AA County Gun Violence Task Force: Meeting Update

Jeff Hulbert from Patriot Picket and “Mike” (an MDS Minuteman) keeping eyes and ears on “Youth & Schools”

hodgepodge said:

Chamblee wants "safe storage " requirement.

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Will she be going door to door to verify compliance?

Ed Hershon monitoring “Laws/Legal”

I couldn’t be prouder to stand (and sit!) with the MDS Minutemen and Patriots who walked in tonight to make a difference.

Also thanking HillyBilly Grandpa, Michael Burke, and Adam Rutter of FB who attended.

Mike asked the very first question to the TF, opening what became a public question period, about their data collection intentions. Hillbilly Grandpa gathered intel and Adam R captured some video.

Good times!

Awright, book-report time ...

Liz Mundie was the opening speaker, pointing to a naitonal campaign called "do not stand idly by." Executive summary - force gun manufacturers to develop magical crime-proof gun tech, and demand that manufacturers police their distribution network. She cited three gun shops in Chicago that she said pretty much were responsible for everything wrong in that area.

They handed out a flyer for Mayor Gavin Buckley's Safe City summit.

Major Goodwin (I believe she's AACo Police) discussed a new 5-page form officers would be tasked with completing at a crime scene. She summarized the data being collected, such as suspect's race, the gun's caliber, manufacturer, model, etc. If there were more than one suspect, a check-box was provided for "multiple suspects" and she promised that her minions behind the scenes would scour the police reports to fill-in the appropriate statistics so the field officers wouldn't be bogged down with paperwork drudgery. She also pointed out that her "minions" comprised of two civilians who analyzed paper police reports manually. She was hinting at the need to computerize data collection efforts, but didn't explicitly say so.

The first of the prohibited audience-participation questions was posited at this point - "Was there a box for 'no firearm recovered at scene' on the form?" There was a bit of back-and-forth, as it appeared that Major Goodwin didn't understand the question. She responded with something about revolvers, presumably in relation to "no casings" being found, but eventually came around with the help of an example - somebody got shot, the perp ran away, the police are not in possession of the firearm. Ah, the good Major will take that up with her ... well, whoever made the form.

Oops, skipped a detail. Andrea Chamblee pounced on Major Goodwin for not considering transgender folks in her male/female-only trans-biased prototype form. Ed fired-off the second prohibited-audience-participation question about the ability of officers, administrators, and janitorial staff to edit the contents of the data collection form after the fact. Again, Major Goodwin didn't seem to understand the question, and responded with something about a supervisor not necessarily being on site of an incident to review the form. Ed reinforced with "chain of custody" and "protection of sensitive information" and the lightbulb went off. No, the forms would not be editable once submitted into the system.

Andrea Chamblee got up at this point, and had a private conversation with one of the event admins. I believe the admin conveyed a message to Jennifer Purcell, who asked that guests stop participating ... because schedule limitations. Questions from guests could be submitted in writing to the Task Force (with no direction on how that's supposed to be accomplished. My expert guess is "send your emails to file-13@dev.null") She then begged for suggestions on guest speakers ... maybe someone from [Bloomberg-funded] John's Hopkins?

On to the meat. Bishop Carroll moved to define "gun violence." There was a pregnant pause that hung in the air like a fart in church. He immediately delegated to Jennifer Purcell, County Executive Steuart Pittman's personal fluffer. She asked if anyone had a definition that they liked ... a few suggestions were tossed out which resulted in an actual discussion about the topic. Questions about "are we considering intentional and unintentional gun violence?" and "must the acts be criminal in nature?" were offered, but no conclusion was attained. Not surprisingly, Fluffer Jennifer offered to wordsmith the definition and circulate a proposal in about a week. She made clear that County Executive Pittman wanted the definition to be as broad as possible. (If you're starting to sense a foregone conclusion in the making, you're right on track.)

So this all seems like a cheap exercise to justify AACO becoming more restrictive than PG because some liberal elite, an Australian in Annapolis, and Bloomberg found an easy place to manipulate. Disgusting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Any press there tonight or are they getting their stories phoned in to them?

A Yuge thank you to all who attended.

