christmas cards, gifts, goodies, etc. from Reverend Kathy Lee?
[2:02:33] So, unfortunately we can't accept the cards or the cookies.
[2:02:37] We do partnership with churches and we do have a pastor, Nate Wright, who is the, you know, religious advisor for our facility.
[2:02:47] So, a lot of times, like the Sheriff mentioned, what we do on our own is often, we'll
[2:02:53] we'll utilize resources that we have to provide, you know, some type of, you know,
[2:02:58] goodies like pizza or something to the MA population. Also, a phenomenal program that they do is
[2:03:04] they do come around during Christmas time, they go block the block, they talk to the
[2:03:09] hidden mates here, the month is one that actually doesn't facilitate the process,
[2:03:12] such as basically every year and they have what's called the Angel Tree program.
[2:03:16] And what that is is a goal to all the inmates in the population.
[2:03:19] They talked when they explained the program, it's offered what it is, is they say, do you have any family?
[2:03:23] And how long can we assist in, you know, your incarcerated police system help you get gifts for your family?
[2:03:28] You know, and they are allowed to put names on an angel tree in those church service system in their houses.
[2:03:33] And their family is in the community.
[2:03:35] Very nice.
[2:03:45] Okay, I don't see anything.
[2:03:46] Oh, here we go.
[2:03:47] From Legislative Harbin, does the sheriff support the use of body cams?
[2:03:54] I do, um, and I would love to see us, um, get the funding to do them. I know that's probably the biggest hurdle.
[2:04:02] Maybe our, uh, maybe our government will help us with that and give us some funding because I know that's a huge push.
[2:04:08] It's a great thing to have. It'd be great for us. It comes with some, with some headaches for us as far as personnel and how you manage it and all that.
[2:04:16] But I'm the same token. I think it's a direction where everybody's going.
[2:04:19] It's just something that people expect, and I think it's a great tool for everybody.
[2:04:27] Thank
[2:04:30] you.
[2:04:31] Both us, thank you as well.
[2:04:33] Thanks, Paul.
[2:04:42] Okay.
[2:04:43] If there are another questions, I will put in the emails again into the chat for any further questions.
[2:04:52] And if we don't, by chance, get them tonight.
[2:04:54] Again, feel free to send them at another time.
[2:04:56] We'll still answer.
[2:04:57] Yes,
[2:05:04] I want to thank the Sheriff's Department and for everybody for logging on tonight, and I hope you have a very good evening, thank you.
[2:05:12] Before we close tonight's meeting.
[2:05:14] I would, sorry, Savannah.
[2:05:17] I'd like to thank Sheriff Helms and his department, with partnering with the Court and County Legislature in order to put it in effect.
[2:05:26] the governor's executive order 203, I'd like to thank Sheriff Helms in his team for their excellent
[2:05:32] presentation tonight, and for the work, his men and women do for the community of Court
[2:05:38] on a daily basis. I'd also like to thank legislators who's in Wilson,
[2:05:45] legislative clerk, Mulville, and deputy clerk, Hemsdad for their assistance in tonight's meeting
[2:05:51] Would like to thank the community for attending this meeting tonight and being there was no further business for our Legislature tonight this meeting is adjourned
[2:06:06] Thank you