After a brief potty-break, individual subcommittees began their respective discussions. I was seated with the Behavioral Health folks (apologies if I mis-spell or mis-name):
Adrienne Mickler - Executive Director AACo Mental Health Agency
Billie Penley - AACo Department of Health
Tricial Wolt___ - AACo Fire Chief
Tim Mikules - paramedic
Lt. Steve Thomas - AACo Crisis Intervention Team

The initial few minutes were spent discussing "well, I guess we should talk about something related to gun violence." There wasn't much coherency, and the conversation drifted to one about general-violence, mental health, and the issues associated with getting those in need of mental health care the care they need. Lt. Thomas described situations where he and his teams used available information to make sure that they provided an appropriate level of force for a particular response. Repeat violent offenders warranted more personnel than a first-time call. He noted [later] that mental health database information is not available to the police, and Dir. Mickler confirmed that they can't provide that information due to HIPPA restrictions. Additionally, Lt. Thomas noted that if the DA or SA declines to press charges, the arrest/detention/incident information becomes "need to know," and apparently field officers don't need to know. He's frustrated that information that could be essential to his officers' decision process is being withheld internally.

He followed-up with some information about the post-release process in a mental-health case. Usually there is a follow-up interview with an officer, which is usually conducted by telephone. Participation in the follow-up by the subject is voluntary unless the person was committed or charged, and there's a condition in the release. There's a gigantic hole in the process in a post-incident context.

The subcommittee members talked about how to make assessments of peoples' mental health, and what to use as triggers to involve government oversight. They talked about a juvenile intervention program in either Macon or Cobb County which conducted mental health evaluations and counseling instead of incarceration. The program is labor intensive, but apparently very effective. (Sounded a lot like there was a State substitution for a missing parental responsibility.) Emphasis was placed on early-age interdiction.

Lt. Thomas described a trigger within the AACo police department where [N] use-of-force incidents will initiate a review. The events may all be justified, but the Police Department wants the officers to be self-critical of the situations and to consider alternative scenarios. Honestly, the introspective aspect sounded like a very healthy thing, if for no other reason than it creates a closed loop feedback structure aimed at continuous improvement. (no mention of "gun violence" anywhere in this discussion.)

The paramedic steered the conversation toward helping the people who were neither suspect nor victim in a particular event. There are plenty of witnessess, friends, family members, neighbors, etc. who are adversely affected by acts of violence. They are often excluded from formal assistive programs. The paramedics provide something called "mobile integrated health" where they go out into the communities and basically shove the healthcare at the folks who need mental-health services. He found that many of the paramedic and police objectives are coherent, though executed differently. There needs to be better hand-off between fire, police, and medical providers regarding who is responsible for the recipient, and exactly how the mental care will be provided (fire may receive the initial call, but police may get the follow-up and won't know anything about the initial situaiton.)

The subcom efforts were concluded at 7:45, and a rep from each group was asked to present a summary at the podium.

Data committee - Chamblee
where gun came from?
data-mine court transcripts
create visual presentation of data from police
other victims are not considered in data
what other data sources can we use?
there are multiple agency sources of data - how to get? by december?
privacy concerns

Schools committee
identify preventive measures
reporting is important, and is inconsistent from one school to next
need better communications
placement of juvenile offenders back in schools causes issues
- administrators are often uninformed about details of offence
wrap-around service (heard this multiple times; don't know what it means)
need data on gun sources
look for trends when data avail
crisis response team education

Legal
examine local legislation options
survey of adjacent county policies and court decisions

Behavioral Health
root cause v symptoms
Hopkins guest speaker?
historical data on people
AACo already leading country in "progressive" methods
deeper dive into police data
national data evaluation
role of physicians in mental health considerations
there are gaps in services and treatment

Communications Messaging
what top messages from subcommittees
how do AACo residents get info?
exploring multiple methods for distribution of Task Force message


Fluffer Jennifer - lots of overlap = connection between subcommittees
would like 10 min summary reports next time

What is AACo Crisis Intervention Team ?

Biggfoot44 said:

What is AACo Crisis Intervention Team ?

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A vital component of the CRS has been the partnership with the Anne Arundel County Police to implement Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs). The CITs consist of an officer trained in CIT and an independently licensed, behavioral health clinician. The advantage of having a CIT is that they are able to respond in situations where MCTs are not, such as when weapons or barricades are involved, or as first arrival at schools until a parent/guardian can be reached. These teams also provide a comfort to county residents, as a police officer can go onto someone’s property to perform a “well-being” check, where no other component of CRS is able to do this.
http://www.aamentalhealth.org/crisisresponsesystem.cfm#cs_crisisint


https://www.wbaltv.com/article/anne...intervention-team-helps-officers-cope/9661280

With quotes from Lt. Steve Thomas, coordinator of Crisis Intervention Team and Task Force member.

hodgepodge said:

In addition to the data AAPD is collecting, member Jamie Benoit is offering pro bono work from his 1000 person CT analysis firm to mine court transcript data.

May need County Executive assistance to the Court Clerk. May be a Task Force recommendation.

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As Jamie was dropping several "terms of art" in describing data analysis, I looked him up. In addition to being a former AA County Council rep, he's the CEO of FedData. FedData is a Government IT contractor, primarily serving a Fort Meade customer.

Their board is the cream of retired NSA executives.
https://www.feddata.com/about/
Seriously, I'm impressed.

He wants access to public court records. While he understands that this may not happen right away, he has already indicated that this may be part of the Task Force recommendations.


The AA County Data subgroup was dominated by Maj. Goodwin (AAPD), Jamie Benoit (pushing the data analysis angle), Sandra Bartlett (Delegate, D32 who sponsored a bill requiring MSP to publish a report on gun violence.) and Andrea Chamblee (who has an agenda the size of a train).

The PD has two people assembling data from 2018. In the month or more, they've worked through five months of 2018, but they should be completed by the July meeting.

The Task Farce is using Google sheets to collaborate, disseminate information, and communicate. Does anyone know:

1. If that information is available to the public

and

2. If it is not available to the public, does that violate the rules/laws about meeting information being public?

I assume it's subject to a PIA request.

https://www.aacounty.org/pia/

I assume it's subject to a PIA request.

https://www.aacounty.org/pia/

MigraineMan said:

Tricial Wolt___ - AACo Fire Chief
Tim Mikules - paramedic

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For accuracy-
Trisha Wolford - AACo Fire Chief
Timothy Mikules - AACo Deputy Fire Chief (Logistics)

Redcat said:

For accuracy-
Trisha Wolford - AACo Fire Chief
Timothy Mikules - AACo Deputy Fire Chief (Logistics)

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Thank you. Some of the name cards were obstructed, and I didn't feel comfortable rummaging through the subcommittee's papers to clear them.

Chief Mikules was often quiet, but brought a wealth of information about field triage and real-world conditions (makes sense, now that you've identified his area of expertise.)

Interestingly, the Behavioral Health subcommittee spent most of the time discussing high-level scenarios and response methods, youth interdiction programs, balances between police, fire, and medical discipines, and inter-department / inter-government-agency data sharing issues ... none of which involved "teh scary gunz."

Still, most of this is symptomatic of a bigger problem - (imho) societal destruction of the family-unit. Lt. Thomas emphasized the efficacy of youth interdiction programs ... situations where the State was substituting for the missing parental influence (my words, not his.) But destruction of the family-unit is one of Big Socialism's objectives, right?

hodgepodge said:

Chamblee wants "safe storage " requirement.

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This may be the one thing that gets through as a bill. and maybe ammo shipments into the county.

MigraineMan said:

The paramedic steered the conversation toward helping the people who were neither suspect nor victim in a particular event. There are plenty of witnessess, friends, family members, neighbors, etc. who are adversely affected by acts of violence. They are often excluded from formal assistive programs. The paramedics provide something called "mobile integrated health" where they go out into the communities and basically shove the healthcare at the folks who need mental-health services. He found that many of the paramedic and police objectives are coherent, though executed differently. There needs to be better hand-off between fire, police, and medical providers regarding who is responsible for the recipient, and exactly how the mental care will be provided (fire may receive the initial call, but police may get the follow-up and won't know anything about the initial situaiton.)

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There are some sitting in the room with him! and sure enough, Pittman put them on this board. Have they received said help? PTSD on the board, doesn't seem like a good way to get helpful data for the county. Knee jerk reactions maybe. #wtfpittman







Open meetings rules need to be followed.
Where are questions to be sent.
What was the German secret service called? not related, ssorry.


Thanks everyone for being there.

My group did basically nothing. They had no focus and are meeting on July 11 via teleconference.